Orange cashew milkshake

With an unusually mild winter and early spring weather I was in a mood for something just like this. I love the orange flavored popsicles, cream filled cookies and ice-cream. I made a quick and delicious milk shake with orange sorbet and vanilla ice-cream. It was heavenly!

Ingredients

 2 scoops orange sorbet

1 scoop vanilla icecream

a cup of chilled milk

5-6 cashews

1 tbsp honey or maple syrup

orange cream or ginger snap cookies (optional)

Method

Place all the ingredients in a blender jar and blend until smooth. The cookies are optional. Instead of blending the cookies they can be broken into small pieces and added on top.

Dal with salad greens

 

Growing  up salad in our house used to consist mainly of sliced/diced cucumbers, onion, tomatoes or radish. Salad greens like fresh lettuce, arugula or radicchio were not readily available and not a part of my diet. Now I do include these greens in my salads mixed in with some beans and vegetables.I have recently been on a salad eating binge, which was good and I really enjoyed the greens and veggies for a while but it soon became a bit too much for me and I missed hot, cooked food. I still had a huge whole sale bag of  mixed spring greens and I could not bear the thought of consuming any more raw salad, so decided to cook them. I blanched the greens and added them to lentils. It made for a  a healthy and delicious lunch with a side of baked sweet potatoes. The lentils with the salad greens was almost like a soup. I added a dollop of Greek yogurt on top  to complete the meal.

Ingredients

1 cup toor dal (split pigeon peas)

1 bag of mixed salad greens (spinach, arugula, radicchio, chard)

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 small red onion sliced

1 tsp cumin

1 green chili sliced

handful of halved grape tomatoes

1 tsp turmeric

a pinch of garam masala (optional)

Ghee or oil 

Salt

Method

Wash and boil the lentils in a pressure cooker till soft. Blanch the salad greens and grind it along with the garlic. Pour the greens in the dal. Heat a tbsp of ghee and drop the cumin seeds. As they splutter add the onion and green chili. Cook till the onion get golden brown, add the garam masala and tomatoes  and mix with the lentils. Serve wit rice.

For the sweet potatoes

Scrub and wash the sweet potatoes. Slice them and sprinkle salt and pepper. Coat them with olive oil. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or till they are soft and slightly golden. 

Besan Cheela (Lentil Crepe)

I like to make cheela sometimes called vegetarian omelette in many different ways. It can be thin like a crepe or thick like pancake. Here I have used besan (gram flour) moong dal flour  and rice flour to make the batter. Any number of vegetable can be added in the batter or placed on top to make a filling. Sometimes I top it with cheese and green chilies or just chopped onion and cilantro like this one.

Ingredients

1/4 cup moong dal flour

1/4 rice flour

1 cup besan

1 tsp. carom seeds powder (ajwain)

5-6  cloves ground

1 finely chopped green chili

1 tsp red chili powder

1/2 tsp asafoetida

1 tsp turmeric powder

3 big garlic cloves (grated)

1 large red onion chopped

bunch of chopped cilantro

black salt and red chili powder to sprinkle on top

salt as per taste

oil for cooking

Method

Mix  the  flour and all the dry spices in a bowl. Add water  and mix well to get and pouring consistency (should be similar to pancake batter). Now add the grated garlic and green chilies. Mix the the batter well. Heat a non-stick pan. Pour a ladle full of batter on the pan and spread it around. Top it with chopped onion and cilantro. Flip over carefully. The onion and cilantro should stick to the pancake. Cook for a minute and serve. I like to sprinkle black salt and red chili powder on top. Tastes great with hot sauce or mango chutney.