Italian Prune Jam

Recently we bought a pack of Italian prunes from Costco. The prunes were tart and sweet and had a deeper flavor than the regular plums. It was a 3 pound pack and I was wondering how I could use the rest of them. Both of us are not great fans of cakes and cookies, so I made jam out of the remaining prunes. It turned out to be excellent and there is another jam recipe in my kitty. It takes around 1- 1/2 hours to prepare this jam, so plan in advance.


Ingredients: 
2 pounds prunes
1 pound sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg powder
1/2 teaspoon clove powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper powder
juice of one lemon
2 tablespoon rind of lemon


Method:  
De-seed the prunes and quarter the prunes. Put the prunes in a heavy bottomed pan and cook on low flame for around 15-30 minutes. Add sugar and all the spices, lemon juice and lemon rind and cook for 1 hour or till the prunes are well cooked. The mixture should achieve the consistency of jam. Cool and put it in bottles. Spread on top of hot buttered bread.

Baigan ka Achar / Brinjal Pickle / Pickled Eggplant

Last few days have been busy with things flying out of the blue at me. Things have left me exhausted and me being a kind of a perfectionist makes life harder for me :) When I was in India I saved all the photos of all the delicacies and my travels in the computer at my home. And I forgot to copy my photo folder from my computer back at my home in India to my laptop while I was returning back to US. Being quite a big folder, the transfer failed quite a few times and I am planning other ways to transfer it. That's another thing on my mind. On my vacation I joined a month of yoga and meditation class. It has made me realize the importance of living in the present and not worrying excessively about things which have not been done or which cannot be done. Yoga has been a wonderful addition to my daily schedule and helps me relax through things which life throws at me. As my friend E says "Start with the baby steps first and things will be fine".

Well, coming back to this interesting pickle made with eggplant. I had two eggplants on hand which I bought from the farmer's market last week. I had made eggplant fritters and sabzi last week so instead of repeating the same sabzi's I thought about this pickle. I got to taste this pickle at a friend's home in India and was instantly hooked to it. It tastes good even if chili powder is not added and it is an excellent choice for kids who do not like spicy pickles. It is also a healthier version as it does not use much salt like the other pickles. I usually eyeball the ingredients so the ingredients listed are not in exact proportion. They can be adjusted as per ones individual taste. A great option to spread on bread instead of jam! Instead of eggplant, combination of cauliflower, carrot, zucchini, turnips (shalgum), green chilies, carrot can be used individually or in a combination. I am not sure how pickling raw banana will taste..but its a sure thing to try! Apricots and prunes can be used to made chunda or murabba kind of spicy bread/roti spread.

Ingredients

2 medium sized eggplant
1 1/2 tablespoon crushed yellow mustard seeds (this can be obtained at any Indian store or black mustard seeds can be coarsely powdered)
1 1/2 tablespoon kalonji or onion seeds
1/4 teaspoon methi or fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon saunf or fennel seeds
2 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoon salt or as per taste
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon tamarind concentrate
2 teaspoon red chili powder roasted for 1-2 minutes (use more if you want it spicy)
15 tablespoon oil (preferably mustard oil)

Method

Wash the eggplant and pat it dry completely. Cut the eggplant into 1 inch cubes. Put oil in a pan and add turmeric powder. Add the eggplant pieces and cook on high flames stirring constantly and gently. Cook for around 8 -10 minutes. Mix in salt, sugar, tamarind paste and vinegar. Keep aside. Roast the fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds and mustard seeds for 4-5 minutes or till crisp. Pound it very coarsely using a spice grinder mortar and pestle. If using a electric grinder give a pulse for 2-3 seconds. We don't want to powder it but to just bruise the spices so that they will immediately infuse the flavor when added to the oil. Add the spices to the pickle and mix well. Keep the pickle in the sun for 2-3 days and later store it in the refrigerator. This pickle keeps good for around 10-15.

Piyava Odi / Rice and Onion Fritters / Konkani Onion Vadi / Onion Oodi

I have been wanting to eat this dish since a long time now. This was a common item in our meal at my home in India. We would make a jars full of onion and garlic Odi or fritters and store them for the rainy and winter season. My grandmother would also make these in summer and send us these fritters. We also made "Same-tha-pan" or rice papads with sesame seeds steamed on banyan tree leaves. Steaming them on the leaves gives the papads a mild flavor of the banyan tree leaves. Potato wafers and many pickles adorned our jars in the summer season. Coming back to the onion fritters, ensure that you make it when the sun is hot. These need to be dried in the hot sun for 2-3 days until they are crisp and stored in air tight containers.

Ingredients
1 cup rice
5-6 byadgi red chilies
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 medium onion chopped into small pieces

Method
Soak the rice for 7-8 hours. Wash it and grind it into a very fine paste with red chilies. Put the paste in a heavy bottomed pan and add 1.5 liter of water to the paste. Cook the paste on medium flame stirring it constantly. Let it come to a boil, then reduce the flame and stir continuously. Ensure that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.
Once it is cooked it will be semi- transparent. Cook till the dough becomes thick and most of the water evaporates. Let it cool completely. Add onion pieces and mix well.


Grease a few plastic sheets with a mixture of oil and water. I ripped off two ziplock bags and used them as plastic sheets. I usually spread a plastic carpet in the patio. I then put a cotton chaddar or rug on the carpet and then put these plastic sheets on the cotton sheet. I kept spoons along the sides of the ziplocks to avoid it from flying around the patio due to wind.


Dip your fingers in water and take small pieces of the rice dough and drop it on the plastic sheets. The odi should be around the size of a dime. Make vadis with all the remaining dough and lay them on the plastic sheets. I tore up few of the good old ziplock bags and used them to dry the odis.


When they dry completely, store them in a airtight container. Fry them in hot oil and serve hot with rice.


Variations: To make garlic odi or garlic fritters, add 10-15 raw garlic cloves while grinding the rice paste. Omit the onion pieces if you are making garlic odi. To make plain Odi, just add around 1 teaspoon(or as desired) heeng or asafoetida to the rice paste while cooking it. 

Yam Pickle

I found Suran (also called Indian Yam or Elephant Yam) the other day at Namaste Plaza. Generally I only find the sweet potato like yam at the chinese store, so I use only frozen yam in my curries. Here is how the Indian Yam looks.

I was thrilled to find this vegetable. Kala Chana-Yam curry, yam fritters, yam sabzi are some of my favorite Konkani dishes. I was in the process of deciding wich recipe to make, when I saw this recipe in Divya's blog. The recently introduced BLOG LIST feature by blogspot has been a great advantage. I just have to add the blogs I frequently follow in my list, and it gives me a update of the most recent recipes they post. I followed Divya's recipe given here, and the pickle turned out to be wonderful. Thanks Divya for the recipe.
I am generally not a great fan of pickles as they contain a lot of salt which is added as a preservative. I guess it is okay to eat these pickles if you live in a place with hot and humid climate like India. But here in US, unless a person is an athlete or exercises regularly to work up a sweat, there is a need for an moderate amount of sodium in the daily diet. Eating lot of salty items can cause a bloating in the body due to water retention.

To make this pickle, I added 1 teaspoon salt for around 200 grams of pickle. I used around 100 grams of fried yam. For this I used 7 byadgi chilies and 2 normal hot red chilies. Great thing about this pickle is that it can be made with less salt as it is preserved like other pickles for a long time. Click here for the recipe.

Pineapple Jam or Preserve

My friend S's used to get this pineapple jam in her tiffin when we were in college. When she told me that her mother makes this jam at home, I took the recipe from her and tried it at home. It was delicious. Her mother's native place, Sirsi in Karnataka, is very famous for its pineapples and I guess everyone there makes these divine jams. This tasty jam goes well with bread and chapattis and is very handy for breakfasts and tiffins.


Ingredients

2 cups ripe pineapple pieces.
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 pinches kesar or saffron strands (optional)
1/2 teaspoon pepper powder (optional if you dont' want a spicy taste)
1/4 teaspoon cardamom powder(again optional if you only want the pineapple flavor in the jam)


Method

Cook the pineapple pieces on a low flame in a heavy bottomed pan. Cook covered till the pineapple pieces are tender. Don't add any extra water as the pineapple will leave lots of moisture when it is cooking. Remove cover and add sugar, salt and pepper powder. Cook on a low flame till the sugar has dissolved and mixed well with the pineapple pieces. Dissolve the keshar in warm water and keep aside for 5 minutes. Add the kesar water, and cardamom powder and cook for another 5 minutes. Store the jam in an air tight jar. This jam remains good for around 2-3 months. Enjoy the jam with bread or chappatis.

Preparation time: 90 minutes