Colorful, Tangy, Crunchy Koshimbir

For enough salad for 4, mix together two medium cucumbers, three tomatoes, 1 small onion, 1 small green bell pepper (all chopped fine), 3-4 tablespoons of peanut powder and season with salt to taste and enough sugar and lime juice (of one small lime) for a tangy well-balanced sweet ‘n sour taste.

And that’s it! A great salad that is really versatile and an excellent accompaniment for main course dishes like biryanis, pulavs, bhaaths, kheema, rajma… Remember to season about 10 minutes before eating so that the sugar and lime juice get a little while to mingle well with the veggies – or “for all of them to become buddies”, as Indira likes to joke 🙂

And the little bit of tangy juice formed and left at the bottom of the bowl, once the salad’s been eaten, is almost the best part of this dish!

Tangy green bell pepper, tomato and cucumber salad

This is Indira’s favorite salad (of the moment).

They miss many of the foods they loved so well in France such as avocado, parmesan cheese and the range of excellent olive oils we were able to choose from, so I am glad that they enjoy as much some of the recent introductions to our meals, such as this salad.

They love to dress this salad themselves and are a lot more generous with the sugar than I am. But then that’s why they like to do that part !

2 green bell peppers, cored, de-seeded and diced in to quite small pieces

2 small cucumbers, peeled and diced in to small pieces

2 tomatoes, chopped in to small pieces

1 or 2 small onions(optional), peeled and finely chopped

salt, brown sugar and lime juice – all as much as you like

Combine all the ingredients in a large salad bowl about 15 minutes before serving, so that the flavors mix together well.

This is a fresh, delicious salad; Indira loves how the bell pepper and onion pieces make it nicely crunchy. The juice that remains at the bottom of the bowl once the salad is all eaten up is yummy too !

Adding apples and oranges-Apple, Clementine and Raisin Salad

Inspired by Novairah, I have used raisins, as she does, in salads a couple of times recently. They were particularly good in today’s lunch-time salad, since it had only fruits – I was bored by the idea of using any of the usual vegetables so on impulse decided to use apples and oranges instead – combined with the usual Mesclun.

This made for a nice lunch, with pasta.

I think I love salads as much for the color as the fresh taste, unmasked by spice, of the fruits and vegetables.

Apple, Clementine and Raisin Salad

1 apple (with the skin), diced quite small

2 clementines/small oranges, peeled and with the segments diced in to small chunks

some salad leaves, roughly torn by hand if too large to make it easier for kids to handle with their knives and forks

about 2 tablespoons of raisins (preferable the darker variety for a richer taste)

a few walnuts (optional), sliced in to quarters

2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil

sea salt to taste

Toss the fruits, the walnuts (if you are using these) and the olive oil in a salad bowl and keep aside for 10-15 minutes; just before eating, add the salt and salad leaves and mix well.

So who says you can’t add apples and oranges? This time, it worked out quite well, I’d say !

Penne al Pesto

I had frozen some of the pesto the girls and I made a few weeks ago so dinner today was easy to put together – a quick pasta dish to accompany a chicken and vegetable soup.

Penne al Pesto

200 gms of whole wheat penne, cooked and drained

A few tablespoons (4 or 5, or to taste) of pesto

1 or 2 tablespoons of lightly roasted pine nuts, lightly roasted (optional)

Combine the pasta and the pesto and garnish, if you like, with pine nuts.

A One Sentence Recipe – A Simple Carrot Salad

One of things that is so special, , in my opinion,  about the carrot koshimbir that I make very often, is the tangy taste created by the combination of sugar and lime juice.

Inspired by that, I sometimes make this simpler carrot salad which is so much lighter to eat, quicker to make and yet very tasty too.

Carrot Salad

peeled and grated carrots

lime juice, salt and sugar to taste

Toss the carrots with the seasoning and serve.

That surely qualifies for the “world’s shortest recipe” competition !

Avocado and Orange Salad

This very simple but very nice salad was part of the buffet lunch one afternoon during the conference last week.

It consisted only of alternating, thin slices of avocado and orange, with a very slight drizzle of olive oil, if I remember right, or perhaps not even that.

Light, delicious and perfect for a summer afternoon.

And finally – Pesto

Ever since the girls ate the delicious pasta with home made pesto at Radhesh’s home some weeks  ago, they have wanted to know why I don’t make pesto at home too.

Well, I used to, when they were babies, but back then only Shri and I liked it, the girls always seemed to prefer the bottled variety.

But now that they seem to have enjoyed the real thing, I thought it was time to start making it ourselves again.

So this evening, they helped me make the pesto that will go in to our pasta tomorrow.

They thought plucking the basil leaves from the pot in the kitchen took a little too long, but enjoyed grating the parmesan, and were happy that this meant they got a chance to eat some of it along the way.

This is so easy to make, and the taste so much,much better, it made me wonder again why I have been using the store-bought pesto for so long .

behind the pesto bowl - the napkin holder Noor made in school for Mother's Day this year

 

Pesto

Quite a big bunch of fresh basil

1 large clove of garlic, peeled and chopped in to 3-4 chunks

grated parmesan (1/2 cup to 1 cup, as per taste)

olive oil (4-6 tablespoons)

2 tablespoons of pine nuts

salt to taste

To make : Blend everything together in one of those small blenders that one uses to grind spices.

C’est tout !!

As the girls will confirm, this is finger-licking good 🙂

Indira on the job,

then Noor