Cabbage Toran

As I was sleeping the day away, I got a call from Sanju that he was super hungry and wanted to come home immediately to gorge on the food I had promised him at breakfast. In my defense, who wants to eat lunch at 12 in the afternoon!

I fibbed my way through and told him to be home in 45 mins. Now the slow cooker that I am, a whole meal in 45 minutes is a bit of a stretch for me. So what to do!

This cabbage toran came to my rescue. Fast to cook and yummy to taste. This is a recipe that can hardly ever go wrong. I teamed it with sambar and rice (much faster than making rotis no).

Its very simple really. Start with a simple tempering of mustard seeds and urad dal, add the cabbage, season with salt and wait till it cooks down. Sprinkle a little grated coconut at the end, and the dish is ready to eat.

Recipe

Ingredients:

1 Small cabbage
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1 - 2 Green chilies slit in the middle
2-3 tbsp grated coconut
Oil
Salt to taste

Method:
Dice the cabbage finely and wash thoroughly.
Take oil in a kadhai and add mustard seeds. When it begins to splutter, add the urad dal and green chilies.
When urad dal turns lightly brown, add the washed cabbage and salt.
Mix thoroughly and cover with a lid. Turn down the gas to simmer
The cabbage will leave its own water. Once this has dried out, sprinkle the grated coconut. Stir through.
This toran can be teamed with Sambar or Rasam and Rice

Suffice to say, Sanju loved it and was none the wiser about my mid morning nap

Tomato, Basil and Mozzarella Open sandwich

Last week my wonderful family was here for a week long vacation (thanks to all my emotional blackmail). It was such a wonderful way to end the year for me. In one of our ramblings we started reminiscing about our trip to London, and mom was reminded of these really yummy tomato and basil baguettes she had at Pret (Pret a Manger is a must go for healthy wholesome and cheap food in London). She had loved them so much that when Rashee and I went to London, we brought one sandwich all the way back to Mumbai just for her.

 Obviously then the next course of action was to replicate what we remembered of it. What with all the fresh ingredients and a huge oven at our disposal. Off we went to the hypermarket to get ingredients for a week of wonderful food. (More on that later)

We made these open faced sandwiches at home for breakfast the next day. Very simple actually. All you need is slices of a plump and not too tart tomato, basil leaves, mozzarella cheese and you are good to go. Just assemble these on a slice of bread, toast in the oven and voila, breakfast is ready. 

The bread of course is a different matter. We fought for a good 15 minutes and ended up buying small french baguettes for this attempt. Although I think, normal hot dog breads or even slices of bread would do well enough.

Recipe

Ingredients 

1 medium sized tomato

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Grated mozzarella cheese

French Baguette/Hot dog buns

Salt

Black pepper powder

Method

Preheat your oven to 250 C. Cut up a small baguette or hot dog bun and place a few slices of the tomato and basil leaves on each half of the bread. Sprinkle a pinch of salt and pepper

 Add grated mozzarella cheese over each half.

  Place this in the preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the cheese turns a nice golden colour

Although the sandwiches were super yummy and were gone in a jiffy. Mom still craved those she had at Pret. Sigh. Can't win everyone I guess.