Time for your tastebuds to have a ball with three delightful seasonal recipes.
Indulgent these dishes will take some effort in the kitchen.
So, plan your festive menu in advance and use the weekend to rustle up these dishes (or at least prep in advance) so that your family and friends can enjoy your haath ka banna khanna on Diwali.
Stuffed Dahi Vada
Recipe by Neha Deepak Shah
Serves: 2-3
Ingredients
For the filling
- ½ cup walnuts, roasted
- 2 tbsp chopped green dhania or coriander or cilantro
- 1 green chilly, chopped
- 2 tbsp any chopped berries like strawberries or mulberries or blueberries or else raisins
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp jeera or cumin powder
For the vada
- 1 cup white urad dal, washed and soaked for at least 5 hours
- 1 green chilly, chopped
- Small piece ginger, roughly chopped
- Salt to taste, around 1 tsp
- Oil for frying the vadas
To serve
- Yoghurt, whipped with a pinch of black salt and sugar
- Chopped walnuts, to garnish
- Imli or tamarind chutney
- Green chutney
- Pudina or mint leaves
- Beetroot puree
Method
- Drain the water from the soaked urad dal.
Transfer into a blender.
Add the chopped green chilly and the ginger.
Blend till a smooth batter.
Add a little water only if needed.
Transfer the batter into a bowl and keep whisking it until it's airy and light.
Keep aside. - In the same blender pulse all the ingredients for the filling until coarse.
Transfer into a bowl and keep aside. - Use a paniyaram pan to make the vadas that way you'll end up using less oil and the shape is more or less perfect.
Place the pan over medium-high heat and grease the moulds with oil.
Add 1 tbsp of the vada batter into each mould.
Add 1 tsp of the filling in the centre.
Add some more of the vada batter to seal the centre.
After a few minutes, flip the vadas.
Transfer onto a paper towel or tissue-lined plate.
Repeat the process until you finish the batter. - If you don't have a paniyaram pan, heat oil in a deep kadhai or frying pan.
When the oil is getting hot, using your hands shape the vadas.
Make a small hole in the centre and add some of the filling into it.
Seal the hole with some more batter and drop the vada into the hot oil.
Repeat the process with the remaining batter but make sure you fry the vadas in batches.
Keep flipping and let the vadas cook evenly until golden brown.
Drain from the oil and transfer onto a paper towel or tissue-lined plate. - Garnish with chopped walnuts and mint leaves.
Serve hot with the thick yoghurt, tamarind chutney, green chutney and a bit of beetroor puree in the yoghurt for colour.
Editor's Note: Make your own green chutney. Use Lahu Kapudskar's recipe for Green Chutney.
Lauki Walnut Halwa
Recipe by Kumar Nachikhet
Serves: 2-3
Ingredients
- 1 medium-sized lauki or doodhi or bottle gourd, peeled, grated
- 400 ml full-cream milk
- 3 tbsp ghee
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ tsp green elaichi or cardamom powder
- ½ cup walnuts, crushed
- 1 tsp kewra water or pandanus water, optional
Method
- In a heavy-bottomed kadhai or saucepan, heat the ghee and add the grated lauki.
Cook till it just starts to change colour, approximately 15 minutes.
Add the milk and cook till it reduces and mixes with the lauki completely.
Add the sugar, cardamom powder and cook till the sugar dissolves completely.
Add the crushed walnuts and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
Add the kewra water and give it a final mix.
Take off heat and serve warm.
Carrot and Walnut Barfi
Recipe by Shumaila Chauhan
Serves: 4-5
Ingredients
- 500 gm red carrots, peeled
- 2 tbsp ghee + 1 tbsp extra
- 3-4 whole green elaichi or cardamom, de-husked
- 2 tbsp grated desiccated coconut, optional
- 1 cup milk
- 1/3 cup sugar
- ¾ cup walnuts
- ¼ cup milk powder
- Few strands kesar or saffron
- ¼ cup roughly chopped walnuts, to add at the end
- Butter or ghee, for greasing the cake pan
- 8 x 8 cake pan, or a container with sides, for setting the barfi
Method
- Roughly chop the carrots.
Blend in a mixer/blender with 1-2 tbsp of the milk.
Do not add more milk.
Pulse to a coarse paste.
Alternatively, finely grate the carrots.
Line an 8 x 8 cake pan (or a container with sides) with parchment paper and grease with butter or ghee.
Heat the 2 tbsp ghee in a heavy-bottomed kadhai or saucepan.
Add the carrot paste and mix well to coat with ghee.
Cover and cook over medium low heat for 5-8 minutes or until the carrot mixture loses moisture.
Add the remaining milk, saffron strands.
Mix well.
Cover and cook on low heat till all the milk evaporates.
Keep stirring over low heat.
While the carrots are cooking, pulse the walnuts with the milk powder, cardamom seeds, desiccated coconut to a fine powder.
Once all the milk has evaporated and the carrots are no longer giving off water, add the sugar and mix.
Cook on low-medium heat till the sugar syrup dries up.
Add the walnut powder mixture and mix well.
Add the remaining 1 tbsp ghee and cook for a few more minutes till the mixture comes together and thickens.
Add the chopped walnuts.
Take off heat and transfer the mixture to the greased and lined cake pan.
Pat the barfi with a spatula till it's an even layer of preferred thickness.
Let it set for 2-3 hours in the refrigerator.
Once set, cut into barfi-sized pieces and serve.
