Aayi’s Recipes Konkan/Konkani food blog, Indian culinary treasures

Wish you all a very happy Ganesh Chaturthi.

We had great festival celebrations at home today. We brought home a small Ganesha idol yesterday. We spent last two days shopping for pooja materials and getting everything ready.

V built a beautiful mantapa . I prepared a traditional spread as offering. We did the pooja to the best of our knowledge. For the most part, we followed this vidhi. We had a nice ceremonial pooja. Such a calm, peaceful and comforting celebrations. It felt like being at home in India.

I was thinking about what to post on this auspicious occasion. And I thought the panchakajjaya – mixture of 5 types of delicacies, would be the best. This is a common offering, also is known to be prasadam, prepared for different poojas. At our place, those who bring home Ganesha idol make this in big quantities to share with the people who come to see the idol. While growing up, we kids, loved to go to neighbors houses to see Ganesha and get the prasadam.

Aayi says, in olden days, dalia was prepared at home from the chana. But it is a very long procedure and since it is readily available in markets, everyone(that I know of) buy it from stores.

I updated Vayna pooja & patholi post with aayi’s pooja at our native. Check out.

Ingredients:
1 cup dalia (roasted chana dal/hurigadale/putani)
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tbl spns white sesame seeds
1 tbl spn ghee
2 tbl spn dry coconut (optional)
1/2 tea spn cardamom powder

Method:
Grind dalia to a powder. Add sugar and mix well. Take them out in a bowl.
Dry roast sesame seeds on a medium flame.
Add the sesame seeds, dry coconut, ghee, cardamom powder and mix well.

I am always in search of simple and easy recipes for our lunchbox. I recently started preparing lunch on previous day to make my mornings a little bit less stressful. This is one simple dish that makes its appearance very often in our boxes.

Tomato-capsicum rice is something I have been cooking for a long time now. For the first time, I had tasted this from my friend’s lunchbox, about 4 years ago. I liked the way each grain of the rice was separate. The capsicum gives a nice flavor to the otherwise very mild rice. Use tender capsicum for best results.

Ingredients:
1 cup rice
1/4 cup onion
1/2 cup tomato
1/2 cup capsicum
1 ea spn chopped ginger
4 green chillies
1/2 tea spn mustard seeds
4-5 curry leaves
1/2 tea spn urad dal
A pinch turmeric
1 tbl spn chopped coriander leaves
Ghee
Salt

Method:
Cook rice so that each grain is separate (add about 1 and 1/2 cup of water for 1 cup rice). Let the rice cool to room temperature.
Heat ghee and add mustard seeds, urad dal. When they start popping, add green chilies, curry leaves, ginger. Fry for minute and add onion, let them cook till they are translucent.
Add capsicum, tomatoes, salt, turmeric. Cover and let it cook on a medium heat till the tomatoes and capsicum are softened.
Add rice and mix well. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Serves : 2
Preparation time : 30mins

Sukke(Konkani) translates to dry. Sukke is a type of dry sidedish with coconut. Some times, it has a coconut paste and sometimes it has grated coconut.

Maskasangi – drumstick sukke is a very simple and delicious dish. V’s grandmother shared this with me during my last India visit. I tried it with frozen drumsticks and it turned out delicious. Rice, a simple dal and this sidedish, you can literally get a delicious dinner on the table in no time. It tastes great when it is made quite spicy – since this dish gets some sweetness from onions, use a little more red chilli powder.

Ingredients:
2 cups drumsticks
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 tea spn red chilli powder
1 tbl spn grated fresh/frozen coconut
1/4 tamarind extract
A pinch turmeric
Oil
Salt

Method:
Heat oil and fry onion till it is translucent (do not brown the onions).
Add turmeric, red chilli powder.
Add the drumstick pieces, tamarind extract, salt, a little water(about 1-2 tbl spns). Cover and cook till done.
Now add the coconut and mix well, cook for 1-2mins.
Serve hot.

Serves : 2
Preparation time: 20mins