Tomato Carrot Coriander Soup

The inspiration for this soup is a restaurant in Bangalore, India: Punjabi Rasoi. We went there for a family dinner each time during my last 2 India trips which were a year apart. Both the times I had their coriander tomato soup and simply loved it. It wasn't the usual Indian creamy tomato soup. I made some modification for this soup and made it tomato carrot coriander soup. Almost had 2 bowls of soup before dinner. This has now become another of my favorite soups other than the Thai Tom-Yum soup. This blog started with that soup!

Ingredients:

1. 2 tomatoes
2. 2 carrots
3. Green coriander
4. 1 green chili
5. Ginger
6. Garlic
7. Salt
8. Turmeric
9. Coriander powder
10. Olive oil

Preparation:

1. Wash, peel carrots and blend it along with tomatoes, carrots, small piece of ginger, 1 clove garlic, green chili. I added 2-3 spoon of leftover mashed potato in it as well. 
2. Heat olive oil in a pan.
3. Put mustard seeds and let them splatter.
4. Empty the blender into the pan now. Add water as needed. I wanted a thin soup so I added a lot of water.
5. Add turmeric, salt and coriander powder.
6. Let it simmer on low heat for some time. 
7. Add finely chopped coriander leaves in it.
8. Let it simmer again for some time.
9. Serve hot.

Gobhi Parathe

Long weekend (Thanks to Martin Luther King) had been going great, with a lot of sleeping. I am not sure when I am going to get out of the jet lag mode. The cold weather acts like a catalyst to the sleep! Yesterday was the day when I cooked all meals. Wanted to avoid eating leftovers from lunch in dinner and thus the paratha plan. I have never made gobhi parathe myself so a trial was the plan. They turned out to be great (my expectations from myself were pretty low today).

Here is my recipe which is mostly similar to the several others available online:

Ingredients:

1. Wheat flour
2. Oil
3. Water
4. Cauliflower 
5. Salt
6. Garam Masala
7. Green chili
8. Coriander leaves (I forgot to add these but you shouldn't)
9. Ginger
10. Amchur (mango) powder

Preparation:

1. Mix 1/2-1 teaspoon of oil (I use olive oil for almost everything in cooking) in the flour and some salt (as per taste) and make the dough (I usually use hot water) and set it aside.
2. Wash cauliflower and heat the flowers in microwave for 2-3 minutes to make them soft.
3. Grate the cauliflower and add finely chopped green chili and chopped/grated ginger.
4. Add salt, garam masala and mango powder. Add finely chopped coriander leaves as well.
5. Take 2 small balls of dough. Roll them each to about 3-4" diameter. 
6. Add the stuffing on top of one and place the other on top of this. 
7. Make sure to seal all around it. Roll and make it bigger based on your thickness preference.
8. Roast the paratha with oil on a pan. Ready to serve with anything you prefer. I like curd with paratha. You could also add some butter on top of the paratha but I am not a big fan of adding more calories on top of calorie heavy food on a lazy weekend.

Single Bed Quilt

Yet another bed quilt! This post has been in draft since almost a month. Made this quilt last year in November. The plan was to utilize all the scraps and make a quilt out of it. I used some of the old scraps along with new cloth. Since I haven't learnt free motion quilting yet, this quilt also had to do with the stitch-in-the-ditch quilting. I took it to India and now Mom has kept it for our home there. I had bought all material from Walmart. 

Some stats: (I modified the dimensions in between and did not keep track of all of them). 

Desired finished size:

50" * 90"        

Blocks:

8 * 17     

                     

Block size:

5.5" * 5.5" (finished)

Each block needs:

• 1, 5.5" * 5.5" piece of white/light fabric.

• 2, 3" * 3" pieces of colored fabric.

I bought these fat quarters to use for colored squares.

This is how I made a single block:

Sew the 2 small squares (placed wrong side up) on top of the big square (placed right side up) as shown in the pic on the right below. Then cut the triangle (as shown) leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

Note that you will waste triangles with this but then those are very small and probably can be used for other purpose but this makes it a lot easier and quick to make so many of these blocks that are needed.