How to start a day with a 15 minute early meal

If you have a job like me where you get flexi hours and can start your day excited about the kind of work you do and travel a lot then this is for you. This is a meal I have been trying to perfect for the best of late mornings in the kitchen. The best part is it covers the rainbow spectrum of vegetables along with necessary carbs from noodles. It's a simple noodles recipe I cooked my way.

Now this is not for dummies class so I am not going to cover how much amount of X you should take or give you a list of things you need. Go through these steps and make a note of what you need. I won't tell you to wash the vegetables and other nanny points here. Just use your brains. 

By cooking up a meal early on in the day gives you two things:

1. Cooking in the greens rejuvenates you, makes your mood sexy.

2. And most importantly it gives a sort of organizational skill warm up early on because you're doing lots of kitchen work in 15 minutes. That is a head start.

 

Steps:

1. Take a handful of noodles (cellophane or rice noodles preferred. Buy local)

2. Take out 4 big vessels with flat base. You will need it.

3. Take a handful of spinach leaves and coriander and keep it aside. Slice 2 capsicum (not vertically), so your slicing should make rings. Chop 3-4 tomatoes as per your liking and style of cutting. You can also add in beans, whatever kind suits you,  if you love chopping things like me. I love beans. 

4. Fill in the noodles in one of them and fill up with drinking water just enough to cover them up till you complete point 6 below which shouldn't take much time. You can use regular cooking oil and apply over the stack of noodles so they don't stick if you don't get your hands on rice noodles. Do it anyway, it's a fun activity if your partner is in the house. 

5. Fill up two vessels with drinking water with equivalent amount of water and put it on boil.

6.  Put the capsicum, tomatoes & beans (if any) in one of the boiling pots for 5-7 minutes. 

You could add eggs as well to boil it along and slice them over the mixed veg noodles later if you want.

 

 

 

 

7. Put noodles in the other one when you see it's about to boil. Put in spinach that you had kept aside in the noodles' pot after a minute. Keep it on flame for about 4-5 minutes.

8. Take a frying pan(if it's non-stick, heat it up initially and cut a piece of onion and apply safely over the pan. That temporarily gives it a non stick coating). Put oil in accord to the amount of noodles you have taken. Drain out the noodles and spinach into a vessel. Now is your chance to add your favorite salt and pepper to taste and mix it well with the noodles. (probably the 4 vessels are out now or you could drain this in the one where veggies were boiling).

9. Put in the veggies into the pan, fry for a minute. Take it out.

Then add in the mixed veggies and mix them well once more.

10. Put in the noodles & spinach and the rest of the lot back into the pan and you could crack two eggs over it to make it tastier. Plus the egg has other adhesive qualities over noodles which makes up for good cooking while in the pan. Happy cooking for a minute.

And it's done. Garnish it with coriander and you could make it tangy if you can squeeze in lemon over it. I personally don't do that.

 

 

And it should take not more than 20 minutes over all.

Mussoorie–Revisited!

Namah Shivay!

Long since a new article has been published here. It’s a pleasure expressing my joys as I write this with love. It was 19th of November, 2008 as I remember when I last saw the face of this scenic beauty. 30 kms from Dehradun, set in the lap of lush green Himalayan mountains, is a ride full of twists & turns & a mountainous terrain with steep falls & highs, that welcomes you to the grandeur of this small hill station, its beauty discovered by Col. Young during the British India era. Since then it has attracted foreigners every year throughout the year. The Mall road, Gun Hill, Camel Back, Lake Mist, Kempty Falls, Happy Valley, Buddhist Temple, Tibetan Market only to name a few. It requires one to have a stay of at least a week to fully set in the way of life here.

The Dehradun Shatabdi Express which runs from New Delhi station to Dehradun is a breath of fresh air when it comes to traveling. It’s like an economy flight on rails. The food is good & the signature habit of attendants of Rajdhani & Shatabdi to serve you mini meals every now & then keeps the tummy healthy & smiling. One of the most spectacular views is the green fields during monsoon season as the train leaves Ghaziabad & passes through the villages. At Haridwar, the Hindu culture is predominant & the way of life reflects here as well as soon as you see the confused foreigners, saints & devotees traveling with you get off the train & walk out to the welcoming mountains surrounding Rishikesh & Haridwar. Through the large windows the sight is picture perfect.

We reach our final destination after a spectacular sight of a dense patch of forests that can send ones imagination to a beautiful past which could have been so much colder, denser & mystical a decade or more back. They wouldn’t have required fans in this city back then. Beside the station is the Dehradun bus stand from where, every hour or so, one can catch a bus to the lovely Mussoorie, which is an hour & fifteen minutes ride approximately that would leave you amazed at how much the bus drivers are well acquainted with the steep turns & falls from the valley to the hills. It is reassuring to know how smoothly they handle the wheels at the sight of vehicles coming at you & overtaking vehicles from behind.

We stayed at Padmini Nivas Hotel, on the Mall Road, very near to the Tibetan Market, a 180 year old building, if what I heard is correct, built for the British sepoys as a retreat from the usual routine of life, a retiring place for the recovering & for those battered & bruised. The hotel started operating from 1980. One just has to let their imagination fly as to, back then, what this beautiful place would have been like. The tourists, commercialization hasn’t affected the natural setting as much as the trash thrown here & there that is littered across the boundaries of the hotels, shops that have sprung up, of many a kind. Tea shops, Chinese nook corner, bread & omelet shops, maybe throwing crumbs as well.

At 7000 ft. cracking jokes over a cup of tea & ‘pakodas’ would be an understatement. That’s what Gun Hill has to offer. When the clouds clear the eyes set in to bask in the glory of so many glacial peaks at sight, one could gasp and say a thousand more peaks please. Gangotri, Yamnotri, Rishikesh, Badrinath among others.
Going further on the the Kulri street I meet the age old man & his wife who run their fairy tale chocolate shop still. I am thankful to my sweetheart for managing to get me a beautiful autograph of the legendary Ruskin Bond. Just like before, it is now, a dream ride over there only clouded over the head and rainy, as it should be in the month of July.
More on this later folks.
(to be contd.)

The Epicureans – What’s On

What:	Signature Classics Experience the signature dishes of Master Chef Lin in this award winning restaurant. Lunch & Dinner... From Burrp.com
When:	Sunday, November 1, 2009 12:00 AM to Monday, November 30, 2009 12:00 AM
Where:	The Szechwan Court The Oberoi 39 MG Road Bangalore, Karnātaka   India

There is a place on Earth where eating means sweating. Welcome to Nagpur! Or Nagpore or ‘Naak Pour’, however you may call it, the uprising city of Vidharbha region in Maharashtra (India) that allegedly got its name from a river nearby, although I have never seen any, that goes by the name of ‘Nag’ as in the Cobra.
Yes where else would you find such tongue burning, rectum burning delicious, one inch deep oil submerged and mixed with chopped red and green chillies, food to savour? I have had an experience myself and I have vowed to term it cuisine. It’s just “Saoji”.
When those Marathi Tais (Elsewhere called cousin aunties) bring home-production based mini joint’s cooked food, lovingly called Saoji, you can’t resist that tempting smell of grounded spices otherwise called ‘khada masala’ and a whole packet of red chilli put in especially just for one person. Isn’t that great!

While I had the pleasure of one night in lavatory, the aftermath that followed after eating a typical cuisine of theirs, I gave up all my hopes. How would I ever become a ‘Marathi Mulga’! Lord! Not to be confused with a cock though. They give you every opportunity not to miss their mouth watering delicacies. Piece of advise. It’s not for those who have a knack for bland or non-spicy food. Otherwise, they would end up like me.

I was watching a show on travel & living and it gave me an idea why not search for the recipes on the net. Speaking of which I would now like to praise the other side of the story and that is the Pork Chops, Prawn Curry Rice, the outcome of Tibetans in exile settlements at Mussoorie. There’s something called soba noodles that I am yet to figure out but I have heard legends of this special kind of noodles which settles in your mouth and blend your thoughts with pork & soup and takes you to a night long imagination of Shangri-La kung-fu movies. And all of this just under half a grand. They give a rice bowl, Shaptak and a pair of chopsticks with it and instantly you feel like your eyes are getting stretched laterally wide and your beard disappearing (if you’re a man) and your legs getting smoother than a Barbie doll (if you’re a girl) and that’s it! The magic’s working on you. Ever tried the momo-soup?

In fact, I have got a better idea. I’ll leave you folks with the two choices I have enlisted above and you can decide which one suits your appetite. Cheers!