thayirsaadham

I love muffins. I really do. They are very easy to whip up, can be frozen and reheated for a quick snack and are perfect as to-go foods. Plus they can be made as healthy as possible by reducing the amount of butter or oil and by substituting it with applesauce or yogurt or buttermilk. You can even add jam to the batter! Don’t ask me why I am so excited at adding jam to the muffin batter. But I am. Imagine biting into a warm, moist muffin and tasting blueberry or blackberry jam. I am drooling.

I do make muffins pretty often. I have never posted any here because I almost always finish them before taking pictures. I make muffins in batches of 6. As soon as I make them and they are cooling, I think to myself “I should take pictures.” Then I start looking for the camera and 99% of the time, as soon as I switch on the camera, it tells me to change the batteries. I am great at anticipating things and being ready for them, you know? So anyway, I charge the batteries and by the time they get charged and I remember to take the pictures, the muffins are gone. I swear I don’t know how but somehow I end up eating all the muffins. My waistline is not happy but who cares?

Today, I am posting this recipe for savory muffins. I made these corn muffins to go with this Moroccan Red Lentil-Bean Stew that I made sometime back. They were a perfect side to go with the soup. I searched online for corn muffin recipes and there were tons of them. I finally ended up using the common ingredients but I kicked up the heat a notch by grinding green chillies into the muffin batter.

Ingredients

Makes 6 regular - sized muffins

1. All purpose flour - 1/2 cup
2. Stone ground yellow cornmeal - 1/2 cup
3. Baking powder - 1/2 tbsp
4. Chilli powder - 1 tsp
5. Salt - to taste
6. Ground black pepper - 1/2 tsp
7. Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
8. Butter milk - 1/2 cup
9. Vegetable Oil - 2 tbsp
10. Green chillies - 2
11. Corn kernels - 1/4 cup
12. Green onions - 4-5 (chopped finely)

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Whisk the dry ingredients (1-7) together and keep aside.
3. Grind the green chillies with 1 tbsp of water.
4. Mix the wet ingredients (8 & 9) with the ground green chillies.
5. Add the corn kernels and green onions to the wet ingredients.
6. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients.
7. Mix gently. This is an important step in making muffins. Overcome the temptation to be thorough with the mixing. It is okay to have some lumps and/or some unmixed flour. These will be covered when the muffins are baking in the oven.
8. Grease the muffin pan (or line them with paper cups) and fill the cups with batter up to 2/3-rds of the cup.
9. Bake for 15-18 minutes.
10. Check for doneness, remove the muffin tray out the oven.
11. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes.
12. After 5 minutes, gently pry the muffins out of the muffin pan.
13. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack for 5 more minutes. Serve with soup

A word of caution when using this recipe. This is a bit spicy. Please reduce the amount of green chillies/chilli powder/pepper according to your taste. Taste the final muffin batter and adjust accordingly. Some corn muffin recipes also have sugar in them. So, you can also add sugar to yours to compensate for the heat.

There can be a lot of variations to this recipe. You can add bell peppers, fresh cilantro. You can even add other vegetables and make it a more wholesome muffin. I am thinking of making a version with more vegetables and without the corn meal. Maybe I will try with whole wheat flour to make it more healthy. What do you think?

Hey all,

Am alive. It’s just that things are crazy at work and I have started swimming classes and that leaves me with less time to cook and even lesser time to blog. Excuses, I know. When am I ever going to master time management? I have this window in the morning from 6:30 a.m to 8:30 a.m which I currently use for snoozing the alarm clock and burrowing deeper under the covers. I should use that time to blog/cook. Even if I don’t use that time to do something useful, I could use it to get ready for work at a leisurely pace. Now, I just get up around 8 a.m and then run around the house like a headless chicken getting ready. I have always wanted to have a relaxed morning routine. Is that ever going to happen?

I also started reading Zen Habits . In the words of the author - Leo Babuta - “Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives. It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, find happiness.” Please do read if you get time. Though I am not even kind of close in doing the things on that blog, I like to read and pretend that I have a plan for doing those things. The first step of all my plans are - Start tommorrow. I am doomed, aren’t I?

I am going to post the recipe today and run away. I need work out a schedule so that I can blog more frequently. Pray that I should get this plan to move past the first day.

The weather in Seattle is back to normal and by that I mean, we are back to gloomy, chilly, windy days. All I want to do is to settle down on the couch with a hot cup of coffee and a good book. Also, do get hold of Bill Bryson’s books. I should warn you though that they are not fit for reading in public. Unless you are the kind of person who does not mind when people around shoot weird looks at you for slapping your thighs and laughing out loud at sporadic intervals. Seriously, he is damn funny.

Soooo, back to the recipe before you guys go “grrrrrrrrrrr”… I was looking for a good soup recipe to chase away the chilly weather. I love soups. They are healthy to eat, easy to cook and taste yummmy. Do you need more reasons? I had this book - A Beautiful Bowl of Soup (by Paulette Mitchell) and saw this recipe for a moroccan red lentil stew there. This book is good with lots of vegetarian soup recipes. I changed the recipe a little bit going by what I had in my pantry.The original recipe had white beans, rosemary, saffron threads and fennel seeds among the ingredients. I did not have any of those. So, I substituted with chick peas, dried spices and no saffron. I also changed the spices used and added some ground cumin and coriander because I like that combination.

Moroccan red lentil-bean stew
Adapted from A Beautiful Bowl of Soup - Paulette Mitchell

Ingredients

1. White Chick peas - 1/2 cup
2. Black chick peas - 1/2 cup
3. Red lentil - 1/2 cup
4. Rice - 1/2 cup
5. Extra virgin olive oil - 1 tbsp
6. Onion - 1 (chopped finely)
7. Tomato - 2 (chopped finely)
8. Tomato paste - 1 tbsp
9. Cumin seeds - 2 tsp
10. Coriander seeds - 2 tsp
11. Chilli powder - 1 tsp
12. Italian seasoning - 1/2 tsp
13. Dried Oregano - 1/2 tsp
14. Salt - to taste
15. Cilantro - 1/2 cup

Recipe

1. Soak the chickpeas in water for at least 6 hours.
2. Pressure cook them for 2 whistles if you are using a pressure cooker. If you are using the stove top method, bring a pot of water to boil. Add the chick peas to it and simmer till the chickpeas are cooked a little bit. Make sure they are firm and not cooked to a mush.
3. Add the olive oil to the pot in which you are going to make the soup.
4. Add the onions and let it cook till the onions are browned.
5. Add the tomatoes and cook them till the tomatoes break down.
6. Add the tomato paste, dried oregano and italian seasoning and let it cook for 2-3 minutes.
7. Grind the coriander seeds and cumin seeds and add these to the soup pot.
8. Add the cooked chickpeas and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
9. In the meantime, wash the red lentils and clean them. Do the same with the rice.
10. Add the lentils and rice to the soup pot.
11. Add chilli powder and salt.
12. Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer for around 30 minutes.
13. Just before switching off the stove, add the cilantro and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes.
14. Adjust for salt and spice level and switch off the stove.

When this soup simmers on the stove, there is this heavenly smell around the house. It makes you want to dig out your most comfortable (Read oldest) night wear and settle on the couch with a big bowl of soup and watch a rerun of your favourite sitcom (Read Friends). I had this soup with some corn muffins. I will be posting the recipe for those soon.

Off goes this recipe for AWED-Morocco event started by DK of ChefinYou and hosted by Pavani of Cook’s Hideout.

On an unrelated note, all you Seattle-ites, can you point me to good breakfast places near Seattle? Some place good for waffles? Stop drooling Indhu! I have been searching for one for a long time now. It is a completley different issue that by the time I wake up, they will be serving lunch. We will cross that bridge when we come to it

I like soups a lot. One of the reasons is that they require very minimal supervision while preparing. Just dump everything in the pot. Then go do your thing. (For me, that’s zoning out on the sofa with a book). After 30-45 minutes, come back to a warm comforting bowl of soup

The weather in Seattle has been the usual - rainy and gloomy. My mood reflected the weather last week. So, I wanted a hot bowl of soup to chase away the blues. I was thinking of making it a one-pot meal which translates to cleaning the refrigerator . I had some beans that I had soaked for making a salad but had never gotten around to doing it. I decided to make a vegetarian chili.

I was under the impression that chili was a Mexican dish. Turns out I was wrong. Though it might have had its roots in Spanish cuisine, chili is an American dish and has been known since 1800s. Also, chili is the official dish of Texas. Woohoo… That is where I graduated from. Hence the woohoo .
Wonder what the official dish of TamilNadu is - idly, sambar, pongal and vadai… I guess. I am drooling as I type this.

I had the chili with some brown rice and some herbed croutons. I had a couple of slices of bread left over from this. So, I ended up making croutons from that. It was a very filling dinner and I took it to lunch the next day and it tasted even better.

Chili

Ingredients

1. Onion - 1 (chopped finely)
2. carrots - 1 (chopped)
3. Tomatoes - 1 (chopped finely)
4. Bell pepper - 1 (chopped)
5. Black beans - a handful
6. Red kidney beans - a handful
7. Cumin powder - 1 tsp
8. Red chilli powder - 1 tsp
9. Salt - to taste
10. Olive oil - 2 tsp
11. dried parsley - 3/4 tsp

Recipe

1. Take a soup pot or a heavy bottomed vessel and add the olive oil to it.
2. Add the chopped onion and saute it till the onion becomes translucent.
3. Add the tomatoes and let them cook for a minute or two.
4. Add the bell peppers, carrots and saute them for a minute or two.
5. Add the cumin powder, chilli powder, parsley and salt.
6. Add some water and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes.
7. Add the beans and let everything simmer for 20 minutes.

Herbed croutons

Ingredients

1. Olive oil - 5 tbsp
2. Bread - 2 slices
3. Salt - to taste
4. pepper - 1/2 tsp
5. herbs of your choice

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 275 F.
2.Cut up the bread slices into bite sized pieces.
3.Take a wide bowl. Add the olive oil and the other ingredients except bread and mix them well.
4. Add the bread to this and mix well.
5. Spread the bread on a baking sheet and pop into the oven.
6. Let it bake for 8 minutes.
7. Remove the sheet and with a spatula, turn over the bread pieces (This is so that they get browned evenly.)
8. Pop into the oven for 8 more minutes.
9. The croutons should be done by now - crunchy and yummy.

To serve, take a bowl and add some brown rice to it. Ladle some chili over it. You can either drop the croutons in the chili or keep them as a side.

This was one yummy chili and very easy to prepare. You can add any combination of vegetables here. The traditional chili has some corn in it. I did not have any that day. Also, I used black beans and red kidney beans. You can use chick peas, pinto beans.. anything really. This is a very healthy dish and is full of vegetables and you get protein from the beans. So, slurp away to good health

Its snowing here in Seattle. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. I mean… it looks beautiful when it snows… but it is soooooooo damn hard to wake up in the morning… to get out of the warm bed requires a Herculean effort.

I have never liked soups that much except for the regular tomato soup that we get in restaurants in India…with bread cubes fried in ghee . That changed when I had the minestrone soup in Olive Garden. yummm… their soup is filling and tasty and I can have (and have had) just that for a meal and feel very satisfied. Ok… I am lying… no dinner in Olive Garden is complete without cheesecake

I had this craving for soup sometime back. I wanted something full of vegetables - something that could be a one pot meal kind of a thing. I decided to make minestrone soup. When I looked for recipes online, I found that a lot of them used ingredients like rosemary, thyme, basil, etc. I did not have any of that and decided to go ahead with chilli powder and salt. I am not sure of the authentic vegetables in a minestrone soup. I just tossed in whatever I had

Ingredients

1. Onion - 1 (chopped)
2. peas - 1 cup
3. carrots - 1 cup (chopped)
4. tomato - 2 (chopped finely)
5. spinach - 1 cup (chopped coarsely)
6. cabbage - 1 cup (shredded)
7. capsicum - 1 cup (chopped finely)
8. spring onion - 2 (chopped finely)
9. elbow macaroni - 1 cup
10. vegetable stock - 2-3 cups
11. salt - to taste
12. red chilli powder - 1 tbsp
13. pepper - 1/2 tsp
14. olive oil - 1 tbsp

Recipe

1. Take a heavy bottomed pan and add the oil.
2. Add the red chilli powder and saute for 20 seconds.
3. Add the onions and saute them for 2-3 minutes.
4. Add the chopped tomatoes and saute them till they turn a little bit mushy.
5. Add the rest of the vegetables and saute them for a minute.
6. Add the vegetable broth and let it simmer till the vegetables are half cooked. You can add some water to get the required consistency.
7. Once vegetables are half done, add the macaroni and let the soup simmer again for 20 minutes or so. (till the macaroni gets cooked)
8. Adjust for salt and pepper.

You can add any combination of vegetables. The authentic minestrone soup has some kidney beans. I did not have any that day and could not add them.You can add black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, chick peas, black eye peas. Just play with the ingredients.

This soup is pretty filling and you feel warm all over when you settle down with a bowl

P.S: I did not bake the bread. I got it from the grocery store and I felt the picture looked better with the bread. Some day, I will overcome the fear of baking bread.