A satisfying starter, tea time snack. Somewhat healthy! Steamed potatoes, peas, green beans, carrots mashed with onions, ginger, chilies, dipped in a batter of chick pea and rice flour, and deep fried. While you can make this with just potatoes, the addition of vegetables adds some color and a lovely dimension to the dish.
Panzanella – a salad made with stale cubed bread, some basic dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, and fresh mozzarella. And salt and pepper. There. That’s the recipe, and it comes together beautifully in about 15 minutes.
This is a very simple, but amazing dish of pasta stuffed with spinach and ricotta/mozzarella cheese. Most ravioli we get in restaurants and grocery stores have eggs in them – either in the pasta or in the stuffing. We wanted to try it without eggs since we know pasta doesn’t really need eggs and our family typically tries to eat without eggs. This was a labor-intensive recipe, but simple. My daughter did most of the work. The results were amazing delicious homemade ravioli, enough to feed 3 of us for dinner, and freeze a couple of servings for my daughter for a busy school night! Win-win-win!
Rasam is what I crave when we’ve been traveling or eating out too much. And on those days when I simply don’t want to mess with soaking tamarind, waiting for the toor dal to cook, and make rice in a different pot. A few years ago, I came across this method where you can make it all in one go and tried it in my pressure pan – this was before the OPOS days. Now, I have started using my instant pot for the same, and even the extra step of watching and turning it off is eliminated. It’s ready with minimal prep – no soaking tamarind, no making a pot of rasam, and rice separately, no waiting for dal to cook. All the ingredients go in the instant pot together, pressure cooked for 15 minutes, and a simple rasam rice is yours – hot, steaming, and will soothe your soul in under 30 minutes. And it tastes heavenly!
