Beetroot Hummus

Beetroot Hummus| Pink Hummus is another healthy variant to the plain hummus with the added beetroot  providing a vibrant colour and of course more of nutrients to the hummus. Kids love to eat this hummus as it is absolutely colourful and attractive.

Beetroot gives mild sweetness to this hummus so add in some chilli powder or paprika while grinding or you could add chilli flakes while serving to balance the sweetness. This goes well with crackers, bread toast and pita bread or any flat bread. You could use this as a dip for any vegetable platter.

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Cuisine: Egyptian
Serves: 1 and 1/2 cups

INGREDIENTS:
Beetroot-2 small (or) Large-1
Chickpeas/ chana, dried/tinned- 1 cup
Garlic cloves-3 big
Tahini sauce/ sesame paste- 1 and 1/2 tablespoons
Lemon juice- a squeeze
Olive oil- 3 tablespoon
Salt- to taste
Chilli flakes- big pinch

PROCEDURE:

• If you plan to use dried chickpeas, soak the chickpeas for 6 hours or overnight and pressure cook with some salt for about 3 whistles. Once the pressure releases, open the pressure cooker and allow to cool.

• Pressure cook the beetroot for four to five whistles till soft. Once the pressure releases open the pressure cooker, remove the beetroot and allow to cool. Peel the beetroot using a knife and chop them into small pieces.
• In a blender jar or food processor add the chopped beetroot, drained chickpeas, garlic cloves, tahini sauce, lemon juice and olive oil. Blend well to make a smooth paste. Add little chickpea cooked water if you find difficulty while grinding.

• Transfer the hummus on a bowl and make a depression inside using the backside of the spoon and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle chilli flakes on top.
• Serve with pita bread, vegetable platter, crakers or tortilla chips.
• Refrigerate immediately after preparation.

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Avocado Hummus

Hummus or Houmous is an Egyptian dip or spread made from cooked and pureed chickpeas with tahini, olive oil ; flavoured with garlic or lemon. Nowadays there are many variations created by innovation with various colour and flavour. I have already shared normal hummus with garlic, and another variation Roasted bell pepper hummus in my blog earlier. Will share other variations soon.

Avocado hummus gets green colour from the avocados and tastes really nice and slightly creamy. It adds more nutrition to the hummus and adds volume too. Easy to prepare dip for a vegetable platter or tortilla chips or crackers. Best spread for any flat breads like Khubz or Pita bread. You could spread this hummus inside the flat bread and fill with chopped vegetables of choice or cooked meat or salads.

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Cuisine: Egyptian
Serves: 1 and 1/2 cups

INGREDIENTS:
Ripe Avocado-2
Chickpeas/ chana, dried/tinned- 1 cup
Garlic cloves-3 big
Tahini sauce/ sesame paste- 1 and 1/2 tablespoons
Lemon juice- a squeeze
Olive oil- 3 tablespoon
Salt- to taste
Chilli flakes- big pinch (optional)

PROCEDURE:

• If you use dried chickpeas soak the chickpeas for 6 hours or overnight and pressure cook with some salt for about 3 whistles. Once the pressure releases open the pressure cooker and allow to cool.

• In a blender jar or food processor add the drained chickpeas, garlic cloves, tahini sauce, lemon juice and olive oil. Blend well to make a smooth paste. Add little chickpea cooked water if you find difficulty while grinding.
• Cut the avocado and discard the seed. Scoop out the flesh using a spoon.
• Add the avocado flesh and blend well to make a fine paste.

• Transfer the hummus on a bowl and make a depression inside using the backside of the spoon and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle chilli flakes on top.
• Serve with pita bread, vegetable platter, crakers or tortilla chips.
• Refrigerate immediately after preparation.
• Notes: If i have only one avocado i used to remove half of the plain hummus and then add the avocado and blend well. I will get hummus with 2 colour and flavour.

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Chilli Garlic Chutney

Chilli Garlic chutney | Garlic Chutney is a spicy red chutney which is generally served with idli dosa or even with paniyaram. I have shared earlier this chutney and get many requests to post the recipe mainly due to its colour. Apart from looks the chutney tastes delicious with South Indian breakfasts.
I love the garlic flavour in this chutney. I have added lots of garlic to get the nice aroma of garlic. It is a spicy garlicky chutney with full of flavours. This is simple to make delicious dip or spread for breakfast. You could spread on top of dosa to make Chilli Garlic Dosa. You could even fill with Potato masala and serve like Mysore masala dosa. You could even use it as a seasoning for any salads.

INGREDIENTS:
Dry red chillies- 15nos (Use according to your spice level)
Garlic cloves, big-20
Tamarind- 1/2 teaspoon
Salt- to taste

To temper:
Oil-3-4 tablespoons(preferably sesame oil)
Mustard seeds- 1/2 teaspoon(optional)

PROCEDURE:

• Soak the dry red chillies for about 10 minutes
• Peel the garlic and set aside.
• In a blender jar add the soaked red chillies, garlic, tamarind, salt and blend well to make a coarse paste without adding any water. Now add some water to grind well to make a smooth paste as much you can.

• Heat oil in a pan and add mustard seeds if you like once it crackles add the ground chutney and mix well.
• Allow to cook the chutney in low flame till the oil separates on top.

• You could use this chutney for a week under refrigeration.
• Note: Replace some red chillies with Kashmiri red chillies to make the chutney less spicy.
• Or you could add one tomato while grinding to reduce the heat from chillies.
• Adding enough oil is important for this recipe.

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Roasted Bell Pepper Hummus

Hummus is a popular middle east dip or spread known world wide. This hummus is colourful,  creamy, smoky, spicy, slightly sweet and with the garlicky goodness. Hummus an old favorite with a flavorful “twist”.  Goes great with grilled pita bread, pita chips, crackers and with any types of vegetables or with cooked meat.

Healthy tasty hummus perfect as a spread in making pita bread rolls with meat or vegetables. Rich in protein and the goodness from the capsicum makes the spread so healthy and light. In my home we are all a big fan of hummus and we enjoyed the hummus with a twist a lot. Click here to get traditional hummus recipe.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Cuisine: Middle east

Makes: 2 cups

INGREDIENTS:

Chickpeas/ Channa, dry (or) tinned - 1 cup

Red bell pepper/ Capsicum- 1 big (or) 2 small

Garlic cloves, cut- 2 big
Red chilli powder/ paprika- 1/2 teaspoon

Tahini/ sesame seed paste- 2 tablespoons
Lemon juice- 1 tablespoon

Salt- to taste

Olive oil- 3-5 tablespoons

PROCEDURE:

• Soak the dry channa for 5-6 hours or overnight and pressure cook them with little salt for 3 whistles till soft.

• Wash the bell peppers and wipe them; Roast them on low flame on stove top by turning often to cook them evenly till blisters form all over the bell pepper. 
• Wrap the cooked bell pepper on a kitchen towel to retain the heat inside for 5-10 minutes. The heat inside the bell pepper which makes the bell pepper to sweat and separate the skin from the flesh.
• Open the parcel and peel the skin as much you can and cut open and discard the seeds and chop the bell pepper.

• (or) Cut the bell pepper and remove the seeds and cut them into big pieces and bake the bell pepper by keeping skin side up and bake it on a preheated 180 degrees oven for 5 minutes or till the top of the bell pepper gets black blisters. Cool them and peel them.
• In a blender jar add the cooked chickpeas, cut bell pepper, cut garlic cloves, chilli powder, tahini paste, lemon juice, salt and start to grind as a paste.

• While grinding stop in between and scrape the sides, and the olive oil little by little and grind till you get a smooth paste.

• Chill the hummus till u serve. Hummus will firm up slightly as it chills. While serving make a small depression on the middle and drizzle olive oil all over to cover the hummus to prevent drying out.

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Tahini

Tahini is a paste made from sesame seeds generally used as a dip or spread in middle east or Turkish cuisine. This tahini is a major component of other popular middle east dishes such as Hummus, baba ghanoush and halva. Raw tahini is flavoured with garlic or lemon and diluted with water  and served in restaurants as a dip.This is also used in meat preparations too.

This spread become soon rancid and tastes bitter as it is high in oil content so refrigeration after making this spread is essential. For longer storage add more olive oil which floats on top to prevent spoilage.

Preparation Time:5 minutes
Cooking Time: 5 minutes
Cuisine: Middle East/Turkish
Makes: 1 cup

INGREDIENTS:
Sesame seeds/ Gingelly seeds- 1 cup
Olive oil- 1 tablespoon
Salt- to taste

PROCEDURE:

• Heat a pan add add the sesame seeds and allow the seeds to slightly toast. Check by touching the seeds. This step is just to speed up the grinding process.
• Allow the seeds to cool; when it reaches room temperature add the seeds in a blender jar and powder well.

• Initially it forms a powder and then at one point of time it starts to turn butter.
• Once it is powdered add the oil and grind well to make a smooth paste.

• Refrigerate in an airtight container to prevent spoilage.
• You could use garlic or lemon juice to flavour this tahini if you are using this paste as such as a dip or spread.

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Orange Jam

Orange preserves are generally made in to Marmalade which is slightly sweet and also bitter in taste.  As the oranges are in season I bought some oranges two weeks back and everyone caught cold at my home and the oranges and simply lying on the table. So i was thinking to make some thing out of them which could be used later. In my home we are not a big fan of marmalade so i wanted to make jam out of these oranges.

I am happy with the out come love the colour, taste and the texture of the jam. This jam is sweeter side 100% and not even tastes a bit bitter. So try this jam you are also going to love this jam.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 40 minutes
Cuisine: Continental
Makes: 1 and 1/2 cups

INGREDIENTS:
Orange, Mandarine- 1½ kg (10 nos)
Sugar- 1½ cups
 Lemon- 1/2 (optional)

PROCEDURE:

• Peel the oranges and separate the orange segments and remove the seeds from that. Cut the white centre pith portion and try to remove the white skin as much s possible because it wont get soften after cooking and spoils the texture of the jam.(You could make jam using only orange juice to get very smooth texture but it takes longer time to reduce)

• Squeeze two oranges and extract the juice; set aside.This gives the slight smooth texture for the jam.
• Chop the orange segments in to smaller pieces and keep them on a pan in which we you are going to cook the jam. Squeeze them with a ladle to crush them slightly.
• Add the extracted orange juice with this crushed orange pulp.
• Add the sugar and keep the flame to medium and allow the mixture to boil. Once it boils the sugar dissolves in the orange juice and allow the mixture to boil well for around 20 minutes on medium high flame and stir the mixture in between.

• Once the liquid content almost reduces reduce the flame to low and keep stirring and mash the orange pulp with the backside of the ladle and cook till the mixture reduces in volume.
• Switch off the flame when the orange jam's consistency little hesitates to drop off from the spoon.

• Allow to cool the jam when the jam is warm draw a line on the jam using the spatula the space should not merge indicates the right consistency of the jam.
• Transfer the jam on to a sterile container and refrigerate and use with in two to three weeks as we have not used any preservatives.

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Strawberry Jam

Strawberries are now in season and the taste, colour and the flavour of the strawberries are just amazing in any dessert. I bought some strawberries to make this easy pectin free version of strawberry jam. After making this jam i can able to feel the freshness of the jam. With toast it tastes really Yum.

We could not get the the bright colour, rich taste of strawberries and the freshness of the jam in any store bought jams. I bet you are going to love this jam to the core. This jam simply applied over a bread tastes divine like a dessert. So easy to prepare jam in minutes. Finger Licking Good Jam!!!

INGREDIENTS:
Strawberries, fresh/ frozen- 15 nos, big (1 packet)
Sugar- 3/4 cup
Lemon juice- 1/2 small

PROCEDURE:

• Select deep red coloured fully ripen strawberries for making jam.
• Remove the stem and also the leaves of strawberries.
• Take a bowl full of water and dip the strawberries  to remove the clay particles.
• Drain the water and wipe the berries and cut them into smaller pieces about 6 pieces.
• Keep the strawberries on a pan on which you are going to make jam.
• Add the sugar on top of the strawberries. Switch on the gas and keep stirring till the sugar get melted on medium flame.

• Reduce the flame to low and cook the strawberries on the syrup further till the strawberries cook till soft.
• Mash them with the back side of the laddle while cooking. The strawberry pulp makes the jam to get thicker and gives the colour and also gives proper texture to the jam.

• Within minutes the jam thickens and get the colour and proper glossy spreadable consistency.
• Add the lemon juice and cook for a minute and switch off the flame and allow the jam to cool.
• To check the consistency of the jam, when the jam is slightly warm draw a line on the pan using a spatula the gap formed should not merge ensures the right consistency of the jam.(Check last picture)

• Transfer the jam on to a sterile air tight bottle and refrigerate. Use within two weeks.
• Notes: If you jam turns too thick add some water and boil again till you get the spreadable consistency.
• Right consistency is important otherwise the jam run off from the bread or could not able to spread.
• If you get small strawberries reduce the quantity of sugar added to 1/2 a cup and proceed with the recipe.

 Bread Butter Jam:

• Take two bread slices and apply butter at one side and the other side with strawberry jam.
• Sandwich both the slices and cut diagonally and serve.

• Best sandwich which can be made for kids snack box.

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