Dear reader, my food life has changed a lot since I first started blogging. Then I was just a food blogger sharing my home cooking with everyone.
Now I cook for catering requests. And the requests just seem to keep on growing. I’m not complaining. I love cooking and serving people. And nothing gives me more happiness than a satisfied guest. However since I now spend my weekends cooking for others, I haven’t been able to write my blog for a bit. But today its time to share even though its midnight, Canadian time. My work laptop isn’t picking up the network & I made myself a strong cup of tea to work on a talk I have to give in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Sigh! I will probably pull an all-nighter tomorrow once IT figures out what happened.
On to sharing my amazing dish.
A regular guest picks up about 8-10 meal packages every Friday. This time I made a variety of dishes, including an amaranth leaf stir fry.
Always respecting my food cooking principles as follows:
- Food must be fresh
- Food must nourish body
- Food must be easy to digest
- Food must satisfy taste buds
- Food must not be made from processed foods
- And last but not least food must have prana or life energy
When I made the amaranth leaf stir fry, I discarded the stems as it was nice to have a leafy stir fry. Today I had the stems look up at me from the fridge as if to say, take me, and make the best dish you possibly can. 🙂
I love coconut in my cooking. In fact I would say I put coconut in almost anything. Its my cultural inheritance, its how my grandmother cooked. And I’m just following intuition. It tastes good, it feels good. But now research is coming up every day on the amazing benefits of coconut. Great cure for alzeimers. Its also now been proving to stimulate the growth of new brain cells
Do try this recipe, the coconut is so good for you. Amaranth is another superfood that I can simply not get enough of. Its called mulaikeerai in tamil cooking. And the variegated leaves are so pretty you’re bound to fall in love with this dish.
You need
| 2 cups diced amaranth stem, washed ¼ cup split chickpeas |
Spice Mix ¼ tsp cumin(cumin is a strong spice & you can opt to leave it out altogether) ½ cup grated coconut, fresh or dessicated 2 black pepper pods ½ tsp cilantro seeds 1 dry red chilly |
Garnish 1 tsp mustard seeds 1 tsp coconut oil 5 curry leaves Salt to tasteServes 3 |
How to
- Wash amaranth stem thoroughly. It’s a green & has a tendency to have soil sticking to its roots.
- Cut into small dice sized chunks & set aside
- Wash and soak split chickpeas in ½ cup hot water for ½ hour. Rinse again before using.
- Wash & soak ingredients of spice mix in 3 tbsp water. Let soak for about 10 minutes before grinding to a fine paste in food processor. Set aside.
- Heat Pan and add 1 tsp coconut oil.
- Add mustard seeds, when they splutter, add cumin seeds, curry leaves and then quickly sauté.
- Now toss in the rinsed split chickpeas. Give everything a nice stir
- Add in the chopped amaranth stem. Stir everything so that amaranth & chickpeas are nicely coated with coconut oil.
- Add salt & let cook on medium flame. Watch the stove as you don’t want any burnt flavours. Chickpeas, amaranth & coconut are way too valuable to let go to burn. Try not to multi task when you are in the kitchen J easier said than done. But try to practice lots of mindfulness. I’m speaking from experience, as I have had knife cuts, burns, scalds, etc. since I was trying to use my other life multi-tasking sensibility in the kitchen.
- Add the ground coconut spice paste to pan.
- Let everything come to a soft boil so that any raw tastes from spices are gone.
- Add salt and take off stove.
- Optionally drizzle 1 tsp coconut oil on top before serving with steamed rice.
I served it with a tamarind okra sauce, steamed rice, roasted carrot chutney and chickpea eggplant baked fritters.
Here’s my quiet Sunday dinner. Its patio season. I find every excuse to run outdoors & sit in my warm & fragrant with herbs & flowers back yard. Wouldn’t you do the same if you were snowed under for 6 months like we were 🙂
Do you like my recipe. Then please do like my blog on facebook. And do comment below telling me what you enjoyed, my story, my recipe or my health tips or everything. Let me also know what other recipes you would like me to share. Would you like to me to do a step-by-step youtube video?
–charuyoga–
charuyoga 