Green Peas Soup

I got the idea of making green peas soup after reading the entries for our first day of the blogging marathon. PJ has posted a very interesting recipe of green peas soup and I wanted to try it immediately. I was also running short of 2 recipes for this week's sub-theme and the green peas soup fitted perfectly for my theme this week. I haven't made much changes to the recipe that PJ has posted.

Since this is not the season of fresh peas, I used frozen peas to make this soup. Peas is one of my favourite vegegies and I keep adding it to anything I make, upma, some rices. I add them even to sambar and dal fries sometimes. I loved this soup and everyone at home appreciated it. It gave a warm feeling to have this soup on a rainy evening.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp Butter

1 Onion chopped

1 Potato chopped

1 Carrot chopped

1 clove garlic optional

1 cup green peas

1/4 cup Milk

Salt to Taste

black pepper freshly ground,to taste

Method:

• Blanch the frozen peas. Put them in hot water for about 10-15 minutes.
• I microwaved the chopped carrot, potato, onions and garlic for about 10 minutes.
• Grind the peas along with the microwaved vegetables to a very smooth paste.
• Add water as needed while grinding. We can use the hot water which we used to soak the peas.
• Transfer the ground paste to a pan; add the milk, salt, pepper and add water and adjust the consistency of the soup.
• Cook until you see froth coming in from the edges of the pan.

 Serve hot!!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Palak Tomato veg soup

Here's another soup which I tried of my own. Since I often make tomato soup, today I thought why not add palak also to it and some veggies. So this is my own creation. 

To make this soup kid's approved, I also added some noodles to it. The soup turned out to be dark in color. Thats because I cooked the palak leaves and didnt think about retaining the color of the palak. So after cooking the palak leaves were very dark green and after mixing it with tomatoes I got a brown color. Its better to retain the color of the palak leaves. So cook the palak leaves separately and add little lemon juice to retain the color. 

Over to my recipe:

Ingredients:

Tomatoes  - 4, finely chopped

Palak (leaves) - a bunch

Vegetables (cauliflower and mushrooms) - 1/2 cup

Onion - 1 small, finely chopped

Garlic - 2 cloves, minced

Tomato sauce - 2 tbsp

Soy sauce - 1 tbsp

Chili sauce - ½ tsp

Sugar - 2 tsp

Vinegar - 1 teaspoon

Maggi veg broth - 1 cube

noodles - 2 tbsp

Oil  - 1 tbsp

coriander leaves (chopped) - ½ tsp

Salt - to taste

Method:

• Boil noodles in salted water. Strain it and keep aside.
• Microwave the tomatoes and palak leaves for 4 minutes. Once cooled, grind them into a fine paste.
• In a pan, take 1 tablespoon of oil. Add minced garlic and chopped onions. Saute them till the onions turn translucent and there is not any raw smell of garlic.
• Add the vegetables and fry for 5 minutes so that the vegetables are half cooked.
• Add the ground tomato and palak paste. 
• Add all the tomato sauce, chili sauce, soy sauce, Maggi vegetable broth cube and sugar. 
• Let it boil and then for 5 minutes.
• Add seasoning, salt and noodles. Mix well. Cook for another minute.

Serve hot with some bread!!

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#66

Hot and Sour Veg soup

For this week's blogging marathon I have chosen soups and salads as the theme. Soups and salads are very good for our health. We should have it at least in one of our meal course. But I am very lazy to prepare these some how : even though soups and salads are the most easy recipes to prepare.

Hot and sour soup is basically introduced from the Chinese cuisine and the non-veg version of this is very famous. I just tried the veg version. Chinese cuisine has the characteristics of being nutritious, economical, balanced and delicious. And in this generation Chinese cuisine is world famous.

I have often tried the hot and sour soup in restaurants and this is the first time I tried it at home. The taste was a little different. I actually am not able to point out the difference but nevertheless it was fabulous. I researched this recipe in the internet and found many versions and finally did a mix and match of 2-3 recipes and prepared it to suit our taste. 

Ingredients:

Beans - 100 grams

Carrots - 100 grams

Cauliflower - 100 grams

Cabbage (finely chopped) - 3 tbsp

Spring onion - few

Green chillies - 3 nos

Sugar - 1 tsp

Salt - to taste

Lemon juice - 1 tsp

Garlic - 5 cloves

Soya sauce - 1 tbsp

Tomato sauce - 1 tbsp

Chilly sauce - 1 tbsp

Oil - 1 tsp

Corn flour - 1 tbsp

Pepper powder - 1 tsp

Method:

• Chop the spring onion, carrots, beans, cabbage finely. 
• In a deep wide pan, add oil (preferably olive oil) and add the slit green chilli.  
• Add the finely chopped garlic and sugar and saute for a while.
• Now add the veggies which we chopped finely. Saute for a minute and add 3 cups of water.
• Add salt and bring it to a boil. Once the water boils, lower the flame and leave it for 5-7 minutes so that veggies are half cooked.
• Add all the sauces and mix well.
• Mix corn flour in 2 tblsp of water without any lumps and add it to the pan. Mix well. The soup will reach the right consistency in 2 minutes.
• Add pepper powder and lemon juice.

Serve hot with some bread

Notes

• Any veggies can be added like capsicum, peas etc
• Garnish with spring onion leaves. I didn't have any.
• You can add extra 1 tblsp of soya sauce if you want the darker color. But don’t add too much it will spoil the taste

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#66

Lemon Rasam

A simple recipe for rasam

Ingredients:

Toor dal – 50 grams

Tomatoes – 50 grams

Rasam powder – 10 grams

Lemon – 1

Green chillies – 2 (slitted)

Turmeric powder and salt  - to taste

To temper

Ghee – 5 grams

Mustard – 2 grams

Cumin seeds – 2 grams

Curry leaves – few

Coriander leaves – few

Method:

• Pressure cook the toor dal until it is soft and mushy.
• Chop the tomatoes and microwave for about 2 minutes.
• Mash the toor dal and cooked tomatoes nicely.
• In a kadai, add the mashed toor dal, rasam powder, salt, turmeric powder, green chillies.
• Add sufficient water and allow it to boil. Switch off the flame.
• In another kadi, add ghee.
• Once the ghee is hot, add mustard.
• After mustard splutters, add cumin seeds and curry leaves. Transfer this to the rasam.
• After about 5 minutes add lemon juice.
• Garnish with coriander leaves and serve.

A Quick tomato soup

The other day I made a tomato soup in just 10 minutes. Well here goes the recipe.

Ingredients:

Tomato – 250 grams

Onion – 50 grams

Carrot – 50 grams

Cloves – 2

Garlic – 10 grams

Sugar – 10 grams

Butter – 25 grams

Coriander/Mint leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Chop the onions and carrots.
• Draw four vertical lines around the tomato (like drawing with a pencil) with a knife making shallow cuts, covering the 4 sides.
• Microwave all the vegetables for 5 minutes.
• Now peel the skin of the tomatoes. It should be easier because of the lines drawn earlier.
• Grind the steamed vegetables into smooth paste.
• In a kadai add butter, add the finely chopped garlic and the cloves. Fry for 1 minute.
• Pour the tomato paste. Add salt and sugar.
• Mix it well. Add water if required.
• At the end add pepper powder.
• Garnish it with coriander and mint leaves and serve hot.