Food for the Soul: Starters & Snacks

Jhal Muri(Puffed Rice salad)
Total Calories : 138 kcal
Calories from fat: 40 kcal

A common street food in eastern India, this is a super healthy snack. It is quite filling, and can have variations to suit your palette, involves no cooking, and takes less than a minute to prepare.

What you need
1 bowl Puffed Rice*
1 small onion finely chopped
1 small tomato finely chopped
1 small potato boiled and finely chopped(optional)
1 small green chili deseeded and finely chopped(optional)
1 tablespoon Murukku mixture (or 1 tablespoon roasted peanuts)
1 teaspoon mustard oil/extra virgin olive oil

Preparation
Mix all the above ingredients in a bowl, and serve!

*For those who do not know what puffed rice is : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffed_rice

Easy Scones

What you need:
Egg                                  1 medium
Flour                                2 cups
Vanilla essence                1 tablespoon
Baking powder                1 and 1/2 teaspoon
Salt                                 1 large pinch
Sugar                               1 cup
Butter                             2 tablespoon
Milk                              2 tablespoon for brushing

How to cook:
1. Beat Egg until fluffy. Add vanilla essence.
2. In a separate bowl mix flour , baking powder, salt
3. Add butter to flour and mix with your fingers
4. Add the flour to the egg, and mix.
5. Knead to a soft dough.
6. Roll out the dough, and cut into medium biscuit size pieces
7. Brush scones with milk
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 20 minutes
Serve hot or cold with Coffee or tea!

Start Cooking

As a kid , I absolutely detested the idea of cooking. Looking at my mother constantly juggling between her job and cooking, first breakfast and our lunch and then dinner, and all those homemade snacks, jams and pickles, I used to say to myself, when I grow up, the first thing I am going to do is get a job and pay for a butler to cook for me. I felt a lot of pity for my mom toiling through the day unnecessarily.A lot of the times, my mom asked me to help out, but I always refused, as I thought it was so boring to make that dough, or chop those vegetables. Ughh! what a yucky time pass. I grew up, a dreamy little teenager, mostly submerged in fiction books or chatting with friends, and absolutely loathed home food. I preferred gorging on junk food, at the slightest given opportunity. And once in a while, when mom requested me to make a cup of tea for her, I just refused to cooperate. To this day I hate making tea. But surprisingly I do love to cook now, and enjoy every moment of it. It all started with my travel to foreign locations for my first job. It was Belgium, and I loved the place, the people. But very soon I got bored of the food in the restaurants, and the takeaways, and started craving for home food. Food that my mom cooked every day, and food that I used to loathe eating as a teenager. I called up mom, and asked her for a few recipes, that she recited to me over the phone and I jotted them down. I cooked my first fish curry on a Sunday that week, and it turned out so delicious, that I invited my Belgian girlfriend to join me for dinner. And she loved it too. And so started my love for cooking.The confidence that I could cook, with the additional bonus that I loved the food I cooked, and was specially overjoyed when someone else loved it too, overhauled me into the long journey of cooking which I enjoy to this day. The abundance of creativity that you can add to known and unknown recipes coupled with the fact that almost every time you try and cook something new, you learn something new is a joy for a lifetime. And I would definitely suggest everyone and anyone, to try to cook. It is an easy and forgiving pastime, and it gives you the opportunity to impress. What more, it uplifts your taste buds, and helps you know and accept food in all its multitude.

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