How To Vegan Indian Tea or Chai.

Here is my go-to recipe for Indian style Tea or chai

What's Needed:
1 cup filtered cold water
1 1/2 tsp of loose tea - If you can get Taj Mahal or red lable tea.
add sugar to taste.
small pinch - Everest Tea masala ( optional ).
vegan milk or regular milk

Prep:
Put the 1 cup of water in the sauce pan and put on high heat.
Using a fine mesh sif, sif out the loose tea to take out any fine tea dust.
Once the water has come to a roaring boil, slowely drop in the loose tea, as soon as you do that, cut the heat off and cover with the plate for 1 1/2 min.
Now will be a perfect time to add sugar or tea masala if needed.

How to know the tea is ready?
Well the leafs will be at the bottom of the pan and tea infused water will be ready to pour into the cup.

Now pour the tea into a clean tea cup and fill till 80% cup capacity. Stir with a spoon and add cold vegan milk or regular milk to taste.

Serving Suggestion::
Serve hot with tea biscuit or rusks

Video Of This Recipe - You Got it!



Recipes And Requests? 
You Bet! I will be happy to accommodate your wishes.


Take care and enjoy.


Man Rat

Indian Saffron Rice - For ZombieK1tty

This recipe was requested by my good friend ZombieK1tty.

Ingredients needed are

1 cup basmati rice - sold on amazon or indian store.
1/2 teaspoon saffron - also sold on amazon or indian store
3 green cardamom -
1 bay leaf
1 Cinnamon stick
2 cup Water
salt to taste
2 cloves
1/2 star anise
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 Tablespoon of oil or ghee or melted butter
Optional sliced almonds and cashew

How to Cook.
It's rather easy and simple

1st in a shallow pan that has a lid add oil or ghee or melted butter.
Then to extract the spices and oils from the spices, toss in 1st Bay leaf with cumin seeds. Wait for the cumin to start changing color/popping. Now add green cardamom, cinnamon stick, cloves, and star anis, along with sliced almonds and cashew and toast just a bit.

Now the add rice and saute for 3-4 mins. We basically want the rice to have a small coating of the oil that is infused with all the spices on top.

Now add 2 cups water ( with basmati rice we want to go for a 1:2 ratio, so one cup rice, add 2 cups of water), now add salt to taste and bump up the heat to bring the water to a slight simmer/boil

Now the start of the show saffron, we need to mix the saffron with a little bit of cold water, (1/2 spoon saffron to 2 spoons of cold water), mash it lightly so the color comes out, let it sit on the side for 2 min.

After that, add the saffron-infused water into the dish and cover the pot with the lid.
Make sure the flame or the gas is at its lowest setting.

Cook the rice till its done.

Open the lid and take out the whole spices - bay leaf, cardamom, star anise, cloves as the can be too strong in a single bite.

Serving Suggestion: Serve warm with plain yogurt or tzatziki or raita.

Let me know if you try this dish and if you have a request, post it here and I will try to provide the recipe for you.

Take care
Youtube.com/ManRat

Changing Gears

Hi All,
So a small post, but with a major update. This blogger site of mine is going to switch gears a bit and will showcase weekly segments with thought-provoking discussion along with my regular cooking recipes.
Stay tuned!

Poori - Fried Crispy Puffy Doughball Of Goodness.

This time on Blog, We are going to be making Fried Crispy Puffy Doughball Of Goodness - Poori.

What's Needed:
We will need the dough that I posted in my last blog post.
Along with a dash of dry flour
Cooking oil.

Prep Work:
Take the dough and make a big golf size dough ball.

Now on a clean cooking surface, sprinkle some dry flour and start rolling the dough ball with a rolling pin. We are looking to form the dough ball into a round shape and the thickness we are going for is about 2 mm thin.

Once that's done, you need to take a deep frying pan or WoK and bring the oil temperature up-to 425 or till you start seeing the oil glisten. Easy way to test if the oil is ready, just drop in a small ball of dough, if it sinks and doesn't come up, let it heat up more, if its too hot, VERY carefully add some cold oil.

Cooking:
very VERY carefully drop in the flat dough disk away from your self. It will initially sink and start puffing, flip it so the other side can also cook. We are looking for the Poori to be light golden brown.


Serving Suggestion:
This goes really well with any savory salty dish, me personally, I love to eat these with chickpeas dish called Punjabi Choleys, but you can have it with any dish you want to eat it with, but please do try to eat it while it's still hot and freshly made.

Video Of This Recipe - You Got It!



Recipes And Requests? You Bet! I will be happy to accommodate your wishes. I have started a cooking series on my ch and this recipes along with many amazing recipes will be pushed out every Friday at mid-night EST -

Ch link - youtube.com/manrat

Take care and enjoy.

Man Rat

Super delicious amazing Red Kidney Beans.

Here is my go-to recipe for super delicious red kedney beans.

What's Needed:
1 cup Dry red Kedney beans.
Cover with water and soak for 5-6 hrs.
Now put them in a pressure cooker with water and salt to taste.
Ration to be used 1 cup dry beans to 3 cups water.

Pressure cook till fork tender or till they are cooked through.

Tarka Prep:
dice 2 medium onion
4-5 cloves of garlic diced
1/2 in of ginger diced
3 medium size tomatos.
3-4 green hot chillies

In a shallow pan, add about 2 table spoon of oil and the pan should be on high heat
add 1/2 tea spoon whole mustard seeds
add 1/2 tea spoon cuman seeds
add 3 bay leads
add 2 black cardmom seeds ( 4 green cardmom seeds can do too).

As soon as you hear the mustard seeds start cracking add the onion and mix it up.

As soon as the onion start looking transluent, add ginder 1st, let it cook for a few seconds, then add ginger and green peppers.
Mix and then add one staranis and 1 1/2 whole dry chillies.

Once the onion start getting golden brown the following dry spices will go in
NOTE: Turn the heat down to low before adding the dry spices!
1 tea spoon Turmuric
1/4 tea spoon kasuri methi
1/2 tea spoon amchoor power
1/2 tea spoon cumin power
1/2 tea spoon salt (Because we did add salt to the beans while they were boiling)
1 tea spoon red chilli powder.

As soon as you start smelling the spices now we need to add the diced tomatos. Add about 1/2 a cup of water, bring the heat up to medium high and cook till the tomatos have cook and are fine.

Now very carefully add the tarka into the pressure cooker and mix well
NOTE: This is the perfect time to taste the salt and spices, add any as need or to taste.

Once the tarka is in with the beans, put the lid back on the pressure cooker and cook for 3 more minutes.

Serving Suggestion::

Ideally, please serve on a bed of boiled rice along with a fresh cut cucumber and sliced tomatoes.

Pita/Roti/Paratha - yes, you can serve it with them too.

Video Of This Recipe - You Got it!



Recipes And Requests? You Bet! I will be happy to accommodate your wishes.


Take care and enjoy.

Man Rat

How To Make Vegan Rolled Tacos Or Vegan Taquitos

What's Needed:

2 - boiled potatos
1 - small onion, chopped fine and split into two equal parts.
3 - garlic cloves sliced.
2 - medium tomatos chopped.
2 - dried chillies.
1 1/2 - Tablespoon all pourpose flour.
2 - Green chillies finely chopped ( you can use jallaponos too)
1 - tea spoon taco seasoning
1 - tea spoon southwestern seasoning
1/2 - block of extra firm tofu, pressed and cubed
Handful of chopped centro
Crushed Black pepper to taste
Salt to taste.
8 - ready made medium size flour torties

Sauce:
Put one part of the onion that was sliced along with 2 sliced garlic, chopped tomatos and dried chillies with 1/4 cup water and grind to fine paste.

To cook the sauce, Add 1 table spoon oil and 1 1/2 table spoon all purpose flour in a small sauce pan and cook till the flour starts changing color.
As soon as that happens add the tomato paste that we just made and a dash of south western seasoning of your choise and salt to taste.
Mix it well, cover the pan and take it off heat so it can rest.

Taco Filling:
Remove the skin from the boiled potato, chop them up into rough cubes and using a fork or potato masher, mash it/mix it with the the other part of the onion, 1 sliced garlic, salt to taste, crushed black pepper to taste, 1 tea spoon taco seasoning, green chillie and a handfull of celentro. Key is to get the potato mashed really well and to get all the ingridientds mixed really well. Do taste the potato mixture at this point and add extra spices or salt to personal liking.

Now cut a block of tofu into half, using a tofu press or plate and try to remove as much water as you can and then chop it into small cubes.

Very gentelly now mix the cubed tofu with the potato filling.

Taco Prep;
Using a microwave or flat iron skillet, heat the taco's so they are soft.

Filling The Taco:
Put the taco on a flat surface and put the filling towards the back (about 2 spoon full) and roll.
NOTE: Once you are done rolling, the end of the rolled taco should be at the bottom.

Cooking The Taco:
In a big sauce pan, add some oil and place the rolled taco's fold side down and cook till they form a slight golden color. While the bottom is cooking, brush some oil on top and using a knife and fork, flip the taco so the other side can also cook.

Serving.
In a salade bowl or a big plate, place the tacos and using a ladel put the red sauce on top. Garnish with celantro or vegan cheese and serve warm.

Video Of This Recipe - You Got It!


Recipes And Requests? You Bet! I will be happy to accommodate your wishes. I have started a cooking series on my ch and this recipes along with many amazing recipes will be pushed out every Friday at mid-night EST -

Ch link - youtube.com/manrat

Take care and enjoy.

Man Rat