Recipes

Seethaphal or Custard Apple Milkshake

Ingrediants

¼ kg Custard Apple
50gm sugar
50gm Milk

Method

Take ¼ kg of ripe Seethaphal or Custard apple, take the pulp, no need to remove the seeds. Put it in the mixer and churn it once. Do not add water. Drain the pulp and remove the seeds. Then add 50gm of sugar and 2 cups of milk to the pulp and put it in the mixer. Churn it well. Depending on the taste of the fruit, if required add more sugar and churn it well. Pour it in a glass and add flakes of custard apple without seed and serve it chill.

Bisi Bele Bath

Ingrediants

1 Cup Raw Rice
¾ Cup Thuvar Dal
½ Cup Dhania
¼ Cup Channa Dal
4 Seeds of Pepper corn
4 Seeds of Methi
4 Seeds of Lavang Stick
10 or 15 Dry Chillie
½ Cup of Copra
1 lemonsized tamarind
¼ kg of Mixed Vegetables like potatoe, pease, beans, carrot, pumkin, capsicum,
drumstick etc.

Paste
Fry with a little oil Dhania, Channa, Pepper, Methi, Lavang Stick and Dry Chillie. Fry till you can get the aroma. Cool this and Grind all this including the Copra into a smooth paste.

Method

Put Raw Rice and Thuvar Dal in the cooker, add 2.25 : 1 proportion of water and pressure cook it well. Some vegetables can also be pressure cooked others can be just fried. Extract Tamarind water and boil it till the raw smell disappears, add the boiled or fired vegetables. Once this is boiled add the rice and dal which is cooked. Add the required amount of salt. If the rice is thick add one or two cups of water so that it does not thicken once it cools. After all this together is boiled add the Ground paste and stir it for a while so that the rice does not get burnt. After this is boiled and mixed well add two table spoons of ghee.
Seasoning
Keep oil in a Khadai, Add a table spoon of mustard seeds, hing, and some curry leaves. Add this to the rice.
Your Bisi Bele Bath is ready. It is tastier when served Hot
For the side dish you can serve, Papad, or cucumber Raitha.

Tomato Pickle or Tomatoe Thokku

Ingridients

11/2 kg Tomato
½ Cup Salt
100 gms New Tamarind
1 tsp Turmeric powder
2 tsp grated Jaggery
50gms Chillie powder
a pinch of Asafoetida
1 tsp of Mustard
1 Cup of Oil

Method

Cut tomatoes into small bits. Add salt, turmeric powder and jaggery. Mix well. Add tamarind. Close the container and keep overnight. Next day squeeze the juice separately and dry the pieces and the juices separately under the sun. Dry them till they are ¾ th dry. Grind them together into a smooth paste. Fry methi seeds and make a powder. Heat a little oil, fry mustard and asafetida bit and add to the paste. Add methi seeds powder. Heat the remaining oil and add chillie powder just for a while. Pour it on the paste immediately. Mix well. Store in a clean and dry container.

Manikaran

Manikaran
We actually set off to Kulu – Manali but since my uncle, a former employee of NHPC had a friend in Manikaran we first went to Manikaran. The route was Chennai – Delhi – Chandigarh – Manikaran. We took a cab from Chandigarh – left around 3 in the afternoon and reached Manikara at 11 pm. We met our guide Bharturamji and driver Rameshji at Nahgwai 30 kms before Manikaran and changed vehicles. It was pitch dark, no lights and not a sound. After a point we could hear the sound of gushing water and we had reached the NHPC guest house at Manikaran. Virmaniji, my uncle’s friend and Chief Engineer received us with great warmth. It was shivering once we got down from the jeep (this was in May). Dinner with hot phulkas and sizzling sabji was waiting for us and after dinner we reached our rooms and set off to sleep in our rajaais. Next morning, no clue about the time, we got up and went out just to see where we were.
Oh my God! No words can describe the breathtaking place. The guest house, located in a plain was surrounded on all sides by huge mountains, green mountains on the east and south. In front, just 10 metres away the ice cold river Parvathi was flowing in its full gusto. On the right we could see the snow clad peaks of the Himalayas. It was too much for my eyes. I could not believe this!!

About 10 in the morning Barturamji took us to Manikaran. It is a small place and not many tourists as in Kullu or Manali. Barturamji told us that off late, the inflow of tourists has increased. First we visited the NHPC’s dam site where a 30 Km long tunnel is being drilled through the mountains to generate hydro electric power. Then we visited the Sri Ram Mandir and Shiva temple, famous for their hot springs. Manikaran has some of the hottest springs in the world. It was a great sight to watch perennial boiling hot water gushing out of the ground in front of Lord Shiva and joining the ice cold waters of the river Parvati engulfed with fumes. They have laid carpets all round the hot water spring but still it was difficult to walk on them since it was very very hot!. We bought a sack each of raw rice and dal tied with a long thread and put them into the hot spring and when we went around the temple and came out in about 10 minutes time, we had cooked rice and dal ready from the spring. The rice and dal thus cooked are treated as prasadam in Manikaran. Even now when we think back, it is just amazing. That’s what nature is all about. Then we did a little bit of shopping (u get some good wooden items in Manikaran) in the small market adjacent to the temple. We heard that there were caves with hot water springs in the mountains behind, but didn’t visit them due to paucity of time. We then had lunch at the Gurudwara behind the Shiva Temple where most of the food (rice,dal, etc) is cooked in the hot water springs. They fill pots made of clay with rice and dal and lower them into the springs after tying the mouths with cloth and take them after 30 minutes and you have boiling hot cooked rice and dal ready. It was a wonderfull experience and we felt sorry that we could stay for two days only in Manikaran since we had to leave for Kulu.