Carrot Payasa - Half a century celebration

I still remember the first time I tasted the carrot payasa/kheer at a friend's house. It was a few years ago, summer time and also a string of South Indian festivals. Her mom was visiting her from India and it was a beautiful Saturday morning and the house was completely filled with the tantalizing smell of the kheer. Her mom had indeed prepared a feast which included this yummy dessert. I didn't believe her when she said it was just carrots and milk and that it took her under 30 mins to make it. We all love carrot halwa at home but it does take time to make a good halwa and I think this is only second best compared to carrot halwa. The same goodness of carrots, richness from milk turns this easy to make dessert into a delicacy.

I made one small change to the recipe aunty gave me by adding a fistful of soaked and peeled almonds. I have made this for parties and pot lucks and have always seen the payasa get relished by all.

Coming to the celebration part, Sattvaa completes 50 blog posts with this carrot payasa. It has been a great journey for the last 4 months, blogging has really given me the needed distraction in my life in addition to providing a creative outlet for me. It definitely is busier now but I like it. I love making friends, hearing from them and it lifts me up to see the comments on my posts. I appreciate every one of you taking the time to leave your thoughts on this blog. Looking forward to staying connected. BH spent a Saturday morning recently to help me create a facebook page for the blog, you can friend me on facebook to bring you immediate updates on my posts. Click on the facebook 'Like' button on the blog page. 

Back to today's recipe, this payasa has only a few ingredients and yet tastes great.

What do you need to make Carrot Payasa? 
Makes 10 cups of payasa 
8 medium sized carrots
1+1/4 cups sugar
5-6 cups of milk (I used 2%)
8-10 almonds
1 Tsp ghee (clarified butter)

How do you make Carrot Payasa?

• Wash, peel and grate carrots.
• Soak almonds in warm water for 20 minutes, peel the outer skin. 
• Heat ghee in a sauce pan, add carrot gratings and fry it on medium heat until soft, takes 6-8 minutes.

• Once the carrot is cool, blend it in your blender with 2 cups of milk and almonds to a smooth paste. 
• Bring the remaining milk to boil, add sugar and the ground carrot paste. 
• Stirring frequently, boil for about 6-8 minutes. 

• Adjust sugar if necessary. 
• Payasa tastes great served warm or cold. 

Notes: 

• Adjust sugar to please your taste buds, watch out for the sweetness of the carrot. 
• You can skip almonds, aunty's payasa didn't have it but still tasted great. 
• Adjust the quantity of milk if needed to get a pouring consistency.
• I do not add the usual suspects in a South Indian dessert such as cardamom, nutmeg or saffron in this recipe as the carrots and almonds have a perfectly matched flavor. 

Here is a cup of warm, frothy carrot payasa for all of you!

Carrot Chutney

I grew up thinking that a chutney has to have coconut in it. Though nammamma made many different chutneys, invariably they all had coconut in it to some extent. It was a coconut chutney where coconut was the prime ingredient or a heerekayi sippe (ridge gourd peel) chutney which had a generous amount of coconut in it, you get the point :-). Coconut not only acted as taste enhancer in these recipes but also provided bulk or volume when you were feeding many people at every meal.

Switch to post marriage scenario, at my in-laws' we got coconuts home on special days like festivals, pooja, after offering it as prasadam, amma makes a sweet with grated coconut and jaggery and the coconut will be gone. I was newly married and working and amma very sweetly would cook for all of us, pack my lunch dabba every single day and my cooking was limited to weekends. I used to wistfully look at the coconut and think of all the other yummy possibilities with it :-). After a little bit, amma realized my fondness for coconut and she would keep aside the coconut for me to use when I got to the kitchen. I introduced my new family to the pleasures of coconut eating while I learnt the concept of making delicious chutneys and pachadis from amma.

Coming back to chutneys, I was opened up to a whole new world by amma. She makes such awesome chutneys with least expected ingredients all the way from vegetables to vegetable peels and nuts and greens and pickles made into chutneys. I learnt a plethora of chutneys from her and started challenging myself to make non-coconut chutneys. I constantly look for variations in chutneys to make meals interesting. You can try my chutney experiments with grapefruit here. Carrot chutney combines the sweetness of lightly cooked carrots with a hint of ginger and tamarind makes it a delicious accompaniment for rice, idli or dosa. It is very easy and quick to put together and makes a week day dinner colorful, healthy and tasty.

What do you need to make Carrot chutney? 
4 firm, fresh good size carrots - washed, peeled and grated to fill 2 cups
2 green chilies, cut into two pieces each
1 dry red chili
1 inch piece of ginger - washed, peeled and grated
1 inch piece of tamarind
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1 Tsp chana dal
6-8 methi/fenugreek seeds
2-3 sticks of cilantro (I use the stem also)
1 Tsp of cooking oil

For Vaggarane/seasoning:
1 Tsp cooking oil
1 pinch of asafoetida powder
1 dry red chili broken into 2 (optional)
1/2 Tsp mustard seeds
2-3 curry leaves (I didn't have it today)

How do you make Carrot Chutney?

• In a wide pan, heat a Tsp of oil.
• Add the chanadal and methi seeds and let it fry for a minute until you get the roasted aroma of methi seeds and the dal turns pink.
• Add grated ginger, chilies and tamarind and mix it in the hot pan.

• Add grated carrot, cilantro, salt and let it cook covered for 5 minutes with one in-between stir. 

• When you see the carrots become soft, switch off and let it cool completely. 

• Once the mixture has cooled, take it to the blender/mixer and grind with a couple of spoons of water as needed to turn your blender. Grind it to a smooth paste.
• Prepare vaggarane - heat oil, add mustard and let it splutter, add asafoetida and curry leaves and switch off. 
• Pour the vaggarane on top of the chutney and give it a mix, serve it with hot rice or dosa or idli. 

Tips: 

• Let the carrot mixture cool completely before you grind it for best taste. 
• Use as little water while grinding as needed just to keep the blender running smoothly.
• Be conservative with chilies in this recipe as carrots do not take the spice very kindly.
• Adding red chilies to seasoning is Amma's trick and is added for a purpose - if you like it spicy, you can break the fried crisp chili into the chutney while eating to make it hot.  

Carrot-bell pepper soup for a rainy evening dinner

When the weather is cloudy and it is a little chilly indoors, I crave for something hot and spicy. It is also true on days when work day has been longer and busy and you realize it is dinner time but not much is ready in the name of dinner. We enjoy our bread & soup days without any of the aforementioned excuses also since we are a soup loving family :-).

I made this delicious carrot-bell pepper soup yesterday and took cue from Veggie Belly's tip for flavoring it with mint, thank you Sala. It was very flavorful and we slurped it with bread topped with grapefruit chutney.

What do you need to make Carrot-bell pepper soup?
4 large carrots - washed, peeled and cut into bite size pieces
1 small yellow baby bell pepper - this adds a sweetish peppery flavor, you can use red colored ones also
1 cup milk
10 mint leaves
1 tsp ground pepper + some for garnish
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp butter
1 cup water

How do you make carrot-bell pepper soup?

1. Heat the butter, fry carrots and bell pepper for a minute, add water and cook until soft, alternatively cook carrots in a pressure cooker.
2. In the mean time, heat the milk on low heat, add mint leaves and let it come to a boil.
3. Switch off the stove, take the mint leaves out and preserve the flavored milk.
4. Once cooked carrots & pepper have cooled, take them to the blender, add the flavored milk and blend it till smooth.
5. Bring the blended mixture to a rolling boil in a soup pot, season with salt & pepper, add water if the consistency is thick. I didn't need any additional water.

Variation:

1. You can add a 1/4 red onion and 1 tomato instead of the bell pepper for a different flavor. grape tomatoes give a nice red hue to the soup. 
2. Add 1/2 tsp of amchoor (dry mango) powder while boiling the soup if you like your soup to have a little punch.