Need your skin glow with shiny hair and healthy nails? You would be surprised to know how easy it is to achieve our goal with a little effort. Here comes a simple plan..
Fruits and Vegetables are bursting with vitamins and minerals that our skin, hair, and nails rely on to look fabulous. 5 serving of veggies and 3 servings of fruits a day will help us towards our goal. One serving equals half a cup or 125 ml. We need to eat 8 x half a cup of colorful veggies and fruits. The main colorful veggies and fruits include Orange, Red, Blue/purple, and Green foods. Now, its easy for us to track the main veggies and fruits. Here follows the most important color foods to include in our diet, which takes us towards our goal of healthy hair, skin and nails.
ORANGE FOODS: Carrots and Oranges, which contains beta carotene to fight wrinkles causing free radicals and it is loaded with vitamin C to strengthen collagen fibres in skin and hair.
RED FOODS: Tomatoes and Cherries. These are a good souce of lycopene, which protects agains sun and harmful UV rays.
GREEN FOODS: Broccoli and Kale, again is rich in multiple vitamins
BLUE/PURPLE FOODS: Blueberries and Eggplant contain flavonoids that make skin glow and hair shine.
Other than these, Proteins are powerhouse for our skin, hair and nails because our body relies on to replace old or dying cells. Many women skip the suggested two servings of meat, which can be achieved by two boiled eggs or a piece of meat or fish.
Though, 8 servings of colorful veggies and fruits is our goal, we can always start with four servings or 8 servings with two or three serving of our same favorite veggie or fruit and just watch the difference your body will experience, which will help you to stick with the required goal.
1. Wash and cook the dhal in one cup of water with garlic in a pan, till it is cooked fully. Add more water, if all the water has been asbsorbed or we can cook in the pressure cooker for up to 6 - 7 whistles. 2. Smash the cooked dhal immediately with a spoon into a smooth paste without any lumps. 3. Add sufficient water to make it a kozhambu/curry according to our consistency. Always make it little water, as dhal tend to thicken once it cools down. 4. Add turmeric powder, asafotedia powder, and sufficient salt. 5. Heat the above dhal mix and bring it to a full boil for two to three minutes. 6. Remove from heat. 7. Heat another pan and add oil. Once the oil is hot, add mustard seeds and wait till it splutters. Then, add curry leaves and dry red chilly and fry for a minute. 8. Add this to the boiled dhal.
Soak the tamarind in one cup of warm water for 20 minutes. Then, filter it and add one more cup of water to it. Heat a pan in medium and dry roast all the items listed under "To roast and blend". Let it cool and blend into a powder. Cut the garlic. green chilly, and tomato into small pieces. Now heat a pan on medium flame and add oil to it. Once the oil is hot, add the garlic and green chillies and fry stirring continously until the garlic pieces turn light brown. Add the tomato pieces and fry for a minute or two. Add the tamarind juice and add the cooked dhal to it and mix it well. When the whole tamarind juice with the dhal start to boil, add the spice powder we had prepared before and sufficient salt and stir once and wait again for its first boil. Meantime, heat another pan, add oil. Once the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds and wait till it splutters fully. Then, add asafotedia and turmeric powder and fry for a minute. Transfer this to the rasam that is about to boil and when it gets started to boil, remove from heat.
This is a hot and spicy fish fry recipe. For this recipe, I have taken eight small pieces of fish as you can see in the picture below in Ingredients. So, you have to adjust the spices according to the size and quantity of fish you are using.
Ingredients:
I would like to give the ratio of spices I use for this Fish fry. I usually start with salt. First, I measure salt, sufficient for the fish pieces in a dry container/bowl/plate, then chilly powder double the amount of salt. Rest of the spices as listed below with respect to the chilly powder.
Salt sufficient Chilly Powder 2 measure of salt Corriander Powder 1 measure Cumin Powder 1/2 measure Turmeric powder 1/4 measure Garam Masala 1/2 measure
Mix well all the spices and salt with a spoon. Take out each piece of fish and dip in the spices thoroughly as seen in the picture. After doing so, if you get some spice mixture left, go ahead and add on top of the fish. Then refrigerate for one to two hours. The marination time depends on your comfort.
Method:
Heat a wide bottom pan at low to medium heat and add enough oil to fry the fish pieces. Once the oil is hot, add the fish pieces and keep the flame between low and medium throughout. Flip to each side of the fish pieces every two minutes. When it is wholly done, remove the pieces
You can use the remaining oil by frying few thinly sliced onions. These onions taste so good with the fish fry.
As the title suggests, the fish is cooked in boiling tamarind sauce along with indian spices, green chillies and little coconut paste. The seasoning gives a very good aroma and a good taste to this fish curry.
Ingredients:
Fish 5-6 pieces Tamarind lime size soaked in 1 cup of warm water Tomato 1/2 Turmeric powder 1/4 tsp Corriander powder 2 tbsp Chilly powder 1 tbsp Shallots 1/4 cup approximately (blend without water) Cumin seeds 1/4 tsp Grated Coconut 1/4 cup Green chillies 2 Salt to taste
Soak lime-sized tamarind in one cup of warm water for 20 minutes. Meantime, we can just blend the shallots 1/4 cup without water and keep aside. In the same blender, make a smooth paste of 1/4 cup coconut with 1/4 tsp cumin seeds with just enough water to form a paste. Clean and wash the fish pieces.
After 20 minutes, mix well the tamarind with our hand and filter it to remove impurities into a pan, in which we are going to prepare the fish curry. To this filtered tamarind juice add one more cup of warm water..
To this tamarind juice we prepared, add 1/4 tsp of turmeric powder, 1 tbsp of chilly powder, 2 tbsp of corriander powder and squeeze in half tomato with hand.
Heat the pan of tamarind juice and spices on medium flame and allow to boil. When it starts to boil, just stir once and allow to boil uncovered at medium flame for 5 more minutes from now, so that all the raw smell of tamarind and spices goes off.
After 5 minutes of boiling, add the blended shallots and allow to boil for two more minutes uncovered. Then, add the coconut-cumin paste to this and allow to boil for another 3 minutes uncovered. Get ready the fish and two slit green chillies for the next step.
After 3 min of boiling, add the fish pieces and sufficient salt for the whole sauce and two split green chillies. Now, when it starts boiling, reduce the flame little less and the whole tamarind sauce with the fish in it needs to boil uncovered at slow rate for another 20 minutes.
Just before 20 minutes, heat another pan on medium flame. Add 1 tbsp of sessame oil. when the oil gets heated, add 10 no of fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp of mustard seeds and wait till it splutters. Add one stem of curry leaves and shallots cut lengthwise. Fry for a minute or two and immediately transfer to the boiling tamarind fish sauce and cover the pan and remove from heat. Let this stand for atleast 30 minutes so that all the flavors of seasoning get into the fish gravy. Then, the tamarind fish gravy is ready to serve.
Dosa's are all-time favorite dish. Ada Dosai is one of my childhood favorites. I love this dish at my young age just because its very yummy and my mother prepares this dosa with lots of oil especially for me and my sister. Now, post marriage, I love to prepare this dish just because its very easy to prepare during busy days and a makes very healthy meal. The photo you can see above is prepared for my son, Jeishnav and so you cannot find chopped onions and chopped curry leaves, though i always add these in my batter to make it crunchy and greener.
Ingredients:
Raw Rice 1 cup Urad Dhal 1/2 cup All other dhal 1/2 cup (like i have taken Toor Dhal one layer on top of Urad dhal
Masoor Dhal one layer on top of the above Yellow Split Dhal one layer on top of the above Chana Dhal one layer on top of the above Green gram Dhal one layer on top of the above)
Ginger 1/2" piece chopped Dry red chillies 2 Green chilly 1 Asafotedia 1/4 tsp or a small piece
Procedure:
Wash and soak the rice and all type of dhals together with ginger, dry red chilly, green chilly and asafotedia for 4-5 hours.
Blend all the soaked ingredients with more water and sufficient salt at the end. It should have the dosa consistency. I usually make it a bit coarse and not very smooth just to get the crispiness. When you try, make sure you are not making it a very coarse batter.
Add chopped onions and chopped curry leaves(optional) according to ur preference just before you make dosas. This is optional. These dosa's tastes awesome with coconut chutney.
I tasted this recipe for the first time about three years back at one of my friend Jenu's Party. It was like Love at First Taste... I am a lover of Chinese food and this dish with fried Idlies was a good starter that everyone at the party enjoyed the best. The very next week, I invited my friend Jenu to my home and we prepared the dish at my home. My husband liked it so much, that next day he took the leftover to his office. I have to say my spirit of cooking started since then..
Soon, this dish became very common in my kitchen when there were guests, parties, and sometimes as weekend snacks, like that... This is very simple to prepare with left over Idlis. Now-a-days, I cook more Idlis to prepare this dish. I am so excited and happy to share this recipe in my blog and I want to give my best for this recipe, that I decided to shoot a short video with the help of my husband, Ganesh.
Here follows the Ingredients and the method and have a look at my video clicking the link at the end.
Ingredients:
Idli (medium) 6 Ginger 1" (chopped) Garlic 2-3 pods (chopped) Onion 1 medium (chopped in large pieces) Capsicum 1/2 (chopped in large pieces) Dry Red Chilly 3 - 4 Soy sauce 1 tbsp Sweet Chilly sauce 1/2 - 1 tsp Tomato Ketchup 1 - 2 tbsp Pepper powder 1/2 - 1 tsp Salt to taste Spring Onions 1/2 cup Oil For frying
Method:
Refrigerate the Idlis for 6-8 hours if possible. Heat the Oil for frying the Idlis. Cut the Idlis into four peices. Deep fry the Idly pieces in oil till its light golden and crisp outside. Overfrying the pieces can make it hard to absorb the sauces later during the preparation.
Soak 3-4 dry red chilly in just enough water to immerse for 20-30 minutes. Blend them and make a paste.
Now, 1. Heat a pan on medium flame. Add 2-3 tbsp of oil. Add the chopped ginger and chopped garlic and saute till light brown. 2. Add one medicum onion cut in large pieces and saute till it becomes glacy 3. Add half capsicum cut in large pieces and fry for 2-3 minutes only. 4. Add the red chilly paste we had prepared and saute for a minute. 5. Then add soy sauce 1 tbsp, sweet chilly sauce 1/2 - 1 tsp, tomato ketchup 2 tbsp and saute well for another 2 minutes 6. Then add pepper powder and salt and again saute for 1-2 minutes 7. Now, we can add the fried idlies to this and saute till it gets coated with the sauces well. 8. Once coated well, fry for another 2-3 minutes. 9. Finally, add chopped spring onions, reserving some for garnishing at the end and saute for a minute or two. 10. Switch off the heat. Add rest of the spring onions and saute once.
Note:
The no of red chilly paste we are using to prepare the paste depends on how much hot we prefer our dish.
You can always add more tomato ketchup at the end, to make it sweet for kids.
Drumstick 1 Brinjal 2 Cooked Toor dhal 1 cup Shallots 5 no Tomato 1/2 Sambhar powder 3 tbsp Tamarind lime size soaked in warm water salt as per taste Corriander leaves 2 stem
For seasoning: Mustard seeds 1/2 tsp Fenugreek seeds 1/4 tsp Curry leaves 1 stem Dry red chilly 2 no Sessame oil 1 tbsp
Procedure:
Cook the brinjal and drumstick separately with enough water and little salt.
Heat a pan on medium pan and fry th shallots for a minute and then add half tomato and fry for a minute and add to the cooked vegetables and allow to boil for a minute.
Add cooked dhal and sambhar powder and tamarind water and enough salt. add more water to make the whole little dilute (as the dish tends to become thick when it becomes cold, make sure the dish is little watery when it is hot) Allow to boil for 5 minutes on low flame and finally check for salt.
In a separate pan, heat oil at medium flame. Add fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds and wait till it splutters fully. Then, add curry leaves and dry red chillies.
Add the above seasoning immediately into the boiling sambhar and allow to boil for 2 minutes more at medium flame. once done, remove from heat, garnish with corriander leaves and cover with a lid.
This is a typical fish curry that you can find in home-based hotels only in extreme southern part of India. This tastes so delicious with raw mango and drumsticks. The best flavors of this dish comes from slit green cillies and curry leaves. This dish can give you a completely different taste for your family. Women always tend to like the raw mango cooked with fish gravy and drumsticks tastes awesome. Its a good idea to try this dish on a relaxing day and enjoy the real taste of Kerala style Fish Curry. This is commonly served with hot steamed rice and Fish fry.
Ingredients:
Fish 3-5 piece
Drumstick 1
Raw mango(small) 1
Coconut 1 cup
Turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
Chilly powder 1/2 tsp
Whole Black pepper 1/4 tsp
Cumin seeds 1/4 tsp
Shallots 2 or 3
Garlic pods 1 or 2
Green chillies 2 no
Curry leaves 2 stem
Procedure:
Cut the drumstick in small pieces and cook in two cups of water.
While the drumsticks are boiling, wash and cut the raw mango into pieces. Then, blend together coconut, turmeric powder, chilly powder, black pepper, cumin seeds, garlic, shallots together with just enough water to form a smooth paste. Take out two green chillies and curry leaves ready. Also, wash the fish thoroughly and cut in desired size.
Once the drumsticks are cooked, add the cut raw mango and the blended coconut paste into this and wait for the first boil.
Once it starts to boil add two green chillies slit lengthwise and 1 stem of curry leaves and allow to boil not more than 2 minutes. Then add the fish pieces and salt and reduce the flame to low. If you feel the curry too thick, this is the right time to add water and get the curry to ur desired consistency.
Let the fish pieces cook in low flame with the blended coconut mixture for 15-20 minutes covered. Switch off the flame and add one more stem of curry leaves for garnishing.
The kerela style fish curry is ready to serve with hot steamed rice and this tastes awesome with Fish fry as side dish.
