Paneer (Indian Cottage Cheese) Puffs

These stuffed puffs can be eaten as a snack or full meal, it is quite filling. For this you would need 1 puff pastry sheet and following ingredients for filling

300 grams paneer

½ cup chopped onion

1 tablespoon chopped green chilies

½ teaspoon jeera powder

½ teaspoon black pepper powder

1/4^th cup chopped cilantro

Mix in all the ingredients required for filling in a bowl. If your store bought paneer is hard and not easy to mash then here is something that would be helpful. Put paneer in a bowl of water, paneer should be completely under water, microwave it for 2-3 minutes. This will loosen the paneer and easy to work with.

 Roll out your thawed pastry sheet and cut it into nine equal squares and divide the filling into nine equal parts as well. Take a piece of pastry sheet, put the filling on it and fold it to make a ball. Heat the oven to 400F and bake puffs for 15 minutes and then broil for two minutes. Keep an eye on the puff they burn very easily.

Serve them hot with sauce and tea :).

You can always adjust the spices in the filling according to your taste.

Broiled Grapefruit

Grapefruit, one of the healthiest fruits, can be eaten as breakfast or snack if you like. Here is a yummy twist you can put on this juicy fruit. This will serve 2-4 depending depending on portion size. I made it for two people.

What you need is
Two grapefruits
Two tablespoons of brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon powder 

Cut grapefruit in half and remove the seeds if any, using a small sharp knife cut all the way around the grapefruit between the pulp and rind and then cut diagonally along the sections. This cutting would make it easy to eat, make sure you don't cut the rind otherwise you will lose all the juices. Mix sugar, vanilla and cinnamon powder in a bowl and sprinkle it evenly in grapefruit halves. Then place them on a baking tray (on foil) in oven to broil  (500F) for 10 minutes or until the top is slightly brown as shown in the picture. Serve it hot!

Broccoli basil soup

I made it for the first time today and was a little apprehensive as I was not sure how broccoli would taste in soup. But it turned out great, I gave a bowl of this soup to one of my neighbors and she loved it :).
This will make 4-5 serving of soup (serving being one regular size bowl)
Ingredients

• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 2-3 cloves of Garlic 
• 2-3 green chilies coarsely chopped
• 1/4th of a large onion chopped
• 10-12 basil leaves
• One medium size potato (I used yellow potato)
• 5-6 cups of broccoli flowerets
• Salt to taste
• 1/2 tbsp cumin powder
• 1 /2 tsp black pepper powder
• 1/4th cup of mascarpone cheese (can be replaced by heavy cream or 1/2 cup of full fat milk)
• Water

Heat oil in a pot, add garlic cloves, green chilies and onion and saute till onion is translucent. Then add basil leaves, broccoli, potato, salt, cumin and black pepper powder and stir in everything. After two minute add enough water to cover the contents in the pot, close the lid and let it simmer for 20 minutes (you can also pressure cook it, two whistles). After 20 minutes check if broccoli is cooked, you should be able to mash it with the ladle. Switch off the heat and let the soup cool down a bit, then use an immersion blender to puree the mixture until smooth (you can add more water if the soup is too thick for you). Mix in mascarpone cheese and serve it with any kind of bread (jalapeno cheddar bread in the picture).

You can replace broccoli with tomato (4) and baby carrots (2 cups). And keeping rest of the ingredients and recipe same, you get tomato-carrot soup.

Crochet Hats

This is the easiest thing to do and very quick too, I have made several of these and gifted to friends and relatives. 
If you want to make one, here is a very helpful YouTube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cq9ivY-FAw

Baby hat

Winter muffler (scarf)

The multi-color hat is made from multi-color yarn

Crochet bulky yarn Poncho

This is a very simple poncho to crochet. It is a 60"X18" rectangle joined on edges at two places for neck and arm hole.
I used a size N crochet and Bernat Baby Blanket Yarn ( 20 ounces). If you want the pattern I can direct to the website I got it from.

Avocado Roti (Avocado Indian Flat-bread)

This is a very soft and healthy roti and at the same time delicious and goes very well with curry or sabji. Here are the ingredients, measurements are approximate and would vary depending on the size of avocado.

• Two ripe avocados, de-seeded and mashed (it should look like a paste)
• 2 finely chopped green chilies
• Salt to taste
• Jeera powder half tsp
• 2 cups of whole wheat flour (another half cup to adjust the consistency of the dough)

Put mashed avocado, salt, jeera powder, green chilies and two cups of flour in a large bowl and knead to form a soft and non sticky dough. Add more flour in case it is sticky or too loose. And remember "NO WATER", if you add water and keep this dough in refrigerator it will be very sticky next day and you will have to add more flour and knead it again. 

And then make rotis as you would usually do.  You can also modify this recipe by adding other ingredients like cilantro or ajwain or flax seed powder etc.