Drinks - Juices, Milkshakes, etc

Would anyone have a chilled milkshake in Winter? I will! :) & so would my husband. We looove looove the drinks made from fruits. Weekdays, we get our daily dose of milk from the cereals we eat for breakfast. But on weekends, I make south Indian tiffins for b/fast. In the afternoons, I make milkshakes so that we get to have milk in some form during weekends too. They are quite refreshing and at the same time, healthy.

If you have a blender/mixer, you are good to go. Blend any fruit (like strawberry, mango, banana, chikkoo - only used these so far) or a fruit-combo with sugar, milk, ice and vanilla sugar (optional). From my experience, I learnt that banana-based shakes should be consumed immediately. Since we don't get ripe mangoes and chikkoo here, I use store bought mango pulp and frozen chikkoo.

Few pictures of the shakes I make:

Strawberry banana m/s

Chikkoo (sapota) m/s

There's this small chaat place in San Diego called Surati Farsan Mart where you get chikkoo shake. Until few weeks ago, we used to visit this place almost every week to have this milk shake. Fellow used to charge 3$ per serving. I always used to crib that I can get a whole week's supply of milk for the same amount. But because I couldn't get chikkoo anywhere, we had to go to this place to have it. I tried really hard in all the Asian and American grocery stores for something even remotely belonging to the sapota/chikkoo family, but in vain. Then one afternoon, I sat and started thinking, if that Surati fellow can get his supply of chikkoo, why am I not getting? It then struck to my mind that probably he could be using frozen chikkoo from India. I never peep inside the frozen foods section of the desi stores. But when I did, the last time I went, I found a bag of "frozen chikkoo". Hurray!! I proudly showed it to my husband as though that was a trophy/award I achieved :) From then on, we started having home-made chikkoo shake. Very fresh, with a very heavenly taste. This is one truly "dil maange more" drink. All for under 1$.

Coming to juices, the only fruit juices that I make are with watermelon and pineapple. Reason- I don't like to eat the melon directly & my husband doesn't like to eat pineapples directly :)

Fruit + sugar + ice + water = one "aha moment" after a day's work :)

Pineapple juice

Watermelon juice

Masala buttermilk



My grandma first made this after seeing us purchase packets & packets of masala buttermilk from Visakha Dairy. These elderly people tend to favour "at-home" cooking a little too much. "Why waste money, when you can have something more healthier and fresh at home" is what they say. I'm so glad my grandma made this, for now, even in the US, I can have masala majjiga whenever I feel like.

For the recipe, churn the curd with water (manually/mixer) and add salt, lemon juice. Grind ginger, green chilli, jeera, curry leaves in a mixer and add to the buttermilk. Serve chilled.

Chole chaat

Blogging would be the last thing on my mind on a Sunday morning. Why then am I posting something now? Well, I'm actually waiting for several things ...

1. for the tomato pulp to cool, so that I can grind it
2. for the chutney (1) so that I can have my breakfast
3. for my husband, so that I can go out shopping
4. for my sister, who gave me an appointment at 10:30 to call her

Now that I have nothing else to do, I decided to post my first recipe. Something I made yesterday for evening snacks. Chaat with Badam milkshake.

Call it channa masala, chole chaat, whatever, its essentially a delicious curry made with chickpeas/garbanzo beans. We either have it with chapathis or just as a light snack. This is one "fast to cook, good to eat" dish. When I made it the first time using my mom's recipe, I was like "Is that all?". Very very simple recipe, yet very very tasty.

Ingredients:

1. Chickpeas/garbanzo beans
2. Tomatoes
3. Green chillies
4. Onions
5. Dhania-jeera powder
6. Channa masala
7. Lemon juice
8. Coriander leaves

Procedure:

1. Soak chickpeas for atleast 8 hours and boil them with a little salt. If you use the canned beans, you can skip this step.
2. Puree tomatoes (quantity depends on the amount of chickpeas) and keep it ready.
3. Heat a little oil (I just use 1 tbsp for a cup of chickpeas) in a pan and fry the tadka (mustard and jeera).
4. Add little turmeric to the oil and fry green chillis.
5. Add the chopped onions to the pan and saute them.
6. Tomato puree to be added next along with some salt.
7. Add the boiled/canned chickpeas to the puree and some dhania-jeera powder, little sugar, any store-bought chole masala.
8. Cover the pan and let the contents cook for about 10 minutes. If the gravy is too thick, add some water.
9. Add some lemon juice and garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves and onions.

That's all it takes for a bowl of chatpata chaat to land on your table.



I've got something to say about dhania-jeera powder. Store-bought powder neither has the taste nor the aroma of home-made powder. I use it in most of the curries, particularly the ones with gravy. Once in a while, when I'm really jobless, I grind equal quantities of coriander seeds (dhania) and jeera along with few red chillies to a fine powder. This stays fresh for about two weeks when stored in an air-tight tin.

Along with chaat, we also had a glass of chilled badam milk. For the recipe, well, buy a packet of MTR badam feast and DAD (do-as-directed) :). Blend milk and the MTR powder along with an ice cube or two and savour the drink.