Homemade Pizza

Prep Time: 15mins

Cook time 30mins

Ingredients

For dough

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2 cups all-purpose flour

Olive oil for kneading

½ tsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Toppings

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Grated Mozzarella cheese

½ cup Olive oil

1 Cup Pizza sauce

Chopped veggies of your choice. I usually prefer Onion & Capsicum. Rest of it like black Olives, tomatoes, Sweet corn, Baby corn, Finely chopped green chilies can be used.

Pizza sauce:

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1 cup Tomato sauce/ketchup

½ tsp red chili powder

½ tsp salt

1tsp oregano

Kneading dough:

Add dry yeast in warm water. Make sure the water is really warm and not hot. Yeast would die if its put in hot water and it wont ferment the dough. Add sugar and leave it aside. When yeast starts fermenting you can see mild bubbles and sour smell like fermented dosa or sour curd. Take all purpose flour in a bowl, add fermented yeast, pinch of salt and knead it. Occasionally use oil to get rid of the stickiness and bonding purpose. Use water adequately to make runny dough. It should be soft enough to flatten it to a base with bare hands. Cover the dough and allow it to ferment for 30mins.

Add pizza sauce ingredients and mix well. Take a pan, dust it with dry flour. Take runny dough, with dry flour flatten it in pan. Your base is ready. Now poke complete base with fork. Brush the base with olive oil. Spread the pizza sauce. Add grated cheese on top of sauce. Add your favorite toppings and bake it.

If you are using a oven, preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place the pizza inside oven and bake it for 30 mins in convention mode(250 degrees). Incase you are making pan pizza, cover the pan with lid and bake it in medium flame for about 20mins.  You know your pizza is ready when you see your cheese is melted and veggies are cooked. Serve it with chili flakes and oregano.

Tips:

1. Use oven if possible. Pan pizzas are good if you are making a thin crest pizza. Usually pan pizza will give you a crispy crest.
2. When you are making pan pizza, make sure you cook toppings separately before adding them to pizza base.
3. Pan pizzas are quick. Keep an eye on the crest make sure it doesn’t get roasted.  Pizzas in oven take easily 30mins for 250 degrees heat.
4. Keep a tap on dry yeast. Expired or very old dated wont ferment as expected.
5. You may add oregano and chilly flakes while baking, but I prefer plain pizza. You don’t want to add too many flavors as not everybody likes it. Its better if you keep them optional while serving.

Indian Masala Chai

Audience : Indian chai lovers

Ingredients:
1/4 cup Cloves(Lavang)

1/2 cup Cardamom(Elaichi)

1/4 cup Black peppercorn(Kaal menasu)

1/4 cup Cinnamon(Chakke)

1/4 cup Dru Ginger(Ona Shunti)

Method: 

Dry roast Cinnamon,Black Pepper,Elaichi & Cloves for 2mins in high flame in non sticky pan. Allow it to cool completely. Blend the roasted spices with dry ginger in mixer to a smooth powder. Store it in air tight container.

Direction to use:

For 4cups of tea, add 1/4-1/2 tsp chai masala with tea powder. For stronger flavor, you may increase the quantity depending on your taste.

Tips:

1. Maintain the sequence as Cinnamon needs more time to roast and Cloves less

2. Powder ginger separately so that a part of ginger powder can be stored separately for ginger chai. That’s another flavor when you don’t want too many spices in your tea.

All mothers Fav -UPMA

The alternate name I used for upma is Concrete. During my school days it was my mother’s fav breakfast as it’s easy to cook in very less time. I always felt like hiding under the cot than gulping the upma. As I grew up, I now understand why it was my mother’s fav. To sell my upma, I did struggle experimenting with different ingredients and finally have learnt few ways to make upma interesting and believe it or not, when I ask what they need for breakfast, my brother says "UPMA":). Good luck with your version now. Here you go.

Ingredients:

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1 cup Semolina(Rava)

2 cups water(1:1 or 1:2 or 1:3) depending on how thick you want the upma to be.

1 Onion

3 green chillies

Vegetables of your choice(Usually its beans,carrot,Potato)

Coriander leaves for garnishing

lemon juice(optional)

Seasoning:

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1/4 teaspoon Mustard seeds

1/2 teaspoon Cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon Bengal Gram(Chanadal)

Curry leaves

Oil for seasoning

Heat pan in medium flame. Fry Semolina till its golden brown in low flame. Take out fried semolina and keep it aside. Now in a pan, heat 2table spoon oil. Add mustard, cumin, Bengal gram. Wait till mustard seeds splutter. Now add curry leaves, finely chopped onions, chopped chillies,chopped vegetables. Fry till onions turn soft. Add water, salt to taste, Salt should be slightly at higher side than usual taste as the salt will be absorbed by semolina in sometime. Bring the water to boil. Add lemon juice if you want tangy taste. Add semolina, close the lid and cook in low flame till water is absorbed and semolina is soft. You may adjust it water if required depending on how soft you want your upma to be. Keep stirring the upma to avoid lumps.

Turn off the flame. Garnish with coriander and serve it hot.

This is usual upma recipe. When I was in school I never liked it. Now when I cook, I make sure the upma is interesting to gulp:). How do you make it interesting

Optional ingredients:

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1. Add cashews/ground nuts in seasoning.

2. Add lots of coriander, fresh coconut after turning off the flame/before serving

3. Serve it with lemon so that only if required people may add it while having the upma.

4. Add tomato along with other vegetables. This gives a different taste to upma. Make sure your tomato is small and tangy ones. Tomato usually dominates the taste, so I usually avoid it

5. Serve upma with curd. It tastes awesome and is easy to gulp when not in mood to have upma.

6. Add sambar powder to enhance the taste.

7. Add small cut ginger pieces to basic upma recipe to give a different flavor to upma.

8. You may add ginger garlic paste to make it like pulao.

9. Add fenugreek leaves while seasoning. Make sure the leaves are fried in oil else it will give a bitter taste to upma.

Let me know if you have few more tips. I would love to try them too to make upma interesting to eat:). Happy cooking