Quick & tasty grad student food

At my sister's request, I will deviate from the usual theme of this blog, and post a recipe. Disclaimers include : I do not claim this to be my original recipe, its simply something I find easy to make. I do not claim to be an expert chef, instead I hope this can help a few grad students make a quick meal.

Ingredients:

1. Frozen mixed veggies -  1 packet

2. Onion - 1 medium sized

3. Tomatoes - 2 medium sized

4. Ginger - garlic paste - 1 tsp

5. Salt - to taste

6. Chilli powder - to taste

7. Coriander powder - 2 tsp

8. Yogurt - 2 tsp (optional)

9. Lemon concentrate (optional)

10. Oil - 2 tsp

Procedure:

1. Microwave the veggies, so that they are 75% cooked. 

2. Heat the oil in a tava. Cut the onions into decent sized pieces (about half an inch on each side) and sautee them in the oil until they look golden-brown.

3. Cut the tomatoes in decent sized pieces, add them to the onions and sautee them too.

4. Add the ginger-garlic paste to this mix and let this cook for a 3-4 minutes.

5. Let the mixture cool down for 5 minutes, and then grind them into a gravy.

6. Meanwhile, take the microwaved veggies and put them in the earlier tava.

7. Add coriander powder, salt, chilli powder and the gravy to the veggies and let it cook for sometime, until the veggies are fully cooked. 

8. If the dish is too spicy, add the yogurt and lemon mix. Be careful at this step, as adding too much of either will make the dish taste sour.

9. If you want to get fancy, add a garnish of cilantro / spring onions at the end.

8. The dish should be ready in a total of 25 minutes or so.

Suggestions:

1. Use canned beans / tofu / paneer instead of veggies. In that case, skip the microwaving step. For a higher calorie meal, fry th tofu / paneer in the oil before sauteeing the onions.

2. If using tofu / paneer, it has to be slow cooked, or else the tofu / paneer will taste raw. 

3. For variety, I replace the coriander powder with cumin powder or garam masala interchangeably. Even better, get one of the Everest masala / MTR powders from the Indian store. Or the best I have found is to use the Patak masala pastes, which can also be found in the Indian stores.

Two requests for all readers:

1. If you have any suggestions / comments about this recipe, let me know.

2. If you have any other quick recipes / links to the same, please post these in the comments too.

Let me know if any of you find this useful !

And now Reliable Calling

Close on the heels of Airtel's 1cent/min deal to call India, Reliable Calling has come up with a similar offer. For 8$, you pay 4$ as fees, and for the remaining 4$, you get 400 minutes. So, effectively it works out to 2c/min, but they like to advertise it as 1c/min! In any case, these 400 minutes have to be used within 14 days, as opposed to the 30 days of Airtel. All in all, I feel the Airtel deal is better, but if someone has a born hatred to Airtel, and would like an alternative, Reliable Calling seems to be the answer!

Civic Musical Road

I saw this Honda Civic ad today where a section of road has grooves cut into it. The result of this is as the car drives over it at 55 mph, a preset musical tone plays from the grooves. I thought that was pretty cool! There are also a whole bunch of other videos of youtube with handheld cameras of people going along this section of road. What I was able to learn from the web was that lots of residents who lived close to this section complained that it was being a disturbance, so the road was paved over. However, this was remade on another section of road farther away from homes, so if anyone is visiting Lancaster, CA, which is about 70 miles N of Los Angeles, you should try this out! Check this news article for some more info.

However, such musical roads are already present in Holland, Japan and South Korea. Here's the Wiki on this too. Here's hoping these roads are made in lot more places!

Very interesting advertisement

I thought this was brilliant