Mint Powder

METHOD:

- Pick all green mint leaves from stems and wash them with tap water.

- Dry with a kitchen towel and arrange it on a big plastic sheet or plate.

- Make sure about no/minimum overlapping of leaves.

- Sun dry it for 2 days and grind it to make a course powder.

USE FOR:

- Any kind of kebabs or skewers

- Tandoori marinade to give it a minty touch!

- Beverages like jaljeera, lemonade, masala soda etc.

Tandoori Masala

"Tandoori Masala" - A blend of spices used to cook tandoori (North-Indian) or Afghani food!!! You can get this tandoori masala ready-made almost in any Indian grocerry store... And another option is, you simply use Garam Masala instead. 

But to present your dish with classic "Tandoori" touch, try this out in your kitchen!!! 

INGREDIENTS:

2 tbsp Garam masala
2 tbsp Roasted cumin powder
1 tsp Smoked chilly flakes
1 tsp Kashmiri Mirch (As a coloring agent)
2 tsp Kasoori Methi
1/2 tsp Turmeric powder

METHOD:

- Combine all the ingredients above in a mixture jar and grind well to make a fine powder.
- Store it in air-tight container.

SJ's NOTE:

- 1/8 tsp red food-color can be used additionally to get bright red color.
- This can be used as the only spice-ingredient for Tandoori cooking.

Goda Masala

Before marriage, I always had at least one Maharastrian family in neighborhood & so I got to have their special dishes every now n then (Thanks to "Vaatiki-Vyahvar" in India, which is one of the traditions I miss here)... :P Each delicacies I enjoyed, had distinct lip-smacking flavors, quite different from rest of all Indian Food :) I bugged my very closest Aunty several times for her recipes and then tried cooking them by my own several times, but didn't sound that flavorful at all... 

Finally I asked her the secret of all her dishes, specially beans & pulses!!! And she handed me over a recipe of her secret itself - "Goda Masala"!!! I definitely would love to share it here as soon I'm going to post few  'Core-Maharastrian' dishes... :)

INGREDIENTS:

5 cardamom (seeds)

1 small stick cinnamon

5 cloves

2 tsp sesame seeds

2 tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp dessicated coconut

10 black pepper corns

1 tsp oil

METHOD:

- Heat oil in pan and saute cinnamon, cloves and cardamom.

- Turn off the flame once cloves gets bigger in size

- Take coconut, sesame seeds and black pepper corns in another pan and dry-roast it on low-flame till coconut changes color to light brown.

- Transfer it to a bowl and let it cool down to room temp.

- Grind both the mixture together to make a coarse powder. 

- Store in air tight container.