Avocado and Black Bean Salad

Planning for a weeknight dinner after a long hectic day at work and everything else, is when you need to get your creativity to kick up a notch and work full force. And every time I want to be creative, I think of salads. There's something about throwing in multiple ingredients and bringing them together in a bowl and serving it up with style. Makes you feel like Superwoman. 

And this time it was a mexican style salad. Simple ingredients that come together beautifully. No jazzy special stuff required. Takes about 20 mins to put together the entire satisfying meal including the rice and vegetables. 

Chop and dice the avocado and cucumbers into small bits. I used the small tender Persian cucumbers and just diced them with the skin on.

Arrange on a platter or you can just add to a big mixing bowl if you're not taking pictures for a blog!

Roast some corn with a little salt to taste and also a pinch of paprika or red chilli powder. I use the frozen corn and feel that it definitely taste a hundred times better when you slightly roast the kernels.

Add the corn to the platter.

Chop up a couple of roma tomatoes and about half an onion into small bits and add to the bowl or platter.

Chop up some fresh lettuce into small strips.

Add to the platter.

Next comes the protein. I used the canned black beans - but you can soak and cook regular black beans or even the Indian rajma beans. Wash the beans once to remove the slimy brown liquid and all the unnecessary preservatives.

 Add the beans to the bowl and also add a whole bunch of cilantro chopped finely.

I can just stare at this all evening!

Add all of these below to the veggies and beans -

Salt - to taste
Red Chilli powder or Paprika - 1 tsp
Olive Oil - 1 -2 tsp
Juice of half a lime - squeezed out fresh.

Using a couple of forks, just mix up all the ingredients.

And there people, is the salad of the day!

Fresh. Crisp. Tasty. Fulfilling.

And this is how I multi task and catch up on all shows from back home. Listening to Jesudas singing while making a salad - perfect! Music and Food. My two best friends.

I also made some lemon flavored rice (Chipotle style) and sauteed onions and bell peppers along with the salad. And served them all with some tacos. You could get some tortillas too and roll up some burritos with all these fillings. TH missed his burritos very much!

Fill up some tacos with all the goodness and drizzle on some hot taco sauce on top for a wonderful dinner.

For the cheese lovers in the family, make them happy too!

“To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad.” - George Ellwanger (1848-1906) ‘Pleasures of the Table’ (1902)

Enjoy. Peace Out!

Awards and a Veggie Mex Wrap and Mexican Rice

I'm going to begin the post with a few awards received for the blog. My heartfelt thanks to Madhuri of Cook-curry Nook for passing these on to me. Thank you Madhuri for the kind words on your blog and for the wonderful award!!

 

 

  

 

 

  

And here are the 7 things you guys did not know about me - I'm going to try and keep it short.

1. I'm an obsessed NCIS fan. I think I'm in love with Gibbs but my husband is ok with it as he knows it can always be just one-way love!
2. I laugh like the evil sea queen Ursula and I scream like a crazy woman when I'm on a roller coaster!
3. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up and be a candy store clerk..coz I thought that was the coolest job with free access to all the candy in the world.Talk about ambitions!
4. I multitask all the time. With everything I do, I do one other thing!
5. I yawn when I talk on the phone - my sister hates it and always complains! But, it does not matter even if I'm fresh or its the middle of the day - when I talk on the phone, I yawn! Its a syndrome - my own.
6. I'm a gadget freak - be it electronic or kitchen gadgets! I prefer gadgets to roses!
7. And finally - one of these days - I will get a tattoo. Really.


And from me to you - I would like to pass these awards to all these wonderful bloggers below -

Sashi of Sashi's Recipes
Cilantro of Cilantro 
Nirmala of Amma's kitchen
Satya and Sridhar of Samayal Corner
Kajal of KajalDreams
Asha of Foodie's Hope
Prajusha of ICook IPost

You all have wonderful blogs and here's to appreciate that! Congratulations and keep up the great work!


Now moving on to the recipe for this post!

This is one of our favorite meals at home. A simple tortilla wrap with assorted vegetables and a simple tomato based mexican rice to go with it.

There are many ways to make mexican rice - this is of course a vegetarian version and a quick version too.

To get the rice ready, wash about 2 cups of rice and set aside.

 

In a blender, blend about 3 chopped tomatoes, a few small pieces of either jalapeno or green chillies - adjust to your heat tolerance. 

  

In a sauce pan, saute some finely chopped onions, finely chopped bell peppers ( about 1/2 cup of each). Add a 1/4 cup of frozen corn and saute for a min. 

  

Add the washed rice to this and mix well. Now, turn down to heat to medium or low-medium.

  

Pour all of the blended tomato paste in the rice. Mix JUST ONCE so that the paste gets to the bottom of the pan. The reason is, when not mixed, there is this nice texture to the rice, where some parts of the rice has a concentration of the tomato paste and that somehow makes the rice very tasty!

  

Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for 20 mins. If you have a lid with a glass cover, use that so that you can look at the rice to see if its done. If not, that's fine - but try not to open the pan many times or you will be letting all the steam out! Once its cooked for 20 mins, switch off the stove and let it sit. Do not open it yet. Let it sit in the steam for about 10 mins. When cooled down, open and smile your broadest smile possible!

  

Check out the cooked rice below.

Now, for the wrap - saute any vegetable you like - I used Onions, bell peppers, carrots, broccoli and zucchinis. Saute each vegetable separately for about a min or so and then mix them all together. 

  

I got some tomato basil tortillas from the market. Heat up for a few secs on a griddle. Add a little bit of grated cheese on top and heat till slightly melted. 

  

Add the veggies to the center.

  

Add some iceberg lettuce on top if you have it. 

  

There's my wrap and the wonderful tasty mexican rice. This rice is so full of flavor that you can have just that as a meal!

  

Enjoy. Peace out!

Vegetable Medley - Mexican style!

It's friday evening - the one day that I so don't feel like cooking. It was a little cloudy and rainy here today. That made my husband call me 3 times from work with suggestions as to what fried food we can make today. There is something so comforting about eating pakodas when its raining. But, I was totally in a different mood today - I wanted mixed vegetables - very light - very summery, springy - whatever you want to call it. I actually wanted a nice cold salad! That's new! never happens! but it did today.

Long back I had seen this recipe for spinach and mushroom taco packets. I thought that would be a good thing to try. I can make the fried version for my husband and I can just eat the veggies like a salad!

So, here it is - we all actually loved the end result. It was very tasty - even though there were hardly any spices in there. It was just the taste of all the vegetables.

Veggies I used -

Fresh Mushrooms - about 10-12 pieces chopped up into small pieces

Red Onions - chopped up into small bits

Tomatos - deseeded and chopped into small bits

Red Bell Pepper - deseeded and chopped into small bits

Fresh Spinach - chopped up into halves

Fresh or Frozen corn - I used frozen corn but if you have fresh, use that - its better.

Crumbled Paneer - 1 cup; you can use crumble cheese if you have it. I made low-fat paneer and wanted to use that.

Salt

Pepper

When all your veggies are cut and ready to go, add them one by one to a pan and saute for just about a min. Fry the onions first, bell pepper next, and then follow with the others with tomatoes being the last. Take care to not saute them for more than 30secs - 1 min. That's all you need. You should still be able to bit into them without having them all mushed up. Add salt and pepper to each of the veggies when you saute them. Use a salt sprinkler so that you don't add too much.

Fry the paneer too for a min with salt and pepper- the paneer will also absorb all the juices and flavors remaining in the pan after frying all the veggies.

Here are my veggies - before and after.

When all the veggies are done, switch off the pan. When the pan is a little cooled down, put all the veggies back in there and toss them up. Add the crumbled up paneer onto it.

Your veggies are ready.

I served this in three ways. Fried stuff for my husband, plain burrito for my daughter and just as a salad for me!

For the fried tortilla pockets, fold a readymade tortilla like a pocket, seal the edges with a little maida paste and deep fry it. Once this is done, fill up the pocket with the veggies. Serve hot.

For the burritto, just add the veggies and roll and wrap it up a tortilla.

You can also make a bed of tortilla chips and add the veggies on top. Kind of a veggie nachos!

Or you could make wonderul veggie quesadillas! Or tacos..

I added a few drops of taco sauce on top of all the above just for to kick it up a notch. That kind of compelted it! It made me think of the saying on top of the hot sauce packets in taco bell - "you complete me"!

A good dinner is one that satisfies three different tastes at once. And I acheived it today! I'm feeling victorius having overcome my friday blues.

Until next friday....