The Orka-M Food Journal

My family is the inspiration for this food journal- which I made to share my love for healthy and delicious vegetarian food. My husbands musical vision (find out more at www.orka-m.com) has guided us to India and settled us in Singapore, where I have been integrating the variety of fresh spices and produce into my cooking. I want to inspire a practise of creative cooking. The appreciation for pure ingredients and my own diverse cultural memories are the rich source for my daily food-improvisations. You can support the future developments of the food journal, as well as Orka-M’s educational work http://e-cademy.tumblr.com/ by purchasing beautiful Music-Artworks of my husband Rajesh Mehta (displayed on our online gallery http://orka-m.tumblr.com/ ) Enjoy and participate!

Zucchini-Quinoa-Red rice patties

These newly created vegetarian, high protein patties were a big success with my family and i would love to share them with other adventurous vegetarians!

Ingredients:

1 zucchini

4 cloves of fresh garlic

1 peeled piece 2,5 cm fresh tumeric

1 peeled piece 2,5 cm fresh ginger

1 green chilli 

1 leek or a bunch of spring onions

flour

1 egg

ca. 1 1/2 cup of steamed left over red thai rice

ca. 1 cup of boiled quinoa

rock salt

freshly cruched black pepper

oil to fry the patties in

How to make them:

I very often work with left over rice and I love to transform it into new food surprises. So if you have leftover red thai rice go ahead and get quinoa to make these delicious patties. The quinoa should be washed and looked through for little stones…Boil the quinoa till it is soft, drain the water.

Then you chop garlic,turmeric, ginger and chilli and fry lightly in olive oil, add salt and pepper to that mixture. Rasp the zucchini into a big enough bowl,cut the leek into thin slices. Now you mix all the ingredients together, using the egg and the flour (possibly wholeweat) to bind the ingredients together to a quite moist “patty dough”. 

Heat up the oil in the frying pan and pace 4 pattys each time in the pan. They should become very crispy and nicely baked!

I made 12-14 pattys, enough for a hungry family of 4 including afternoon snack…

Yogurtsauce: To dip the pattys I made a fresh yogurt sauce with plain yogurt spiced with ground coriander and rocksalt. That makes a beautiful contrast. You can serve the pattys with a fresh red cabbage salad or any other salad that comes your way! :) Enjoy!

Indian longbean-tofu dish with grilled yam

This newly created combination of a vegetarian dish accompanied by grilled yams has enchanted the whole family and that’s the reason for finally posting a new recipe after a longer break, not in cooking, but in posting recipes…

Ingredients:

250 gr hard tofu

oliveoil

200 gr organic longbeans

handful cherry tomatoes

1 red onion

fresh tumeric

fresh ginger

3 cloves garlic

1 red chilli

15 cm leek

fresh coriander

ground coriander

asafoetida

cuminseeds

black pepper

palmsugar

curry leaves

garam masala

yogurt

First cut the tofu in medium sized blocks and fry them in oliveoil till crispy. Put them aside and prepare the vegetables. Grind the fresh ginger, fresh tumeric, garlic and chilli together to a smooth paste in the blender. Heat oliveoil in the frying pan, add the indian spices and curry leaves till you like the smell coming from the pan. Then add the chopped onion,leek and the palmsugar, let it cook till this mixture has a nice colour. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and the longbeans into short pieces (1 cm) and mix it into the pan. Let it cook and add some water together with the yogurt, to make a nice gravy. Finish the dish with fresh coriander sprinkeled over it.

Grilled Yam:

Boil 4-5 bigger pieces of yam in water till they are soft. Peel the yam and cut it into thin slices, put them into a glas casserole together with oliveoil and sprinkel black pepper on top of it. Put it into the oven-grill for ca.30 min, till the yams are crispy.

Serve both dishes together and enjoy the feast!

Homemade Bagels!

Hi this is Vinya again, I made these bagels with my sister (Lena also draws all the food) on a nice saturday morning (I don’t like sleeping in) I miss great bagels here in Singapore, the ones you can buy here taste pretty awful… but these cheese and garlic bagels turned out so well! I’ve made this recipe a couple of times it seems pretty fool-proof , because making bagels is pretty labour intensive next time I plan on making a double batch so that they last a bit longer :) they were gone with in a few hours! http://johndlee.hubpages.com/hub/Homemade_bagel_recipe_Make_great_nadrolled_water_bagels__its_as_easy_as_baking_a_loaf_of_bread

Ingredients:

4 cups bread flour

1 Tbls sugar

1 1/2 tsps salt

1 Tbls vegetable oil

2 tsps instant yeast

1-1/2- 2 cups of warm water (changed from original because we used more)

Toppings

Cheese of your choice

Garlic

Black and white sesame seeds ( Made these once they taste yummy!)

To be eaten with butter, cream cheese or anything else you crave.

The directions to make these bagels can be found by clicking the website link above :)

Have fun eating! ;)

Fresh Turmeric Fried Rice with Cabbage and Tofu

If you want to try an incredibly delicious variation on fried rice, here is what you need and try the following: