Cooking
feeds my curiosity.
The
distinguished aromas of the spices, scent of the vegetables intrigues me each
time I am planning on cooking something. Offcourse the beautiful pictures, the
description starts the process.
My
recent treasure is ‘The Joy of vegetarian cooking’ by Jasleen Dhamija. Book talks about the selected vegetables in
details and then lists down few recipes for each.. Most of the recipes are
simple with few ingredients. You could randomly pick choose a recipe and find
all the ingredients in your house or in the closest grocery store.
What
excites me to try this book are the various combination of spices and
vegetables to make simple meals pleasurable.
For
today I am trying out her ‘Cucumber and cottage cheese soup’
Cucumber
soup? Now what that? Its very simple. Core the cucumber, stuff it with cottage
cheese and coriander mixture (it literally has only these 2 ingredients), cook
it with lemongrass leaves and voila… ready to serve. Being used to spices
tomato and hot and sour soups.. this is a fresh change in taste, method and
look. There are absolutely no spices in it except for the flavor of lemon grass
and coriander.
Lemon
grass and coriander are together used extensively in Thai cooking but is also
combined with ginger and chillies. This soup is influenced traditionally Thai cuisine
but stuffed with chicken instead of cottage cheese.
Recipe:
Cucumber and cottage cheese soup
Adapted:
The Joy of vegetarian cooking’ by Jasleen Dhamija
Serves
6
Cooking
time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
3 cucumbers, 8 inch long
200
gm cottage cheese
100
gm green coriander, finely chopped
1
tsp salt
3
leaves of lemon grass
2
tbsp lime juice
Method:
- Peel
cucumber and taste for bitterness. Discard bitter cucumbers. Cut both ends and
set aside
- Hollow
out the inside, removing all the seeds and set aside.
- Take
200 gm cottage cheese, mash it well and mix with 50gm coriander, ½ tsp salt and
stuff the cucumbers. I added more to
adjust the taste.
- Close
both ends with the pieces set aside, using wooden toothpicks.
- Put
cucumbers flat into a pot and add 7 cups water, lemon grass and remaining salt.
Add the remaining cottage cheese stuffing as well as the remaining coriander.
- Cook
covered on slow fire for 10 to 15 minutes. Test with a fork to see if the
cucumbers are done. Remove from fire and add lime juice.
- Take
the cucumbers from the pot and remove the ends. Cut the cucumbers into 4
pieces. Put 2 pieces in each bowl and ladle soup on top.
This
soup should be served hot.
