Cauliflower Manchurian

Hi Friends,

I am back again with a new recipe that I tried today.  It was Cauliflower Manchurian and it turned out nicely!!  I tried this recipe from a different site this time.  It was from http://showmethecurry.com/appetizers/gobi-cauliflower-manchurian-dry.html.  I had heard about this site from a friend and thought of looking for the Manchurian recipe here since they also have video recordings of the recipe.  Luckily I found and tried it out.  Here is a snap of how it turned out :).

Cauliflower Manchurian

Ingredients:
Vegetables:
- Cauliflower (1/2), Onion (1 medium size), Garlic (3-4 cloves), Green chillies (1-2), Green onions (2)

Spices:
- Black pepper, Salt

Other:
- Oil, Water, All purpose flour (maida), corn starch (rice flour as substitute), tomato ketchup, red chilli sauce, soy sauce

Preparation:
- Chop cauliflower into bite size pieces
- Finely chop onion
- Finely chop green chillies, garlic cloves, and green onions
 

Process:
In the process, it is advised to first make the sauce and then cook the cauliflower so that way the sauce can be re-heated and then cauliflower can be mixed with the sauce right away.

1) For gravy:
- In a pan, heat oil
- Add chopped onions, garlic, and green chillies
- Saute everything until oil starts to separate and onions are slightly brown
- Add tomato ketchup (about 3-4 big spoons), red chili sauce (about 3-4 big spoons), and cook for little while
- Then add soy sauce (about 2 spoons), and mix everything
- Add little water and let it cook for while
- Add 1 spoon of corn starch for thickness to the gravy (I didn't have corn starch, so I used rice flour which worked fine)
- Let it all cook for little while and once the gravy is bit thick, switch off the heat.

2) For cauliflower
- In a separate utensil, mix all purpose flour, corn starch (1 spoon), black pepper, and salt
- Add water in it and keep mixing everything to make it a batter (not too thick and not too thin) and make sure there are no lumps in it
- In a separate pan, heat oil to deep fry the cauliflower
- Once the oil is hot, dip the bite size cauliflower pieces into the batter and fry them into the oil
- Once the cauliflower turns slightly brown, you can take them out and keep them aside

3) Mix
- Re-heat the sauce and add the cooked cauliflower pieces
- Mix it with the sauce properly so that each cauliflower piece is coated with the sauce
- Garnish with green onions

This recipe was bit time consuming and hectic since it involved frying the cauliflower which took most of the time.  I had help from my mom who did the frying while I was making the sauce.  I had always wanted to try this recipe out and I finally did, so it certainly feels like mission accomplished :)...hehe.  Hope you enjoy the dish if you decide to make it.

Have a great week ahead :).  See ya!!

Partition Wizard

Hey Friends,

Recently I got a good deal on an external hard drive during Thanksgiving Black Friday sale.  I got a 2TB Seagate backup plus desktop drive (external hard drive) which was on sale for $79.99 at Staples.  The drive is formatted in NTFS but it can also connect to MAC, at least that's what it says in the description of the drive.  Another purpose to buy this drive was to be used by my brother with his PS3.  Unfortunately, PS3 only recognizes FAT32 drive, so if he wants to use the new external drive, he would have to format it to FAT32.  The good news is that I found out that I don't have to format the entire drive to FAT32.  I can create partitions in the drive to have half of it served as NTFS and the other half can be FAT32.

Now, the disk management program of windows only lets you format in NTFS and not FAT32.  So I had to find another way to do that.  Thanks to one of my colleagues who introduced me to Partition Wizard software.  Partition Wizard provides with a free Home Edition version that can be downloaded from their site http://www.partitionwizard.com/.  It took just few minutes to be downloaded and installed and using it was very easy as well.

In order to keep NTFS and create FAT32, I had to first re-size the current partition to half of the original size.  Once the re-size was done, I applied the changes.  When you re-size the partition, it leaves unallocated space on the drive which can be used to create new partitions.  Next, I created a new FAT32 partition using the unallocated space of the drive.  And done!! It took less than 30 seconds to perform both the operations!!  To test the newly created partition, I copied one video over to it.  If you want to use the drive for PS3, you have to create the folders in this partition how they are created in PS3, for example, create a folder named VIDEO (that contains your movies), MUSIC (that contains your music), etc.  My brother connected the drive to his PS3 and his PS3 recognized the drive and listed the movies under the video category!!! Yay!! Partition Wizard worked like a charm and solved our PS3 problem with new drive in minutes :).

Hope this helps you!!

Windows 7 - Preparing your desktop problem

Hey Friends,

I came across this problem "Preparing your desktop" on my Windows 7 desktop about a month and half ago.  It was annoying and of course it gives you a shock for a second because your personal user profile is not loaded so you don't see any of your desktop settings or your documents where they should be.  What happens is that when you log in, a temporary profile is created due to some problem with user's original profile, so that's why you don't see any of your settings.

I searched around on Google and it seems that other people with Windows 7 have experienced a similar problem and some have been able to resolve it easily and some have had hard time fixing it at all.  I was one of the users who have had hard time fixing it!!  You don't loose any of your data, and it's still intact in the user's folder (C://users/Admin, for example), but the temporary profile creates a temporary folder each time you log in such as TEMP or TEMP.COMPNAME, etc.

In order to get rid of this temporary profile, here is the first thing you should try.
1. Shutdown your PC and start it in SAFE MODE (press F8 couple of times when the computer starts)
2. Login to your Admin account (or whatever account is affected)
3. Go to C://users/ and remove any temporary folders that starts with TEMP
4. Now you will also have to update the the registry entry, so for that, you will need to follow the steps below:
     - Start -> search for regedit
     - Select the regedit program from the list
     - Select My Computer -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft ->
        Windows NT -> Current Version -> ProfileList
     - This lists profiles of all the users listed on your computer
     - Since your computer created the temporary profile, you should see a profile that ends with .bak
     -  That is the correct user profile!!! Because the temporary profile was loaded, the correct and original profile was listed with .bak extension and the temporary profile would have the same number as the original one, but without any .bak extension
     - If you click on the .bak profile, you will see that the ProfileImagePath points to your correct Admin user folder and the other profile points to the temporary folder
     - What you want to do now is, rename the temporary profile by adding a "_new" extension at the end.
     - And rename the correct profile by removing the ".bak" extension from the profile name!!
5. Once the registry changes are made, shutdown the computer and restart as normal
6. Login as Admin (or whatever user that was creating the temporary profile) and check if the problem still exists or not.
7. If you are successfully able to log in, try logging in couple of times because I have had this happened to me where it will work the first time but fail the consecutive times.
8. If you are still getting the temporary profile (aka Preparing your desktop), then it means that your user profile is corrupted.

Here is a second approach to correct the user profile if the first approach above didn't work.  You will have to remove the current user profile from registry and remove the user folder (after backing it up or renaming the current one) along with any temp user profiles and temp folders in order to create a new user profile fresh.  To do this, you need to have another account that has Admin privileges so it can remove the registry entry and rename/remove the troubling folder (Again, after backing it up!! Don't just remove the folder, first back it up completely, or  rename the folder so it's there at least!!).  To remove the registry, you need to go into the regedit same way as described above, remove any user profiles that point to the TEMP folders and mainly remove the user profile that points to the correct user folder.

After you remove the folders (TEMP and the user folder, for example Admin), restart your computer and log in as Admin (or as the user which has problem).  This time you will see "Preparing your desktop" since there is profile to start with.  Once it does that, you can easily copy all your stuff back to the newly created Admin folder under C://users/ and use the computer how you used to before :).

I have tried to explain this problem as much as possible, but if you have any questions, I will try to help you out based on what I had experienced.  Hope you never get this error, because it's a pain, but you never know who runs into it!!

Pasta - desi style

After I made Chilli Paneer, we had some pasta and pasta sauce at home, so I gave it a try at making desi (Indian) style pasta with same kind of recipe I made for Chilli Paneer.  What this means is that I used the same recipe of Chilli Paneer with few variations and additions.  First thing first, look how delicious the pasta turned out to be :D.

Pasta - Indian style

Ingredients:
Vegetables:
1 Green/Red/Yellow bell peppers (these are to add color to your dish, you don't need all 3 of them, I just used green and yellow in my dish), Onions (2-3 medium or 1 to 1.5 big), Green onions (2-3 pieces), Cilantro, Green chillies (1 big one or 2 small)

Spices:
Red chilli powder, Coriander powder, Chilli sauce (Yeo's, but you can get any chilli sauce), Soy sauce (Kikoman, again, you can get any soy sauce), Pasta sauce (any pasta sauce would do, but I got the sauce with roasted garlic and herb flavor), Ginger garlic paste (in my case, garlic paste), Cumin seeds

Other:
Oil, Water, Paneer (250 grams), Pasta (Penne Regate Macroni)

Preparation:
- Cut paneer into cubes
- Cut green/red/yellow bell peppers into cubes
- Cut 1 medium sized onion into cubes
- Finely chop onion (1/2 to 1 medium)
- Chop green chillies (1 big one)
- Finely chop cilantro
- Finely chop green onions

Process:
Pasta:
- In a separate utensil, boil water
- Once the water is boiled, add pasta
- Once the pasta is cooked, remove the water from it and keep the pasta aside

Paneer:
- In a nonstick pan, heat oil
- Fry/cook paneer on medium heat until they turn light brown
- Keep cooked paneer on side

Main gravy:
- In a nonstick pan, add 3-4 spoons of oil
- Add cumin seeds and let it warm up
- Add chopped garlic & finely chopped onions and saute them
- Add 1 spoon of garlic paste and mix it well
- Cook everything until the raw flavor of garlic paste is gone
- Add green chillies, coriander powder (1spoon), and red chilli powder (1 spoon) and mix everything well
- Let the mixture cook for a minute or so.
- Add 3 spoons of chilli sauce and 3 spoons of soy sauce and mix everything well
- Once the oil starts to separate and the gravy is bit thick, add about 1/2 glass water (you can add more water if you want Chilli Paneer to have little bit of gravy, but add little at a time instead of pouring it all in at once)
- Add pasta sauce to this.  Now, I added about half a bottle of pasta sauce since I was going to add pasta in this at the end so needed a lot of gray for it.
- Once the gravy is cooked properly, add cube onions, green/red/yellow bell peppers, and mix everything with the gravy
- Add salt (to taste) to the gravy
- After letting the onions, and bell peppers cook for about 5-7 minutes, add cooked paneer to this
- Taste the gravy and add anything that feels like missing
- Add your cooked pasta in this mixture and mix it well with everything and let it cook for about 4-5 minutes
- Finally add chopped green onions, and cilantro and turn off the heat and let it sit on stove for few minutes
- And it's  ready to serve!!!!!

Since I made the chilli paneer 2 days ago, I knew exactly what was needed to make the gravy and I made this pasta so quickly that it took me just half an hour to make it instead of 1 hour.  The pasta was spicy but also super delicious that we all over ate it I think :P...haha.  Give it a try and let me know how it turns out for you.

Until then, take care!!

Chilli Paneer

Friends,
I am back with another delicious recipe.  It is none other than Chilli Paneer.  I got the recipe from http://www.vahrehvah.com/Chilli+Paneer:4397 but I changed it around and didn't follow exactly as the Vah chef had done it.  What I love about vahrevah.com is that it contains recipes with videos.  I am more of a visual person and once I see it, it helps me make it better when I am cooking to see if the vegetables are cooked properly or if the gravy is turning out how it should be, etc.  Anyways, here is my take on the recipe but before I do that, I have got to show you how the Chilli Paneer turned out :).  It was so delicious!!!

Chilli Paneer

Ingredients:
Vegetables:
1 Green/Red/Yellow bell peppers (these are to add color to your dish, you don't need all 3 of them, I just used green and yellow in my dish), Onions (2-3 medium or 1 to 1.5 big), Green onions (2-3 pieces), Cilantro, Green chillies (1 big one or 2 small), Garlic (2-3 branches)

Spices:
Red chilli powder, Coriander powder, Chilli sauce (Yeo's, but you can get any chilli sauce), Soy sauce (Kikoman, again, you can get any soy sauce), Ginger garlic paste (in my case, garlic paste), Cumin seeds

Other:
Oil, Water, Paneer (250 grams)

Preparation:
- Cut paneer into cubes
- Cut green/red/yellow bell peppers into cubes
- Cut 1 medium sized onion into cubes
- Finely chop garlic & onion (1/2 to 1 medium)
- Chop green chillies (1 big one)
- Finely chop cilantro and curry leaves (optional)
- Finely chop green onions

Process:
Paneer:
- In a nonstick pan, heat oil
- Fry/cook paneer on medium heat until they turn light brown
- Keep cooked paneer on side

Main gravy:
- In a nonstick pan, add 3-4 spoons of oil
- Add cumin seeds and let it warm up
- Add chopped garlic & finely chopped onions and saute them
- Add 1 spoon of garlic paste and mix it well
- Cook everything until the raw flavor of garlic paste is gone
- Add green chillies, coriander powder (1spoon), and red chilli powder (1 spoon) and mix everything well
- Let the mixture cook for a minute or so.
- Add 3 spoons of chilli sauce and 3 spoons of soy sauce and mix everything well
- Once the oil starts to separate and the gravy is bit thick, add about 1/2 glass water (you can add more water if you want Chilli Paneer to have little bit of gravy, but add little at a time instead of pouring it all in at once)
- Once the gravy is cooked properly, add cube onions, green/red/yellow bell peppers, and mix everything with the gravy
- Add salt (to taste) to the gravy
- After letting the onions, and bell peppers cook for about 5-7 minutes, add cooked paneer to this
- If the gray feels little dry, add little more water and also taste the gravy and add anything that feels like missing
- Finally add chopped green onions, and cilantro and turn off the heat and let it sit on stove for few minutes
- I had forgotten to do this in my dish, but you can also add lime juice to the dish if you want
- And it's  ready to serve!!!!!

I tell you, this was actually not that hard to make at all and it was prepared in an hour as well from preparing everything to cooking it :).  I was really happy with the outcome and so was my family!!!

After I tried this dish, I cooked pasta desi style (similar to described above) and it turned out to be super delicious and mouth watering...but I will brag about it in the next post when I share the recipe with you guys. 

Until then, happy cooking!!