The tastiest Moong Daal recipe to try at home | 24 Mantra Organic

24 Mantra Organic
Easy Daal recipe


This is post marks a lot of first for new beginnings. A new series on Foodie Land blog will now a part, simple and quick recipes for all the food lovers. Let’s say, we will keep three things in mind while posting recipes – Easy to cook, for lazy people like ourselves and hella tasty! Let us begin with a simple and staple food for all of us Indian. The humble daal!

For our First post, we have teamed up with 24 Mantra Organics, to bring you the tastiest and easiest Moong Daal recipe! Using the organically, ethically grown produce from 24 Mantra we wanted to ensure that the recipe is not only tasty but healthy too! Expect a lot of healthy recipes in the coming days, because we are going through a big lifestyle change. But without any further ado, let’s dive in to the recipe.



Easy Pressure Cooker Moong Daal Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup 24 Mantra Moong Daal,
2 green chilies {slit},
2 small onions {roughly chopped},
1 small tomato {roughly chopped},
4-5 cloves of garlic {finely chopped},
½ Tbsp Coriander powder,  
½ Tbsp turmeric powder,  
½ Tbsp Chili powder,  
½ Tbsp garam masala powder,
1 bay leaf,
½ tsp cumin seeds,
1 dried red chili,
1 tsp mustard oil,
Salt to taste

Method:

Wash and soak the Moong dal, and toast it in dry pressure cooker. Toasting is optional, but it does bring out a nice nutty flavor.

Heat up the oil in the pressure cooker, put all the dry spices {Bay leaf, cumin seeds, red chili} when the oil is hot. Fry for 40 seconds.

Put in the onion, garlic and green chilies in and fry for 2-3 minutes, till the onions are a little brown.

Add the tomato, fry for another minute, till the tomato is soft.

Add all the powder spices {Coriander, Turmeric, Chili, Garam masala} and the salt to taste. Fry this for 2-3 minutes.

Add the soaked moong daal and mix it well with the fried spices.

Fry for a minute, add 2 cups of water and give it a good mix.

Put the flame on low and let this be for 3 whistles of the pressure cooker.

Let the steam go off and you have your super simple daal ready!

Serve this daal with rice or hot phulkas and enjoy a simple and healthy meal! Do let us know if you try this recipe out , we would love to hear your feedback.

We'll be back soon with more grub.

Till then -- Keep reading our posts & bon apetit!

Monkey Bar Team Spirit Food Festival | Bangalore

bangalore
The Team Spirit Spread

 It’s that time of the year when Indian Cricket enthusiasts rejoice. If you know what we are talking about, you just made our job a lot easier. If in case you didn’t, this time of the year is IPL time. There have been 11 editions of the IPL so far, considering the ongoing one & it is undoubtedly the biggest annual sporting festival in our country.
The IPL does not need any introductions & the same goes for The Monkey Bar, Bangalore which is hosting the Team Spirit food festival. This post will be all about this food festival, about what we tried, our recommendations, feedback & the amount of research it took for these guys to come up with an elaborate menu covering all home states of the IPL teams.

As mentioned, the Team Spirit menu consists of items from all the home IPL teams: Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Rajasthan etc. to name a few. This festival is running across all Monkey Bar outlets in the country for the entire duration of the IPL. Now that’s one long food festival! The advantage is that there is a lot of time for anybody to plan a visit & support their team during the live screening. The best part: even if your team loses, you can say that your team’s home cuisine is better ;).

Now, coming down to the food & drinks:

Toast to Calcutta, Pork Powerplay & Fried Riders : KKR

Regarding drinks, we tried the Toast To Calcutta, which is a Gondhoraj based cocktail with a Vodka base. The drink is light & very aromatic. A classic Monkey Bar cocktail. On top of this, there is a 1+1 on all drinks so it is not only the taste but also the value for money.
We’ll try to keep it short, so we’ll give our recommendations first:

Lal Maas Royals: We couldn’t keep our hands away from this one. This is a taco which has Lal Maas filling in it & it is too good to be true. Try insisting on lesser amount of mayo as that’ll bring out the flavor of the meat. If you’re a fan of the Rajasthan Royals, this is for you!

Murgh of the Match: This is a char grilled chicken preparation honoring the Punjab team. They’ve tried to recreate the Dhaba style chicken which is served in the region & we must say that it doesn’t matter because it’s mouth-watering! Moreover, this is a good companion with drinks & is filling.

Kothu Super Kings: This dish is obviously honoring Chennai Super Kings & was delightful. Many might complain about this but that is probably because they are unaware of the concept. Kothu Paratha is mostly shredded paratha & less shredded meat.

Full Toss Fish

Kothu Super Kings in the background

Chicken Googly

Gully Bao

Captain Kheema: This is a Hyderabad based specialty which is a puffed roll stuffed with spicy & tasty mutton keema. This is not for the calorie conscious but boy does it taste good.

Full Toss Fish: This dish is honoring the Royal Challengers Bangalore & consists of Rava coated Mackerels inside sliders. The mint mayo adds a zing to it. It is perfect as finger food.

Gully Bao: If you’ve watched the film Gully Boy, you know which team this dish is honoring. This is a recreation of a Misal Pav in the form of a Bao. Once you bite into this, this really does taste similar to kudos to the chef & the team behind for the creativity involved. This is the only recommendation we can give for the vegetarians. We’re sorry :P.

We believe the dish called the Fried Riders will be a huge hit, especially amongst the Bengali folk & fish lovers in general.

Murgh of the Match


However, we felt that the Pork Powerplay, the Kolkata street style Kolkata dumplings could be made better. The dumplings themselves & the pork filling was not the problem. It was the seasoning as the typical Kolkata pork momos are a tad bit spicier. Pork as a meat has a natural smoky aroma which we felt was missing in this.

The Laal Mas Royals & Captain Kheema are our favorites, do let us know if you find yours!

Overall, this is yet another well executed food festival from Monkey Bar. The food has a greater chance of winning your heart than your favorite team. The festival is on for quite some time so do give read through & try out their offerings.

Good luck to all the participating teams!

We’ll be back soon with a lot of posts this month so you know what’s coming ;).

Till then – Cheer on & Bon Apetit!

CKs Bakery Experience | Bangalore

baked

Paneer Puff, Chicken Puff, Chicken Sausage Roll

Well, it’s been some time hasn’t it?

Nowadays it’s all about micro blogging & the traditional blogging has taken a hit!

This time we’re back with something which spans across 2 different cities. If you’ve ever been to Chennai you’ve probably tasted their baked goods as this post is dedicated to CKs Bakery & their launch in the city of Bangalore.

CKs bakery has numerous outlets throughout Chennai & now they’ve decided to enter the competitive market of Bangalore. The parent company is Cavin Kare Pvt. Ltd. Which is famous for its milk shakes & other products. CKs bakery has a number of specialties which we’ll be talking about in this post. They are also present in the cities of Hyderabad, Cochin, Trichy & Madurai.




They’ve opened 3 outlets in Bangalore, 2 of which are in Electronic city & Banaswadi. We visited the former & we are delighted with the experience. Starting with the location, their store is located near Velankani in Electronic city phase 1 & is pretty noticeable. The store might not be big on size, but it definitely has other qualities which makes up for it.

CKs bakery is famous for its Paninis, sandwiches, wraps & pocket friendly confectionary items & why wouldn’t they be? We tried it, & we loved each & every one of them.
We tried the Chicken Puff, Paneer Puff, Chicken Sausage Roll, Butter Chicken Panini, Chicken Tikka Wrap for baked goodies & the Black Forest, Butterscotch & Choco Truffle pastries.

We even tried their classic Vanilla Milkshake & boy that’s a delight! It goes very well with their handmade Coconut cookies.

We’ll keep this short & sweet as we had promised before. Starting with the highlights:

Darker: Chicken Samosa Lighter: Veg Samosa

Butter Chicken Panini

Black Forest, Butterscotch & Choco Truffle Pastries


All of their items are super pocket friendly. They are high on quality, taste & very reasonable on the pricing. All the confectionery items were brilliantly made & delicious. They re-kindled childhood memories to be honest. The Panini bread has a crunch to it & the creamy butter chicken stuffing does wonders. All of their puffs have ample amount of filling & they are good enough to clean your plate.

The cakes/pastries have distinct flavors & have 60% less crème than other pastries that we’ve had. It actually has more cake & that’s what we’ve had growing up. We’ll just say that we loved it. The rest of the feeling cannot be conveyed but only replicated.

What’s more? It actually takes them 10 minutes to deliver cakes to customers when they order one at their store. Seriously, 10 minutes! There is a see through cabin where the cake is prepared fresh in front of the customer. Now, that develops serious customer trust.

A variety of offerings from CKs Bakery

They maintain proper hygiene & we must say that we’re going to visit them pretty often. The only feedback which we had for them is with their wraps. We feel that they can be made better, as they are a bit too thin & lack sufficient stuffing. Taste wise, no complaints.

That’s all from our side. The overall feedback would be that whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right. In our short visit of about an hour we could see a good inflow of customers & that’s very good to see.

Do visit these guys to try out their offerings & let us know about your experience. From what we think, you’ll not be disappointed at all ;).

Till then—keep calm, have cake & bon apetit!

Next Stop Kolkata Street Food Festival @ The Monkey Bar

bangalore
Fish Roll


It is always a great feeling if one catches a glimpse of their rich cultural heritage on display in a faraway land.

This time of the year is where all the festivities begin & we as Bengalis mostly talk about the festival of festivals: Durga Pujo.

This post is dedicated to the ongoing Next Stop Kolkata food festival across all Monkey Bar outlets in the country where certain handpicked street food specialties of Kolkata are being served.

Bengali culture has a variety of aspects and it is very well known that food is extremely important to us. Moreover, the street food in Kolkata has an influence of multiple cultures unlike any other Indian city.

We were a part of the preview & we were impressed at the amount of research conducted before putting up the final menu. The festival lasts till the 21st of October & aims to hit the emotions of Bengalis living away from Kolkata. For those who have never indulged in these, it’s time!  

Now coming down to what we tried:


Beadon Street Fish Roll, Girish Park Shoitan Deem, Chitpur road Chicken Rezala, Esplanade Mughlai Porota, Vardaan Market Moong Daal Pakodi Chaat & the Vivekananda Park Ghooghni.

We also tried a couple of cocktails which are a part of the menu.

The full menu consists of 4 other items which can be seen in the menu which we’ve put up.

The fish rolls in Kolkata typically consists of thin slices of Kolkata Bhetki, stuffed with a mixture of curried fish/prawns & vegetables. It is always served with Kasundi mustard. Here, in all cases there were some adaptations based on multiple factors, mainly because this is going to be in a bar menu. The actual fish rolls are generally bigger in size but they’ve replicated the taste remarkably & made them bite sized.

The Shoitan Deem is a hybrid of scotch eggs & Egg devils available in the streets of Kolkata. A well done Dimer Chop (Egg chop) will blow your mind! This was impressive with the runny yolk (6 min eggs) & the shammi kebab filling but it isn’t quite there. Moreover, egg devils are generally light on the stomach. This is not. Highly recommended for meat lovers.

Shoitaan Deem

The entire spread
Moong Daal Pakodi Chaat

The Rezala was our favourite! The delicate flavor & the traditional triangle parathas took us back a thousand kilometers. The white curry was aromatic & not so rich. Making the gravy richer would have enhanced the taste but it would’ve lost the “street food” touch. Very well executed & highly recommended. The meat was well done as expected.

We had mixed feelings about the Mughlai Porota. Although typically, Esplanade Mughlai Porotas are famous for being made with duck eggs, in this case considering different palates they were made with normal eggs. In the iconic shops, they are deep fried & very oily but here they are sautéed on a tawa & not much excess oil. The crunch was missing though. The taste of the potatoes were spot on.

Lastly, the Ghooghni & the Daal Pakodi chaat are ingredient based. These guys did their homework well & it tasted as good as the real thing. The ghooghni won the race because the Chutney in the Chaat needed to be more Khatta as the sweetness was perfect.

Ghooghni with  Phuchka Pani Capriojka

Chicken Rezala with triangle Paratha
Mughlai Porota with Thanda Cha 

About the drinks: we tried the Thaanda Cha which is quality Darjeeling tea with a tickling kick of Vodka.

The 2nd drink we tried was the Phuchka Pani Capriojka which was truly brilliant. It had a great balance between the Vodka, the Gondhoraj lebu & the Phuchka jol. The mixing was done perfectly & it goes very well with the items on the menu.

That’s all we tried, but we’re surely going to visit to try the Pork & Prawn Dumplings!
This festival is running across Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai & Bangalore & we would definitely recommend a visit.

We have our roots in Kolkata & felt the deviations but criticism aside, they’ve done an amazing job.

Do let us know about your experience if you visit!

We’ll be back soon with more news on grub.

Till then—believe in good food & bon apetit!

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