Get Kamfortable

Easy Aloo Paratha Recipe

03.01.17

Sorry for not posting anything last week, but I was having a tough week. I’m back with something amazing!! An easy Aloo Paratha Recipe!!

I think every Punjabi person grows up eating some type of paratha on the weekends and generally Aloo Paratha is everyone’s favorite. Well, it certainly was for me. But because I had both my mom and my grandma make them for us growing up, I never actually had the chance to make them myself. Now that I am married, I want to make them for my family, and YouTube and blog post recipes are what I’m using to find the perfect recipe. And as I watch and read more and more, I’m realize that the authentic, delicious Aloo Paratha recipes are just not the same as the ones my mom and grandma made me. So, I asked my mother-in-law and she showed me how she makes them and they are delicious, and that’s what I’ll be sharing with you today. AUTHENTIC and DELICIOUS Aloo Parathas!!

So, for those of you who do not know, Aloo Paratha’s are a potato stuffed roti (or chapati) that is a common weekend breakfast in many Indian households. And trust me, they are so so good.

Now, let’s get started on the recipe.

The first thing to do which will also take the longest, is to boil 2 cups worth of potatoes (I used 4 regular sized potatoes), and any type of potato you have lying around at home should do. So, I just boiled 4 potatoes in some salted water until tender, let them cool a bit, and then peeled off the skin.

After this, it’s pretty simple and foolproof. Add the potatoes into a bowl and add salt, haldi (turmeric), mirch (green chili pepper), freshly grated ginger, and some fresh cilantro (exact amounts will be listed in the recipe below). Mash this up and this is the base of your Aloo Paratha.

If you already have some roti dough in your fridge, you can skip this next step, but for those of you who don’t, it’s super easy. We just need to make some roti dough next. Basically, this involved mixing together some flour with some water until an elastic dough is made!

Now you just roll up the roti dough using some flour and a rolling pin and place a tablespoon of potato filling in the middle. Now, pull up the sides of the dough to create a ball (see pictures below) and flatten this out and roll it into a paratha (again, pictures will do this description more justice).

INGREDIENTS – Easy Aloo Paratha Recipe

2 cups boiled, cut and peeled potatoes

1.5 tsp salt

1/4 tsp haldi (turmeric)

1 tsp hari mirch (we blend and keep some frozen) – green chili pepper

2 tsp freshly grated ginger

2 tsp chopped cilantro

DIRECTIONS – Easy Aloo Paratha Recipe

Bring a pot of salted water to boil and cook potatoes until tender. Peel and chop the potatoes.

Add salt, turmeric, green chili pepper, ginger and cilantro to the potatoes and mash together.

Roll out the roti dough into circle and place a tablespoon of the potato filling into the center.

Pinch together the dough into a ball and flatten. Roll this out into a large circle.

Cook the paratha on the pan. Make sure to add a little bit of butter/margarine on each side so that the Paratha gets nice and crispy.

Serve with some dahi (yogurt) and achaar (pickled mangoes).

I hope you all enjoyed this easy aloo paratha recipe, it’s my favorite weekend breakfast. Check out the Kamfort Food Section of the blog if you’re looking for more fun and easy recipes.

Kamfy Living

DIY Rose Mist Toner – Affordable Facial Toner

02.12.17

I’ve been loving the Rose Hydrating Mist by Saje, however, last month I finished my bottle! It lasted me a good 6 months and it was well worth the price of $14.95 (although I got it on a discounted price). Anyways, I had a thought that it must be fairly easy to DIY a rose mist for the blog and today I will describe to you how I made this DIY rose mist toner. Super simple, super affordable! And this may just be my shortest blog post ever!

So when I looked at the ingredients on the Saje rose mist, there were just two: distilled water and rose! Well, in a typical Indian household, there is normally some rose water (sometimes added to Indian desserts), so I thought can’t I just put that in a bottle and call it a rose mist? Well doing some google research, I discovered that that is indeed true! You can just use a rose water as a facial toner!! Well, if I literally just added rose water into a bottle, I would have little to write about in this post, so that is why I’m going to add a few more ingredients into the bottle with the rose water, which are the following:

Rose water: well duh, this is going to be 99% of the recipe! And what makes rose water critical to the mist? Well it’s in the name of course 😛 Also, rose is apparently very anti-inflammatory and very hydrating! I agree because I’ve been using it the past 6 months and have probably broken out just once or twice!

Vegetable Glycerin: Honestly speaking, the reason I added this to the recipe is because I literally had it lying around and hadn’t used it in a while. I had bought it a while back because I needed it to make a soap recipe (let me know in the comments below if you want me to write a blog post about affordable and easy soap recipe). Yupp, I had it so I decided to use it. Now that I am looking up the benefits I’m glad I did.

Vegetable glycerin is a clear odorless liquid made from plant oils and has two amazing benefits to the skin. The first is that is is very hydrating for the skin and the second is that it increases the solubility of the active ingredient. This property, in the case of a rose mist, means it will make it easier for the skin to absorb the rose water! Yay for more hydration! Also, it’s better to use this than alcohol, but does the same job.. I must try making more skin care/beauty products that are easy and affordable!

Essential Oils: I chose a combination of essential oils, because I have quite the collection from Saje. I love Saje in case you hadn’t noticed (Saje, please collaborate with me, I love you). I added them just for fun, and to have more than one ingredient in this DIY rose mist (hehe).

That’s all. I literally just added all these things into a bottle (which happened to be my old Saje rose mist bottle, because I love to reuse and recycle of course) and called it a blog post!

The only thing you need to know are the quantities of each, so here we go for the full recipe:

INGREDIENTS – DIY Rose Mist Toner

1 cup rose water

2 tbsp vegetable glycerin

2 tsp essential oils of choice

1 glass bottle (better to have a tinted bottle)

1 mini funnel

DIRECTIONS – DIY Rose Mist Toner

Combine all ingredients into a glass bottle using a funnel.

Mix by shaking and spray onto your face to stay hydrated and smelling rose-y!

I hope you all enjoyed this DIY rose mist toner and fore more DIYs, check out the Kamfy Living section of the blog 🙂

Kamfort Food

How to Make Baked Crispy Kale Chips

02.05.17

How to Make Baked Crispy Kale Chips

This year, Gursheel and I have decided to eat healthier. For him it means to cut out cookies and chips, and for me… well… I have not been doing so well… whoops (still having cookies for breakfast some days, shhh, don’t tell him that) 😛 But don’t worry, I’m going to start eating kale, in the form of chips, in particular baked crispy kale chips. But we will get to that!

I know I know, I can’t be a hypocrite and should join him in healthy eating. So, I’ve been looking up some snacks that we can eat that are healthier and delicious and oily? Because I sure do love my oily, fried foods. One thing that I have started making is baked chickpeas and they are delicious (I may do a recipe post on those in the future), but the snack I’ll be talking about today is kale chips! And they are not fried!! Way to be healthy! And did I tell you they are delicious?

When I think of kale, I think super healthy, iron rich, and bitter, extremely bitter. That’s because a while ago, when I first heard of kale being a super food and was a good vegan (:P), I used to eat it in salads and smoothies. But, honestly, I never liked it. It had too of much of a strong bitter flavor that was very hard for me to get used to. But then, a little while later, when I worked at a cafe, I made kale chips and they were amazing!!

Kale chips at this point were quite trendy and you could get them anywhere. But I couldn’t justify spending a bunch of money (because, yes, they are expensive) on a snack that was made of kale that I already didn’t even like. So, when I made them at work and tried them and realized how great they were, I knew I had to make em again and try the ones that came in packages at the grocery stores.

I think now it’s probably been a little over two years since I last had kale chips, let alone kale. I’m not sure why, but I am gonna change things around and start making them again! Starting today!

So, I didn’t follow any recipe, I didn’t even google how to make kale chips, I just used what I remembered when I made them at the Boulevard (the cafe I worked at). It’s a simple recipe for these crispy baked kale chips and just has three ingredients: kale, oil and salt, but to make it taste amazing, there are a couple of tips to remember.

The first thing is to make sure you buy some nice looking kale, by that I mean kale that is not pre-cut or pre-washed. Kale that is green in color (not yellow or brown), and kale that is not wilted. So just some nice looking kale 😛

The second tip is to remove the stems of the kale. These tend to be quite thick and are not really what kale chips are all about. You just want the leaf part of the kale.

The third tip is to wash it really well and then dry it completely. You want to make sure you wash off any dirt there is on the kale, because some bunches of kale have a LOT of dirt! And you want to make sure the kale is completely dry because if it isn’t, the kale chips won’t crisp up as much. So I recommend taking the time to wiping the kale dry (this is probably the only time consuming part of the recipe anyways).

And the final tip is to MASSAGE the kale with the oil! Get both your hands involved and use some of that elbow grease to really massage the oil into the kale. This step is crucial because this is how your kale chips will get crispy and delicious.

Once all the oil is massaged onto the kale, lay them out onto a cooking tray. Make sure to give the kale some room to breathe (:P). Then sprinkle the kale with some salt. And remember, a little salt goes a long way!

Bake the kale at 350’F for 15-20 minutes until the kale has crisped up and you’ll notice that the kale shrinks in size a considerable amount. I thought we started off with a lot of kale, but it shrank down to just a cup of really delicious kale chips.

And the ultimate critic, Gursheel, who’s never had kale or kale chips for that matter before, thought they were really good as well!!

INGREDIENTS – Baked Crispy Kale Chips

1 bunch kale

3 tbsp oil

1 tsp salt

DIRECTIONS – Baked Crispy Kale Chips

Preheat oven to 350’F and take out a couple of baking trays.

De-stem the kale, wash well, and then completely dry off the water from the kale.

Tear off the kale into bite size pieces and massage the oil into the kale.

Lay out the kale onto the baking trays and lightly sprinkle with salt.

Bake at 350’F for 15-20 minutes, flipping the kale after 10 minutes.

Let cool completely before enjoying.

I hope you all try and make these delicious crispy baked kale chips and if you’re looking for more recipes, check out the Kamfort Food section of the blog!