Carrots-Raisins-Cashews over Minced Corned Beef

 This time around, the festival of lights or Diwali as it is popularly known was quieter than usual in and around my neighbourhood. Even Obama had a thing or two to talk about Diwali...hmmm...that was trending! Yeah! I do like the "lighting the lamps" part but the noises that follow with all those fireworks gives me the jitters and drives me mad.

I do not celebrate any festivals. I do cook for any occasion or coinciding with the festivities but never is there any pomp or show at home. We have given our kids the freedom to choose and enjoy whatever they want as long as it does not glorify anybody or anything. Food of course will always be the cynosure of all eyes.

All my life, I always spoke against these fireworks to my students and my own kids. In fact, I used to harp at them so that they would feel it deep down in their hearts that what they actually are doing is burning hard earned money which otherwise could have fed a few hungry mouths or go into some other form of charity.

As a principle, I have never bought a fire cracker for my children and I pray that as they grow older, they will carry the same forward and never be lured into polluting the environment through noise and paper waste/litter. I always pity the sweepers of our streets (especially during such festivals) who have the herculean task of cleaning up after everybody else's mess.

 This time around the rains played spoilsport to many so the large scale bursting had reduced and those who successfully managed to burst added more wet litter, imagine all that wet debris. And one calls themselves educated citizens. My analysis is that the social platforms and various forwarded messages and statuses against the same did play a major role in the reduction and I pray that there will be a time when I hold my grand child trying to sing a lullaby to it, none of these pollutants will hinder its sleep or my song.

Now you must be wondering why did she go about blabbering all this, well the raisins and the cashew nuts that you see in these pictures are one of the Diwali gifts I received from a neighbour. Of course preparing home made sweets and distributing gifts is also a part and parcel of the celebration. When I saw these raisins I knew where it would go...I had bookmarked an Afghani Pulao recipe but I did not want to play around with rice. I did not want these raisins to garnish a rice dish.

 Thus, in some ghee I had fried some of them along with whole or split cashews and took them out to drain the excess ghee into an absorbent kitchen paper.

 I had sauteed some thinly sliced carrots as is seen in a Kabuli Pulao and set them aside. I garnished them over a minced beef dish. In this case I had used canned corned beef. In a deep sauce pan, I added a tbsp. of oil and in it sauteed  finely chopped onion along with finely chopped ginger and garlic. Trust me that is the smell of a non-veg dish in progress...

Once they browned lightly, add in one or two finely chopped tomatoes and stir them through. Once it got mushy, I added two tbsp or more of my store bought Eastern beef Ularthiyathu spice powder. I let the spice merge well with the onion tomato mix. Then slid in the contents of the can into the mix and allowed the minced beef to cook through. If you are using fresh minced beef do ensure that the beef cooks well. My can of beef already had salt that was used to preserve the meat hence I did not add any more salt. Do check and only if it is not adequate to taste, add in the required amount.

Once my corned beef cooked through and I was happy with its taste and appearance I added a tsp. of cumin powder and squeezed in half a cheek of lime and finely chopped cilantro or mint.

The dish was tossed well and those carrot juliennes and ghee roasted cashews-rasins-carrots were spread over the dish. In a Kabuli Pulao,this goes over the flavoured Basmati rice.

We enjoyed the dish thoroughly.

We had them with rotis and a fresh salad.

Hoping that the next Diwali will be milder than this time's and finally fireworks and fire crackers will be banned totally!!!