Sattva: Issue 29
Let's meal prep | The all purpose tomato puree you need in your life | Thoughts on festive gifting
Hello! If you are new to my newsletter, a warm welcome.
Sattva (सत्त्व) is a beautiful Sanskrit word that has many meanings—spirit, true essence, good sense, wisdom, quality of purity, energy, consciousness and mind, among other things.
Through this fortnightly newsletter, I want to bring to you all things good, which will make your life better. My focus will be on topics such as mindfulness, productivity, slow living and sustainability, accompanied by genuinely useful recommendations of products, books, music, links to read, and of course food and recipes. Through these, I hope to instil some Sattva in your life.
Given how long a break it has been since my previous issue, it is safe to say that this is Season 02 of Sattva 😄
Hopefully, I won’t stay so uninspired for so long and will be back with regular editions each fortnight. Thank you for sticking around and to those who regularly enquired with me about when my next edition will be out. Let’s get cracking!
I’ve Been Meal Prepping
I have been packing my son’s breakfast and lunch for school for the last few months. It means cooking breakfast and lunch first thing in the morning. Although I am very much an early morning person, I like to spend the early hours either writing, walking, or learning something new. Pottering around the kitchen at 4:30 AM is not my idea of fun. To make life easier, I have resorted to doing some meal prep at the start of every week, which not only takes care of the lunch boxes but also some of the meals of the folks at home.
Meal prep for me is keeping ready a bunch of individual components so quick meals can be put together and not cooking entire meals and eating the same thing all week.
I did a detailed post on one of my weekly meal preps on Instagram which got a lot of love from the readers. The components, as well as the meals I prepared from them, are documented in the post as well as this highlight.
Here are some of the items when prepped and kept in the fridge make life much easier. You don’t obviously have to stock up on everything. Choose from the list as per your / your family’s food needs.
Cooked chickpeas (or any other kind of beans)
Cooked sweet potatoes or potatoes
Cheese grated or crumbled (don’t laugh, this is a big time saver)
Curry base [recipe here]
Tomato puree (recipe follows)
Quick pickles (either purple cabbage, pickled onions or beets or radishes or a mix of all) [Pickled Purple Cabbage – recipe]
Salad dressing
Washed and dried lettuce / salad greens
Shredded cabbage-carrot mix (cole slaw mix)
A kind of chapati dough (plain or masala)
A kind of batter (any combination of grain and lentils)
Green chilli-ginger paste (adds a ton of flavour to curries, masala roti dough, and breakfast dishes like upma)
A bottle of something lactofermented such as chillies, bell peppers, radishes or onions.
A spread or a dip like hummus or made with hung yoghurt and spices
Also read:
Meal prep salads for a whole week (vegetarian and vegan ideas)
The equipment
Some of the equipment that I find very helpful for meal prep are the multipot, my OXO mandolin slicer, electric kettle, salad spinner, spice grinders, mason jars or any other recycled glass jars, glass boxes with airtight lids, masking tape and marker pen.
I cannot emphasise this enough. Always label the food you prep and keep in the refrigerator so that you can easily identify what the contents of the jar are (you’ll be surprised at how some bottles look just the same) and you can also keep track of how many days old the jar is.
I have made a Meal Prep Helpers list with these useful items on Amazon for you to check out.
The all-purpose tomato puree you need in your life
Why make tomato puree when you can easily pick up tetrapaks from the supermarket? (lol, does anyone go to supermarkets anymore? – this is a topic for another discussion for sure.)
The tetrapak tomato puree tastes far too sour and does not add any actual tomato flavour to the dish. It is also rather watery. The tomato paste I had written about in my earlier issue is a better option if you want to keep something on hand to add an intense tomato flavour to dishes. But let’s be honest, even though it is a great product, it does not come close to the taste of real tomatoes.
I picked up this recipe to make tomato puree from Punjabi cooking YouTube channel. I’ve made this a few times and I am happy to report that it is versatile, tastes great and stays good for two weeks in the refrigerator.
Homemade Tomato Puree
Take a kilo of tomatoes. Slice off the top end. Cut into quarters and make a coarse puree in the mixer. Do this by using the pulse function often rather than running the mixer continuously which will grind the tomatoes to a thick juice. A few small chunks are fine.
Take this prepared puree in a large heavy saucepan or pateela with high sides. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and let it come to a boil. Keep it partly covered with the lid if it is splattering outside the pan. Let it continue to simmer on a medium flame for around 15-20 minutes.
At this point, add 2-3 tbsp of either mustard oil (great for Punjabi curries) or any neutral flavoured oil (if you want to keep it more multipurpose) to the puree. Stir in a tablespoon of Kashmiri chilli powder, which gives the puree a brilliant red colour. Both the oil and salt act as preservatives.
Continue to simmer this for another 7-8 minutes until the oil separates out and the puree has turned thick with very little residual water.
Pack this in an airtight glass container and refrigerate. This stays good for 10 days.
6 ways to use this tomato puree
The puree has salt so do be careful to adjust the salt added to the dish accordingly.
Add a small ladle of this puree to dal tadka or dal fry instead of adding chopped tomatoes and cooking it down.
To make a super quick pasta, cook pasta according to pack instructions. In olive oil, saute chopped garlic and add 2-3 ladles of the tomato puree. Stir in crushed dried herbs. Toss in cooked pasta and top with grated parmesan cheese.
To make curries, in oil, saute grated ginger in oil. Add the prepared tomato puree along with powdered spices like turmeric, coriander, cumin and red chilli and add any vegetables, or beans such as cooked rajma or paneer to this. It will make a thin ‘jhol’ (thin sauce) like everyday curry.
To make pizza sauce, add some crushed garlic, olive oil and dried herbs to the puree and cook down for 1-2 minutes in a bowl in the microwave.
To make tomato rasam, bring dal water, tamarind water, salt and tomato puree to a boil. Add rasam powder and let it simmer. Temper cumin seeds and curry leaves in ghee. Add it to the rasam.
Add cooked beans, tomato puree, cumin powder, oregano, smoked paprika, chilli powder and you have a delicious Mexican bean mix to be stuffed into quesadillas or to top nachos.
Festive gifting
With Ganesh Chaturthi, we have declared the festive season 2022 open. The next few months are going to be a blur, catching up with family and friends (with renewed vigour this time to make up for the loss of the last two years), celebrating at home, and sharing goodies and gifts. And then it is time to wish happy new year.
Talking about gifts, I’m not sharing a gift reccos list just yet but thinking aloud as to what constitutes a good gift in our current times. [You can check out last year’s The Conscious Diwali Gifting Guide]
I don’t think anyone is excited anymore by a stack of sweet and fried snack boxes staring at them at the end of the festive season. And being a conscious person, the least I want to do is to gift things covered in miles of plastic or any other single-use packaging that adds to the trash generated.
My criteria for a good gift are-
not a sweet or savoury box
nothing perishable
something that does not come wrapped in plastic
something that is zero-waste
something that will stay for months if not years, making the gift worthwhile and memorable
something that won’t be discarded soon
supporting a small business
something that serves a purpose in the receiver’s lifestyle
If you haven’t checked out my book This Handmade Life yet, this is the right time to get your hands on it. Out of the 52 projects detailed in the book, a lot of them make excellent handmade gifts. If you want to make your own soaps, fermented hot sauces, crochet gifts etc. now is a good time to start.
What are your criteria for an ideal festive gift? Do share in the comments below along with any recommendations of category or brand, so I can check them out and compile a list of the best and most interesting ones in the next newsletter.
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None of the product mentions are sponsored unless explicitly mentioned.
Resources:
Meal prep helpers - Amazon shopping list
Tomato puree pic -Photo by Anshu A on Unsplash
Punjabi Cooking - Tomato puree video in Punjabi (no subtitles)
Refika’s best hummus recipe video
Plenty of good tips here, thank you!