skillet Handvo recipe for quick breakfast | staying fit, eating well

With a skillet Handvo recipe which is more of a cheat’s trick, I am back to this blog after a short break. I been cooking all this while, though I prepared very few healthy recipes and lots of traditional and heavier foods. I have been eating those fat and high calorie food too but one thing I want to share here is that my weight didn't go up even if I feasted on holi specials (all the holi recipes can be seen on banaras ka khana in the coming days) we enjoyed during this time. I had my fair share of guzias, matthis and dry samosas but I did not stop having my bowlful of veggies everyday.

A big bowl of vegetables for two meals I feel is a great leveller when it comes to balancing the meals even in the times of festivals. Once you start eating your vegetables religiously, cooked or steamed, in the form of raw or warm salads, it satiates you really well, keeps the gut healthy and doesn’t tempt you to binge onto the heavy desserts and snacks.

So despite having pooris, malpuas and gujhias my weight didn’t go up because there was a balancing act done by a bowl full of veggies in every meal and some dahi or buttermilk in any form.

The trick that I have found is, to not deprive yourself and eat your pooris, parathas and pakodas regularly so there is no craving that leads you to binge eating. I won’t say the same about cakes and pastries because those are loaded with sugars, maida and cheap fats but home made mithais, kheer and halwa is much more satisfying without an after effect that leads to craving more of those.

Before I share my ways of eating well and staying fit, let me share a quick recipe of the skillet Handvo that makes my life easy in times when there is so much to do and so little time.

Ingredients

1 cup chana dal, 1/2 cup urad dal and 1/2 cup rice soaked overnight, blended to make a thick batter and fermented overnight. This batter keeps well in the fridge for a week and you can use it to make savoury pancakes or cheelas and sometimes into this skillet Handvo.

For the batter
To make 2 servings of Handvo you need 1.5 cup of the above batter
1 cup grated bottle gourd or shredded cabbage
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
2 tsp ginger green chilli paste
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp pepper

For tempering
1 tbsp peanut oil
Pinch of hing
Few curry patta leaves
Few pieces of broken dry red chillies
1 tsp mustard seeds (rai)

Preparation
Mix the fermented batter with the ingredients listed under batter.
Heat a cast iron skillet or a wide iron Kadhai and pour oil, add the ingredients for tadka. Once the tadka splutters, pour the Handvo batter and cover to cook in very low heat for 10 minutes.
Flip the thick pancake like Handvo with the help of a slotted spatula and let it cook on the other side too. Both the sides should get golden brown and crisp. You may need to drizzle some oil on the other side after flipping.

It takes about 20 minutes to cook including the mixing, chopping etc. and once the Handvo mix goes into the pan you can do other morning chores. That’s the reason I tried to make this cheat’s version of Handvo.

Once cooked you can take it out in a platter and cut into four wedges. Serve it as it is or with some chutney or raita.

This skillet Handvo is one of the recipes I find most balanced for my breakfasts. It’s almost like a cheela and yet something different for a variation.

We do need some tricks of our own to keep the everyday food interesting and filling and yet easy enough to cook so we don’t end up ordering food or opening a packet of some cereal or snack.

Here are some of my own tricks that I apply on myself to keep the food everyday food balanced and my weight in check.

1. Eating about 700-800 gm vegetables everyday, including onions, tomatoes and even chutneys.
2. Including a lot of chutneys, raitar and quick pickle type condiments in my everyday meals to keep the gut healthy and to supplement soluble fiber, micronutrients and vitamins in my diet. All the ingredients used for making chutneys and raitas are superfoods indeed.
3. Not to deprive oneself of fried foods and high fat, high calorie food so the cravings don’t make one binge on wrong kind of foods. All these foods satiate to a higher degree and sometimes make us skip the next meal or have some soup for the next meal. That’s how the balance happens naturally and instinctively.
4. Include some nuts and seeds almost everyday in some form. It can be in salads, in snacks or in chutney form.
5. Keeping the snacks minimal. Even if I need my little snack with my chai I make it a point to have just a few roasted nuts, roasted chiwda or a tbsp of bhujia type namkeen. Chips and ready to eat snacks are a big NO in my book. Some of the trusted brands of bhujia and namkeens mixes are good but they shouldn’t be consumed more than a tbsp at a time.
6. Eating good quality fats. Ghee and mustard oil are my staples. Coconut, sesame and peanut oils are used to make some specific foods and extra virgin olive oil for salads and pasta.
7. Starting and ending my day with lots of water. I try and drink as much water as soon as I wake up and till I have my late breakfast. the dinner is early and I drink some more water before I go to sleep.
8. Finding time for some sort of movement, stretches or workouts. For me different types of workouts work in different times and I find it very difficult to find a discipline into a single type of workout regime. I haven’t been able to stick to one regime so I have found peace in doing whatever fits into the current time. Basically going with the flow. So it is walking sometimes, working out with weights sometimes and just the basic stretching some other times.

We actually have to find out what works best for us.