In May, we visited our cousins in Boston. V’s cousin’s wife, we call her Poornima vaini, makes delicious chicken dishes. Every time I visit her, I learn something from her. She pampered us with this grilled chicken, biryani and many more. She had taken this to a get together and it had become a huge hit. What makes these kababs stand out is the kasuri methi. It gives an awesome taste to this....

Finally we have started using salmon regularly. I have been cooking it with slight modifications every time. We love grilled salmon with different spices. This is one such recipe I tried recently. It tasted great. Ingredients: 18oz salmon fillet Olive oil Spinach paste (Make a paste of following) – 3/4 cup chopped spinach 1 tea spn ginger 1 tea spn garlic 4 green chillies 3 cloves 1″ cinnamon 1 tbl spn lemon juice Salt...

Today’s lunch box was chapathi , potato bhaji and pineapple sheera . I never actually gave any sweets in lunch box before this. So let me see the feedback in the evening :). I mentioned about yellow rice in my chicken gravy post. This is a hit combination at our home. The normal white rice does not go well with the gravy, so aayi always makes the flavored rice. We call this rice as ‘fried rice’....

There are times, when I get bored of cooking and like to make some one pot dish. I usually go back to pasta/noodles dishes. This was one such dish that I just made up. I had seen similar baked dishes in different books, but I mainly used all the vegetables I had with me. It was a nice change and very filling dinner. Ingredients: 1 and 1/2 cups elbow macaroni 2 cups vegetables – red & yellow bellpeppers, cabbage, corn, jalapenos 1/2 cup tomato 1/2 cup soya granules 1 tbl spn chopped fresh basil 1 egg white 1/2 cup milk 1 tea spn all purpose flour 1 tea spn butter 1/4 cup parmesan cheese Pepper Olive oil Salt...

Hope you all had a very happy Diwali. So after all that sweet dishes that you all might have enjoyed, I thought of posting a spicy dish. Last year when we visited India, my SIL R prepared this dish for us. She got this recipe from a magazine and she made little modifications to it. I loved it so much that I asked her to send the recipe. It sat in my inbox forgotten for a long time....

I was introduced to quinoa about 4 years ago. Some of my ex-colleagues talked about it all the time. Although I was intrigued, I had no interest in trying it. Then a day came when we were advised to reduce all kinds of starchy carbs. Our doctor told us to stop eating white rice and move to brown rice if we wanted. I started looking for things that would replace rice and I came across quinoa again....

There are few people in this world, with whom you can share your happiness and also your worries, who’ll always be there for you. They laugh with you in your happiness and give you help and support when you are in sorrow. You feel very comfortable around such people, who you don’t get to know often. They are pretty rare, aren’t they? We think we are very lucky to know a person like this....

Creating nutritious and tasty lunches for kids can be a real challenge. When I was growing up, we didn’t focus much on high-protein diets, and our meals were often carb-heavy. However, as my son got more into sports, I realized the need for a change in our eating habits. I’m still learning, but I’ve taken small steps towards healthier cooking. Last year, I discovered soya chunks, and my kids loved them....

This recipe is from my friend Poornima. I have posted many of her recipes here so far. She is one of the most important source of Kannada recipes for me. Few days back I called her and she gave me many recipes and this is one of them. Pumpkin is called Kumbalkayi in Kannada. This is a spicy idli . I prepared this few days back and absolutely loved it....

One of my readers asked me for this recipe. I was a bit hesitant to try this because I am not a big fan of bitter gourd. But since it is good for health, I use it once in a while. Whenever I use it, I chop it finely and fry it well to remove bitterness. But for this, I had to use the whole bitter gourd. I tried this last week and as I said it was bit difficult to remove bitterness....

Pesto is Italian sauce. I have been watching many pesto preparations in food network ever since I started watching it. So from this experience, pesto meant a chutney like preparation in which olive oil is used to bring to a required consistency in place of water in our chutneys. I may be totally wrong in this perception, but that is what I have seen on TV. I am always horrified to see the amount of oil that goes into this....

Paddu (Kannada), appe (Konkani), ponganalu (Telugu), paniyaram (Tamil), unniyappam (Malayalam), is one very popular dish in South India. To make this we require a special paddu tava ( Appe Kayli ), which looks like following. Usually we get two kinds of tavas , one of black colour(of cast iron) and other silver color(I guess it is aluminium). In silver one the batter does not stick to tava , so preferably use that....

This is a recipe mostly done in rainy season. Usually this is made of different kinds of leaves grown in the gardens. Very very good for health. This and Pathrado is a perfect combination. Vandelaga leaves are called Brahmi in Sanskrit and Ekpanni in Konkani. I used watercress when I prepared this here in US. Ingredients: 1 cup Vandelaga (brahmi) leaves 4-5 green chilles 3/4th cup fresh/frozen grated Coconut 1 tspn cumin seeds 1/2 tspn ghee 1/4 tea spn pepper 1/4 tspn tamarind extract or 1-2 small pieces of tamarind Salt...

More than 2 years ago, I had posted a recipe of Vegetable Lasagna which was more of my own experiment. This time I am back with another recipe which was given to me by my friend Cindy. About 1 year ago, Cindy had invited us for a lunch at her place. Though she usually prepares meat dishes, she made vegetarian food for us. She knew I am a lasagna lover, so she made this for me....

Ambade is one of the very common vegetable used in Konkani food. Ambade(hog plums/amtekayi/ambazhanga) trees are commonly found in backyards of most of the houses in our region. There are two types of ambades – sour and sweet. This is a seasonal vegetable. Tender ambades of both types are used in pickles and as souring agents in many dishes. Some of the dishes we make with ambades are Gojju, Sasam, ghashi(Rosu/Udid methi) , gravies ....

I remember that day in Belgaum, my friend and I had been to shopping. We got late and thought of having food in our favorite tiny restaurant. We wanted to try some dish with noodles – according to us, everything with noodles was Chinese dish :). We were a little surprised to see a dish with the name American Chopseuy in the Chinese list because we were confused to why an American dish is in Chinese list....

It was our first valentine’s day in the US, we had never celebrated this day before. I had just got a new job. So we thought of celebrating the day. I knew V does not like any non-Indian food, but I insisted that we go to an Italian restaurant. He booked in Zio’s restaurant which is close to our apartment. We went there and it was packed full. After waiting for a while, we got a place to sit....

We were busy for last few days, so could not post anything here. One of our readers requested for this recipe. This is a recipe from my mother’s sister. She was a very good cook. She passed away about 3 decades ago. I had noted down few of her recipes. This is one of them. Everytime I cook these dishes, I remember her. Capsicum ( phugge mirsangi ) is cooked in a sweet and spicy coconut paste to make kairas ....

Clams are used widely in Konkani cooking. ‘Aghanashini’ river flows at our native. During the low tide days, people stand in knee high water and pick up the clams. While using for cooking, the clams are opened carefully and the soft meat inside the shell is used in a variety of dishes. Usually one of the two shells is kept intact for some clams. I do not know why the shells are used, but when we were kids we always fought with each other to get the shells :D....

Ingredients: Cucumber 2 Tamarind paste or lemon juice 1 tea spn Mustard, Cumin seeds and urad daal Half tea spns each Green chillies 4-5 Garlic paste 1 tea spn Curry leaves Coriander leaves Oil Salt Method: Cut cucumber into small pieces. Add finely chopped chillies, tamarind paste or lemon juice, salt and garlic paste. Heat oil in a pan and add mustard, cumin seeds, curry leaves and urad daal.When they start to splutter add this to cucumber....