Sonali tagged me for this meme. I felt this meme is very unfair!!!. Only 10 things??? How do I pick up 10 things, there are hundreds of them :). I miss each and every dish that my mom makes. I wish I was in India, I could have run to her whenever I wanted :(. Pathrode and ankre tamboli – This is the best combination I have ever had. I am a big fan of this combination from the time I was a kid....

Ever since I started using avrekalu in my cooking, I have been hooked to it. I have at least 2 frozen packs of these all the time in my freezer. This is packed with nutrition due to so many vegetables in it. It does not require fermentation, so it is fast to make on weekends (may be a bit too much work on a weekday). It can be served with or without a side dish since this has green chilies, ginger in it....

Ingredients: Babycorns 5-6 Potato cooked and mashed 1 large Coriander leaves 5-6 strands Ginger-garlic paste 1 tea spn Green chilli paste 1/2 tea spn Soya sauce 1/2 tea spn Corn flour 1 tbl spn Garam masala 1/2 tea spn Salt Oil for deep frying Method: Mix all the ingredients except babycorn and oil. Take this mixture and make a thick coating on the upper half of babycorn (like lollipop). Deep fry in oil....

These days I am trying to post as many masala powders as possible. With experience, I have found the home made masala powders are always better than the ready made ones. Also, Indian store being very far from my place, I can only go there once in a while and whenever I go there, I forget to buy some masalas . I tasted bisi bele bhath in Bangalore for the first time....

Few days back, I got a comment here from Dr K. B. Malya . Through the link given in his comment, I reached his site Mangaloreworld.com (which does not look like working anymore). I found an amazing amount of information including many recipes on the site. The thing which took me back again and again to the site was the great enthusiasm by which Dr Malya (fondly called as Baab) is presenting the information about so many things, people, and recipes of Mangalore....

This is usually done from a day old bread that remains after making some sandwiches or other bread dishes. In the above picture I haven’t used coriander leaves and coconut, but if you add both or one of them the taste will increase. Ingredients: 4-5 cups bread cut in to small pieces 1/2 cup onions(optional) 2 tbl spns fresh/frozen coconut(optional) 3-4 green chilies A pinch turmeric (optional) 6-7 curry leaves A pinch asafoetida 1/2 tea spn each mustard seeds, cumin seeds, urad dal 1 tea spn sugar (optional) Oil Salt...

This is the time again for Daring baker’s challenge. This month’s host is that lovely blogger, because of whom I joined this group. Yes, it is Meeta along with Tony . I won’t be lieing if I say, only because it was Meeta’s month, I took up this challenge. Now, some of you may wonder what that is supposed to mean – as I mentioned in my last post, due to so many things that have come up on in our lives, that need more attention, I would not be able to make time, so I have decided to leave this group for now....

Ingredients: Basmati rice 2 cups Onions 2 Cumin seeds 2 tea spns Ginger-garlic paste 1 tea spn Coriander leaves 4-5 Green chillies 4-5 Ghee 2 tbl spns Water 5 cups Salt Method: Heat oil in a pan and add cumin seeds. When they start spluttering, add ginger-garlic paste, green chillies and onions. Fry till onions turn slightly brown. Add rice and fry for 2mins. Add water and salt. Cover and cook....

When I was working in Bangalore, the company provided evening snacks to all employees. A different snack is served each day of the week. A ragi-vegetable dosa was one of them. I absolutely loved these dosas unlike all my friends. I have been trying to recreate it ever since. I think with this recipe, I came pretty close. Ingredients: 1/2 cup urad dal 1 cup rice (I used 1/2 cup brown rice + 1/2 cup boiled rice) 1/2 cup finger millet(ragi flour) Salt Oil 1 cup(approx) vegetables (finely chopped/grated carrot, onion and cucumber)...

Finally I am happy to say, I can cook fish!!!. This was my weak point for a long time. I recently tried this delicious Bangda (Meckeral) fry and it was great. As I said earlier, since I am from North Kanara, a coastal area, we used to get very fresh river and sea fish. Unlike my brother, who is a great fan of fish, I seldom liked fish. One small piece of fish, thats all I could eat in a meal....

This is another of those salmon experiments we liked. Recently we started buying Salmon from Costco. It is quite cheaper there compared to Whole Foods (where we do all our grocery shopping). I buy a big piece, cut into smaller pieces and freeze them into individual bags. Some days I just make this dish and a salad for dinner. Aayi prepares this green fish using Mackerel (bangda) or king fish (Ishwan/Visonu/Surmai) or some other fish available in India....

I was very busy for last few weeks due to house renovation work. Still the work is going on, but today got some time to post here. Gooseberry ( avalo or avla ) is full of Vitamin C. MoravaLo is prepared by cooking gooseberry pieces in sugar and preserved. When my kids were toddlers, my grandmother used to make this for them. She also gifted me with two tiny plates to serve this....

Yesterday was one of those days when I wanted to try something new. I wanted it to be a totally new sweet. So I thought of making halva out of some unexpected vegetable. I checked my fridge/freezer and saw I had 2 packs of frozen green peas which needed to be used soon. So I thought of making halva with them. The final result was very good. V could not stop eating it, so in my opinion, it was a success....

Peas pulav is one of the quick fix pulavs that I love very much. Its very easy to make and tastes amazing. This is one of the dishes I make to carry in our after lunch boxes. At my native, we don’t get peas all the time. Whenever we get, mom used to make this dish and we love it. Now that I have frozen peas all the time in freezer, I prepare this very often....

Ambe Haldi(Konkani) or Mango Ginger(English) is very rarely available at our place. These roots look almost like turmeric(Haladi) root and have a strong aroma of mangoes, hence the name Ambe haladi/haldi. The most popular preparation from these roots is pickle. When I saw these roots in Indian store here, I remembered this very old recipe – sasam. I have prepared this only a few times in the past, could not find these roots anywhere after that....

At my native, during mango/pineapple season, this dish is prepared in huge quantities(just like pickles) and stored for the rest of the year. The jam/syrup goes well with dosas , chapathis , rottis etc. Usually the pineapple ( ananas ) version is more popular compared to mango( ambe ) version. When I was a kid, I loved this or honey with the dosas and usually avoided chutneys. Previously, I had prepared strawberry paank (syrup) on the similar lines....

I grew up eating rice every day. Chapatis were prepared occasionally for breakfast. Now, I make chapatis/parathas almost every other day. No matter how many different varieties I try, I keep looking for new ones. This is one such recipe I tried recently. I got this from my friend Pallavi. She makes these very frequently and I love them. I frequently make methi parathas and alu parathas . This was a great variation including both....

Yesterday was our friend’s birthday . So I made this cake for her. I wanted to make an eggless cake as she is vegetarian. Though she occasionally eats cakes/pastries which has eggs, she prefers vegetarien versions and also, since it is Navaratri, I thought she won’t like it. At first, I thought of making dates cake . But I felt, I have already given overdose of dates cake to all, so thought of coming up with something else....

‘Tamdi bhajji’ in Konkani means ‘Red edible plant’. This is referred to as ‘tamdi bhajji’ or ‘moDil bhajji’ (means the ‘edible plant cut into pieces’, I donno how this name has come). This is very famous at our native, people used to grow it at home, but now it is widely available in markets also. This is widely used in Kerala cusine (LG has given a lot of good information about this bhajji) and called as ‘cheera’....

Nupur sent me a lovely package of very fresh & fragrant Kolhapuri masala. I had totally forgotten the aroma of this masala which I had tasted in Belgaum at my pachi’s place. I have always relished this aromatic masala and continue to do so. Thanks a lot Nupur. Now, I wanted to experiment with this masala. I used it in all kinds of dishes, one particular dish which I am sticking to is, this very fragrant pulav....