Yay!!! I am a member of Daring Baker’s group now, those who don’t know about Daring baker’s challenge, please read this . For last many months, I have been drooling over Meeta’s gorgeous entries for this challenge month after month. I still don’t know how she manages to make them look so beautiful. I was just enjoying her pictures for so long and then one day, they came up with bread challenge ....

This is a dish I have grown up eating. Aayi makes this with rice rotti(alayle pita rotti) for breakfast. The cooked masoor and the garam masala gives a very different aroma to this dish. This tastes good when it is made very spicy and goes very well with the bland taste of rotti . Ingredients: 3/4 cup masoor (whole) 1/2 cup onions(chopped) 1/2 cup potato(chopped) 3/4 cup coconut(fresh or frozen) 3-4 cloves 2″ piece cinnamon 1/2 tea spn coriander seeds 3-4 red chilies 1/2 tea spn tamarind extract (or use 2 small pieces of normal tamarind) 3-4 pepper Oil Salt...

Today is the auspicious day of Srikrishna Janmashtami , a hindu festival celebrating the birth of lord Krishna . This is my favourite festival among all hindu festivals. Here is how we celebrate it. Few people keep a fast (without food and water) on this day. But at my home, we used to eat a light fasting lunch. The main celebrations start in the night. At our native, this pooja is performed only in few houses and in temples....

I had posted recipe for urad papad (uDida happol) sometime ago. These are quite delicate papads and break easily (if they are dried properly-completely dried papads are very delicate, so sometimes they are half dried when we want to transport them from one place to another and then they are dried again before storing). This gravy is a way of using these broken papads which are difficult to roast....

Sajje (Kannada) or Bajra (Hindi) are Indian names for pearl millet . Sajje Rotti is very popular in some parts of Karnataka, similarly, Bajra Roti is an important part of Rajastani cuisine. Pearl millet flour has a very different taste that takes a little while to get used to. According to a USDA , both pearl millet and sorghum ( Jola or Jowar ) have many nutritional contents. Recent work has suggested that these cereals possess unique characteristics that have both nutritional and functional properties that lend themselves to the development of healthy, nutritious foods....

I am one of those moms who want my kids to learn cooking. I do not expect them to cook any elaborate dishes if they don’t wish to, but atleast they should be able to feed themselves some fresh homemade food. I have been giving Ishaan little jobs in the kitchen whenever I can. He now gets excited when I ask him for “help”. Few days back we had a get together and we planned for make-your-own pizza for kids....

Few days back I blogged about Vali bhajji ambat and prawns curry . Now it is time for a delicious dish having both vali bhajji (Indian Spinach, Malabar Spinach or Vietnamese Spinach) and prawns( sungat ). This dish is cooked in almost all houses in North Kanara. Usually Prawns or khubbe (clams) are used for this dish.I recently tried this dish with Spinach ( Palak ) because I was not having the Vali ....

I have cooked very limited Srilankan dishes so far. The main ingredient for all of these dishes is coconut milk. I am not sure if most of their dishes use coconut milk or it was just a coincidence. But whatever I tried so far were big hits. So when I got this recipe in a Kannada weekly, I tried it immediately. I keep at least 2-3 coconut milk cans all the time in my pantry....

Hayagreev maDDi is a sweet dish from Udupi. There is a story behind the birth of this sweet dish. A goldsmith was making Ganesh face from gold. But every time he tried, he got a horse face( Hayavadana in Sanskrit). He remelted the gold and tried again with same outcome. After trying many times, with the same outcome, he got frustrated and threw it in dustbin. Same night Shri Vadiraj Swami (a famous pontiff who started Vadiraj math ) got a dream in which lord Hayagreev – Lord Vishnu’s avtaar (incarnation) with a horse face, appeared and said, it has fallen in dustbin after getting beatings from goldsmith and requested him to save it and worship it daily....

From many days I am thinking about sharing the recipes of some of the delicious chutneys I make. Some of them, I haven’t tried here for a long time, so I cannot post the pictures. As and when I prepare them, I will upload the pictures also. Sweet chutney is a must in most of the chaats. It gives sweet, sour taste to the chaat. I don’t like very sour taste, so reduced the amount of tamarind paste....

I was thinking about blogging about this typical konkani style Buns from many days. But recently one of my visitor, Seema, requested for this recipe. So I thought of blogging about it without any further delay.’Buns’ is a very famous Konkani dish usually prepared with pumpkin or ripe bananas. Usually when we get the big pumpkins at home, a veriety of dishes are prepared using them. It will be cut into big pieces and some of the pieces go to neighbours and relatives who stay in nearby places....

This is my first ever meme. Some time back, one of the food bloggers tagged me with a meme. I did not know what is “meme”. I did not have any time to find out about it. Last year blogging new recipes was not so easy for me because of time constraints. This time Anthony , Ujwala tagged me with this meme. So here it goes – Please list three recipes you have recently bookmarked from foodblogs to try: This is a very difficult question....

We get two types of edible Amaranth – red ones called as ‘tambdi bhajji’ and green one(we call it white) called as dhavi(white) bhajji. Any greens are called bhajji in Konkani and stems are called as dento/dente. These greens are full of iron. Moreover all parts – stem and leaves of it are delicious especially when it is tender. We prepare sukke, saasam and raandayi using this bhajji dento. Both of these varieties are very popular here....

Otane is dry green/yellow peas. Randayi is a sidedish with coconut and is watery in consistency. Otane randayi is one of my all time favorite dish. Mainly because it has breadfruit in it. We make a lot of different such randayis with the same base(coconut, chilies), but depending on the vegetable or beans used in it, all of them taste very different. Few days back, I found a fresh breadfruit in Indian store....

I have this undying interest to make a new chicken dish every time I cook chicken at home. Sometimes it comes out well and sometimes it becomes a flop. Since V only eats dry chicken dishes, that is what I cook 99% of the time. This is one such dish I tried recently. It came out really well, so I tried it again for a small get together at home....

This is used as a side dish. A sweetish chutney which is very flavorful. Ingredients: 1/2 fresh/frozen coconut 1/4 tea spn tamarind extract or 1-2 pieces of tamarind 10 strands coriander leaves 2 tea spns jaggery 2-3 red chiles Salt Method: Heat the chillies directly on the gas flame for 1min(be careful while doing this). Grind all the ingredients together. Serve as a side dish with rice. Serves : 3 Preparation time : 5min...

I am a big fan of crabs from my childhood. My Aayi prepares crab for me and fish for my brother because I am not a fan of fish and he is not a fan of crabs. Now this has continued as my husband has joined my brother’s group. So there are distinct “crab-lovers” and “fish-lovers” groups at home. When we go to restaurants, I always ordered “crab thali” and my brother and hubby ordered “fish thalis”....

My brother and sis-in-law live in Bangalore. While chatting with them last week, SIL said she was preparing the fish fry. So I asked them to prepare the green-fry and click some pictures for me. At my native, Aayi prepares two types of fries. One with normal masala and the other is green-fry. I think the green-fry originated from “ Pathrani machi ” (fish with green masala wrapped in banana leaves)....

We had some friends for dinner over the weekend. I wanted to make some simple dishes. I thought of a simple chicken dish and made this one with loads of garlic in it. I used roasted spices, unlike any chicken dishes I have tried so far. It came out so good. I will be making this often now. Spice mixture -(roasted without oil and ground) Method: Serves : 3-4 Preparation time : 20mins...

Kohlrabi is called as ‘Navalkol’ in Konkani and ‘Navil Kosu’ or ‘kosu gadde’ in Kannada. ‘Sukke’ is usually a side dish prepared with some kind of vegetable or sea food and coconut masala. This dish has a sweetish and spicy taste because of the jaggery and red chilies in it. This is one of my all time favourite dishes. When I was a kid, I had grown these in my neighbour’s fields....