It has been couple of months since I became a “Stay at home mom”. I was both happy and sad about this decision. Happy because finally I could give all the time to Ishaan and also work on a thousand things that I was putting on back burner due to my busy schedule. Sad because it would mean a big unknown about my career. We took Ishaan out of daycare....

This is my pachi’s dish. I used to like it very much. I donno exactly what she puts. But this is how I do it and I simply love this. Ingredients: Masoor 2 cups Potato 1 Ginger-garlic paste 1 tea spn Onion 1 Tomato 1 Chilli powder 1 tea spn Coriander leaves 3-4 strands Kala masala or kitchen king masala or garam masala ½ tea spn Oil 1 tea spn Salt...

Have any of you visited Bangalore? If yes, you must have tasted the chaats and the most popular chaat in Bangalore is Masala puri. You will get it everywhere. It is as popular as (or rather more popular than) any other chaat . I tried my best to make this at home, but was never successful. It would taste great but nothing like the original masala puri . I don’t know if this is available anywhere else or not, because I never found it in Indian restaurants here(though all other chaats are available, this is missing)....

I have this crazy desire to make different kinds of chicken dishes every time. I change one or the other ingredient every time to see if I can come up with a new dish. Most of the times they all taste almost same even though I switch around something. V loves spicy chicken, so few weeks ago I tried this spicy pepper masala chicken. It reminded me of our days in Bangalore when we loved to eat at Andhra restaurants....

Posu (Konkani), Ginnu (Kannada), Junnu (Telugu), Kharvas (Marathi) is a sweet made from lactating cow’s milk. Usually it is prepared by the first 3 days milk from the cows who gave birth to calves. It’s one my favorite sweet. This was prepared only few times in a year when we could get the colostrum milk. Few days ago, someone reminded me of this sweet. So I tried to find colostrum milk in all the regular groceries here, I think it’s hard to find it in stores....

Set dosa has different definitions for different people. I was introduced to it in Bangalore and I instantly became a fan. A stack of 3 spongy dosas is served with sagu – a vegetable side dish. I absolutely adore this combination. Recently, one of my friends told me, the set dosa he knows is a stack of 3 different varieties of dosas. Anyway, I have seen so many different recipes for these spongy dosas....

Some of you might wonder, why am I posting upma here? This is one of the most famous and extremely easy breakfast. I think this is the recipe learnt by most of the people in their early days of cooking. But I am an exception to this. Though I knew the recipe for upma very long back, I prepared the most horrible upma until recently. I even stopped making it, because every time I prepared it, it became like cement :D....

Spicy buttermilk is served after a heavy meal in most of the restaurants in India. Every restaurant has different way of making it. I tried and tried to get the taste which I liked. Finally I zeroed it on this recipe which we always liked. Ingredients: 2 cups buttermilk 1″ piece ginger 2-3 green chillies Salt 1-2 strands coriander leaves Method: Add finely chopped ginger, coriander leaves, chilies and salt to buttermilk (Alternatively, blend/grind all the ingredients together)....

Pineapple is called ananas in most of the Indian languages. Palya (Kannada) meaning side dish. Many people asked me for this recipe. I had seen this in one of the Kannada TV shows. From the day I saw it, I wanted to try it. Finally when I got many requests, I tried it. I used to eat pineapple as it is or in ananas paank or in ananas sasam ....

Though they are nutritious,it often becomes difficult to make the children to eat different vegetables. In one of the T.V. programs I saw an unique way of using carrot, palak and beetroot in making chapatis.The three vegetables carrot, spinach, beetroot, give orange, green and red colour. The children are attracted by the three different colours and they may eat these nutritious chapatis. Check Nivedita’s version here . Ingredients: 1 and 1/2 cup Wheat flour 1/4 cup Carrot paste 1/4 cup spinach(palak) paste 1/4 cup beetroot paste 1/2 tea spn red chilli powder 1-2 green chillies 1 tea spn cumin powder 1 tea spn garam masala powder (optional) Salt...

While growing up, we ate lot of dried beans. Of late, beans have become side lined in my kitchen. I am trying my best to bring them back to table. One of my favorite legume was black eyed peas – we called them alsande. I loved dishes like alsande randayi , padwale randayi etc that my aayi made. I make these very often now. Recently I started experimenting with alsande, combining it with other vegetables to make new dishes....

Its no secret that I love easy lunchbox items. Daily morning I spend some time thinking about what to cook. This is one such item that I tried recently. I had seen this recipe in one of the TV shows back home. This rice takes some time to get used to. While I simply love this, V is not a great fan. I would definitely recommend trying it atleast once....

Chicken Biryani with Coconut Milk During Christmas holidays we visited our cousins in Boston. My cousin’s place, we had delicious and comfort vegetarian food, something I was craving a lot. At V’s cousin’s place, we had all non vegetarian meals. I was in a foodie’s heaven, amazing food at both places and we had a very relaxing time. Make a big batch of it, as it is just out of this world and it disappears in no time....

We had invited some of our friends for dinner over the last weekend. We didn’t realize how the time had passed. During one of our discussions, I told them I love baking. Our friend Vishal asked if I make Jeera bread. Well, that sounded a great thought, I had to try it. It reminded me Jeera biscuits which we get, back at home. I somehow didn’t act on that idea the next day....

A bowl of hot soup is all I ask for in this cold weather. I usually make some or the other kind of soup when I reach home literally shivering. It is very challenging to come up with new soups as we get bored of having same again and again. I usually keep a big batch of drumsticks in freezer. So when I saw a drumstick soup recipe in my collection, I wanted to give it a try....

This is a very famous chutney in North Kanara. My mother prepares this with coconut dosa( soyi polo ) or rice roti( alayle pita rotti) . But some people make this with urad daal dosa or as a side dish with rice. Ilike this chutney-coconut dosa combination very much. Ingredients: 4-5 cloves garlic 1/2 cup fresh/frozen coconut 4-5 red chillies 1/4 tea spn tamarind extract or 1 piece of tamarind Oil Salt...

I have been requesting my brother to post some recipes here for last 8 years. He is a complete foodie – who loves to eat, loves to cook. Finally he agreed and here is his first post here. This is also the 1000th post on this blog (yayy!!!). Now over to my brother Naveen . – Shilpa To give a brief but much deserved break, from several years of relentless work of Shilpa, I decided to contribute to this site with few and really few recipes, she has missed so far....

Hirva batata is a Marathi dish that I had tasted at my pachi’s(mom’s sister) place in Belgaum for the first time. This must be one of my favorite Marathi dishes. I found it in one of my recipe notebooks. Probably I had written it down a long ago. I was so happy to find it. Without trying it’s hard to appreciate it’s flavor. Simple recipe for a out of this world dish :)....

It has been a long time since I posted anything here. Last few months were very busy for us. We were preparing for a long awaited India trip. Time sure flies. Here we are back from India to Kansas now. It was quite emotional trip for many reasons. We had been there after 3.5 years. Since pappa had many health issues in last few months, I wanted to meet him....

Few days back when I posted a ragi drink , I got a few requests for dishes with ragi/finger millet flour. I have a very good article with many ragi recipes in it, but had never tried any of them. Then I read an article about the medicinal values of ragi and I thought it is the time to try few of the dishes. This article (from the Kannada weekly “Taranga”) had 3 types of ragi idlis....