This time when I went to Price choppers, I saw mushrooms and could not restrain myself from buying them. I love mushroom curry, mushroom pulav or anything made of mushrooms. After trying all my usual recipes, I still had some remaining in my refrigerator. So thought of trying out something new. From last one or two months, I prepare different kind of soups almost alternative days. Actually I have got big collection of recipes with me these days…Thanks to my pappa(daddy), who had cut all the recipes from kannada weekly magazines(like Tharanga, Sudha) and neatly bound it into a book....

In North Canara, we get mushrooms when the rain starts. These are usually naturally grown in forests. Some people who know about where to find good edible mushrooms, pick them up from these places. They are the tastiest mushrooms I have ever tasted. Aayi prepares this dish with those mushrooms. You can even use artificially grown ones which we get in markets these days. Ingredients: 2 cups basmati rice 1/2 cup onion 1 cup finely chopped mushrooms 1 tea spn cumin seeds 2 tea spns chili powder A pinch turmeric 2 tbl spns ghee or oil Salt...

Kando or piyyav are the Konkani names for onion and EeruLLi/NeeruLLi is the Kannada name for it. I didn’t know much about this vadi before this comment from my dear reader Purnima . Luckily, aayi knew this recipe and she agreed to make it for me immediately. I say luckily because, this turned out to be one of the best vadis . These vadis are made of rice, so they become super crispy and light when deep fried or microwaved....

This is another quick fix dish that I have come to love. I am a fan of ennegayi which has a combination of eggplants and peanuts. But I had only the huge eggplant that we get in any grocery store here (and sometimes I am very lazy to do stuffing). So I made the normal stir fry with eggplants and potatoes and added crushed peanuts. It turned out very delicious....

We have a big garden in front of our home, where we have grown different types of banana plants, coconut trees etc. We have both types of banana plants – one that can be eaten after ripening and the other type which is used in cooking. The second variety is called AnbaLi keLi (Not very sure if this is also called plantain). I make chips, phodis and this ambat, papads etc with these....

I dont know how I forgot to blog about this delicious recipe. One of my cousin recently reminded me of this. At our home, we call this Aayi’s bhaji (just to distinguish from Amma’s bhaji !!!). This is prepared with either puri or dosa. In Konkani Paattal means ‘a substance which has more liquid’ (Please somebody give me a more suitable word here). This name is given because the other bhaji I mentioned above is a dry bhaji....

Many of my readers asked me for recipes with ragi (Finger milet) . I have many recipes with this healthy flour. Whatever you do, the color of the ragi dishes is so bad that you don’t feel like making them again. So I avoid ragi most of the time. But I always have a pack of ragi at home. I was going thorugh the ragi special in my Kannada recipe collection and I saw this recipe....

Sambar is a very popular lentil soup served with idlis or rice. There are many different ways of making it. I think every family has their favorite recipe for making this. This is my aayi’s version. We usually serve this with idlis . She usually adds only onions, potatoes and tomatoes while serving with idlis. She adds other vegetables to it while serving with rice. She makes this Sambar with Sambar Powder which she makes in big quantities and stores....

5 years ago, if someone had told me I would be a big fan of cast iron, I would have laughed. “There is no way” I would have said. I had this myth in my mind that cast iron takes a lot of oil. The first entry of cast iron in my kitchen came in the form of grill pan – I bought this after I read about it at Sig’s blog ....

Some of you must be thinking, why am I posting so many rice preparations. My answer is – “that’s what I am cooking these days”. One time cooking for both lunch and dinner is working very well for me. Though both of us can eat out and survive, we don’t prefer to do it frequently. V is very happy that he can eat different kind of pulav/biryani so often. I use as many as lentils, vegetables, egg in these dishes so that we don’t miss out on any nutrition....

As I had mentioned earlier many times, I like to discuss food with V’s grandmother. She is almost 85+ years old now, but has this great interest in food. What surprises me is, though she cannot cook now, she loves to learn new dishes. She also loves to give me her own recipes. This is one such recipe I got from her. V remembers eating it as a kid when she made it for him....

My day to day cooking is usually very simple, but I love to cook with lots of spices once in a while. This was one such dish with loads of spices. I serve this with flavored rice . Give it a try if you are a val/avrekalu fan. PS: I think the peeled val tastes a lot different than the one with skin. I did not peel these. Will have to try that next time....

Ingredients: Vegetables like Capsicum, Onion, Potatoes Cut into thin long pieces 1 cup Rice flour 2 tbl spn Corn flour or maida 1 tbl spn Vinegar 1 tea spn Soya sauce 1 tea spn Ginger-garlic paste 1 tea spn Chilli powder 1 tea spn Salt Oil for deep frying Method: Mix all ingredients except vagetables & oil. Make a thick batter of bajji batter consistency. Dip the vegetables in the batter and deep fry in oil....

Ishaan started going to daycare at a very young age. When he was around 1 year old, they made him sit on his highchair to eat. He was all excited about feeding himself at that age. I was not a very big fan of the food provided at daycare – especially lunch, most of which was non-vegetarian. I buy mostly Organic vegetables/chicken, so the thought of him eating something else everyday at daycare was not easy to digest for me....

From my childhood, I have a strong aversion to apple. No matter how much I tried, I cannot get myself to like this fruit. My parents did everything they could to make me eat this. Even now, whenever we talk to them, they tell me to eat it. My hubby has a entirely different story. He has no problem in eating this, but he wants someone to cut it into pieces and give him....

This is one of the very popular Konkani sweets. There are few types of duddaLLis – one prepared with rice and coconut , the second one is made with arrowroot powder ( kachra peet ), the third one is made from ragi flour. Ingredients: 1 cup arrowroot flour(kachra peet) 1 cup sugar 3 cups milk 1/4 tea spn cardamom powder 2 tbl spn chana dal (optional) 2 tbl spn cashews (optional) Ghee...

While growing up in coastal India, we always had luxury of getting very fresh fish. Though I don’t miss it much, V misses the Sunday fish lunches very much. So last time when we went to buy fish, I remembered a baked fish which I had seen on TV many times. We came home with Halibut (Please do not ask me what is this fish called in one of Indian languages, I have no idea)....

Sometime last week, one of my reader had put a request for chole biryani . When I saw it, I realized that I had read something similar to one of the recipe books I had. But when I checked it, it was more chole pulav than a biryani . For me, biryani has to have the layers of rice and some kind of masala layered and then cooked to perfection....

I am noticing that some people are blatantly copying images as well as recipes from this blog along with exact text and description and posting on their blogs. This is seriously disappointing. Especially when thousands of readers have benefited and appreciated the effort that has gone in to developing, maintaining and creating content for AayisRecipes. So many of you have written to AayisRecipes appreciating efforts and time that is spent here....

A lazy evening, I did not want to cook anything. I thought of preparing something easy-to-do, healthy and tasty dinner. I had a lot of different vegetables in the refrigerator. So this was the final result. I cannot say that, this is authentic fried rice, because I used whatever came to my mind at that time. Ingredients: Basmati rice 1 cup Vegetables (corn, yellow pepper, green beans, carrot, onion) 1 cup Green chillis 3 Cloves 3 Cinnamon 1″ piece Soya Sauce 1 tea spn Vinegar 1 tea spn Eggs 2 Pepper powder 1/2 tea spn Sugar 1/2 tea spn Ghee/Butter 1 tbl spn Salt...