Breakfast in my house is usually a typical Indian spread – either uppittu/upma/dosas/idlis. I cook both lunch and breakfast in the mornings. V tells me to take a break once in a while when we can just eat cereals. But breakfast for me has to be something hot and savory!. Since he loves waffles, I bought a waffle iron last year. I made waffles a couple of times, then it sat in one corner (Thank god for lot of cabinets in my kitchen – but they are all overflowing now!...

I prefer to prepare this sasam when we get tender bhajji dento (stems). We prepare this sasam with red amaranth also. Sasam is usually made of uncooked coconut masala and some kind of cooked vegetable. This is served as a side dish with rice or chapatis. Ingredients: 1 cup bhajji dente pieces 1 cup grated coconut 2-3 green chillies 1/2 tea spn tamarind Oil 1 tea spn mustard seeds 1/4 tea spn asafoetida Salt...

This is a recipe I picked up from aayi’s or SIL’s recipe book. Can’t recall from which one exactly. I think they got it from a recipe show. It looked so good that, I had to try it. I used frozen gooseberrys( amla/nellikayi ). I changed the recipe to include a garlic seasoning and also used tamarind to give it a tangy taste. It came out very good. It had a distinct amla taste....

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 nonsour(sweet ). We use sour ambades for this pickle. These sour ambades are preferred in most of the recipes to obtain sour taste.These trees bear hundreds of fruits and we use tender ones – provided they get spared from ‘monkey business’. Yes, we have these mischievous monkeys visiting our garden frequently....

Lately, I have been very slow in updating the blog. Between running behind a very active toddler, a job and cooking, I hardly find any free time. By the time he sleeps, I am totally exhausted and loose any interest in blogging. But I will make a sincere effort to blog once in a while. Last month when we visited India, my pachi (mom’s sister) came to visit us. Like always, I bugged her for recipes....

Upkari is a Konkani stir fry. We make stir fry of many vegetables as well as beans. This is an ideal example of the mixture of both. Somehow the black chickpea – plantain combination is very popular among Konkanis. Another combination of these two is chana ghashi . We also make similar stir fry with only chickpeas or only plantains. This recipe was sent to me by Gowri . I have tasted this dish many times but I had forgotten completely about it....

Ambe – mango, saTh (pronounced as saaTh ) in Konkani or mambaLa in Kannada is one of the most popular ways of preserving mango pulp during season at our native. There are two types of people, one absolutely love this and the other can’t stand it. I belong to first type. I can go on eating these forever without stopping. We have many mango trees in our garden. Some of them have a very thick layer of pulp in them....

I get many requests for day to day simple recipes. I avoid posting some of my favorite dishes thinking they are way too simple. I have to try and bring these comfort foods to the blog more often. This is my aayi’s recipe. She is not finding time to post anything these days, so I thought of posting it. The ginger and onion give a great flavor. Please note, it is not the traditional Konkani Talaasani, but made like talaasani, so I mentioned the name....

Adults only chutney – Attempt this only if your taste buds are mature enough to handle very spicy dishes :). North Karnataka food is very popular for its spicy dishes. This must be one of the spiciest cuisines of world. People here eat raw green chilies with rice or rottis . When I say raw green chilies, they are not the mild ones available here in US. They are the very spicy variety....

I am a big fan of cooking channels. I used to watch Food Network for hours before Ishaan was born. Then a time came when I didn’t have a single moment to sit infront of TV, so we decided to cancel cable. Then, around last year, I found out this amazing channel CreateTV . It has some of the best cooking and art shows, somethings I really love. The cooking shows are very simple and without any of the extra glamour/hype of Food Network....

As I had mentioned earlier, Konkanis make many different sarus which are like rasams . These are very quick to make, so they are very suitable when you want to cook something tasty very fast. This is such a saru which has very few ingredients. My mother and grand mother used to make these kind of sarus . This is my son in law’s favorite and on his request, I am posting this....

Few days back when I had requested for kids’ lunch box recipes, one of my readers asked me to post lunch box ideas for adults. I gave it a thought and finally decided to click pictures of hubby’s lunch box and post them here. I do not know how long this category will continue, because it becomes very difficult to click pictures early morning when I usually run here and there to finish cooking lunch and breakfast before 8AM....

Muth/Moth or Matki is one of my favorite beans. Â I love to sprout these beans as they sprout pretty easily. I use it in many different dishes. This particular sidedish has become a regular at home. My pachi makes something similar to this. We love it both with chapathis or rice. Here is my pachi’s version of matki usal . Ingredients: 1 cup muth/moth/matki beans 1 cup potato 1/2 tea spn garlic paste 1/2 tea spn ginger paste 1 tea spn goda masala A pinch turmeric 1/2 tea spn chilli powder Oil Salt...

Mushrooms was one of the favorite things to eat when I was growing up. I haven’t been using them much lately. Last week I saw a pack of beautiful pack of mushrooms and I impulsively bought it. I wanted to make something different. I prepared this spicy Mushroom – capsicum gravy. It was so good, V sent a message to my family whatsapp group saying “the best bhaji with chapati in the history of the universe” lol....

I like to make dosas for breakfast, mainly because half of the work is done when batter is prepared on the previous day. So I am always in search for these dosa recipes. Recently I tried this recipe and we both loved it. There are many different recipes for paper dos a, which is basically dosa which is thin like paper and very crispy. Usually in restaurants, they use a big tava and make a huge paper dosa ....

In India, we were frequent visitors to Nandini restaurant . This is the place where we became huge fans of Andhra food. We loved the normal vegetarian thali , which according to us, was a comfort food. The other thing we absolutely loved there was their chicken dishes. Since hubby is not a great fan of chicken with bones, we would always pick up some boneless dish. After a while, our staple chicken order was for an extremely flavorful pepper chicken....

Peppercorns are usually called as pepper in India. I mentioned this because people get confused when we refer to it as pepper in recipes. Scientific name of pepper is piper nigrum. They grow to a vine. The leaves look similar to betel leaf but slightly rough and not edible. We have 3-4 pepper plants in our garden which are twined against jackfruit trees. Pepper is also called as Mareech in Sanskrit, Meeri in Marathi, Kaali mirchi in Hindi, Miriyalu in Telugu, Milagu in Tamil and Karimenasu or Menasinakaalu in Kannada, Miryakan in Konkani....

Few days back, Aruna had mailed me this recipe. Usually I use pineapple to make either paank or juice . I have a good stock of paank with me now, so that option was ruled out. I started giving the fruit to hubby in his lunch box and when I was cutting it day before yesterday, it reminded me of this recipe. As Aruna said here , a pinch of yellow food color is added to this to give a nice color....

Bittergourd has become a latest addition to our diet. Whenever V does shopping at Indian store, he invariably picks up few bittergourds. They have pretty short shelf life, so I have to use them up quickly. Karathe kismuri is the only dish I end up making with it since we love that dish so much. Recently, whenever I fry bittergourd to make this dish, both V and Ishaan keep eating the fried pieces as it is, before even it gets into any dish!...

I am always in search of good spinach recipes. Few days ago, I was chatting with my sister in law and asked her if she had any good recipes with it. She gave me a cutlet recipe. The following is inspired by that. It can be served as a starter at parties too. They get ready very fast and have a great taste. Ingredients: 1 cup finely chopped spinach 1/4 cup finely chopped coriander leaves 1 and 1/2 cups boiled,mashed potatoes 1 tbl spn rice flour 3 green chilies ground into paste 1 tea spn ginger paste 1 tea spn garlic paste 1 tea spn pav bhaji masala (or garam masala) Oil Salt Sooji/rava...