Ingredients: 3 cups cauliflower cut into pieces 1/2 cup chopped onion 2-3 cloves 1 inch cinnamon 1 tea spn red chilli powder 1 tea spn coriander powder 1/2 tea spn cumin powder Salt Oil or ghee Method: Heat oil and add cloves, cinnamon and onion. Fry till onion turns golden brown. Add cauliflower, salt and little water. Close the lid and cook. When half done, add chili power, coriander powder and cumin powder....
Chakli/chaakli or Murukku is my first entry in ‘dabbe khaaN’ category (dabbe khaaN means the food that can be prepared and saved for many days in a dabba or jar). Chakli is the most famous crunchy snack or ‘dabbe khaaN’ of India. I think every household has their own way of making this dish. When I was in college, mom would make this in bulk and give us. In our hostel, all the friends would attack it as soon as we reached hostel from home....
Many people had asked me to post ‘how to make soft chapathis and phulkas’. Finally I am here with this post. Those who are expert in chapathi/phulka making, skip this post. My experience with chapathi/phulka was very bad. When I started cooking, I could never make soft chapathis/phulkas. They used to come out very hard. I still remember one incident that happened in my previous office. There was a bachelor guy, who was very humerous and never missed any chance of pulling my leg....
This was on the drafts for a long time now. My colleague Cyndy asked me this recipe few days ago, I heard it partially and posted Chicken tikka . She had asked this for her friend Barbara, who mailed me next day asking about tikka masala that is served in Indian stores here. For one or the other reason, I could not make it before and I finally prepared it over the weekend....
WISH YOU ALL A VERY VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS DIWALI. Finally I managed to cook some goodies for Diwali. To say the truth, this is the first time I cooked so many things for the festival. All these years, my Aayi prepared and I ate. But this time since I am so far from home, I was missing all the fun. When I came to know, my brother and sis-in-law are going to native for the Diwali, I started feeling homesick....
Ingredients: 3 cups chopped bhindi (Okra) 1 tbl spn besan (grama flour) 1 tea spn rice flour 1 tea spn chilli powder 1/4Â tea spn tamariand pulp A pinch turmeric 1/2 tea spn garam masala Oil Salt Method: Cut bhindi into thin long pieces. Heat oil and add all other ingredients. Fry till bhindi is cooked. Serve hot. Serves : 2 Preparation time : 15min When I was doing my engineering, there was a “Mandar mess” near our hostel....
Shilpa:Â Here is one of the most awaited recipes from my brother. He and my SIL took these pictures and wrote the post. Here is the recipe in their own words. Since my visit to Bangalore, the most adored type of fish fry has been masala fry. I tasted it for the first time at a very small restaurant called ‘Kinara’ on Modi hospital road in Bangalore. Though all of my friends were teetotallers, this bar and restaurant always attracted us for its very resonable ‘numbers on right hand side of its menu’....
This week I am going to post some of the very basic recipes. So these posts are here to help newbie cooks in some small way. These will have more details than the normal posts to make cooking easy for newbies. Idli is one thing that I didn’t get right so many times. After continued efforts and focus, finally I am proud to say I can prepare good, soft yummy idlis ....
As I have mentioned earlier, rice is an important and main item in our food. So during the fasting days, we eat rice only once a day and avoid it for all other meals. At my home, we do fasting every panchami (fifth day of fortnight in Hindu calender). During these days, satvik food -pure vegetarian food without onion and garlic, is prepared. We eat rice with lunch but for dinner, we either eat fruits or make something with wheat....
I always wondered how this name originated? Since ‘kodu’- horn (as in cow’s horn), and ‘bale’-bangle in Kannada, I thought since this dish looks like bangle made of horn, it is called as ‘kodbale’, when I read this same definition in one of yahoo groups, I was really surprised!!!. My mom’s Kodbale are one of the best I have ever had. They were crunchy, tasty and remained good for months....
As many of my regular readers know, I am a huge fan of stuffed parathas, just like my parents. Aayi always mentions the parathas that my brother’s cook made. When the cook left, my brother would bring parathas from some hotel for her. One of their favorites is mooli paratha. I had not tried making these before. Few days ago, I had to use up a radish and I thought it was good idea to try making these and they came out delicious....
It feels like I haven’t posted anything here in ages. Ever since I started working again, things got hectic. This Monday parents returned back to India. So I don’t even find a single moment to relax, forget about spending time on blogging. Anyway, I do not want to give up so easily, I will post when I get few moments. I tried this radish rice few months ago. I was in a mood to experiment with radishes....
Hope you all had a happy Ganesha Chaturthi. We had a small pooja at home this year too. We got a beautiful 10 inch Ganesha from local Indian store here. Ishaan also enjoyed looking at the decorations. We could not do much decorations this year as V did everything at the last moment, but still it was lovely pooja. I made a small spread for the offering. It had idlis, dali thoy , muga randayi , tandla paays, baje , taushe hulel , modak ....
Ridgegourd or Gosale is one of the favorite vegetables for any Konkani person. It is one of those vegetables where every part of it is used – even the ridges to make a chutney . When my father in law was alive, we used to grow ridgegourd in our garden. These days we have many more banana plants, mango trees, so we no more have the empty space where these vegetables were grown....
Sometimes I wonder, how little I knew about Konkani cuisine before I started this blog. The directions to new recipes come from different requests I get here. Batate vaagu is one such dish that I learnt recently, even though I had heard about it before. Most of the Konkani dishes are known for their very bright red color and spicy taste. Now, few of you may wonder that you never saw the color in my pictures....
I have mentioned many times that my brother is a very good cook. He is a perfectionist. Whenever he cooks, he follows the elaborate method and comes up with absolutely yummy dishes. He almost never takes shortcuts. When I started cooking, I used to concentrate more on fast cooking because I am a very impatient cook. I understood the meaning of proper cooking only after moving to US. I had a lot of free time, so I would cook slowly....
Few months ago, when I was still pregnant, I was frantically searching for recipes with spinach because of its health benefits. Some of you might have noticed, I was posting many spinach recipes. While talking to Pel , I mentioned the same and he suggested adding sambar powder to spinach-potato dish. I started making this dish and thought adding kasoori methi and lemon juice would be a nice change. It came out very delicious....
This post was in our drafts for a while now. We sun dry many vegetables , which make nice crispy accompaniments with meals. One such vegetable is tindora or tendli. Once dried, these are stored in air tight containers. While serving, these are deep fried. For health reasons, I fry them in a tea spoon of oil, a handful at a time on a very low heat. They go very well with curd and rice....
GooD (pronounced go-o-D) shankarpal must be another signature sweet made for Diwali in many Marathi/Konkani homes. Last year I had tried these for the first time. But then, I forgot to take pictures, so I could not post it here. I don’t make these dishes very often – once a year is also a very good number according to me, not because I don’t like them, infact I love these too much....
Some of you may start wondering what happened to me suddenly to start posting a recipe every day. Here is the answer. We are planning to go to India this month. Before that, I want to post more so that I can convert most of my drafts into posts. I am a cooking freak and the pace at which I post never catches up with the pace I cook. Sometimes it so happens that, I even forget the dish I cooked few days ago and keep wondering what is the dish in a particular picture (I can never type in the recipe soon after I cook it, as I get very tired by the time I finish cooking, so no, that advise will not work in my case)....
