“Why can’t you make this coconut chutney more often ?” asked the kid, slicing off and scooping up a large spoonful from the red coconut chutney ball and adding to his bowl of hot kanji. Good Friday lunch has always been kanji (rice gruel) made from broken red rice (matta) grains, payar (this year it’s…
Category: Stories
Orange Cake (Baking with the 52 RCSS Morphy Richards OTG)π§‘π°
Everyone has a few tried, tested and by hearted recipes for the popular and fav dishes like the biryani, pulao, chicken roast, fish molee, cutlets, cookies, cake, puffs and so on. Such failsafe recipes always save the day esp. when cooking for guests and you want to put up an effortless but delicious meal (which…
Sambar secrets π
It’s the end of the week and one of the unpleasant tasks in the To Do list of food prep for the next week is grating coconuts π₯₯. Laborious process, but inescapable as we use coconut in practically all the dishes.Β And this is where Sambar scores, it’s a gravy dish that does not require…
A bespoke Onam Sadya πΊ Part π
7: 00 am, Saturday morning, Thiruvonam Day 2021 π΅; no hurry to rush to the kitchen and start with the cooking π….I had it under control or at least I believed so… The To Do list for the cooking spree on Saturday morning ran like this π Extract the thick and thin coconut milk for…
A bespoke Onam Sadya πΊ Part π
I can’t call it a traditional Onam sadya; we had 10 dishes with 8 veg and 2 non-veg, plus 3 payasams. It was a potluck sadya too, our guests were gracious enough to bring 2 dishes and 2 payasams. Hubs was skeptical, “Have you ever seen a Onam sadya spread with non-veg dishes !?” He…
Q for Queens πΈπ»
Inspired by Anita Nair’s book – the Alphabet Soup for Lovers πGood reads for the monsoon 2020 #1 π¦ we held an edible alphabet game in our family WhatsApp group. Beginning from the first of the month till the twenty sixth, the participants had to post a picture of a homemade dish, beginning with the…
Happiness homemade π
Today was my younger nephew’s b’day. He turned sevenπ¦. My brother and sil arranged an online cake cutting, the kid was thrilled and so were we. He is used to online classes, so greeting his cousins and grandparents virtually seemed perfectly normal to him. My sil took the trouble to bake a cakeπ. It was…
Back to Summer βοΈπ
The gardeners are giving a close crop to the plants around the apartment; new flower beds are being planted. Early mornings are still cool, though the people out and about for their morning power walk have shed their jackets and hoodies. The days are bright and sunny, the afternoon heat lingers into the evenings. The…
Le Creuset lunches π
This Advent season, I bought a few colourful dinnerware pieces from Le Creuset. I wanted to buy their cast iron cook pot, but felt it too heavy. I don’t want to do such heavy lifting in the kitchen right now. I am a Corelle fan, their plates are the absolute best. But the colour on…
Love is Brown π
No, it’s not chocolates, but equally sweet π There are a few things quintessential Kerala, starting with Usha Uthup’s song Ente Keralam πΆπ΅πΆ followed by food specialities like banana chips, jackfruit halwa, tapioca & fish curry, parotta & beef, puttu and so on. There is much more you can keep appending to the list, like…
Prawn delights π€
You know the curry is good when the kid says “Why don’t you make this more often?” π Roasted coconut is often added to curries to make the gravies rich, thick and so much more tastier. But the fact that you need to grate coconut, roast and then grind it into paste translates to more…
POTD: Fish Biryani
I make fish biryani atleast once a week. Easy to make one pot meal keeps everyone happy. The fish I used this time is boneless cubes of sea bass or kalanji in Malayalam. Crispy pappadam and raita completes the mealπ. The bright yellow hue also adds colour to an otherwise grey and cloudy day here in…
The magic masoor dal β¨
The humble masoor dal today has become one of my kitchen staples. Dal tadka made from masoor dal is addictive and the taste is so distinct that once you have tasted it nothing else will doπ. My discovery of this very common dal happened very recently; during the lockdown. Till then I used to make…
Breakfast bites π
Good morning π€ Friday evening we had a visit once again from the Carnival Cakes & Breads people; they had a couple of new items on their menu this time – Focaccia bread, veg puffs, egg puffs and vada pavπ. The egg puffs were in demand and were over in the first thirty minutes of…
Breakfast Bites π₯£
The kid is starting the chapter in Maths titled Permutations and Combinations; I recall my P&C days, never understood the logic clearly and just managed to scrape through. Wait, the teacher is talking about Harry Potter, I am all ears – TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE – he says any guesses on the significance of the name?…
Plan for palak (spinach) π₯¬
Mornings in Bangalore are glorious and unpredictable; you can wake up to chilly mornings with grey cloudy skies, sometimes a silent drizzle, maybe just a peek of the sun or clear cloudless blue skies with warm sun. Today was a latter kind of day and the residents were making most of it; there were more…
Mulling over millet πΎ
Millet is regarded as the new super food and there is lot of print devoted to its recent resurgence. Quinoa had a similar following sometime back. I have not tried quinoa yet, so any chance of my encounter with millet also remains bleak. We are what people call a two grain household – rice and…
Season’s special: Strawberriesπ
Strawberry jam, strawberry ice cream…a few of my favourite things made from strawberries are sweet and delightful; so could the actual fruit itself be any different. Unfortunately yes..!! January to March is the strawberry seasonπ and these red juicy gold freckled fruits make their appearance in the supermarkets and wow…fresh sweet strawberries, we take…
Food we love: Toasts ππ
“Food is what we are. It speaks for us. It stays with us. When we have lost everything else, the memories of food keep us going.” says Lathika George, author of the book The Suriani Kitchen. The kid has a list – Butter chicken from a hole in the wall place at Manali Beef pepper…
Karen Anand and Gambas Pil Pilπ©π»βπ³
This is a very old book; I remember spying it in the bookshop and at that time I had not heard of Karen Anand. I leafed through the book, because of comments behind the book by known celebrities and after reading a few lines, I wanted to devour the book and also get myself something…
Miles and smiles 