In this post, I am sharing a traditional method of making jalebis using yeast, flour, ghee, sugar and yogurt. These homemade jalebi turn out super crispy and irresistible! If you are in a mood for a seasonal twist, may I suggest my pumpkin jalebi recipe? Come end of September and its time for autumn festivities. Hindus all over India celebrate Navratri (nine days of fasting & feasting), worshipping Goddess Durga in nine pristine forms, each form depicting a virtue....
I am officially starting off my Deepavali Snacks and Sweets series for this year. What else could be a better start than this most delicious Kaju Katli recipe. Every year I meticulously plan Diwali recipes just because it is my favorite festival of the year and it brings back so many wonderful childhood memories. I have a list of recipes planned and requested, that will be featured in the coming days....
It’s been a really long time I posted anything from my mother’s kitchen, my favorite cuisine of all – Andhra special recipes. So here is a recipe that is close to my heart and is so simple yet quite delicious – Kandi Podi, that delicious spiced gun powder recipe that is inevitable in any Andhra special meal. There are certain things that are so simple and are a part of every day meal in our houses that it barely feels special....
Kara Boondi is a popular South Indian snack made with chickpea flour and spices, garnished with roasted cashews, peanuts and curry leaves. Tiny pearls of crispy & crunchy fried boondi is such a tasty and much addictive snack. Every year for Deepavali I make a batch of kara boondi to be turned into Madras Mixture or South Indian mixture recipe, but never got a chance to document the boondi recipe until now....
We are a big chutney loving family. We love our chutneys so much that we don’t mind what the main dish is sometimes, as much as we worry about the side dishes. I have gone on and on here about how we love our hearty breakfasts every morning. And no South Indian breakfast is complete without a good chutney. I have already posted a few combinations of onion and tomato chutneys – precisely how my mom or my MIL would prepare....
I can eat these egg rolls everyday, they are so delightful! My love affair with Calcutta Egg rolls started much before I married into a Bengali family. Delhi is a culturally diverse city and during Durga Pujo you would find a lot of puja pandals sprouting up throughout the walled city. The evenings of navami were dedictaed to pandal hopping for us. There used to be a big pandal near our house and we used to walk there to attend the evening aarti and savor the delectable offerings from the food stalls....
In this post, I am sharing how to make these fritters using a aebeskiver pan, however you can deep fry them too. Pakora/Pakoda= Fritters. Kuttu Ka Atta= Buckwheat Flour. In my grandmother’s house, we always had kuttu ke pakode for falahari meals. These are also know as vrat ke pakode or falahari pakode. This is an easy kuttu recipe for Navartri or for any fasting occasion. You can make these with tea for snacking on usual days too- these are nutritious, satisfying, crispy and delicious!...
When it was the pickling season, the attention shifted from regular tasks to raw mangoes, baby limes and chilies.To tell you the truth the pungent smell of strong pickling spices along with the piquant aroma of virgin mustard oil would be the last thing you would want to sniff at 6 in the morning but her dedication and involvement towards this business was contagious. Attention to detail boiled down to sterilizing the knifes and kitchen towels that would or could touch those chilies and mangoes,leave alone the large glass containers and spoons or bowls....
I am a huge fan of easy chicken dishes. Some of my all time favorites include baked chicken wings, chicken parmesan pasta, chicken and broccoli pasta and this chicken asparagus pasta. Spring has sprung here in California – the trees are full of blossoms, the temperature has been around 70 degrees and spring produce is starting to pop up in stores. When I saw that asparagus was on sale I had to pick up a bunch to have for dinner, and that’s how this lemon asparagus pasta with grilled chicken came to be....
Please tell me that you guys are still very much enjoying soup? Because over here, it’s still very much soup weather, with temperatures dipping into the negatives overnight. Surely soup weather, right? In all seriousness, over the last few months I’ve been making a new soup recipe every other week. You’d think I might start to get sick of it, or run out of new ideas. But nope, soup is still exciting me....
Do you feel the summer vibes or what? I am well aware that it’s only late April, but I’m definitely getting excited for summer…and Cinco de Mayo! Today’s cocktail and next Saturday’s cocktail are both Mexican inspired, and both are refreshingly delicious. Pretty excited about it. SO last summer my family traveled to Mexico for a little fun in the sun. They brought EVERYONE along. I’ve mentioned this before, but sadly I could not make the trip....
Long time no Indo-Chinese food right? I don’t know how could I let it pass without having posted anything Chinese on the blog for this long. That doesn’t actually mean I haven’t been making some amazing fried rice, noodles and such like. Don’t want to miss my every day food – do follow me on Instagram! My latest obsession has been with this out of the world low calorie mushroom manchurian dry recipe....
With two recipes of Karasev and Badusha up for Diwali, here comes my third recipe for my Diwali special sweets and savories – the best ever Madras Mixture. For the uninitiated, Mixture is just mixture (really pronounced as Micchar colloquially) . Just a mixture of this and that, making it so good. Now Madras Mixture is very special, as it has been one of the best food memories from my childhood days....
It’s the middle of July, so ice cream every day, right? Ahh, yes…of course. So here’s the story. These sandwiches are meant to take you back to your childhood summer days of chasing down the neighborhood ice cream truck or stopping in at your local ice cream shop on a hot summer day. My go-to ice cream truck order was the classic ice cream sandwich or the cookies n’ cream ice cream bar (or the strawberry shortcake one…oddly)....
And because it’s cold and snowy – pasta weather. Oh yes. I hate to talk about the weather yet again, but just let me get it out of my system, then we can talk about other things. K? K. Sooo, do you guys remember back in early February when I was telling you just how much snow we were getting? Well, I still think that was a lot of snow, BUT right now, in mid November, we may quickly be catching up to that amount....
But then it’s not, and umm, so DELICIOUS!! It’s my new favorite soup recipe hands down. Like it’s honestly the BEST and I really have no other words to describe it. It’s simple, fast and practically effortless… and just so dang good! It’s the soup you literally cannot stop eating. I am so excited about it – clearly. Oh, and the cinnamon sugar twist?!?! I mean, just YES. Sorry for the insane amount of excitement today....
Dad and I love love love Haldiram’s Masala Peanuts. It’s a ritual every evening when parents come over to Bangalore – As amma prepares coffee for me and tea for dad, dad would put forth two small bowls on the teapoy. Then he brings a pack of Haldiram’s Masala Peanuts and fills both the bowls. While I quickly finish off mine, dad would take every peanut and really relish it 🙂 When my stock is over, I keep going to his bowl and eat from that too....
I know we just celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday and all, but come on, let’s be honest, pizza is the way to just about everyone’s heart. It’s carby, cheesy and in today’s case, has plenty of mediterranean roasted red peppers and basil. <–my favorite kind of pizza! This is the pizza I literally grew up eating and I cannot believe I have waited so long to share it with you guys....
We all love our cheesy pizzas. There is nothing healthy in a pizza, even if we are to include a truck load of vegetables. First, the crust is prepared with all-purpose flour that is bleached and processed to get the pure white color. Do you think it is healthy? Absolutely not. Some people have allergies towards yeast. And there are some who can’t resist the oozing cheese and there are some who can’t stand the cheese....
I did a quick Google search on the topic which mostly pointed towards a British/Scottish origin. Seems the true origin dates back to the Scottish countryside in the 1700’s where the dish was made mostly by the poor from leftover lamb meat combined with gravy and mashed potatoes. It was originally called “cottage pie”. Shepherds pie didn’t come about for another 100 years or so when the Brits, who’d taken a liking to the pie but also added some veggies, favored the word shepherds over cottage....
