Thai Yellow Curry

 

Its a funny story on when I tasted my first ever Thai khana. Well, it was not when I was travelling in Bangkok, though I could’ve had the authentic best there. The fear of everything being mixed with oyster sauce scared the vegetarian-me so much , that all the days that we were in Thailand, we went looking for an Indian restaurant, and ate Alu Paratha – all 3 times a day, for almost a week. Yes, shame on us.

And after I came back, I bumped into blog posts stating how awesome Thai food is and how tasty the street food there is. Well, that was when I felt a real heartburn ! :) A very valuable lesson learnt from the foolishness displayed in the Land of Smiles was that, no matter how it is, we have decided to try the local cuisine. Or atleast not search maniacally for Indian restaurants.

So when we saw that Hydie had its first own Thai restaurant, Isda Thai, we dined there almost immediately. The ambience was awesome, so was the food. What I loved the best is that they had veggie options for every dish on the menu. It felt like paradise. Thats where I ate my first ever red, yellow and green curries. And fell in love with the spices used in them. Since then, it had been a dream to make Thai food!

When I saw this recipe by Arundati, I tried it right away. Yellow Curry with white rice – Made a pretty picture on the plate.

Followed most of the steps in the recipe to the T, but made some minor changes to it, because of lack of ingredients, and reluctance to use some :)

1. I did not use the oyster mushroom sauce. I know its vegetarian, but blame it on the word ‘oyster’!
2. Didn’t find baby bok chok anywhere, and so omitted that. Could’ve substituted that with spinach as advised by Arundati and Nandita, but didnt have that too handy.
3. Had just cauliflowers, red & yellow peppers and one small zucchini.

As I was making the yellow paste ready, I could not help notice the uncanny resemblances between a Mangalorean dish called ''Kodyelu’ and this paste. They have the same basic ingredients(cumin, coconut milk and coriander) , and Yellow curry paste has a few more exotic ones.

What I made might not be an exact Thai Yellow curry, but we loved the spice in this, and the taste overall. And it totally appealed to the husband who loves anything that can be eaten with white rice!

Pasta with red sauce

 

As already wrote here, pasta is my ever favourite food to eat. Its something I cook when I am bored or when I am feeling excited or when I have time to cook or when I am too busy – just about anytime.

I used to buy the canned red sauce by Barilla and make the pasta before, but after bumping into a ton of recipes on the net for it, I decided to make my own. Now, there is nothing new in my recipe, but I just tweak around the ingredients, the quantity of the herbs to suit our palate and cut through some long routes :) . The result is always a good pasta, but something I can never replicate, because of the runtime alterations I do to the recipes.

I am sure I am not going to follow the same recipe the next time I make pasta, but this is the basic framework with which I am going to work around :). The changes I do are generally with the herbs, the
This recipe has more vegetables than is generally found in a regular pasta, and serves two for dinner.

Ingredients & Procedure:

For the sauce:
2 medium sized onions, chopped
4 large tomatoes, chopped
2 green chillies, diced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsps olive oil
Salt to taste
1 tsp each of Oregano and basil

In a pan, heat the oil on medium flame and put in the chillies and crushed garlic. After 2 mins, put the onions in the oil and roast till the onions turn to a pale pink color. Add the herbs to this. Now add the tomatoes to this and let these cook in the oil. After about 5 mins, when the tomatoes are cooked, add the salt, take the pan off the stove and let this mixture cool. Pour in a mixer and blend to a thick red paste.

For the pasta:
2 cups whole-wheat pasta(fusilli, penne or spaghetti), cooked al-dente
1/2 cup each chopped vegetables (green, red and yellow capsicums, zucchinis, cauliflower florets)
1 medium-sized onion, chopped into long pieces
1 cup washed and chopped spinach leaves
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp each Italian herbs (I generally use oregano, thyme, basil, sage)
1 tbsp basil pesto
Salt to taste
2 cups red sauce(made from the recipe given above)

For garnishing:
Cheese grated or diced. (I generally use the Britannia Masala Mania cheese cubes or Cheddar slices)

Heat the oil in a thick bottomed pan and add the onions to this. Add the herbs and basil pesto and let these roast in the oil. Put the capsicums in the pan now, and roast them for 4-5 mins. Now add the other vegetables like cauliflower florets, spinach and zucchinis and cook for another 4-5 mins. Now add the red sauce to this mixture, and let it cook till the sauce boils. Add the salt to taste in this mixture. Add the cooked pasta to this and mix this well, but careful to not crush the veggies.
Garnish with the cheese and serve warm.

Mamma, am coming home…

 

Yes, I was going to Mom’s house after 3 months, and during this period I had started baking. Mom, who is someone who has never asked for anything special to eat for herself so far, actually asked me to make something for her.

So the day before I was to leave to her place, I started baking at 7 and finished by 11 :)
I baked her a Paneer Cake, Ukranian Tea Cake, Chocolate Brownies and Peanut Butter Cookies, and she loved them all! :D

Weekend breakfast–Rawa Idli

Rawa Idli is that dish which, in spite of being a hotelier’s daughter, I have not gotten over. In Mom’s house, I would just have to utter the word Rawa Idli, and Dad would send the piping hot idlis home, but after I moved away and got married, I had to look for sustainable options  to eat this delicacy. One of the was cooking it myself, more because of the husband’s love for all south Indian khana(That man’s ability to eat South Indian food day after day after day without complaining and in fact relishing it is something I am yet to understand!)

One of those weekend mornings early into our marriage and my kitchen days, the husband suggested that I make Rawa Idli for him. Like a dutiful wife, I went to the supermarket, bought the MTR rawa idli mixes and made him the idlis. As usual, he loved them and thats how we started stacking up packets and packets of the mixes.

Life would’ve gone this way happily had I not joined the anti-readymade-food-campaign(God alone knows where I caught it from. My guess is wisdom :) ) and gave away all these packets to the maids. This meant longer hours in the kitchen, more raking of the brains for recipes and varieties of home-cooked meals, and with the small incentive of healthier and tastier food. We, of course, chose the road less taken, and moved to the bright side of food-eating.

Giving away the packets meant, I no longer get to eat the awesome MTR rasam or sambar rice and oh the horror, Rawa Idli also! Well, those were the dire times which pushed me to start making my own rawa idlis. :)

Some reading up and some talking to the women in the family yielded me this recipe, and ever since I started making this, I’ve never got the urge to stock up on the ready-made stuff! Honest!

The recipe is simple. In two steps, Make dry upma and mix it with sour curd. Yes, that simple! :)

Here is a more detailed recipe, though !

Ingredients:

1 cup Bombay Rawa
1 tsp each of mustard seeds, chana dal, urad dal, jeera
A pinch of hing (Asafoetida)
4-5 crumpled kadi patta
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp ginger, finely chopped
2 tbsps refined oil

2 cups sour curd(I leave the curd out of the fridge overnight for breakfast the next day)
A pinch of salt

Procedure:

Heat the oil in the pan on a medium flame, and add the mustard seeds to it. Once the seeds start spluttering, add the chana dala, urad dal and jeera to this. Once all these attain a golden color, add the hing and kadi patta. Now add the chilli and ginger pieces to the oil. Wait till they are a roasted.

Pour the rawa in the pan, and mix with the roasted ingredients. Keep roasting the rawa till you notice the change in smell of the rawa. Its is a nice roasted fragrance which is hard to miss. Take care to not burn the rawa and that its roasted evenly. Let this mixture cool.

At this point, you have two choices. Either mix 2 cups of hot water to this and let it evaporate and eat it like Upma. Or mix this with sour curd and make Rawa idli.

Once you mix this curd, do not let it sit for more than 2-3 mins. This mixture hardens, and you will need to add some water to soften it again, and get it to the batter consistency.

Depending on your method of making idlis, ie either pressure cooker or microwave, grease the idli pans, and pour one spoon each of this mixture into each mould.

I make these in a microwave, and heat the idli mixture for 6 mins at full power.

Serve with coconut chutney.

Date & Cashew cake

When I was a kid , Mom used to make everything possible in her might to make me drink my evening milk. She used to resort to emotional blackmail, loud screaming, feign ignorance to the fact that I hate the milk and also push that milk glass down my throat. Which kid would love to drink plain milk 4 times a day, that too when there was no sugar added to it, tell me!

Being the strong-willed woman that she is, she always got her way. But she adopted the best of her ways only after about 18 yrs, which we loved. She would make a different milkshake every evening for us(me and my younger brother), and that was something we loved. One of her fave recipes and ours too was the date milkshake. So the minute I saw this cake recipe, I was taken back to the time when we used to fight to finish off the milkshake, this time fondly. She used to soak the dates in milk the previous night and grind it to a paste and then mix it with a larger quantity of milk. This cake has a similar method to make the date mixture.

This weekend was just awesome in terms of the number of cakes baked in my oven. I baked this date cake continuously for three consecutive days, twice for friends and the last time for myself, each time altering the recipe a bit to suit my palate :)

The first time I baked this, I followed the recipe to the T, the second time, I reduced the oil by half and the third time, I baked this with whole wheat flour and with no oil. I got to taste this all three times, and this cake was splendid all the three times. There was a minor difference in texture each time, but something which I could live with.

This is the final recipe that I am going to follow from now for this cake. This recipe yields one 6’ round cake.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
18 dates, de-seeded and chopped
3/4 cup milk
10 cashews chopped into small pieces
1/6 cup oil(if required. Adds density to the cake, but is still perfect without it)

Procedure

Soak the dates in hot milk and boil it for 2-3 mins. When the dates soften, take the milk vessel off the stove and let it cool. Add the sugar to this mixture. After the milk cools, put this in the mixer and grind to a thick paste.

Grease the cake tin with butter and preheat the oven to 200C.

In a large mixing bowl, sieve the flour and baking soda together. Add the date mixture to this, and oil if you are adding it. Mix these two well and add the chopped cashews to this mixture. Pour this paste into the cake tin and  decorate with cashews on top. Bake for 30-40 mins at 200C or till the tester is clean.I bake this at 185C for 30 mins, and at 200C for another 10 mins but this might depend on the oven.

Let it cool and then share with friends. Enjoy!

Each time I baked this cake, I was in no position to take a photo of this one. Either I was giving it away to friends or we just started biting in almost immediately, but I shall put up a pic of this one soon! :)

Recipe Courtesy: Aayi’s Recipes

Marbled Banana Chocolate Bread

 

With this, I feel arrived! Honestly! :)

After baking the Banana choco-chip cake and loving how it tasted, all I could think was to bake Marble Banana Chocolate bread. Since morning, the procedure to do it was running on my head. The visions of chocolate and banana batter mixing with each other were playing havoc with my mind! The bread wouldnt just leave me alone. I thought of it as I was tadka-dalofying to my dal, as I was driving and as I was having my breakfast. It just had to be baked! I just wasnt sure of the quantities. And earlier experiments have shown that baking without proper ingredients is not good for one’s own sanity! :)

So some search on the internet and I bumped into this recipe. What I totally loved about this recipe was that the procedure and the ingredients I had in mind were exactly these, and it can easily be adapted to be egg-less! :D

As I was baking this a sweet smell engulfed my kitchen and I wished over and over again that I should’ve been able to bottle up the fragrance and let it out later… yes, it was that awesome! Like they show in the advertisements :)

So here it is, Marbled Banana Chocolate Bread -

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour(I used 1:1 ratio of whole wheat and AP flour)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick/2 oz/56g) butter, softened
3 Bananas. Ripe and mashed. (This should be about 1 cup)
4 tbsps yogurt (or 2 eggs)
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips(I used 100 gms of dark chocolate)

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a 9’x3’ bread tin.

Melt the butter just a bit by microwaving it for 30 secs. Melt the chocolate in a separate cup by microwaving it at high for 1 min, and then stir it to mix the lumps.

In a mixing bowl, mix the sugar and butter. Add the mashed bananas and yogurt to this, and mix well.

Sieve the flours with the soda and salt. Add the wet mixture to this and mix it well to a batter consistency.

Take about half a cup of this batter and mix it with chocolate in a separate cup.

Pour the white batter and the chocolate batter alternatively into the bread tin. And mix them with a spoon, just once. The layers should be visible in this bread.

Bake at 180C for about 75 mins. I baked it at 185C for 60 mins and at 170 for 15 mins. Check for the tester to be clean.

Cut it in slices, and serve. This bread stays better and tastes awesome when you let it in the fridge overnight. We ate it for breakfast the next morning, and absolutely loved it!

Banana choco-chip cake

 

I bumped into this recipe when I was searching for some fruit based cakes. I had grown tired of baking the same recipes over and over again, and so this one was a total welcome bake. The banana flavour blended with the chocolate flavour and tasted heavenly. This is a dense cake, and I followed the recipe to the T. This yielded me one 6’ round cake, and two 3’x2’ square tin full of cakes, which I gave to friends who seemed to like this too.

So here it is. I slightly modified the recipe from here, to make it eggless.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
¾ cup Brown Sugar
2/3 cup Chocolate chips
3 Bananas (overripe), peeled. You can either mash them or paste them.
1/6 cup Oil
4 tbsp thick yogurt

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 200C and grease the cake tins.

Sieve the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together. In a large mixing bowl, mix the yogurt and sugar together. Add the oil to this mixture and whisk well.

Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients just about enough. Add the choco chips to this mixture and fold in.

Pour in the cake tins and bake for about 30 mins at 200C or till tester is clean.

Peanut Butter Choco-chip cookies

Ever since I read on JoyTheBaker’s blog about Peanut butter and chocolate together, I have been drooling. No, am not kidding. I have been literally thinking about how awesome peanut butter would taste if I make a brownie with it or a cake with it and so on…

For someone who has discovered peanut butter very recently(just about an  year ago), I have taken to it like its my staple diet. If I was not worried about the fat I’d pile on with all that eating of PB, I’d probably have it everyday for breakfast and lunch and dinner also. Yes, thats how much I love PB. And every time I have it with jam and bread for breakfast, I remember the taste the whole day and grin to myself. Yes, the way I love PB is just weird!

So imagine how much I’d have been craving and thinking about PB being in one of the baked dessert items. Yes, it was on my head ever since I read that post.

Just the other day, I came home frantically wanting to make something with PB. I rushed through my bookmarked recipes and found this recipe(the one listed at the bottom of this post, under Recipe Courtesy) . And I was about to start making it, when I realized I had run out of baking soda. Aaaaah! The horror! So I ended up making Dark Chocolate brownies, which turned out to be heavenly and is a totally different story. But remember, my PB craving has not been satiated yet.

As much as I loved the thought of the Dark Choc brownie around me – in my fridge, in my tummy, in my mouth – anywhere, I was waiting for it to be finished, so I could try something with PB. Yes, I have to wait for one dish to finish before I start baking another, this is the only way I can kill the guilt that eats me up!

Going to Mom’s house came as the perfect opportunity, and I jumped to it. That was when this awesome cookie was baked, and was loved by both of us. (For the total non-dessert eater that S was, its sad how I have changed him. He eats everything I try and gives me very constructive criticism if its gone bad and reaches out for the second piece every single time :D)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/8 cup water
1/2 cup oil 
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips
8 spoons of milk(If the batter is too dry, mix spoon by spoon)

Procedure:
1. The usual drill – pre-heat the oven to 200C and prepare your baking sheet. Mine is as usual foil wrapped on my grill
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix the peanut butter with the sugars, water, oil and vanilla extract
3. Sieve the flours with baking powder, baking soda and salt
4. Pour the flour mixture into the wet ingredients mixture and mix just enough
5. If you see that the mixture is too dry for you to roll the dough into balls, add spoon by spoon of milk into the batter, till you see the right consistency (This piece of advice came as a life-saver from N at the right minute for me)
6. Add the choco chips to this mixture and do not over-mix
7. On the baking sheet, take a spoonful of the dough and roll it into a small round ball. Flatten it on the sheet. If you would like to beautify it, do so with fork impressions, which is what I did.
8. Bake this for about 20 mins at 200C and flip the cookies to ensure that the other side is baked as well
9. Bake the other side for about 10 mins at 185C

This cookie does not melt in the mouth as I have seen, but it tastes brilliant. The PB taste is not too much to overpower your other taste buds, but is still distinctly felt. On cooling, this cookie does turn out to be a little hard, but I am okay with it, since the overall fat content of this cookie is way lesser than the other pure-butter ones. And next time I try this, I am going to do this with whole-wheat flour.

Recipe from – My Diverse Kitchen

Espresso choco chip shortbread cookies

 

Now, cookies are something I always see on blogs, drool  upon, wonder if I should try them and tell myself that I can never pull them off and close the blog dejectedly. In addition to my doubts on my baking capabilities, there is one more reason. I can never afford to eat that much butter. The amount of butter in the cookies is just plain… humongous! And there is no way on earth I can make and eat them and not feel guilty.

But this one particular evening, after having had loads of cookie discussions with friends on Twitter, and after having stared at this recipe page (link in the Recipe courtesy below) for a considerable amount of time, I decided I will try baking this one.
So what if it uses an entire butter stick! (Too scared of the amount of butter in this, I decided to halve the portions, though)

Oh but then, I knew I was having guests who were to stay over, so I thought I’ll bake these cookies for morning coffee and impress them.

Ingredients:

1/2 tablespoon instant espresso powder(Nescafe it is!)
1/2 tablespoon boiling water
1 sticks (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature(I used 100g of Amul butter)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips
 

Procedure

1. No need to preheat the oven now :)
2. Mix the espresso powder with the hot water to make strong coffee and set it aside to cool
3. In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and the sugar well enough to make a smooth mixture. Add the coffee and the vanilla essence to this mixture
4. Add the flour to this mixture and mix just enough

5. Take a small sized zip lock bag and transfer the batter into the bag. Lay it on the counter and even it out carefully, so that there are no creases in the plastic sheet. Also be careful to not let the batter out of the bag. Once the batter is spread evenly to all corners of the bag and is of even thickness, close the bag and put this in the refrigerator

6. I let this bag be in the fridge overnight, and removed it the next morning
7. Preheat the oven to 200C and line up the baking sheet. I wrap my grill with aluminium foil and use that as the baking sheet. Gives me a lot of space. Yet again, a friend gave me this idea.
8. Cut open the plastic bag, and cut even squares of the batter

8. Put these on the baking sheet atleast 2 inches apart from each other and bake them at 185C for about 15 mins.
9. I had to flip the cookies and bake the other side for 4 mins too

10. Did you spot a mistake that I did here? Well, I turned lazy midway and tried putting as many cookies as possible on the sheet, and see what happened. Luckily, this wasnt a huge mistake, and I could easily break off the cookies that were stuck to each other

We enjoyed them in the balcony with lots of conversations, and had a great time. But there is no way I am going to bake these cookies all for ourselves. I even gave away half the amount of cookies to S’s colleagues. They were addictive and we were scared we’d eat them up ourselves and then roll over in guilt :)

Recipe Courtesy : Smitten Kitchen (Check out her photos. They are enough to make you drool!)

Dark Choc brownie to end a tough day!

Today was not a good day. I cant point out at one reason, but it has been a very stressful day, with even a panic attack. Dont ask me the reason, I’ll tell you when I figure it out myself.
Suddenly at 3PM , I felt this craving to bake something. It might’ve been my mind’s escape mechanism to get out of the stress and calm myself, but it took a lot for me to stay on till 6PM at work after that thought. The minute I reached home, I ran to the kitchen and took stock of things I had. No walnuts. No Baking soda. But yes, loads of dark chocolate(I bought a big bar of cooking chocolate, inspired by N, hoping that would help me when I run out of stuff. And yes, it did!) Now what would I bake. One look at the recipe notebook(I bookmark all interesting recipes I come across in OneNote Notebooks, filed by sections. Yeah, I really use technology for all walks of life :P) and I saw that there were a couple of brownie and cookie recipes that I had wanted to try out.
My mind did a minor ping-pong jig and told me to do something with peanut butter and/or chocolate. More and more browsing led me to this fave site of mine. I picked up the recipe, halved the measures, modified it slightly to make it egg-less and voila! I had my dark chocolate brownie ready!
It tasted absolutely heavenly, and this is one brownie I am going to make and not share with anyone. Honestly!
Ingredients
8 tbsp (125gms or 1/4 of the 500gm bar) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
6 tbsps unsalted butter(75 gms – 3/4 of the Amul 100g butter pack)
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cups sugar
2 large eggs (I used 4 tbsps yogurt, hoping it would add to the density)
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon instant espresso powder
Oh btw, since the dessert was exotic, the dinner was just Foodles!
On a totally sidenote, do you think I might need help if I resort to baking even when I am stressed at work? Do you think this phase would pass off too? I hope it does, coz its not helping my hips! Sigh!

Zucchini zuppa

J, a very good friend of mine at work got me her big book on Soups and motivated me to try some from them. I’ve had the book with me for a while, and all I did was to turn the pages and sigh tiredly. The whole idea of going through the elaborate process of making the soup for the just the two of us was very tiring, but the photographs in the book were just luring me to try one of these. One weekend we were having friends over for dinner, and I had just the mood to do something new. One thorough look into the book told me that I have been tired for the wrong reason, coz the recipes in the book were just simple.

I picked up the most simple yet interesting one, and tried it. In spite of my doubts on its taste, the guests loved the soup. :)

Ingredients

1 Zucchini, washed and chopped. Preferably green colored one
1 Onion, diced into medium sized pieces
4-5 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp curry powder (I used Priya Koora Karam podi)
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying the Zucchini
1 cup vegetable stock
Some Italian herbs like Oregano and sage(optional)

Procedure

1. Put a medium sized pan on the stove and pour olive oil in it. Wait till the oil heats up and put in the onions into it
2. After a while, put in the crushed garlic cloves and sauté a bit
3. Add the zucchini pieces and sauté more till just enough. You can add the herbs at this point
4. Let this mixture cool down, and blend in a mixer or a  hand blender. The puree should not be too soft and should still retain very small zucchini pieces, and the green color
5. Put a medium sized saucepan on the stove, and heat this puree in it.
6. If the mixture is too thick, add the stock water and mix well and bring to a boil
7. Serve warm

The original recipe did not have the garlics, but I wanted to experiment with them and it just added to the taste. Also, the recipe says that this soup tastes better when it is served chilled. So try that option too.

Olive-Jalapeno muffins

I’ve seen some savoury muffin recipes on couple of blogs, but never got around to baking them. Somehow, the shape and perception of a muffin in my head means it had to be sweet. And so I could never imagine how a savoury muffin should be or could be. Its been on the Do-List for a while now, and yday was the day.

Last evening, the husband guy suddenly said he wanted to eat something dry, spicy and with garlic in it.He obviously forgot to add the word fried in it and I grabbed the chance. I was also intending to bake some for some friends, so I thought I’d do these.

A quick tweet to my trusted advisors(read:Fellow bakers) and N called and dictated me the recipe from the Muffin Bible.

Jalapenos, garlic and herbs weren’t part of the original recipe, but I added them to add to appeal to the husband’s palate.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp yogurt
1 1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 water
2 cups flour(I mixed 1 3/4 cups of wheat with 1/4 AP flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 slices cheddar,cut into very small pieces
1/2 cup olives, de-seeded and chopped
1/2 cup Jalapenos, chopped to small pieces
1 tsp chilli flakes
some herbs like Oregano and Thyme (I added 1/2 tbsp of each)

Procedure:
1. Sieve the flour with both baking soda and baking powder and keep aside. Add herbs to this mixture.
2. Beat the yogurt till its soft and add water to it.
3. Mix yogurt with the flour mix and mix well enough.
4. Add the olives, cheddar and jalapenos to this, and mix just enough
5. Pour spoonful of this mixture into each muffin paper cup or a greased muffin mould.
6. Bake in a pre-heated oven(200C) for 12 mins at 200C.
7. Check the tester and if you feel that you still need to bake it, do so at 185C for another 4 mins.

This muffin tasted awesome when served warm from the oven, but it was better when it was eaten cold. I put this in the fridge and re-heated it this morning, for breakfast and it tasted good then too.
The cheese pieces along with the tanginess of the olives and hot taste of the jalapenos just tastes brilliant, and appeals to a different section of the tongue, altogether! :)

Shared some of these with friends at work, and they seemed to like these.