Chickpea-Cumin wrap with yogurt dip

I’ve subscribed to GoodFood magazine for two months now, and it is one of the best sources of inspirations I’ve had, in terms of recipe and also the photography angles. All of them are so professionally done, and are so well styled that even an attempt at attaining that level of perfection makes me a better photographer and cook. :-)

This recipe is from the April edition of GoodFood India, and is one of the easiest and healthiest dinners I’ve prepared. It took me exactly 15 min to put together the filling for the wrap and another 5 min to get the dip ready.

Paji Masala Kodyelu

Paji-masala-Kodyelu is a staple in any Mangalorean household, and one of my favourites. It literally means raw-masala-sambar in Tulu, in which the main ingredients for the masala are not roasted. This is something that can be eaten with white or brown rice, and also with the Mangalorean Rotti.

Like all Mangalorean dishes, this one is incredibly easy to make and has coconut, and yes, is also garnished with coconut oil before being served, which you can of course totally skip if the idea of coconut oil in your food makes you squirm. My Mangalorean heart just died for having used the words ‘squirm’ for ‘coconut oil’ but yeah, I do know savouring the taste of coconut oil is not everyone’s cup of tea. :)

Cherry Chocolate Coffee Cake

With the last couple of cake-baking experiments being huge debacles , it was like I had lost confidence to bake a proper cake again, in spite of having figured out that the mistake in the earlier cases was with the expired baking soda. But hey, you all know how it feels, right? The fear of failure? After having mixed the best of the ingredients, and great plans for that cake, seeing it end up in a crusty mess is not what we want… so yes, I hadn’t baked a single cake in two months now.

But finally, I decided to get over the fear, and bake this cake, the link to which I got from my Pinterest feed. The photographs looks awesome (now, that is what I call food photography! Wanting you to eat that thing right OFF the computer screen :-) ), and the cake looked totally do-able.

Fada ni Khichdi + Tambuli

Like most of the recipes on this blog, I came home this evening craving for some comfort food. And comfort food at dinner time for me is Khichdi. But tonight I wanted to eat something which wasn’t same as my regular khichdi recipe. I disturbed some Gujju friends at work, and searched around the web for some Gujju recipe for Khichdi, something healthy, and light, and finalized on this one.

I improvised the recipe from Tarla Dalal’s website to suit just one person, yeah, yet another meal for one. And decided to pair this with a Mangalorean no-cook curd-dish called Tambuli instead of Kadhi.
So here it is… born out of a craving to eat something North Indian and Mangalorean, my dinner menu for one :)

Peanut Butter Cookies

Ever since I made the Peanut Butter at home, I’ve not been able to get it out of my head. In order to satiate this peanut butter craving, and also to make something sweet for my dessert-loving Father-in-law, I decided to make Peanut butter cookies.



I took this recipe as an inspiration, and modified it a bit to make it eggless and more peanut butter-y. It took me 20 min to put together the entire cookie dough and another 10 min per batch to bake it. In short, in exactly 30 min, I had warm cookies , which both FIL and I relished as our after-dinner snack. :-)

Peanut Butter–Homemade

One of these days I am going to run a poll on FB and Twitter – the question is going to be – ‘Who doesn’t love Peanut Butter?’. And I am going to convince those who don’t like PB that its the best thing that has happened to mankind. Yes, I believe it is! Try it with jam for bread for an awesome breakfast. Use it as a frosting for cakes. Make brownies with this. And cookies… ummm… In short, PB is truly the best thing that has happened to mankind. :)

Well , for someone who is as crazy about PB as I am, its kind of strange that I did not know how PB tastes for the first 27 yrs of my life. I ensured that I made up for all the lost time, but yeah, the first time I tasted PB, I felt I was slipping into heaven – Peanut heaven, and I wanted to stay there. I was shuttling between HK and India then, and the only thing I ate during my time in India was PB + Jam with bread. That is how much I loved it.

Moroccan Veg Tagine Curry

I have been interested in exploring Mediterranean , Middle Eastern and African cuisines after discovering the number of vegetarian dishes they contain. The usage of yogurt and vegetables like aubergines, tomatoes and the different spices…very interesting. And flavourful. And quite close to being Indian as well… I’ve cooked couple of Mediterranean stews and dishes before, but never ventured into Morocco, which is North African, but very similar to Mediterranean method of cooking.

Moroccan Tagine curry has been on the To-Do list for a while now, and the couscous that I bought a long time ago was literally begging to be cooked. I read up on the internet for a couple of Tagine curry recipes, but did not find ONE recipe which would suit my requirements. So I adapted this recipe from the two links – This & This.

Tagine curry derives its name from the earthen pot that the curry is cooked in and are predominantly meat-based. However, I resorted to using Chickpeas, rich sources of protein, along with other vegetables, and cooked them all very slowly in my regular pan.