May 23, 2012

Mango!

Nothing says summer like the arrival of mangoes and watermelons to the markets. And of course, the sweet songs of the cuckoos in the mornings, the power cuts and the hot afternoons. 

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A slightly longer, nostalgic post on my blog, The Green Tea Evenings - Here

After I am done sighing at the awesome smell of mangoes the minute I open my fridge, I have to plan a short vacation and also the endless work that has been piling up when I was busy doing... well, eating mangoes... :) and yeah, the home photo studio for my food photography experiments.

Tell me, how are your summers going? Lots of fun? Vacations? What other plans?

May 19, 2012

No-Bake Chocolate brownies

Browsing through Nags’ Edible Garden, I felt like I stumbled upon a treasure when I discovered this awesome no-bake brownie recipe , and that too eggless. It took me a while to assemble all the ingredients and to get the lazy self into the kitchen, but when I found myself finally mixing them all, I knew I really had a treasure.

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An awesome, very healthy, and ready in a jiffy recipe that makes a batch of at least 20 brownies, this one is for keeps. And I am going to make this every week from now on. :-D

May 6, 2012

Kodyelu–a different one!

The more I cook Mangalorean food, the more I realize what Mangaloreans eat. How we get our proteins. How vegetables are imbibed in a subtle way into our meals. And how important coconut is for us all. :-)

Oh btw, in case you were wondering – Kodyelu means Sambar in Tulu, my mother tongue, the language spoken only in South Canara district of Karnataka state.

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This is a sambar, very like the Paji masala kodyelu one I posted a while ago, with a slight difference. The earlier post had raw masalas in it, and this sambar uses roasted masalas.

May 4, 2012

Chilled Potato Green soup

May is here, which means summer is here too. Well, am a huge fan of summers in India, but all that is because of the abundance of water melons and mangoes. Those are the ONLY bright spots in Indian summers, if you ask me. Its hot, humid sometimes, and you cannot live without a fan, or in some people’s cases ACs.

Its an ordeal to enter the kitchen, and a bigger one to stand near the stove and make anything. But then, that shouldn’t stop us from eating good food, right? :-) So yeah, GoodFood has a good collection of chilled soups this month, and I decided to pick one of them for tonight’s dinner.

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This is a healthy soup, flavoured only by the garlic and onions in it. If you want, you could add a dash of lime juice to spruce up the soup, or add more mint leaves to get a zing into it. I had it just as it is, and loved it the way it is.

May 3, 2012

Cardamom Cookies … easiest ever!

Last week, I had some family visiting for tea, and had nothing at home to serve them. I wasn’t in a mood for regular chocolate cookies and since I had already made some shortbread cookies, was looking for something sweet to pair with the tea and those savoury cookies. Some flipping through my archives and visiting some blogs gave me Nags’ recipe for Almond Cardamom cookies.

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Since I didn’t have almonds at hand, and had no patience to run to the store, I decided to substitute them with sunflower seeds , which worked great. To give a slight almond flavour, I used some pure almond extract. Also, the original recipe had way too much butter in it, which I reduced slightly, to fit my ideal butter measure, a 100gm butter bar. :-)