Feb 29, 2012

Pongal & Puli Kajipu

 

As it goes without saying, Pongal is a very famous South-Indian breakfast staple dish, eaten particularly on the Makar Sankranti festival.

Puli Kajipu, literally means, Sour Curry in Tulu. This one is so sour that your eyes will be in a perennial half-blink as long as you are eating this, and complements the slightly bland taste of the Pongal well.

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I know, we are no where closer to Pongal, but suddenly last week, I began to crave for Mom’s Pongal and Puli Kajipu, the best I’ve ever eaten. I called her up, and asked her for the recipe, which I replicated to the T, and had a sumptuous breakfast. :)

Turns out Pongal is very similar to the Khichdi, but Mom’s Pongal has a special ingredient … Jaiphal or Nutmeg, which when added while the Pongal is cooking gives out a very distinct aroma to the entire dish.

Recipes, straight from my Mom’s kitchen, flowing through the phone … :-)

Feb 26, 2012

Sugar-less Date-n-Nut roll


“Don’t ask any questions and come to my desk. NOW”, my friend J [she likes to be called Mumbai_Chef :-)] pinged me on IM. The events of the last week were very exciting for both her and me, and there were many such “Come to my desk NOW” moments, but little did I know that I was in for a sweet treat.
I’ve always known that she is a wonderful cook and a baker. When I tasted her Undhiyu last year, I gasped, died and landed in Food Heaven.

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But when I tasted her sugar-less-date-and-nut-roll last week, I knew I was IN Food Heaven, and alive, coz the very next minute I told her that she HAD to post a recipe of this one. And that was how this post came into being.
Ladies & Gentlemen, presenting the first ever guest post on this blog by the lady herself, my very dear friend, Mumbai_Chef…

Feb 21, 2012

Good old Khichdi!


Am a South Indian, and I hadn’t tasted Khichdi for the first 25 yrs of my life, but now it is my all-time favourite comfort food.

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Known to be eaten when one is not well , every household has its own recipe for this dish.
Khichdi is something I eat when I am all by myself. I have Khichdi when am travelling and have to order room service. It is my first option when I don’t know what to eat, and is still my first option even when I have a fridge full of veggies. Healthy, easy to make, and packed with proteins, what’s not to like in this one?

Feb 20, 2012

Iranian Veg Stew, another recipe


Yesterday being Sunday, and the husband craving for some garlic cheese pilaf, I wanted to pair it with a vegetable stew. The recipe kept forming by itself in my head, and I mentally kept on adding all the ingredients to it. I cross-verified it with the recipes in the Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East book and was all set to make it. That was then I realized that I had made something similar before. Quite different in terms of ingredients, and base, but almost similar in the method of making.
That was when it struck to me that like sambar, there can only be one method of making an Iranian Vegetable Stew. You just change the taste by altering the ingredients, or seasonings. And that’s how I got about to this recipe.
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Feb 17, 2012

Hot Chocolate, inspired by a book


This is Valentine’s Day week, and as I-don’t-think-love-needs-a-day as I am, I am not letting this blog go without posting atleast one chocolate recipe this week.

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And the chocolate... Do you see the nutmeg sprinkled on top?

I lifted the recipe directly from The Language of Baklava, a book I read a couple of months ago. I was sooo in love with the book and the recipes in it that I read it back to back in just under 2 days, I think. More about the book on my other blog, here.

Feb 15, 2012

Cherry Tomato & Aubergine Pasta


The search for the best non-tomato pasta base is on. And I think I am getting closer to it. First it was the Hummus pasta, and now this one.

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What’s so special about this one, you might ask. Its just tomatoes and aubergine again. Haven’t you already cooked this? Yes, just that this time, its roasted aubergine paste as sauce to bind the pasta ingredients together.

Feb 13, 2012

Mortar, pestle and two smoking garlics...


Except that there is no mortar and pestle here, and its three and not two garlics, which are not smoking. You get the drift, right? :-)

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Look, how cute they look!

So when I posted the pic of my mortar and pestle with some cute little garlic cloves in there, Priya thought they looked sick, and called them names. And didn’t stop there. When she visited her hometown, she got some really good-looking , plump garlic cloves, sooo plump that I almost thought they weren’t natural, which is why I was very judgemental of them.

Feb 12, 2012

Rotti/Dose/Dosa

Now that Mom’s here, we are getting to eat a lot more of Mangalorean dishes, the way they are to be eaten, not like how I make them, all modified and with tons of short-cuts. Which is good, for the time-being. And I know that once she leaves, am going to miss all of it, and go back to my dessicated coconuts and ready-mixes of Rasams. Sigh.

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So this morning’s breakfast was Rotti, also called as Dose or Dosa. This is like your regular South Indian dosa, but with slightly different ingredients, and its not left for fermentation. Its eaten with the regular chutney or with Hindi, a Mangalorean mango pickle/chutney or with Kodakene also. Like the Dosa, this is another staple dish in our households.

Feb 11, 2012

New Home, and some Thanksgiving!

Yep, for me, Thanksgiving has come a little early. :-D There is a long list of people I have to thank for something big on this blog!

Did you notice the URL? Yes… I bought the domain – TheMealAlgorithm.com, mainly because I wanted to know how it feels to have your own domain, what with everyone having one of their own, and I having no clue on how to go about it. Well, for starters, it feels great. :-D Its been two days and I haven’t been able to get over it till now. :-)

There was some major confusion, cluelessness and mayhem before I actually bought the domain. I wasn’t sure how to start about it, and what to do and all. GoDaddy.com was recommended by everyone, but when I actually was about to buy the domain off it, there was some problem with the payment options, and I had to cancel my order.

Then I asked Nags of Edible Garden [which you should totally check out if you want to understand the nuances of food photography. Check out her blog for the tips. I did all my prop-shopping after reading how she uses her props] what she did for her domain. After talking to her and figuring out if I can host the domain on Azure, I went ahead and bought the domain from Google, which again was powered by GoDaddy.com, but the process was easier.

And then came the problem of the template. All the food bloggers’ templates I like are based on white, and I knew that was what I wanted too. But my non-existent HTML and web-designing skills didn’t let me pick and choose any template I wanted and could customize. After checking atleast ten different templates and trying them all on the blog and not liking any, I turned to Twitter. I asked for folks how they design their blog templates, and got plenty of help.

All of these guys helped me with template options, on how to customize the blog or a suggestion on how to go about getting a domain and I took the ones that applied the most to me.

Anita Menon
Mala Bhargava
Amit Agarwal
Saleem Pheku
Rads
Monika Manchanda
Shripal Gandhi
Maxdavinci
Thanks a lot, guys!

I went with Madhu’s suggestion of starting with a plain white template, and customizing it the way I wanted. And it worked great. Atleast I love my blog template, and feel comfortable coming here , to my own blog. :-)

Then came the header. I wanted a plain header, nothing fancy, but I wanted it to have a design which would imply what the blog is all about. Well, my creative abilities are again non-existed, and so I wanted to go with a simple flowchart, making something I am good at, but the husband thought of something better. Something which resembles me a lot more, and he customized it to suit this blog.

Yes, the code in the blog is his idea. He wrote it in the Visual Studio IDE, and I made the flow chart using Visio 2010. And I integrated them all using Microsoft Powerpoint 2010. And lo… the header was ready, and am in love with it!

Now that everything is ready and set, all I have to do is to get into that kitchen of mine and cook… :)

[Cross posted in my other blog – The Green Tea Evenings, which is where I write about everything except food!]

Feb 5, 2012

Weekend baking… Savoury Shortbread cookies

This morning I was craving for something savoury. And I wanted to bake it, coz Mom is around , so I wanted to show off my baking skills to her. :-)

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Hence these cookies. I followed the basic shortbread method, but didn’t add sugar to this. The herbs I used in this recipe are indicative only, and can be replaced with anything your taste buds ask for. My next trial will be with Oregano and Rosemary , and different peppers for the spicy taste.