Cooking for Beginners/Dummies- Indian style

Have you ever woken up late and you need to make breakfast and lunch and pack it and eat it and get dressed and oh the morning routine is crashed! But we've all been there. Most of us , if we don't have children or old people at house will simply decide to have food from outside that day. But living in a joint family, I can no longer do that. Hence today I thought I'd discuss a gameplan on how to cook ,pack and clean  in 45 minutes to one hour. Now work day cooking is always done with a bit of advance planning. I'm sure most of you already chop vegetables the night before or make idly dosa batter in advance . Other things that I've seen people doing are preparing chutneys ,idly podi or green sauce in advance. These are lifesavers if you have a lot of feed and less time . At my house ,idly or dosa batter is made every Sunday evening and will last for 4 days. While this can be seriously boring and monotonous, there  are easier and healthy breakfast options like upma

Broccoli okra khadi /soup   This is not your everyday khadi, its Insanely flavourful ,very Arabic taste. I paired it with some Mediterranean simple salad ,yummy yummy.. I've always been a fan of roasted broccoli cheese soup but being Indian and the thought of replacing cheese with a healthier alternative resulted in me making this khadi .. The real sweetness of the veggies paired with the earthiness of cumin and ajwain takes this dish to the next level #foodfusion #broccoli #okrasoup Let's start... Ingredients: 1 stem broccoli or half a small cup 5 medium sized okra or ladies finger 1 small red onion Mustard seeds- 1/4th TSP Ajwain seeds - 1/4th TSP Jeera seeds - 1/4th TSP Fenugreek seeds - 3 or 4 nos Curry leaves - 5 nos optional Turmeric powder-  less than 1/4th TSP Coriander powder - 1 TSP Chilly powder - 1/4th TSP (optional only for a little heat) Asefoitida or hing -  a pinch . Curd or yogurt - 1/2 cup Water - 1 cup( adjust accordingly) Besan

Hi All Today I'm sharing a spicy Soya Recipe . Its purely vegetarian but tastes like a non veg fried dry dish. You can eat it with chapati or porotta or even have it as a starter. Its not as easy as the earlier recipes in my blog and you will need some patience while getting this dish to the consistency or a dry fry. In malayalam such items are called ulathiyathu or varatiyathu and its a continuously stirred slow fried and browned recipe Ingrediants: 1. Soya Chunks - 1 cup or 150 grams ( just add a handful of big chunks, we are going to cut them into smaller sizes) 2. Onions - 4 nos 3. Tomato - 1 nos 4. Ginger - 1 inch piece or measure 1/4th of your index finger 5. Garlic- 5-6 cloves 6. Green chillies - 2 7. Pepper powder - 1 tsp 8. Coriander powder - 1 Tsp 9. Turmeric powder - 1/4th Tsp 10. Red chilly powder - 1/2 tsp 11. Garam Masala - 1/2  tsp 12. Curry leaves - a bunch or 15 leaves ( leave 6 for garnishing) 13. Coconut flakes - 1 tsp (Optional)

Vishu is a festival celebrated by Malayalis . It is basically new year for Malayalis  and we celebrate it as traditional as possible.. When you think of Vishu, We think of the quintessential Cream and Gold saris / Vhesti/Mundu attire, then Lord Krishna and Vishu kani, the Vishu kai-neetam and last but not least the Vishu sadya or the grand lunch feast..  Vishu preparations: Vishu preparations start two or three days before the actual day . One needs to gather Kani konna or  "cassia fistula" , its a beautiful flower that blooms only during vishu time.Yeah it sort of looks like Yellow gulmohar flowers but its totally different, the color is more lemony and a very cute bunch. Back in old days, kids and young ladies would go around the village searching for the prettiest bunch and bring home but now we no longer live in areas where this tree is common, so we end up paying a big amount and buy them from Malayali sellers . Well vishu isn't vishu without Konna poovu(

Broccoli  garlic stir fry  A quick weekday dinner recipe. If you steam / cook broccolis in advance,then the recipe just takes 5 minutes to put together. Broccoli stores/ freezes well in the fridge. Ingredients: Broccoli- 1 medium stalk Garlic - 6 medium to large Cloves  Red Onion -1 large sliced into medium sized pieces Soy sauce -1 table spoon Oil-2 table spoon Salt and pepper Red schezwan sauce or home made chilly sauce - 2 table spoon Method: Cut the broccoli into small florets. Don't throw the stem/stalk, they are nutritious, slice them into very thin Juliennes. Microwave the stalk with one table spoon water  for a minute to soften it. Into a pan add the broccoli florets ,add water and let it Blanche (soften ). Once the stalk is out of the microwave,add that as well to the pan. We have done this step of microwaving the stem to give it a cooking heads up, you see the stalk takes longer to cook so if we add it along with the florets then there are chances of overco

Hi All Today my post is about Baking. Baking has always fascinated me, but there was always a stigma, a mental block to start baking. Till about recently , I thought baking could be done only in an oven, but thanks to you tube, and some web pages, I figured we could bake with our microwave since it had a convection mode, so really its called a convection oven. And on reading most of those blogs, i figured that most home chefs/bakers use a convection oven than a regular fancy oven / OTG that you see in cooking videos. Its more economical as it contains both microwave and an oven.. So my second stigma was that , what you bake in an convection oven wont taste or feel the same as a regular OTG baked goodies, but yea well , that's solved after I attempted a cake some months back ( Pillsbury cake mix) which turned out just fine Another reason I kept holding back on baking is because of the ingredients and the actual recipes.. you see there are a truck load of recipes that you see o