Cooking for Beginners/Dummies- Indian style

Today I'm posting a traditional kerala recipe called as ' Erisherry' . Erisherry is one of the mainstay dishes you'd see in a Malayali banana leaf sadya and is essentially a sweet and nutty flavoured side dish you eat with rice. The most common version  of erisherry  is made with orange pumpkins and red lobias ( cowpeas) . Today I'm making erisherry with toor Dal which is faster to make and is my mother in law's recipe. Toor Dal erisherry is mostly made in trissur and palakkad districts. Cooking time: 20 mins Serves : 6 people Ingredients: Basic: 1. Pumpkin: 250 grams, ripe orange ones are required https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/pumpkin-seeds-pulp.html 2. Toor dal: 1 tea cup soaked for at least 1/2 hour 3. turmeric powder: 1/2 teaspoon 4. Red chilly powder: 1 teaspoon Ground paste:  1. Grated coconut: half of a coconut  or one tea cup full 2. Jeera  / cumin seeds: one small teaspoon 3. Fresh green chillies :4 no's( check t...

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) ...

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 ch...

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...

Hi all, I normally hate evening times, primarily because I'm hungry and in sudden need of food . Normally my In laws have tea with bakery items like biscuits, rusk, farzan like mixtures etc. I come from a background where we don't like those type of food, also I personally don't have tea, so I end up feeling hungry and hell and end up starving cos I'm too lazy to make food for myself. This vermicelli Upma is however a very quick recipe and feels as good as eating instant Maggi. The only work is chopping an onion . Most people nowadays have chilly ginger and garlic already in a ready to use paste form. This is very convenient for busy people like me who want food quickly and can't wait. Let's see how it's done.. Vermicelli Upma Ingredients 1. Roasted vermicelli/semiya- 1 cup or 250 grams 2.onion- 1 small sliced thinly 3. Tomato -1 small (optional ) 4. Ginger and green chillies - 1 teaspoon (either chopped thinly or in paste form) 5. Mustard se...

Hi all Apologies for the delay in writing new posts, but it was navaratri last month, one of my favourite festivals from childhood. I got too busy with it, mostly did a lot of new recipes, some of them a hit, some mediocre . I'm writing several posts now, litrelly a whole article on how we celebrate Navaratri and other recipes, just that they are halfway complete. My laptop fudged up and is now in the service centre for motherboard component change (pretty expensive), so all these things through the mobile which is very tacky. So here is a list of posts you can look out for. I may not be able to get it to look very pretty but I'll tidy up once I get my laptop back. 1. How is Navratri celebrated by south Indians.  (Mumbai based malayali's account) 2. Shezwan Chilly paneer (with Chings secret chutney) 3. The art of making sundals 4. Sabudana payasam 5. Semiya badam payasam 6. Oats carrot Upma 7. Tomato rice / pulav 8. Easy Mozzarella cheese mini samosas 9. Basi...

Hi all, Another easy recipe  for bachelors. Many a times , I buy cereals (cornflakes. Chocos, brand lakes) which gets quite boring after a while. After sometime these cereals get soggy and loose there crisp texture. #HowToRevive old Cornflakes: Very simple... just microwave in 30seconds burst which means after every30seconds, toss and keep again. I do it for total of 1.5 minutes.. Now the tossing part is very important. After the first 30 seconds, you'll see that the flakes seem to harden and feels more wet. Worry Not, friends, that's the moisture surfacing on each flake. By tossing, you are basically air drying the contents. Hence toss it for like 5 times, then microwave again. Toss it, you'll see the texture has changed and the flakes are getting crispy. Now I normally just make something out of these revived flakes immediately as they don't store well Typically my goto recipe is my cornflakes milkshake with chocolate oreos and dates. I can go crazy with th...

Hi All, I have always fancied the big heavy British breakfast concept however it's just too much for an Indian, no Matter how non veggie he or she is, I mean no indian would prefer to have blood pudding(at least a vast majority of us wouldn't, in India nothing can be generalised). But the whole idea of eating a big hearty breakfast to start the day is interesting and a break from our daily idles and parathas... I have put together a selection of items that is essentially Western but suitable for the Indian palette, most of these are packaged items so very less cooking which means a beginner can easily make this . I made such type of breakfast first when I was in my late teenage to surprise my mom for mother's day, of course my mom is a pure vegetarian so all the items were veggie, but over the years, I've discovered more varieties of items to include and after coming back to India, I refined the menu based on what's available in the Indian market. British br...

Hi All Breakfast has now become mostly a glass of Orange Juice and toast. Of course growing up it was different for most of us, there will be elaborate meals with healthy fruits, milk /cofee/juice. For a south Indian, Breakfast is very important. Its just that breakfast is so versatile for us that you cannot imagine skipping something so delicious.But for a working person including me, our corporates demand most of our time which makes it impossible to make elaborate meals. Today we will discuss some quick, on the go type of Pseudo Traditional modern Breakfast items Keeping the Indian palatte in mind. Before starting, there are some tips Id like to share as a form of meal plannning. You see, certain advanced preparation in the weekend or maybe a readymade cheat can help you ace breakfast Making a pleasure Tip1 : Make Idly / dosa batter during weekend, It will last for a week. I normally buy local batter readymade from stores. If you need to know how to make Idly / dosa batter, ple...

Hi All, Have you ever got home and want to whip something up really fast. Today's Dinner recipe is one of the most basic dishes you can cook . It's easy, filling, and really cheap(no expensive ingredients) . You can really impress your family  / better half with this meal. As this is a meal plan, I will post a game plan which will help you plan how to cook the whole thing. To complete the meal, add a dessert which can be as basic as Fruit platter or elaborate as Carrot halwa( I have never made it myself so I cant write the recipe for it). I also add a raita to cool myself, Raita is very simple and just some yogurt/ curd with some chopped vegetables would do. Game Plan for potato masala with Jeera rice Dinner This recipe will  take around 15 minutes of preparation and  half an hour cooking time. There are certain overlaps you can do to minimize time. Step 1: washing everything and keeping everything ready.  Start by washing and soaking the rice.Next peal...