Eggless Lemon Ricotta Cookies

          I had made ricotta cheese at home for making the Spinach Ricotta Raviolis and I had some left after making the raviolis. I wanted to use it in something within the next few days and I was not ready to make another pasta dish, so while browsing I found these Lemon Ricotta Cookies. There are so many recipes out there, but I followed this one from Food Network, the recipe is from Giada De Laurentiis, when I was in the US, I used to watch her shows regularly. Lemon and ricotta is a beautiful combination, and I made the cookies without eggs, replaced the eggs with corn starch and water. These cookies have a soft texture and they taste delicious with the beautiful lemon glaze on the top..

Olan ( Kerala Style Stew With Ash Gourd And Black Eyed Peas )

          We love Kerala food at home, both the husband and I love the Sadya served during Onam, in fact I want to cook a complete sadya, at least once. I don't know when that's going to happen, might be by next Onam, but I do make Kerala dishes once in a while, especially the moru kuzhambu. Olan had been on my do list for a long time, and finally I made it, a couple of weeks back. I don't know why it took me so long to try it, this being such an easy dish, the only major task, might be extracting the coconut milk, even that I wouldn't say is a big task. Anyway, this is a mild stew with pusinikkai or ash gourd/ winter melon and black eyed peas and the seasoning is done with coconut oil which gives a wonderful flavor to the dish. It goes very well with plain rice, but I think it might also taste good with dosas and adais too..

Bread Uttapam, Bread And Vegetable Pancakes

          For the last couple of days, all that was going in my mind was the rains and floods in Chennai, Pondicherry and Cuddalore. Sitting in Bangalore, and trying to reach out to relatives and friends was the only thing I had been doing the past few days and reading and sharing the huge task done by volunteers, in rescuing the affected people to safer places and feeding them as well. It'll take some time for Chennai and the other places to get back to normalcy, but at least for now, the rain has slowed down its pace and the flood waters are receding. So today, to take my mind off a little, from rains and floods, I thought I'll do a post, but it's a simple one, Bread Uttapams.

           For my family, a simple toast with some butter or jelly will not work, once in a while they are okay with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but they are more the savory kind. Any kind of savory sandwich, like with pesto or guacamole or just even with some thokku or chutney is fine, anything that's not sweet. So when I made this Bread Uttapam for a weekend breakfast, they simply loved it, in fact, they couldn't taste the bread in it. I added some capsicum, onion and tomatoes to the bread batter and made the uttapams, this is a delicious alternative to the regular uttapam made with idli/dosa batter. They come in handy when you don't have idli/dosa batter but you still feel like having some uttapams, serve them with some coconut chutney for a tasty and filling breakfast..