Mushroom And Cabbage Pulao, How To Make Mushroom And Cabbage Rice

          There are some dishes that you did some time back ( years back ), not once but so many times, and then, for no reason, you don't do it anymore. Then suddenly, one day, just like that, you remember it back, well, today's dish, Mushroom And Cabbage Pulao, is one of them ( I have so many like that ). It's nothing big, but I like this combination of mushrooms, purple cabbage and red capsicum and I have just added some garlic and chilly flakes along with them. The vegetables along with the garlic gives a nice flavor to the rice, there's no need for a side dish to go with this rice and it's a perfect lunch box recipe..

Vegan Apple Blueberry Bread

          Couple of months back, I had made a post for Homemade Apple Sauce, well I had used the apple sauce for making this Vegan Apple Blueberry Bread, yeah, had made this bread some two months back, but only now I could post it. The recipe is from a cook book, dedicated just to apples, I had picked it up so many years back from a library sale. This bread is loaded with apples, both in the form of apple sauce and chopped apples, some dried blueberries and I have used half and half mixture of all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. The bread came out soft and delicious, serve it for breakfast or as a midday snack with coffee or tea..

Green Peas Paratha, How To Make Matar Paratha

          We love parathas at home, especially my daughter, so I make them at least once in 10 days. After making the Bengali Green Peas Kachoris ( Peas Stuffed Puris ), the next thing that I wanted to make was these Peas Parathas. When I started making the parathas, I was not really very sure about the taste, I thought it would taste somewhat similar to dal parathas ( lentil stuffed flat breads ). The stuffing that I have used here is very simple, just pounded the peas coarsely, that I way I felt that it would have some texture, and mixed it with some basic Indian spices. But these parathas turned out to be a surprise, they tasted so, so good, you don't need any side dish, can eat them as such, but if you must have something, serve some pickle and curd/yogurt on the side..

Lemonade With Rooh Afza, Rooh Afza Lemon Sharbat

          Today's post is another summer cooler, Lemonade With Rooh Afza. Actually till this summer, I had never tried anything with Rooh Afza, except for, might be, I would have had a sharbat but without knowing it had Rooh Afza in it. For those of you who are not familiar with Rooh Afza, it's a concentrated squash made with extracts from herbs, flowers, vegetables, roots and fruits. It's usually used to add flavor to sharbats, lemonade, ice creams and milk and when had during the summer months, it's supposed to cool down the body. If you want to know more about it, you can read this article here. Coming back to the drink, I have made the regular lemon juice, but I have flavored it with Rooh Afza syrup and mint and I have also added another healthy ingredient, sabja seeds/ sweet basil seeds, also known as tukmaria seeds or falooda seeds. The seeds are black in color, a little similar to chia seeds and have many health benefits. Rooh Afza, not only gives a flavor to the lemonade but also gives a beautiful pink color to the drink and the sabja seeds and mint leaves makes it look even more prettier..

Beans Potato Subzi, Aloo Beans Curry For Rotis

          Beans Potato Subzi/Aloo Beans Curry is a perfect side dish to go with rotis, of course, only if you like dry curries. I used to make it whenever I felt that the beans was a little less for making a curry by itself, so I just add a couple of potatoes to make it enough for three people. This is perfect when you have to pack something dry while travelling, serve this with rotis and a dal/lentils for a complete and delicious meal..

Homemade Marinara Sauce, How To Make Red Pasta Sauce

          Today's dish is going to be the simple and delicious Marinara Sauce or Red Pasta Sauce. Though they are readily available in the market, nothing can beat the freshness and the flavor in the homemade version. Some good quality tomatoes and Italian herbs is all that you need to make it, and the sauce is very versatile too, in the sense you can use it with pasta, on a pizza, make a sandwich along with some cheese slices and it tastes absolutely delicious..

Pesarattu, Moong Dal Dosa, How To Make Green Gram Dosa

          Pesarattu, another healthy and delicious dosa made with moong dal/green gram and very popular in Andhra Pradesh. This dosa is so rich in protein, the main ingredient being moong dal/ green gram. You can use the whole bean with skin or the split monng dal without skin, I use the split moong dal with skin. This soaks a little faster than the whole bean and at the same time has the skin too, which is rich in fiber. The dosa comes out crispy and soft at the same time, it's served with some upma in the center along with sambar and chutney. At home, nobody is interested in upma, so I leave it out and sprinkle some onions while making the dosa, and the best side for this dosa is ginger chutney..

Mushroom Capsicum Kurma, How To Make Mushroom Capsicum Kurma

          Mushroom is another vegetable which I pick up once a week or 10 days, it's so easy to cook and goes very well in curries, stir-fries and pilafs/briyanis and it tastes good either alone or in combination with other vegetables. For today's dish, I have paired it up with capsicum and I have made a white kurma with it. This curry is rich, delicious and tastes great with rotis, naans, dosas or as a side to pilafs and briyanis. If you are someone who likes mushrooms, then give this dish a try..

Pasta With Sun Dried Tomato Pesto And Spinach

          Pasta appears in our dinner menu at least once in two weeks. When I made Sun Dried Tomato Pesto some time back, I had used some of it in a sandwich and some in this Pasta. To make it a little more nutritious, I have added some spinach and olives too. Once you  have your pesto ready, this Pasta With Sun Dried Tomato Pesto And Spinach is just so simple to put together..

Carrot Chutney, How To Make Carrot Chutney for Idlis/Dosas

          In a South Indian home, idlis and dosas are made at least a couple of times in a week, and to serve as a side to them, we make sambar or some kind of chutney. Though the coconut chutney and tomato chutney are the most common, we make a variety of other chutneys too, Carrot Chutney being one of them. Grated carrot is sauteed and ground with roasted dal/lentils, chillies and coconut. The carrot gives a beautiful color to the chutney and it's a nice way to sneak in the vegetable, kids will not be able to find it. Usually when making a chutney with roasted dal, we add a lot of coconut to make it, but by adding carrots we can reduce the quantity of coconut and still the chutney would taste great. It goes very well with both idlis and dosas, you can blend it to a thick and coarse mixture and have it with plain white rice too..

Green Peas Vada, How To Make Peas Vada, Fritters

          Green Peas Vada, this is another recipe that I had tried out with fresh green peas, when they were in season. I had seen vadas with dried green peas, that's soaked and then ground and made into vadas. I wanted to try it out with fresh green peas and I made them pretty much the same way that I do Masal Vadas with chana dal. The vadais turned out crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, you can have them as such or with some ketchup or tomato sauce on the side..

Watermelon Dosa, How To Make Watermelon Rind Dosa (Crepes)

          Summer is here and Watermelons are here too, one of my favorite fruits and I can have them anytime. Till last summer, the only way that I had watermelon/dharpusini was as such, or as a juice, but this summer I tried my hand at making a Granita with it and now these dosas. And the best part is, you can have the juice with red part of the watermelon and these dosas with the white part of the watermelon , the rind part between the red and the green outer skin, that we usually throw away. The white part is equally nutritious and what better way than to use it than to make dosas. It's a Konkani dish, I saw a recipe here, but I made a few changes, in fact I followed almost the same recipe as my Bottle Gourd Dosa with a few changes. The batter for this dosa needs to be fermented for at least 8 hours, so plan accordingly. The dosas turned out crispy and soft at the same time, with a unique flavor and taste and they go very well with any coconut based chutney or peanut chutney. We had the dosas with some peanut-coriander chutney ( will post recipe soon ) and we totally loved it..

Eggless Strawberry Scones

          The weather is getting better in Bangalore, some rain in the evenings has brought down the temperature a little. Because of the heat, I didn't feel like baking at all, the heat from the oven made it even worse, but now I can do some baking, at least some bread. These Strawberry Scones, I had actually baked them long time back, on a weekend for breakfast. For those of you, who are not familiar with scones, they are like biscuits, mildly sweet, not soft or spongy and at the same time not very hard, they will have a crumbly texture. They can be had as such or served with some butter or any fruit sauce or jelly or with a simple glaze on the top. Usually it's made with plain flour or self rising flour and with eggs, but I have used only whole wheat flour and made it eggless. Since I had added very little sugar, they were not that sweet and a little dense ( because I had used only whole wheat flour ), but when served with some sugar glaze on top, they tasted perfect..

Double Beans And Mint Pilaf, Double Beans Briyani

          Happy Mother's Day to all, you lovely moms out there. Today's dish is a simple pulao/pilaf with Double Beans And Mint that I made sometime back. You can find the dry beans all year round, but we get the fresh ones, only during the season. We can make this pulao/briyani with either the fresh ones or the dry ones, except when using the dry ones, one extra step is there, soaking it overnight and pressure cooking, with the fresh ones, they can be cooked in a regular pan. We usually add mint leaves to briyanis, here, I have added a little more, so the pilaf/briyani has a nice mint flavor. If you are not able to find these beans, you can do it with other variety of beans like butter beans and rajma beans, or if none of them are available, you can use our good old green peas too. Serve it with a salad and raitha and some chips for a simple and delicious meal..

Banana Raitha, Vazhaipazha Thayir Pachadi

          Till now, whenever there was excess of bananas or overripe bananas, my only go to dish was the banana walnut bread, but now, I found this Banana Raitha/ Vazhaipazha Thayir Pachadi. We all know the health benefits of bananas, and if you need to know more, check out this article ' Banana Health Benefits at Well-Being Secrets ( has intereseting info about the origin of bananas, types and its many health benefits). Coming back to our dish, this is such an easy recipe, needs just minutes to put together, but it tastes so good, even my daughter who is not a big fan of bananas likes this and it's healthy too. You can serve it as a side to any meal, either a typical south Indian one with rice, sambar and curry or with briyanis or even with rotis. I can even have this as a dessert after a meal and it's so cooling and delicious in this hot weather now..

Palak Parathas, Spinach Parathas ( Flat Breads) Recipe

          Today's dish is another easy and delicious paratha, Palak Paratha or Spinach/Keerai Paratha. There are 2 ways of doing parathas, one is mixing the stuffing ( in this case, palak ) with the flour itself and in the other method, we stuff the filling into the dough and then roll out the parathas. Obviously, the second one consumes more time and needs some skills. For today's Palak Parathas, we are going to mix some spinach puree and spices with the flour itself, this not only gives the parathas a bright green color, it makes them very soft. Serve them with some dal or curry or even with some pickle and curd, either way they taste delicious..

Idli Milagai Podi, Chutney Powder

          Idli Milagai Podi or Chutney Powder, something that's always there in stock in most South Indian homes and which comes in handy on those days, when you don't have time to make a side dish for idlis and dosas. Also, when packing idlis or dosas for lunch, they taste better when we spread them with some idli podi mixed with sesame oil. For some of us, in fact, it's the favorite side dish for idlis and dosas. I like to make small batches so that it'll be done before it loses the flavor. It's actually another easy recipe, just roasting some ingredients and powdering them. Well, each family have their own version of it and this is how I make it..

Puttu Recipe, How To Make Kerala Style Puttu

          Making Kerala Style Puttu, using a 'puttu maker' has been on my do list for a long time. My mother prepares very soft Puttu with homemade rice flour, but she uses only the idli moulds to do it and we usually eat it mixed with some jaggery and coconut. Only at restaurants, I have eaten the Kerala style Puttu ( in cylindrical shape ) and Kadala Curry. I haven't yet tried making the puttu flour ( processed rice flour )at home, finding a flour mill, near where I stay is a problem, so for today's puttu, I have used only store bought Puttu Flour made with red rice. Once you have the puttu flour and the puttu maker ready, it hardly takes 20 minutes to make soft Puttu. My family loves it with Kadala Curry, but you can have it with bananas ( mashed into the puttu ) and pappads ( I have eaten with bananas, yet to try with the pappads) or simply with some jaggery and coconut..