Happy New Year...

Happy New Year To You All...
My Friends, Readers, My Blogger Friends And Your Families...
May 2008 be filled with love and beauty, joy and freedom, peace and kindness. Thanks for helping me keeping the blog going on..
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

The Last Post of the Year...Thanks!!

Most of this year went in a pregnancy, delivery and post pregnancy haze with nothing extravagant being blogged from my kitchen beyond the basics. When I got sick of my own recipes and I craved food from someone else's hands, I raided my fellow bloggers yummilicious recipes.

The whole year I have been cooking from other blogs on the sly without posting a "Thank you, this is what ur recipe turned out in my kitchen note." Most of this surreptitious activity occurred conveniently under the cover of darkness in the evenings and hence I have the perfect excuse not to have photographed it.

So let me take this year end time to list all the recipes I tried and loved in the last one year. Most of them are repeated frequently now in my kitchen just as I keep trying out new stuff too.

I developed a sweet tooth midway thru the preg. just after a friend asked me if I have sweet cravings and I said "nah!".
I always thought ladoos took time and effort, but these Moong Dal Laddoo were as delicious and easy as was described. My sweet tooth then intensified and I had to make Pooran Poli , Rasmalai, Addictive Date-Tamarind treats , , Palada Pradhaman,Pal Payasam amd most recently Almond Macaroons.


I went on a veggie kick (which is still quite active) and tried out yummy Punjabi Chole and Arbi ki Subji, Pav Bhaji as well as Kali Peeli Dal (now a staple here) and Gobi Ka Kheema which made the bland cauliflower actually taste good!! Some others were these crispy Bittergourd Chips, Pongalu and Methi Muttar Malai.

Meat and Fish Curries had to be tried out too to feed my better half so those were these Kashmiri Meatballs which were really good and went well with Jeera Rice. These Kuttanadan fish fry are always a hit but I just grill them instead of frying.
Pizza making turned out to be fun my little one with this recipe for Pizza, made quite a few times now as well this Chili Bell Pepper Pasta.

I got introduced me to a whole lot of beans this year (still working on how to make them better digestible!!!) and even made a multi-bean Adai and kollu rasam but the recipes that keep repeating in my house are the Cheese Dosa, and Bell Pepper Jalfrezi.


Kerala food is always welcome and always made but some new recipes I rely on have to be mentioned here...Koombu thoran,Mango Chammandi,Chemmeen Vada, Fool Proof Rasam Mango Pulissery,Veg Kurma, Crab Masala, Kozhi Porichathu. After a day of binge eating recently, we recovered on a bowl of Kanji-Payar, mishmash ishtyle!

Some recipes came as part of the Express Event and since I was on an express cooking mode then, they were quickly tried out and were yummy.. Moong Kichdi w/ Carrot Raita, Nut Cutlets, Best Chilli Chicken ever, Quirky Pita Pockets with Chickpeas,Dalia Pulav,and Methi Mushroom Curry

There are a lot more but I can't remember where to find them now and no time..
Thanks to all my blogger friends for adding to my repertoire of recipes and tastes. Looking forward to more next year!

Happy Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and their families...

A bit of Thanksgiving history for the newbies: Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday to give thanks at the conclusion of the harvest season. The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, to commemorate the harvest reaped by the first settlers after a harsh winter. In that year Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. The colonists celebrated it as a traditional English harvest feast, to which they invited the local Wampanoag Indians. Days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout the colonies after fall harvests. All thirteen colonies did not, however, celebrate Thanksgiving at the same time until October 1777. George Washington was the first president to declare the holiday, in 1789.

It is now celebrated as a time to offer thanks, of family gatherings and holiday meals. So I took this opportunity to get back to blogging after a small break. It's been a while since I wrote and posted anything and now the keyboard seems a bit rusty and indifferent. There's a web of inertia in my mind and each time I sit to explain why there were no posts, the computer seems more and more unfriendly. But this seemed like a perfect time to write to my loyal readers who have been filling the mailbox.:)

Some time after my last post, we were blessed with a baby. So "malluspice" had to take a back seat to the new addition in our family. This is the new entrant in my life giving me sleepless nights and restless days, who puts that dreamy(read sleep deprived:))look on my face. Despite diapers and being on call all the time, it is a wonderful experience all over again.
Now it's this cherubic face that we all watch eagerly for a hint of a reaction instead of the comment section after each post. My camera now sees more of this tiny face than styled food plates. Let alone styled plates, it's mostly been just my mom cooking and me hogging. (But I did learn some new recipes that I will post soon.)

So while I do wholeheartedly want to cook and blog, it's not that easy to write and post frequently now. Getting anything done which takes more than half an hour at a stretch right now seems far fetched. (Now you can understand why I did the express cooking contest.) So please bear with me and I will post soon.
Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all have a wonderful day with your families.

Express Cooking Round Up Tips

One thing the express cooking event showed was that organization shall set you free. Maybe later I will make this a quarterly event but for now this is a one-off event. I do however still have a bunch of tips to share with everybody.

Its not fun to get organized and it won't happen in a day. To change from staring vacantly at the fridge and pantry to be organised enough to have labelled ready to use spice mixes, frozen pastes and gravies ready to be popped into the saute pan will take me awhile.

It looked daunting but now I am armed with the best tips from some of the industry experts...Meeta, Coffee, Jai n Bee, Bharathy, Manisha, Anita, RP etc.
So here are the links to their words of wisdom and lets look forward to more home cooked meals using all these suggestions. It has to make life a tiny bit easier, don't u think?

Jugalbandi took my express meal idea to heart and went one step further...they took time out to list their time saving tactics. Some of the pointers struck an echo in my mind.
"......We cannot live without our pressure cooker, microwave, and electric kettle. These are time savers and fuel savers.

If we make spice pastes for any dish, we try and double or triple the quantity and freeze the rest. Right now, in the freezer we have vegetable makhani paste, Thai green, red, yellow and massaman pastes, and caramelised onions. We freeze them in meal-sized portions so that we don’t have to thaw the entire batch when we want to use it.

Coconut milk powder is your friend. Add it to curries. 1/3 cup of coconut milk powder = 1 cup coconut milk. Use 1/2 cup if you want it really thick. You don’t need to add water to it if your curry already has liquid......"
Follow the link for the whole list.

My friend Meeta also suggested some great organizing tips for the cooking process.
Check them out here
..."Onions, garlic and ginger are very often used is Asian/Indian meals. To reduce my preparing time I normally make pastes of each of these ingredients. They are then filled in ice-cube trays. Once frozen I place them in freezer bags and label them...."
She also has a wonderful collection of ready sauces: Pesto alla Genovese,Aglio Olio,Arrabiata Sauce.

Spicy Chilly also listed her few tips for Quick Indian Cooking...."Plan the dinner menu before hand for the coming 7 days in advance,considering the family preferences and simple nutritional facts.Plan your shopping list accordingly. See to it that you include cereals, salads, vegetables, milk and yoghurt, all over.This might seem a 'burden' to start with, but sets you going automatically the whole week."

Another tip I found on Indian Food Rocks..
Optimising a can of tomato paste."...All you have to do now is use the quantity you need and then spoon the rest of the paste onto a plate in large blobs about an inch in diameter, if you can get them to be round!...."

Spice Cafe seems to have organized her kitchen well enough to create Al Lentilo Pulavo in just 15-20 minutes. We should take a page out of her recipe file and make a large batch of Spice Cafe's Frozen Gravy. It would definitely save time on a weekday or a lazy day.

RP has listed a multitude of options with leftovers to make express meals.

To get you started a well stocked pantry is essential. If you set about pounding spices when the lentils are cooking ,there goes another half hour! So here are some recipes for the most common spice mixes. If you feel there are some other spice mixes already blogged that should be added here, drop me a comment and the link and I will add it.
Spice Cafe's Garam Masala
Anita's Goda Masala
Jugalbandi's Kashmiri Garam Masala
Indosungod's Sambhar Masala
Kerala Sambhar Powder
Tamil Sambhar Masala

My only tip is to cook extra and freeze whatever won't be consumed in two days. All kinds of lentils (Dals) freeze well as do any kind of meat dish.
I am not a big fan of frozen veggies but I do end up with huge pieces of pumpkin or other vegetables which then proceed to die in the fridge. So such extra vegetables (such as ash gourd, pumpkin) could be chopped and boiled and then frozen for an instant curry or side dish (olan/pulissery etc).

Cooked Biryani meat masala if extra should be frozen in a glass container and then when you need it, defrost, make fresh ghee rice(which only takes 10 minutes) and layer and microwave together for biryani. Use the microwave for nuking the potato for curries and cutlets and you save gas and time.

Express Cooking Round-Up Part 1

Finally the entries have been ordered, sorted and categorized! Whew!! Now I really admire anyone who does an event and its roundup every month! The entries had started pouring in from day one but it's only when I sat down to sort it that I realised how many were there! Can U guess how many?
If I have missed posting any of your entries, please bear with me and just send me a hate mail and I will add it pronto.:) There is no way I can check and double check all of them!
I kept delaying and extending the inevitable but I knew once the Kanji Recipes got blogged here and here, I was running out of excuses to do the round-up! So special thanks to two of my friends, RP and Shn for proofing the post.

Rice Dishes:
With the maximum number of entries, Rice has been voted without contest as the easiest to cook with and most satisfying meal at the end of a hard day.
The three categories of rice meals are :
1. Plain steamed rice with a sauce based curry or stir fry.
2. A Pulav is raw rice cooked together with other ingredients.
3. A fried rice which is cooked rice fried with other ingredients.

Fresh plain rice is a must in most Asian houses and while it is cooking, you have enough time to make a curry or a stir fry and in 15-25 minutes at the most, a rice meal is ready to eat.

Some of our bloggers proved to be exceptionally fast...A full meal made from scratch on the table in under 30 minutes! That too traditional style. So take your time and drool over these sumptuous looking plates and wonder if you can attempt the same without calling the fire brigade.:)

Its not too hard if you take a deep breath, focus only on the kitchen and no kids and spouses come looking for you in that time seeking your opinion. And of course it only works if you have a reliable pressure cooker..or 2 ..or 3.

A Pinch of Spice: Kerala Fish curry, Green Beans, Rice




For The Cook In Me: A 30 Minute Kerala Meal




Yum Blog: Express Rice Meal




Saffron Trail: A Tam-Bram Meal in 30 Minutes




Mishmash: A Kerala Kanji-Payar Meal




Simply Spicy:Kanji For the Soul




Chef at work: Sambhar, Plantain Sir fry, Rice




Cooking for all seasons: Andhra Pappu Curry,Taro Stir Fry,Rice




Cinnamon Trail: Egg Curry with Rice




Snack-O-Rama:A Rice Meal




Simple Curries:
Sometimes we have a bunch of leftovers including rice and roti.(If we all plan ahead and organize ourselves as Jugalbandi suggested!!) But the main dish is missing...Then all we need is a spicy, tangy or sweet-sour curry to round off the rice or roti meal but we run out of ideas..what can be made in so short a time while you heat up the rest of the leftovers? So here are some express curries and stir fries for you to try out. One fresh item can revitalise the meal!

Ahaar: Mixed Vegetable Tofu Curry


Food For Thought: Kohlrabi & Drumstick Dal with Rice




Recipe Junction: Green Tomato In Coconut Sauce and Rice




Live To Eat: Tomato Roast, Scrambled Egg and Rice




Jugalbandi: Thai Red Curry With Brown Rice and Bean-Nut Salad




Finger Licking Food: Tomato Rasam and Cabbage Stir Fry




Evolving Tastes:Mapo tofu, Green beans with cashews, Rice




Mary has two little lambs : Kerala chicken stew




Delectable Victuals: Chenai Elavan Koottu




Curry Bazaar: Microwave Bhindi




Crazy Curry: Apple Daynay




Cooking Thunders: Bittergourd Curry and Microwave Cake




Cinnamon Hut: Potatoes in a light and fragrant tomato gravy




Amma's Special:Tamil Sambhar, Rice




The Singing Chef: Achari Aloo




As Dear As Salt: Paneer Curry




Zlamushka's Spicy Kitchen:Thai Shrimp Fried Rice




Cookery Corner:Quick Healthy Meal




Fried Rice and Pulavs:
Pulav..where the rice and vegetables or spices are cooked together is a filling one pot dish for those absolutely short of time. The rice imbibes the flavor of the liquids and vegetables to make a unique pulav each time.

Fried Rice: And if you have rice leftovers, they are an excellent base to make any kind of fried rice. Just stir fry some vegetables, chicken or meat, some spices and you can have a different rice meal everyday for a month!

Escapades: Quick Tomato Rice




A Mad Tea Party: Mutter Pulav, Greek Yogurt




World Wide Cooking: Talimpu Rice




Veggie Platter: Paneer Methi Pulav




Spice Corner: Moong Kichdi With Carrot Salad




The Spice Café: A Lentilo Pulavo




Saffron Trail:Methi Mushroom Curry With Onion Rice




My Workshop: Shrimp Fried Rice




My Workshop: Asparagus Fried Rice




One Hot Stove: Fried Rice With Glazed Tofu




Nalapaka: Coconut Rice




Khana Pina: Chitranna




Indian Food Rocks: Garlic Fried Rice With Rotisseri Chicken




Food court: Kadhi Kichadi




Chutki Bhar Pyar: Jhatpat Pulav




The Singing Chef: Kabuli Pulav With Yogurt




Add Flavor:Cabbage Rice




Zaiqa:Chicken Biryani




Yum Blog: Bisi Bele Huli Anna




Lajawaab:Hot n Sour Soup, Fried Rice




Tried and Tested Recipes:Ek Top Na Dal Bhaat




Other Grain Recipes:
We get caught up as with the obvious choices for meal times.. rice, roti, pasta, sandwiches, but there are so many other grains that beg to be explored right now. As there is more and more hype about eating healthy and eating a variety of grains, it is interesting to see these mainstream recipes, some with other Grains such as broken wheat and corn and some with variations of the traditional rice and wheat.

Bong Mom’s Cookbook: Broken Wheat (Daliya) Pulav




Vcuisine: Corn Kichidi




Spicy Chilly: Vegetable-Rava Khichdi




My Veggie World:Pulihara With Beaten Rice




En Samayal Arai: Varattu Upma




Cook's Hideout: Broken Wheat (Daliya)Kichadi




The Singing Chef: Taro Rice Balls