1 onion chopped
3 chillis
1tbs ginger garlic paste
4 small brinjal quartered
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
One tiny bunch coriander chopped
2 tsp curd
1/2 lime squeezed

150g rice
210ml water

Oil & salt

Soak rice for 20 mins drain. Do the prep meanwhile

Use cooker

Saute onions and green chillies in oil still onion becomes translucent.
Add gg paste, stir and leave till the raw smell goes off
Add turmeric and masala. Stir.
Add brinjal, curd, coriander, lime juice. Stir. Do not cook brinjal further 

Add rice and stir. Top with water. Adjust Salt

Cover the cooker without the whistle till steam comes out. Place whistle turn off heat and let it cook in the steam inside about 10 mins or till steam goes off.

For someone beyond a certain age, I sure order in a lot. That is despite having a cook who comes in daily and would make anything I'd ask her to. One problem I have is, I don't like warming up food. I'd rather have it fresh than from the fridge. Of course, there are exceptions. But most days it's either the local Chinese or Punjabi food which makes it to my dinner plate.

Then I realised. The one thing I order the most is something called Teppanyaki Noodles from Wok Hei. I have an unreasonable amount of these noodles. So I thought maybe I should try making it at home just to make myself feel healthier. Off I went in search of Teppanyaki Noodles.
 

Are you single? Do you live alone? Let's bond over meals that conquer singledom.
I'm a fan of one bowl meals and an even bigger fan of meals which don't need to be prepped in huge portions resulting in leftovers lasting in the fridge forever and forever. I'm also a fan of meals which can be put together easily. Also as you know a fan of all things delicious. In my opinion, this qualifies for all of the above.

I have a lot of things to be thankful for in this life. One of the main things would be the world wide web. Without that I'd have pored over books and still would never have found out about this delicious Greek dessert. It was an Instagram entry by my Turkish friend Elif which led me to this dessert. It looked and sounded so delicious, I hunted down a recipe for it and decided to make it one Sunday.




A little difficult to make if you don't have phyllo pastry. But totally doable if you're in one of those places where you get them easily in the frozen section of your supermarket. I was really determined to do the whole thing by myself, but my maid Jayashree chipped in and said she could easily make
those paper thin translucent sheets of pastry.

This is going to be a long post. Not because of a recipe actually. More because now that I've got a platform to say something, I really want to say something I've got on my mind.


It all started with that Indira Nooyi article. I'm sure you've all read it. Well, if you're Indian and you're on Facebook, you have. After all, she's the most famous Indian female in the corporate world. Someone all girls in the country are supposed to look up to. We don't have too many idols besides movie stars and rubbish politicians. Then she comes out with a story how women can't have it all. I guess we're all caught up in Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In'. Frankly I don't have the inclination to listen to either of them. I maybe female, I could belong to the working class, but we all have our battles and no two of them are the same. But none of this matters to me. What mattered most to me in Indira Nooyi's article was the milk incident.

The story goes, I wanted to make popcorn cake. And that calls for fresh popcorn. Do you know how difficult it is in this day and age to get fresh popcorn? All you get is the microwavable stuff.
I could do with that, but I so did want to do everything from ground up and I wasn't sure the packaged stuff was the best way to go about it.


Chembur market is a treasure trove of fun stuff. After almost 6 years around this place, like Barney, I have a guy for everything, especially when it comes to Chembur market. Surprisingly though, I didn't know where to get popcorn. Even more surprisingly, I really didn't have to go anywhere. Right in front of the local station was this guy popping corn who was happily willing to part with his share of unpopped corn for next to nothing. Though he did warn me as uninitiated as I am to the whole process, popping corn might be a little different than what I expected. Of course it would be different I thought; I'd never popped corn, microwaveable or otherwise. Little did I know, the whole shaking the bowl shebang is a little tiring not to mention that even after all the shaking I didn't end up with a whole lot of popped corn. I had a whole bunch of unpopped buggers at the bottom of the bowl.

These are not regular bananas. These are the other bananas, the big long ones from Kerala. You also get them in Cuba, Nigeria and I think Miami cos that's what Jon Favreau picked up in the movie 'Chef' and he called them plantains!!!
Do ya hear me people??? Plantains!!!! I grew up calling these bananas plantains till I was very properly corrected by my sister and my friend that no, they are bananas.

I have a theory that if you are writing down a recipe, you better write it down the first time. Or by the time you get around to writing it down, you've played around with the original one so many times that you've completely lost the plot.


This is my case for poaching pears. The first time I poached pears, I measured water, I measured wine, I measure orange juice, I counted cinnamon sticks, I basically had everything in hand. These days I throw everything in together in saucepan and pray it does the job. Almost always it does, which goes to prove, yes, sometimes you don't have to be that perfect and creepily crazy about everything.

The miracle answer is: ONE (or you could say Neo, since he's The ONE) OK. Bad Joke.

But seriously, One? like One?  like only One? YES! That's all there is to peanut butter if you make it at home.

Hello Decadence, I'm in love with you.




I'm a big big fan of David L. I don't own a single book of his but follow his blog like a religion. When 'My Paris Kitchen' came out, I read up on all the articles about the book, including the one he'd written in his blog about how he wrote the book. The best part about scouring all those articles online - free recipes from the book!!! I was in 7th heaven when recipes started popping up here and there. This one seemed so simple to make and yet so decadent.

I shouldn't be having a blog. People who don't have much to say shouldn't have a blog where they actually have to wax lyrical about everything. Hence, I wont. Going to back to being my normal, practical self where I think, speak and write in bullet points :-)



Roasted Strawberries are amazing
They bring an extra pop to these babies
Not the mention an accentuation of the flavours
En Papillote, in a cover, its even better, cos it cooks in its own steam, in its own juices, mingling, intermingling like... oh I have some funny words I shouldn't use here. Why are food blogs so polite by the way? Why does nobody ever use cuss words? Chefs are not known for their polite language.

Some days, warming up food from the fridge doesn't cut it after a long day at work. Also, on the same days you don't want to be the really weird female capable of putting in long hours in the kitchen after a long day at work. This recipe works for those days and every other day. No wonder they called it 'Meet your new favourite meatball' recipe in Bon Appetit magazine .

I discovered this magical setting on my camera. Its called Food. Makes life so simple doesn't it?
That's exactly what this pesto also does to you. Make your life or rather your dinners really simple. You can make it and keep it in the fridge for nearly a week and freeze it for even longer times. Best had with pasta, but I do occasionally swipe it over a slice of bread.