Quilled letter "K"

"K is for Kavin" says my little boy whenever I sit down to do this quilling. I have been doing this project for 2 months. It took less than 10 hours for me to finish 90% of this project. But the remaining 10% of the work took me so long. I guess, that is because of the perfect geminian trait of getting bored of the monotonous work. I was very excited to finish it off soon when I initially started this project. But the monotony of making the same quilling pattern over and over again made my excitement decline little by little.At one point, I lost interest and never continued this project.  My husband kept saying, finish this with the same excitement that you started it with. Feeling very fortunate to have such a good support and encouragement, I got all my spirits up last weekend and finished it successfully. The outcome is worth all the effort.

I had a lot of confusion about the choice of colors when I started making it. Thought of going with blue. But fed up with blue all over. So to go along with the jungle decoration, I ended up with these colors.

Now the finished project is hanging in my little one's play room. It looks perfect with the jungle decoration and he always wears a smile looking at it. What more can I ask for ? :-)

Sabudhana Kichadi

I usually stop by my colleague's cubicle for a little chit chat after warming up my lunch in the kitchen. Conversations vary from how the weekend was, how the traffic was that morning, how the kids are doing and obviously how is work :-) . And definitely, we will have a conversation of what we have in our lunch boxes. That is when I came to know about this kichadi which I have never had before. She offered this kichadi once to me and I absolutely loved it. It was so puffy and light with a little crunch in between. Of course I wanted to make it for dinner that day. I did not get a chance to get the recipe from her. So I called another friend of mine on my way back from work and asked if she knows about this dish. She told me the recipe for this dish and that is when I discovered that it needs some prep work and I will not be able to make it for dinner the same day :-(. But I made it for next day's dinner and we both loved the taste.

My friend who gave the recipe also gave me her grandma's idea of adding split moong dhal to it and that tasted even better. But today I made it without the moong dhal. So please don't search for the moong dhal in the picture.

Soaking the sago is the whole trick in this dish. I did not pay proper attention to soaking the sago part once and ended up with a gooey thick ball that directly went into my trash can. So please be careful with soaking the sago with just enough water. That makes a lot of difference.

Ingredients:

1. Sago/Javarisi/Sabudhana - 1 cup

2. Roasted peanuts - 3/4 cup

3. Salt - as needed

4. Sugar - 1 tablespoon

5. Oil - 2 tablespoons

6. Cumin - 1 teaspoon

7. Curry leaves - few

8. Potato - 1 medium (cubed)

9. Turmeric powder - 2 teaspoons

10. Lemon - 1/2

11. Cilantro - to garnish

Method:

1. Wash and soak the sago at least for 8 hours or overnight. The amount of water should be just enough to immerse the sago.

2. Make the roasted peanuts into a coarse mixture just by pulsing it in the mixie/blender couple of times.

3. Mix the soaked sago with the ground peanuts, salt and sugar and keep it aside.

4. In a pan, heat the oil and let the cumin seeds splutter. Add curry leaves and potatoes, turmeric powder, salt and saute till the potatoes are cooked right.

5. Now add the sago mixture and mix it with the potato masala. reduce the flame to medium and let the sago cook completely. Stir in between. It should be cooked without lid and no water is needed since sago is already soaked.

6. Once the sago is cooked add the juice of half of a lemon and remove it from heat.

Garnish it with cilantro and enjoy!

Tip: Cooked moong dhal can be added in step 5 when u add the sago mixture. Moong dhal should not be cooked too much. It should be just right.

Corn Croquettes

I came across this recipe in Arundati's blog sometime back and had bookmarked it. One morning, as always, I stood in front of the opened refrigerator thinking what to cook. When my eyes crawled over a bag of sweet corn kernels, I knew I am going to make this mouth watering corn croquettes. So I quickly went through the recipe, made some few changes, to suit our taste buds and the outcome was "Melt-in-your-Mouth Corn Croquettes". I made it a less spicy so that my son can enjoy it too and he completely loved it just like we did. You can adjust the spiciness as per your taste.

 Ingredients:


1. Sweet Corn Kernels - 2 cups
2. Potato - 1 large
3. Onion - 1 small chopped
4. Ginger Garlic paste - 1 teaspoon.
5. Green Chillies- 1 or as per taste
6. Salt - as needed
7. Seasoned breadcrumbs - as needed
8. Lemon Juice - 1 teaspoon
9. Oil - to shallow fry


Method:


1. Cook the corn kernels for 5 minutes. Darin all the water. Blend it into a coarse mixture and keep it aside.
2. Cook the potato, mash it and keep it aside.
3. Heat a tawa, add the chopped onions, ginger garlic paste, green chillies and saute well till the onions turn translucent.
4. Now add the blended corn kernels, mashed potato, salt and lemon juice.
5. Mix it well and turn off the heat. Once it is warm enough to touch, add bread crumbs as needed to make the mixture good enough to form patties.
6. Make lemon sized balls with the mixture and roll it round between your palms. This recipe will yield 8 -10 croquettes.
7. Heat a skillet, add a tablespoon of oil. When it is hot enough, place 4 or 5 croquettes around the skillet and cook them till they are golden brown. Turn them over and cook till the other side becomes golden brown too.
8. Place it in a paper towel so that any additional oil drains .


Serve it hot with any dipping sauce or have it as it is like what we did :-) .

Creamy Pasta with Broccoli

I sometimes pack pasta for my little one's lunch. I don't like using the store bought pasta sauce every time in his pasta. I am also very particular about adding some vegetables to the sauce. So today is broccoli's turn to go into the sauce :-). I wanted to pair broccoli with something creamy. Since my little one loves anything sour, I decided to mix broccoli with sour cream and it turned out yummmmmm.

Ingredients :


1. Fusilli pasta - 1/2 cup
2. Butter - 2 teaspoons
3. Garlic - 1 grated
4. Broccoli florets - 1 cup
5. Sour cream - 2 tablespoons
6. Salt and pepper to season


Method:


1. Cook the pasta as per the instructions given in the box.
2. Cook the broccoli for few minutes and make a puree of it.
3. Heat a pan, add butter and garlic and saute it for a minute.
4. Then add the pureed broccoli to the pan and saute it for couple of minutes.
5. Add the cooked pasta and toss it around till the broccoli mixture coats all of the pasta.
6. Add 2 tablespoons of sour cream and mix it well.
7. Season it with salt and pepper.

Vermicelli Briyani

This is a very easy dish to put together. Just cook the vermicelli and add the masala and you have a wonderful briyani to serve with Raitha.

Ingredients:


1. Vermicelli - 2 cups
2. Oil - 1 tablespoon
3. Ghee - 1 tablespoon
4. Cinnamon - 1 stick
5. cloves - 2
6. Cardamom - 2
7. Bay leaf - 1
8. Onion - 1 finely chopped
9. Tomatoes - 1 finely chopped
10. Carrot - 1/2 cup chopped
11. Peas - 1/2 cup chopped
12. Green chilli - 4 slitted
13. Cilantro - to garnish
14. Turmeric - 1/2 teaspoon
15. Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 teaspoon
16. Salt - to taste


Method:


1. Cook the vermicelli as per the package instruction and keep it aside in a colander to drain. Make sure you do not overcook it. I usually add a teaspoon of oil when it cooks so that it does not stick to each other.
2. Heat a pan, add oil + ghee and all the whole garam masala and saute it for a minute.
3. Add chopped onions, ginger garlic paste and chillies. Saute till the raw smell goes away.
4. Now add tomatoes, salt and turmeric powder and cook until the tomatoes get soft and mushy.
5. Add the vegetables and saute it for a few minutes.
6. Now reduce the flame and add the cooked vermicelli and mix it gently till all the masala mixes with the vermicelli.
7. Let it cook just for a couple of minutes. Remove it from heat.


Garnish with cilantro and serve it with onion raitha.

Kadai Paneer

I got this recipe from my Gujarathi friend who is a wonderful cook. When we lived in the same apartment complex, we exchanged foods every evening. She would give some north indian chaats / curries and I would give her south indian items like paniyarams, idiyappams, dosa, idlis, etc., Thats how i became a big fan of north indian dishes.


This is definitely not a fat free / low fat version of kadai paneer. The more fat you add, the more tastier it turns out.

Ingredients:


1. Paneer - 1/2 block
2. Onion - 2 (1 1/2 cubed and 1/2 sliced)
3. Tomatoes - cubed 2 big
4. Cashews - 10
5. Chilli powder - 1/2 tablespoon (or more if you want it spicier)
6. Turmeric powder - 1 teaspoon.
7. Dhania powder - 1 teaspoon.
8. Kasoori Methi - 1 tablespoon
9. Red Capsicum - 1 small sliced
10. Green Capsicum - 1 small sliced
11. Salt - to taste
12. Ghee - 2 tablespoons
13. Oil - 2 tablespoons


Method :


1. In a pan, add little oil. Once it is hot, saute cubed onions. Saute till it becomes translucent.
2. Then add tomatoes and let it cook till it becomes mushy. Add the cashew nuts and switch off the heat.
3. Let it cool. Grind it into a fine paste and keep it aside.
4. Meanwhile, add a little oil in another pan, add the cubed paneer pieces and roast it until all the sides are golden brown. Keep it aside.
5. Saute the sliced onions. It should be crisp.
6. Do the same for the capsicums too.
7. In a heavy pan, add oil and ghee and let it heat. Add the ground onion tomato cashew paste. At this point reduce the heat level, otherwise the gravy will splutter all over.
8. Add salt, chilli powder, dhani, turmeric powder. Mix it with the gravy and increase the heat. Cover it with a lid and let it cook till the oil/ghee seperates.
9. Crush kasoori methi with your palm and mix it in.
10. Now add the sauted onions and capsicums and give it a gentle mix.
11. Add the fried/sauted paneer cubes and mix it in the gravy gently. Be cautious not to break the paneer pieces.


Kadai Paneer is now ready to serve with your favourite naan / roti / poori .


Suggestion:Do step 10 and 11, 10 or 15 mins before serving. That way, the vegetables will stay crisp and not get soggy.

Banana Foster

What better way to end a lovely anniversary dinner than with a delicious dessert? We started looking at the dessert menu. He loves ice cream and I love banana. So we ended up choosing Banana Foster which is sauteed bananas with caramel sauce on vanilla ice cream. The moment the dessert came to our table, all three of us started diving in. Yeah even our little one was a great competitor. But he was more interested in the ice cream than the sauce. Since the caramel sauce had rum in it, I scooped some ice cream on to his plate and he was happily enjoying it when we were enjoying this heavenly combination of ice cream with sauteed banana and caramel sauce.

We had invited one of our friends over for lunch last Sunday and I made this dessert for them. Of course, I used store bought ice cream and just made the caramel sauce. It was such a big hit. I omitted rum that the original recipe called for and it tasted heavenly nevertheless.

If you are counting calories, you should not even be looking at this page :-)

Ingredients:

1. Butter - 1/4 cup
2. Sugar - 1/2 cup (super fine)
3. Heavy Cream - 3/4 cup
4. Banana - 2 peeled and cut into bite size circles

I did not have superfine sugar, So I just took the regular sugar and pulsed it in the blender couple of times.

Method:

1. In a heavy flat pan, melt butter over medium heat.
2. Stir in sugar. Keep stirring, until the sugar is all melted and caramel brown. This process will take quite sometime. Stirring is the key to get a nice silky sauce. So be patient and keep stirring. At one point, the butter will start leaving the sugar. But do not give up stirring, stir it until the sugar turns into caramel brown color.
3. Add heavy cream to this. The mixture will bubble up. Boil it and reduce the heat to low.
4. Place the bananas and cook for just 2 minutes and remove from heat.

Serve hot with cold vanilla ice cream. Yummmmmmm......