The latest craze..

baking and taking pics.

There is a lot of experimentation that one can do and the results are good to cheer your mood up..

I was finding it difficult to resist eating the banana cinnamom cake up(yes! I made that), slice by slice so thought of blogging to keep the mind diverted. The thing is I generally end up skiping lunch as eating alone and at times cooking for just self is quite discouraging or plain boring.. so when i liked the cake that i made today, the hunger cells raised their heads tall up.. and I merrily ate quite a bit of it.

So here I am, having eaten a qtr of the cake already :P and sharing pics of 2 of my latest baking experiments.

I read a recipe "nutty banana bread" and modified it today to make the banana cinnamon cake using brown sugar!

Honey-Raisin Bread baked a week ago, using this recipe

When I told Amit that this bread has a lowest fat content i.e no oil, no butter, no sugar, no maida and only egg whites, his expressions were of "should i even taste it??" but he said its tasting as good as cake and we ate up all that you can see in the above pic. & then I had to cook no dinner :-)

PS: Edited to add a closer look of Dhiren's share. I have only started baking... can;t afford his bad nazar :P

But Dhiren, pls watch ur drool.. the kepboard is floating already :D

Edited again, to add recipe link :)

Tales of the cook in me.. (...again )

In my kitchen I am the cook. Infact that is the only place where I could be accepted as someone close to a cook!! Where I make the rules, I create the recipes, I decide the ingredients and I sometimes put my legs up and simply say "I am not cooking today!!" I never cooked when staying with mom and the idea of cooking never interested me till I started cooking :) so now when i stir up something and it turns out good, i feel like framing that moment forever in memory. Choosing what to cook for the day doesnt come easy to me, and that is the reason I thought of recording some of the stuff up here. My cooking starts with looking up in google and then checking into my kitchen and doing my own version of the both. This pretty much also applies to the husband who loves to cook as well as eat. Thank you for stopping by.. Pls cheer me up with your kind words in the comment space!!

This is the write up I was to put for another blog which if i started would record recipes randomly.. for my own reference more than anothing else, because deciding what to cook really doesnt come to me naturally. I need ideas.

So sunday afternoon i was all set to start another blog. The blog name, the title and i even collected matter for the first post too.. Some interesting quotes about cooking. But then something happened and the technically not too sound me dropped the idea. I think i will continue to write them here with the tag "hungry?" as i did so far.

Chicken curry

mushroom malai matar

palak paneer

grilled fish

veg dum biryani & aloo fry(by amit) with raita & green chutney

beetroot veggie

capsicum potato with soya nuggets(small ones)

spinach soup

salad without readymade dressing (cucumber,onion,tomato,lettuce or napa cabbage, corn & beans sautéed in olive oil)

different daal combo for lunch or dinner

omlette by amit in breakfast

This is what i remember having dished out in our kitchen last wk.. I have ample of time at hand these days(which i guess is evident from this blog) and I am actually enjoying cooking. The only thing I dont like much is I end up repeating some stuff. Last time I told mom that its kaddu(pumpkin) for dinner, dad jumped in the conversation and asked me 'if there is excess of pumpkin available in dubai'. its one of the veggie he cannot eat at all but i recently have developed a taste for it. We even make soup out of it often. & Maybe the dinner tonight is also going to be kaddu, though i should not tell mom about it..

When I go out buying vegetables next time, I will try to pickup things other than listed above. subject to availability/their freshness/prices etc.. Lets see.. but like what?? wait, lemme write some..okra, couliflower, eggplant, beans, carrot, radish, turai, karela, methi leaves, broccoli(i dont like), asparagus (we have never tried).. wow! i didn't realize but there are many options...

anyways, pls be kind and tell me what did YOU have in the last night meal, pls?

thanks :)

Indianized version of Chicken Soup

I must have done some good for sure to be born in this era of internet. How else would I be able to meet this girl from Germany who is in love with Indian culture and language. She has not been to India ever, we are what is called 'online friends' for almost 3 years mostly via chats and mails, few phone calls and a postcard letter once. She is 4 yrs younger to me but that has hardly mattered. Hey girl, I still have the sweet teddy u sent for me thru someone coming to India :) , I hope you dont mind me mentioning you on my blog. I basically want to record the chicken soup recipe that you gave me this wkend since I got all praises for it and the credit goes to you. 

Chicken soup sounds simple but I never had tried that before. A relatively new friend, when I said I can survive on soups n salads, said, she too can provided they are non veg. she is "strictly non-veg" in her own words. Since that day I hv been thinking of making non veg soup/salad. 

So this is what I tried with the stuff available in my fridge.

--3 Chicken franks - grated (I dint buy any other chiken as my freezer was full of this wkend offer). If one uses chicken pieces, de-skin it else the soup will taste oily however the bones give a nice taste to the soup so let them be.... (the tip from Lydia)

--1 carrot - finely chopped

--1 bowl frozen corn

--1 boiled potato  - cut into small thin pieces

--1 tomato and 1 onion - finely chopped, mixed with dried crushed mint leaves, fresh cylantro(coriander) and sprinkled with pepper powder.

bullion chicken cube was part of original recipe but that would mean going to supermarket so I tried something wierd-sounding stuff that tasted great. And here is the replacement.

--black eye bean (lobiya). I had some boiled leftover from the earlier day meal which I made into a paste in mixer with some salt and pepper.

--& olive oil

Now lets turn on, the cooking stove..

--) In a large pan heat 2 spoons olive oil and put carrot- cook and stir, add corns- cook and stir, add the grated chicken- cook and stir

--) Then add the lobiya paste, mix the ingredients well- cook and stir. This would give the thickness to the soup and also add to the nutritive value.

--) Put water depending on the quantity and consistency of soup u want to make. I think most of my cooking is done by "andazan" philosophy.. not good when u are recording recipes but anyways.

--) After 2 min you can add the boiled potato, and the onion-tomato mixture that was kept aside in beginning & which kept tempting me to use it in a Haldiram's Bhel snack instead :p

--) Since we are done with adding everything , additional salt and pepper can be put to taste.

--) Bring it to a boil and cook for 2 minutes before you are done. 

I made this at dinner time and it turned out to be almost the main meal, so filling and satisfying. Ask Amit.

Holi '09 & '08

This was the making of it in reverse order!

Sabudana papad (made all by myself!!) and a pinch of turmeric powder for rang! That regular n  umm yum omlette for breakfast (lucky me to have Amit). That was our holi before he left for work.. That was also how we made up after yet another war(this was a mine one though) last night :p, about he being sleepy and me being busy with the net and the light disturbing him etc... why do so many blogs get updated just when u just want to hit the bed??? 

--*--

Last holi at this time, we had already climbed the Vaishno Devi Shrine and what a holy trip it was! We had prior bus bookings from Delhi to Katra but when we reached the bus stop there was some goofup between main bus operator and the agent doing the bookings. We were made to wait and compelled to grumble to get the seats we had booked in the sleeper bus, for an overnite journey which anyways can get tiresome. We reached there at around noon, checked into a simple lodge basically to keep our stuff n freshen up. Had planned that we will take the resigtration slip for darshan, have lunch, relax and start climbing in the evening. It was good only till we saw the miles long queue and a 3 hours waiting at the 'Yatra registration counter' and we were supposed to start our trek within 6 hours else the resistration would be rendered invalid. That left us with no time to relax (which is much recommended before a 13 km trek for darshan, having already done a 12 hrs bus ride on the hills); food wasnt good either, maybe coz we had the lunch at 5pm. With 'Jor se bolo - Jai mata di' enthusiasm we started walking, getting equipped with our walking sticks on the way. I tell you, the trek upill was filled with so much of energy & zest. 

Its advisable to keep ur belongings in cloak rooms behind and take only minimal stuff with you uphill. We were adviced by a friend to carry new pair of clothes and take bath before doing the darshan in those new clothes. So we did that.. From what I remember, at 1 km from katra is 'Banganga', where the goddess is believed to hv stopped to drink water, she actually shot an arrow into the ground and water gushed out in form of a spring from where she quenched her thirst; then there is 'charan paduka' at another 1.5 km where matarani rested before going ahead. 4 and a half km further is 'Ardhkuwari' where she meditated for 9 months inside a cave. This is halfway point in the yatra. & you find another long queue to get a group no. and then a long wait to be called to go inside the cave when your group's turn comes. Its a narrow cave so only one person can pass thru at a time n hence all this arrangement. We were told that our group will hv to wait for some 3-4 hours so we thought of covering the bhawan in the meantime. Who knew that the onward journey will be tougher owing to aching legs, another long queue and wait to enter the main shrine or 'bhawan' as it is called. 

This is the point where our patience gave up. There was chaos, flood of people wandering almost aimlessly, no information boards, no place to stand or sit, utter madness with people pushing, jumping the queue and even cheating to get in without queue or appearing in the middle from nowhere into the queue. Sumit and Amit tried to control the crowd at one point but for how long could the army of 2 people take this battle and some unheard curses on? I cant believe that all these people actually come here for peace of mind and solace. Rab to yaar ghar mein rakhi bhagwan ki murti mein bhi basta hai. We stood in the queue in turns thus getting some time away from all this. Anyone going there for the first time without prior booking or VIP tag or 'jaan pehchaan' would feel totally lost I promise you. It was getting difficult to keep up our holy spirits. The chilling cold winds only drained us some more. Now just as we were to see a ray of hope, reaching the entry gate, they declared that the gates will be closed for pilgrims for next two hours. Being the aarti time. & later I heard from the same friend of ours that they were escorted in, for darshan in the proper aarti time(?!!?!!). This is what I mean by VIP TAG or 'jaan pehchaan'.. Cruel.. but then it exists at all religeous places is what she tells me. Disgusting..

Some more of madenning rush n push! Guess, it must have come as a shocking surprise for many like it did to us. & whynot? Try n imagine holi leading to a long weekend, in north India and a crowd of thousands of shraddhalus and equal no of trekkers coming here as a wkend getaway from nearby places. So the in-flow of ppl continues 24X7 and there is no adequate arrangement at bhawan or any other point for such huge number. The thoughts of a slide or some mass mishap started haunting me and it was suffocating to see people all around. 

We tried to sit near one of rare booth meant for assistance at a point just near the main shrine and what we heard were stories of ppl missing. Its bound to happen when you go in groups and members have different speeds or the elder ones take a pony or palki and reach here before the rest. So the help this booth was providing is by doing announcements about lost and found kids/young/elderly.. I also got into consoling an old lady who had this strange worry that her son and DIL must have planned the trip to get rid of her here and she asked us money and means to go back to her village somewhere in bihar. Her cries and the cold made me feel sick and irritated Amit enough to call it quits. We said our prayers and apologies to mata rani peacefully and somehow made our way out of that flood of ppl sitting all over & waiting for the gates to reopen for darshan. There is 'Bhairo temple', which is to be visited after completing the darshan here. Not sure of whether this qualifies as our darshan, we still booked our ponies to go back via Bhairo temple. There was long queue there again..sigh! But with sunrise, there was warmth in air and with visibility on the top of that hill I felt less choked. We spent some time there and headed straight back to Katra. Downhill ride on the backs of these ponies who are trained to run like in marathons, was painfull and we crashed as soon as we entered our room at Katra. Not a single bone was intact, all screaming aloud for what we did to them. I think we managed to take hot water bath before crashing there as I remember that had helped. That was 'holi' day, our very first holi as a couple and I dont even remember if we had lunch that day or not.

My dreams of playing a full fledged holi with Amit is still a dream only..

The buzzing alarm woke us up in the evening. We gathered ouselves somehow, collected our stuff and checked out. Did some shopping on our way to the bus stop and took one to reach the railway station. Now that is where we had a nice dinner and a walk in spite of the aching bodies before we bid good bye to this beautifull hill station.

Its a BIG NO-NO going there during the holiday, wkend and summer seasons. With little bit of prior planning it could have been better but having said that, I was completely disappointed. Most of my friends have been there and had good experiences but they all had gone with someone having influence over there or with prior bookings.

We have told Mata Vaishno Devi to invite us again OR next time we gonna come & see you in off season!!

This is the scene when we had come back from the yatra, look at the crows still coming in and seeking registration slips when the officials have already closed the counter for the no of pilgrims had exceeded the manageable limits. If we call our darshan incomplete what would they call theirs??

I was going down this way on the pony back :-(, when i saw this monkey that seem to be enjoying his drink...

Tales of a housewife..

I tried the most typical wifely thing today. guess what!

I took the roti n saag to the farms where the man of the house had been toiling in the soil err sands... yes, something on these lines I did today and had a day well spent!

& What made me do that is a story of our laziness and time miss-management but all's well that ends well, so lets not talk of that. Here is what I had cooked.

Best thing was having lunch together (you somehow dont feel like having lunch when u are alone at home) and besides that, got my visa-medical done, checked out a mall that has a sky effect created indoor and also saw another part of Dubai. The more I see it more I like it. Its an amazing land. & The weather has also been kind to me till now. So of this amazing land I was talking - Its one of the examples of what human hard work and creative mind can do to a endless desert. Green lawns, beds of flowers in all possible colors, trees wherever possible - nothing could have been a reality without the metiulous effort of people. For every filament of green life, there is a perfectly laid source of water. And I loved to see this effort bearing such beautiful fruit all around.

Coming back to the wifely thing that I did, reminds me of the blr days when this man of the house used to bring home cooked lunch to my workplace & we had some nice lunches together exploring places around my office & giving headaches to my office people with my absence :) 

Soup of the Day

~~~PUMPKIN SOUP~~~

Prepared today morning and it turned out to be nice. Best thing - Its most S I M P L E. . & quick to make. Plus its healthy and nutritious. Here is what I did.

Peel, clean and cut a qtr of pumpkin into small cubes.

Pressure cook with little salt and pepper.(I waited for 3 whistles)

The pumpkin becomes so soft that one could do with just mashing it but for the proper soup texture, I preferred making a purree out of it in mixer.

(optional) dissolve a spoonful of cornflour into 1/3rd cup of milk to be used for thickening the soup.

Put little butter or oil in a pan and heat it.

Add mustard seeds & let them sputter.

Add the pumpkin pulp into it, add water to get the consistency you like and bring it to a boil.

Add salt and pepper as per taste and stir well. 

Add butter for taste (again, optional)

Garnish:

Coriander leaves

cocumber cut into thin half moon shaped slices.

Serve it hot. Infact have it too.

Inspiration: Bhabhi, who inspired me to try different soups and salads to enjoy my housewife days. Will ping her for the next tip nowwwwww..

Experience: This was my second soup attempt after coming here. First was supposed to be of spinach. But I spoiled it by using some wierd tasting look-alike of it. Picking up vegetables here is not as simple as in India. The other day, I confused lettuce to cabbage :(  YES, ME DID THAT :(

O'Fisshhhhh !!

Allora! This is a latest addition to my bag of words. Courtesy Amit, who just got back from a fun filled trip training program with his international colleagues in Dublin(more on that later sometime). Today I greet you with Allora, which as per my pati, in Italian, means 'come on'.. so, allora! into my little world of cooking experiences. 

I am not a kitchen kitchen person. Neither do I live to eat. But there are times when I feel passionate about cooking. And this is going to be my first post on one of such days. 

While blog browsing last week, I read a fish recipe and since I love fish(live as well as cooked), I thought to myself 'why not experiment' on fish - if it turns out well, good! else its only me who will get to know. And the fact that my mom tasted and had a full piece of it especially when she has left non veg by choice, it meant a reward yday.

I had bought just 3 pieces of rohu from the local fishwala to try my hand and my plan was – I will taste one before mom is back form hospital, have the second with dinner and since mom anyways wont have it, will take the 3^rd for dad to taste the next day n earn few praises. (u can imagine what a strategist I could be even in smallest of matters). Pa, come home soon, we’ll cook one full fish for you :) ye! what a motivation to recover fast.

I am posting one pic here, just for you :D, and the recipe is customised to my imagination n out of whatever I could find in mom/Manu’s kitchen.

Marinated the fish with turmeric and salt for 15 min (wanted to add curd but wasn’t handy)

Heat mustard oil in the kadai and put a split chilli & let it sputter,

Then I put mustard n cumin seeds plus a hint of heeng for flavour,

Put 2 whole pieces of garlic and 1 finely chopped onion,

When the onion gets brown, add turmeric, salt, some garam masala.

Further, add one chopped tomato and stir it till it starts leaving oil.

Now add water to make the gravy and let it come to boil.

While doing the above, simultaneously fry the fish on tawa with little oil and keep aside. 

Once the curry is done and fish is also fried, put it gently into the kadai and let it cook on full flame for 5 min.

I didn’t have coriander leaves @ home, else, garnishing is a must must for me.

With this, its ready to be savoured.

Amit darling, u missed it boy! I(mean me?) did quickly call to tell him this :)