Chavli Amti / Black Eyed Peas Curry

No matter how many side dishes you may have in your repertoire, you are always left wondering when it comes to preparing side dishes for rotis. At least that happens to be true in my case. It becomes even more tough when you do not happen to have any vegetables at hand and all of sudden guests drop by unannounced at your door step. That is exactly what happened last Friday. As we had a 3 day holiday I had emptied the fridge of it contents, discarding the dead and dying planning on stocking it the next day. With no idli batter in the fridge imagine the shock I got when my guests came.

Tomato Pasta Soup

In my household, as far as soups go, I do not have the luxury of opting for any shortcuts like using store bought bouillon/soup cubes which can save a hell lot of time. Arjun loves soups and I try to make a soup at least once in a fortnight and it has to be from scratch. Usually, I just make a plain tomato soup for him but recently my kids have taken a sudden affinity to pasta.

Garlic And Smoked Tomato Pull Apart Bread

So, how warm is warm enough, asked my friend. She meant the water’s temperature for proofing the yeast. When I started out with yeast, even I used to wonder the same as I did not have a thermometer to check on the temperature and still do not have one. To get the perfect raised dough, the proofing of yeast is very important and if the water is not hot enough the dough will not rise or if the water is very hot it will kill the yeast. Luckily for me during the initial days itself, I chanced upon a fool proof way to proof the yeast which has never let me down so far.

Orange Muffins With Orange Glaze

My love for oranges is known to everyone in my family. I love citrus flavors very much and among them oranges are my favorite. I love the color and also anything and everything made with oranges. To prove my point, I have an Orange bread, Vegan Orange Cake, Shortbread Cookie and a delicious, mouthwatering Orange Kheer that will be a perfect dessert and not to mention a drink that will whet your appetite. I have not tried so many dishes with any other ingredient like I did with Oranges, I believe.

Kalkandu Pongal

Wishing you all a very Happy Pongal and also celebrating 6000 Facebook Likes. I feel so humbled with all the love being showered on me. The Second day of the pongal festival is also called as “Thai Pongal” and I had been very much busy with cleaning home, purchases and other related activities to celebrate the festival. In the 4 day long festival, my favorite is to eat Chakkarai Pongal that is loaded with ghee and topped with roasted cashew nus and spiced mildly with just a hint of edible camphor. Let,s just forget the calories for now and worry about it later, right.

5 Minute No Knead Artisan Bread

Do not be surprised by the heading because what you read is correct, it took me all of 5 minutes to put together this bread and look what a beauty is has turned out to be. I still find it difficult to believe that to get a decent bread it just needs 5 minutes of our time. With this bread, you are hands free and there is literally no kneading required at all. But I do love kneading not that I’m afraid of it as we at home, excepting my Hubby eat flat breads/rotis almost daily and I simply refuse to use a stand mixer to get the job done. I mean why miss the opportunity of a free exercise for your fingers and arms.

Garlic Mushroom Pizzas

We, The Gourmet Seven are back with a bang and from this month on it is only going to get better with a few more foodie friends joining us. This month we chose to cook some gourmet party food from the BBC Good Food site and I chose this Pizza recipe as I was sure that my kids would love it very much. After all what is a party without a Pizza, right. It came out fabulous but of course I had to make some marked changes to the dough as I do not get Strong White flour and fast action yeast at my place.

Eggless Coffee Cake

Wishing all my friends and readers a very Happy New Year. I wanted to ring in the New Year with something sweet. So, sharing with you all here is an eggless coffee cake that I made before New Year which I took to my native place where we celebrated the new year with all my relatives. As I had mentioned in Mocha Muffins post, except me all my relatives are hard core coffee addicts and I knew this cake would be much appreciated.