ME, the lazy foodie !!

Beans Upkari is a very simple dish, which gets ready in like 15 mins or so and is a very delicious dish (for people who love beans that is). It is prepared by tempering the green beans and cooking them just tender enough to leave them crunchy and then topping them off with grated coconut. We konkani people are always accused of using a lot of coconut, but what can we do... our tongues have gotten used to that flavor and we just cannot get enff of it :) We LOVE coconut !! and use it in almost every dish that we make, either grind it for the masala gravy or top it off like garnish !! Beans upkari is my sister's favorite dish and she likes it with potatoes added.

SagLe in konkani means "whole" as in we add larger pieces of veggies to this dish than we do in other dishes. I guess we are supposed to add the veggies as a whole, but I guess over time it has evolved into using larger pieces - keeping in mind the amount of time it would actually take to cook the whole veggies. Whenever I make this dish, my friends in the US relish it a lot. This dish can be prepared with a variety of vegetables: eggplant, beans, okra are some of the commonly used ones. This dish has a strong coconutty flavor, but it is not that of raw coconuts and is also masked a bit by the spices used in the dish. So, if you are the kind who does not like coconut-based dishes, you should still try it once.. you might just end up liking it.

Just love this karnataka style dish, for its simplicity and mouth-watering flavors. I hate capsicum (green peppers) in almost everything else, except for this dish. I just love the twist it gives to this dish and how it enhances the flavors. Whenever I prepare this dish, I feel like eating Akki rotti along with it - the kind they make by pre-cooking the rice flour and rolling it out into chapathis. I absolutely love the combination - you should try it sometime :D

I am absolutely positive that most of the Konkani people know how to prepare this. But I just wanted to put up the recipe for non-konkani people just to say its the simplest kind of daal ever. You dont have to cut onions or tomatoes or even garlic and it still tastes yummy (not to generalize but well, atleast all konkani people are in love with it). This daal can be made into either thick consistency or thin consistency and I used to love the thicker version of it and my sister used to love the thinner version of it. As usual, like I have mentioned so many times, me and my sister are like this (X): total opposites !! Anyways, we still used to enjoy the dish so much and even now I eat it like plain lentil soup. Just cannot get enough of it - EVER !!

Medu Vada, meaning soft vadas, are a very famous snack / breakfast item in South India. They are generally served as a side item with Idlis / Dosas with either chutney or sambar. Generally people eat a single medu vada with a heavy breakfast and still crave for more :) Medu vadas are soft inside and crispy on the outside when they are hot. They are super yummy and you cannot just have one :) Here is my recipe for medu vadas. I used to hate idlis back in India. So if we went to a hotel for breakfast, everyone used to order idlis with one vada each and I would get 2 vadas and skip the idlis altogether :P I just love medu vadas.

Heres for all of you a popular Deepavali dish from South India, mainly from Andhra Pradesh state. Its called Bellam Gaarelu - literally meaning jaggery vadas. They are made by soaking and grinding urdh daal, making vadas from them and soaking them in jaggery syrup to get mouth-watering bellam gaarelu. The recipe is from a close friend of mine who hails from Andhra Pradesh, and traditionally for Deepavali, his mom makes these mouth-watering gaarelu every year.

Most people I know today do not know how ghee is made from butter. It is a very simple process where large amounts of butter is heated continuously until a clear liquid is obtained and the solids separate out from it. The process of making ghee takes me back to my childhood days when the aroma of fresh ghee used to fill the house every Friday morning. My mom used to make fresh ghee for the diyas (oil lamps) on Fridays. She used to light ghee lamps on every Friday. She never used the old batch of ghee because it was already used by us for cooking / eating.

I am sure most of you foodies out there know that Andhra Pradesh is famous for its vast variety of pickles, both the ones that can be stored for years and the ones that can be eaten instantly. This recipe for cauliflower pickle is the sort which can be eaten instantly and cannot be stored for long periods of time. One of my close friends loves this pickle and I always make it especially for her. It only requires like 30 mins of your time, including cutting the cauliflower :) Its quick and quite yummy, but also very spicy. So do try it at home, if it appeals to your taste buds :)

Panpolo or Neer dosa is a very common breakfast dosa in a konkaNi household. Neer - meaning water in kannada - is a main constituent of this dosa along with soaked rice. The consistency of this dosa is also watery, which is why the name probably. In konkaNi, I think it associates with Paani (water) polo (dosa). However, this is just a guess :) There are several versions of this dosa, with coconut, cucumber, magge (mangalore cucumber / melon), water melon peel etc., I love all these versions, but they all have distinct flavors and I think they are all acquired tastes.

"Bhakri" in konkani means a hybrid of a dosa and rotti (rotti in kannada - not roti in hindi). So, its a kind of a thick pancake type dish which is a bit crunchier and has a bite compared to a soft pancake.  Bhakri can be made out of rice flour, wheat rava, idli rava etc.,

Serves 2 Preparation Time (10 min) Cooking Time - 15 mins approx Ingredients   1/2 Cabbage (medium sized - chopped) Grated coconut - 1 tbsp Green Chillies - 2 - slit lengthwise Salt - as per taste

Grr... Have any of you hated Firefox sometimes ?? I just wrote this post twice already and both the times, it did not save my post :( Now I have to write it for the 3rd time, fortunately, its working in Chrome... So, lemme collect all my feelings again and.... here it is now....

Serves 2 Preparation Time (10 min) Cooking Time - 20 mins approx Ingredients Fresh / Frozen green peas - 2 cups Rice (preferably basmati) - 2 cups Water - 3 cups (1.5 times of rice) Salt - to taste

Serves 2 Preparation Time (1 min)  Cooking Time - 15 mins Ingredients Raw green plantain - 1 Coriander leaves - few sprigs (finely chopped) Salt - to taste   Chat Masala and / or Amchur powder - 1 tsp each (optional - use if you want to Indianize it) Oil - for deep fry Method   Heat up some oil in a frying pan (the wider the better) on a medium flame, so that by the time the preparation is over, the oil is hot enough to start cooking. This way you wont waste much time. (Remember not to start on a high flame) Wash the plantain thoroughly and peel it (not with a peeler - peel it like you would peel a banana - tips below*). Cut the plantain into 3/4 inch thick slices. Keep aside until oil is hot. Once the oil is hot, add the slices one by one into the oil - they should come up in the oil immediately. Turn them over in less than 30 secs. They should not fry much, just until they change color. Remove them onto a paper towel. Reduce the oil to a low flame. No No its not y

Well, well, well... what do we have here ? A dull girl ? Maybe !! I know, I haven't updated my blog in a long time now. So here's something to go by.... I will post one recipe everyday until my store of recipes is over. Haven't been cooking much lately, so there are no pics / new recipes... just old ones. So here goes... check out my next post for a new recipe :D

YAY !! Finally I graduated..... I was sooooo DONE !! :) But look at the irony... I have all the time in the world to cook and post recipes n stuff like that, but I have become super lazy :( BUT soon, I will get out of this phase, I am sure of that. So wait for the yummy recipes :) - So

Looks like a caption in a movie :) not really.... just counted the number of days since my last post. My God !! Have I been busy or lazy ?? Actually, lots of things happening in my life which makes it quite difficult to sit down and post a few things here, let alone having no time to cook :( I have a list of recipe titles on me. I plan to finish writing the recipes and post them asap, especially for my dear friend Aashu, whom I promised some recipes. Sorry to make you wait Aashu... will definitely do it in the coming month. I am hoping to graduate soon. So, I will have loads of time after that for blogging and ofcourse for cooking :) - So

Hey All !! I am back to blogging now.... I might as well, because I had to postpone my graduation by another semester. So y deprive myself of something that I love to do.... no no not blogging... I am talking about showing off my cooking skills :) Just wanted to post some recent pics of my cooking here. Recently captioned the photos :) !!! Mexican-Indian Medley (Onion Pakodas and Guacamole - I did not make the veggie crispy chips) Breakfast Strata (egg-based) Prepping for White pasta sauce White pasta sauce cooking Mixing cooked pasta and the creamy pasta sauce Creamy white pasta Pasta and garlic bread Garlic butter used for the garlic bread (above and below) Garlic bread (fresh out of the oven) Not-from-scratch pasta (used canned pasta sauce) From-scratch Lasagna (sauces were from scratch) Cooked lasagna Lasagna topped with extra sauce Masala Omlet !! Omlet with toast !! Prepping pizza base (readymade dough) Added toppings to pizza base Topped with cheeses Pizza fresh out of the oven