Anu, a good friend of mine wanted me to make something with an ingredient or set of ingredients that I haven’t cooked with so far or avoid because we don’t like it. Soya chunks are something we like so that was out of the question. My initial plan was to go make something with Quinoa. I have eaten many Quinoa dishes over the past couple of years but never tried to make anything with it myself....

Vegetable Rava Upma Recipe: learn how to make vegetable rava upma using this easy, classic recipe, a popular South Indian Breakfast! Vegetable Rava Upma Recipe Ingredients Instructions Pin I love breakfast, and I love it more when it’s served for dinner. I guess I was just raised like that. We had dosa for dinner 5 out of 7 days a week and my mom’s idlis are very popular among friends in Kottayam....

Remember the banana stem that I painstakingly cleaned up (if not, check out how to prepare banana stem before cooking )? I used half of it to make banana stem thoran which I absolutely love and then reserved the rest to make paruppu usili. It turned out really well, a great blend of textures and flavours. The first I learnt to cook for TH was paruppu usili so each time I make it, I am reminded of the first time I tried it....

One important thing I learnt from Amma’s method of cooking is this - don’t cook a vegetable in water unless you have to. Potatoes, for example. It’s easy to just pressure cook it or par-boil it before making a roasted side dish with it but this changes the flavour of the potato significantly. It does take longer to cook if you add it raw to a pan and start stir-frying it but if you regulate the temperature correctly and have some patience, you will be rewarded for it....

Double chocolate biscotti has been on my mind for a while and I had bookmarked quite a few chocolate biscotti recipes over the past few months, looked up the technique, figured out if I wanted to add nuts to my biscotti, leave it plain, add fruit zest, and a million other things. The final kick came in when I got some lovely almond orange biscotti from a friend on Diwali....

Crispy Waffles - two words that will make me actually pass over a plate of hot dosas for breakfast. If made right, waffles are one of my favourite breakfasts of all time. My mom, being the ever experimental cook that she is, used to make waffles when I was a kid. She had a fancy kitchen equipment that could do a few things, one of which was to make waffles and while it was definitely not an every day affair, I do remember a few hot waffles with fresh, homemade butter mornings....

I love banana cakes . I love chocolate. So this eggless banana chocolate pound cake is love squared. I am sorry if you are a banana-hater and can’t stand the thought of it but really, you don’t know what you are missing. And God help you if you are a chocolate-hater. You really shouldn’t be here at all, right? But wait, I need to tell you about a new project I am on with 8 other amazing food bloggers....

Anyway, I am trying revive myself out of the hiatus with this quickie cauliflower peas recipes. Gobi Peas Masala Recipe Ingredients: Cauliflower - one medium, chopped into fine pieces Peas - ½ cup Onions - 2 large Tomatoes - 2 Ginger garlic paste - 2 tbsp Green chillies - 4 Chicken masala - 2 tbsp Chilly powder - 2 tsp Turmeric - ¼ tsp Oil - 3 tbsp Salt - to taste...

Amma makes idlis in bulk and stores them away. We also have dosa batter at home, dosa is our staple food, much like rotis are to those of you who have it every night or almost every night. For us, it’s dosa. Idli was initially meant to be made only the day after the batter was made but later on, amma started making idlis with more than half the batter and storing them away....

Along with 6 people came a carton of mangoes, my favourite fruit. Although we were eating them as fast as they ripen, we were still left with a lot of mangoes that needed finishing up, a problem I was most happy with. There are so many different things you can make with ripe mangoes, like mango cheesecake , vegan mango cake , mango lassi , and even mango ice-cream milkshake ....

When MTR does such a great job of producing a great instant rava idli mix, you may ask why I even bother with a from-scratch rava idli recipe. How I Made It: Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds and chana dal. Once the mustard seeds pop and the chana dal starts turning golden brown, add the hing and cashews. Fry until the cashews start turning golden brown....

When I went home in June this year, I had tall plans. I wanted to cook a 21-item sadya (traditional Kerala feast) for myself and my I-don’t-like-Kerala-food- all -that-much husband. I even brought back some things like ada for A da Pradhaman , vanpayar for Olan, pappadom and miscellaneous other Kerala-food-related ingredients. Here are some recipes to help you along in case you are planning to cook an Onam Sadya for your family....

Naan On Tawa Recipe Ingredients 1.5 cups lukewarm water ¾ tablespoon yeast 3 and ¼ cups of all purpose flour A generous pinch of salt Instructions Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add in salt and the flour, incorporate well until a sticky dough is formed. No kneading necessary. Set aside covered for 20-30 mins. Tear or cut off peach-sized amounts with a serrated knife and transfer to a floured surface....

This recipe is adapted from a cooking class I took in Bangkok at May Kaidee cooking school. They specialise in Thai vegetarian recipes and teach only those and I learnt a few amazing and simple recipes. I’ve probably made this green curry the most because once you make the curry paste, you can freeze it and I generally make enough for 3-4 rounds of curry-making. From what I saw, the key to making a good vegetarian Thai curry is to get the right kind of soya sauce and coconut milk....

My grandmom was an expert at modakam making and did it with gusto since her grandson (my brother) loved it so much. I remember many evenings of me eating the raw outer covering with the coconut filling as the rest of womenfolk sat around shaping the mothagam for steaming. Vella Kozhukattai Recipe Preparation time: 15 minutes Cooking time: 15 minutes Makes 12 INGREDIENTS: ¾ cup of raw rice powder 1 ¼ cup of water, more or less ¼ teaspoon of salt ½ cup of jaggery ½ cup of grated coconut 2 teaspoon of ghee ¼ teaspoon of cardamom powder...

TH and I are both Okra (vendakka in tamil and malayalam) haters. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word, but definitely its a strong dislike. But being my mother’s daughter, ignoring any vegetable is not my thing, so I still continue to buy it and make things that take out the slimy feel from it, cuz that’s what we both hate. My mom frequently makes Kerala Aviyal Recipe , with all possible vegetables and a generous amount of coconut....

I pretty much threw in whatever masala I felt like but the end result was well-balanced and we loved it with some Peas Pulao made in my rice cooker (recipe coming soon) and homemade vadaam, courtesy The Husband’s G Perima. Paired with a simple cucumber raita, this was a lovely meal that all came together in less than an hour. Baby Corn Masala is a great side dish for roti (chapati) too....

Butter murukku recipe: learn how to make butter murukku this Diwali season, easy and step by step recipe. Butter murukku is the first murukku recipe I tried and it was a huge success! I was wary of making any traditional sweets or snacks for Diwali this year since, you know, I had never done it before but this butter murukku really made me very confident to try more snacks for Diwali, recipes of which will be coming soon....

But, when I got a fresh piece of Chena from Little India, I absolutely had to make theeyal so that’s how this happened. Chena is a pretty popular Kerala ingredient and I love almost anything made with it. Its hard to get fresh chena in Singapore and usually the ones I see are huge and unlike back home, you can’t buy just 250gm by cutting off a chunk. You either take the whole thing or don’t....

Learn how to make vegetarian mushroom pulao at home using fresh mushrooms, some basic spices from your pantry, and cooked (or even leftover) rice. Pulao is a no-brainer for lunch boxes and entertaining. I mean, let’s be honest here. It’s not very often that you have dishes that look well-rounded, colourful (mostly), and like you put in way more effort than you actually did but a well-made pulao is definitely one of them....