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I had never heard of pitlai before I tasted this in July this year when we were in Coimbatore at the in-laws’ place. MIL had made this Kathirikai Chana pitlai for for lunch the day we landed and much like everything else she cooks, it was delicious. I have learnt so much from her style of cooking, not to mention all the super easy yet delicious Tamil Brahmin recipes. Pitlai to me seemed like a mash-up between sambar and kootu but has a distinct flavour of its own too....

Kerala Sambar Recipe : learn how to make Kerala-Style Sambar with mixed vegetables and Fresh Sambar Powder. This Kerala Sambar can be used as a side dish for idli, dosa, and rice. Sambar in Kerala is quite simple. There aren’t many kinds like in Tamil Nadu where sambar usually has one or two vegetables and the flavours are adjusted a bit according to the vegetable added. In this Kerala sambar recipe which amma and athamma make, we add carrots, potatoes, drumsticks, onions or shallots, and sometimes capsicum too....

Poori was always a treat during my childhood days. While amma has no issues with deep frying, we ended up making breakfast dishes like dosa, idli, idiyappam, puttu, or even appam on most days over poori. The rarity of its occurrence made it very special on days we did have Poori Masala . I love amma’s potato masala for poori and while it’s a simple recipe, the combination is unbelievably good in its simplicity....

The first and only time I made pizza from scratch was when I went for cooking classes at Palate Sensations . It was amazing (especially because I didn’t partially burn it then) and since then I stopped buying pizza base. What that also meant is, I didn’t make pizza at home for ages. But its super easy. Remember those garlic rolls that all of you loved and tried at home? Trust me when I say this is not even half as hard....

Coming to think of it, this is very similar to vazhakka thoran which I have posted before. Raks and Jeyashri came over for a potluck lunch one day and Raks brought her roasted vazhakkai. It was delicious. She said the recipe is in her blog so I checked the next day. This is the closest one I saw so I followed that recipe, making small changes here and there to suit my taste....

In a way, it truly amazes me how many different varieties of rasam I know to cook now. When growing up, rasam was served in our home only if someone was sick or amma was feeling too lazy to make a ’nicer’ thakkali kuzhambu or ullipaya pulusu . And, I have mentioned this before, we only make one version of rasam which has lots of crushed pepper and garlic, and no dal....

Easy vegetable biryani in a pressure cooker or rice cooker, the quick and sane way (in my opinion) to make a quick vegetable biryani at home. Pin I always turn to my trusted rice cooker when it comes to making an easy vegetable biryani on a busy weeknight or lazy weekend. Biryani is often seen as time-consuming and needing many ingredients but it needn’t be that way. Often, I just make this one-pot, healthy, and easy vegetable biryani with whatever vegetables I have in hand and it makes a wholesome meal with some raita and papad....

Egg Dosa Recipe I used readymade batter for the dosa. To make the batter at home, take rice : urad dhal in 3 : 1 ratio, soak overnight (or atleast 5-6 hours) in water separately, grind separately and then mix together, adding salt. This batter should be kept covered for another 5 hours or so before you can start making the dosa. You can check this detailed post for how to make dosa batter at home ....

Fast forward a year later and we are living in Sydney searching for a similar market to Queen Victoria Markets in Sydney. The first reaction I got from people I asked is that there’s nothing comparable, Melbourne just has better markets, but that’s not entirely true. Less than 10 mins walk from our apartment, there’s the popular Orange Grove Markets but it’s the Eveleigh Markets that seemed to have everyone smitten....

I made this a couple of months back to serve with the Banarasi Dum Aloo . When I posted a teaser of these dishes on my Facebook Page , a lot folks wanted to know what kang kong is. Its not easily available outside of Asia as far as I know but there’s this dish called Sambal Kang Kong that I fell in love with during my first few Singaporean Malay meals in Singapore....

When you blog about food, you realise that you go to great lengths to cook as many unique and varied dishes as possible, mostly because that’s your thing, you are the food blogger, and partly because you want new content for the blog. I am always looking for new things to cook, especially when I have people over. This Kanchipuram idli seemed like the perfect starter for a brunch I hosted a couple months before leaving Singapore....

I tried this prawn roast recipe a couple of months after getting back but never got around to posting it. Here it is, finally. The process may seem a bit long-wound so I would recommend lining up all the ingredients so that you can add them in one by one. Preparation time is about 20 mins and cooking time another 20 so it doesn’t take that long at all. Note that I got cleaned prawns so if you don’t, then that will take extra time to prep....

Fast forward 3 years and I tasted my first thepla in Bombay at TH’s aunt’s house. They were delicious! She mentioned how you can make many variations of thepla, one of her favourites being methi theplas. I immediately knew I would love them too but never got around to making them until very recently. Although they look a lot like rotis, theplas are spiced parathas where the dough is made with curd (plain yogurt), atta, and besan as main ingredients....

The main ingredients are french beans and toor dal but the recipe is flexible enough to accommodate slight changes. Sometimes I use cluster beans instead of french beans and it works just as well. I have even heard some make cabbage usili but haven’t tried this out myself. There are also different and healthier options to cook the dal as opposed to the traditional method of drenching it in oil and telling yourself its healthy cuz it has lentils (which translates to lots of proteins, especially for vegetarians)....

Pin Poriyal Masala Podi Recipe Source: Southern Spice by Chandra Padmanabhan What I Used: 1 cup coriander seeds/kothamalli ½ cup urad dal/uluntham paruppu/husked black gram ½ cup grated coconut 2 generous pinches of hing/asafoetida/perungaayam 10 dried red chillies 2 teaspoon oil How I Made It: 1. Dry roast the coriander seeds in a skillet/kadai until the seeds turn a darker shade of brown (about 4-5 mins). Set aside. 2. In the same pan, dry roast the dal until golden brown, taking care not to burn it....

I took this picture recently. Pin 2 corn cobs from the super market and I was good to go. Grind to a coarse paste like so. Pin Drain and set aside. (Sidenote: using steel ladles on your non-stick cookware and taking a picture with your right hand while dealing with hot stuff with your left is to be done at your own risk. ) Sweet Corn in Rich Onion Sauce Serves: 2 Ingredients: 2 corn cobs 2 large onions, chopped 2 garlic cloves A 2" piece ginger ¼ teaspoon turmeric powder ½ teaspoon onion seeds (optional) ½ teaspoon cumin seeds 1 teaspoon chili powder 6-8 curry leaves ½ teaspoon sugar 1 cup scant yogurt Oil Salt Instructions: 1....

You can add any vegetable of your choice, the most popular ones being tomatoes, drumsticks, brinjal, etc. I made my favourite, the tomato version with drumsticks. 1 big tomato, cubed 1 drumstick, cut into 4" pieces 1 cup tamarind water (from a small lime-sized ball of tamarind) Salt to taste Grind to a paste: ½ cup grated coconut 4-5 shallots / ulli ½ teaspoon jeera 2 dry red chillies A pinch of turmeric 1 clove of garlic...

Andhra chilli chicken is a spicy chicken recipe made Andhra-style with lots of green chillies. A perfect accompaniment to rice and curry. I love Chilli Chicken and Chilli Fish . Or wait, I should say I loved Chilli Chicken. I have been vegetarian for the past 2 months and going strong so far. It’s easier than I thought and although I didn’t want to talk about this too soon, 2 months is a good milestone....

This is one of the recipes that caught my eye immediately. Black eyed beans thoran. The basic thoran recipe includes coconut, shallots, jeera, green chillies and curry leaves, along with a vegetable (or two) of choice. This one is not much different but the use of black eyed beans with this recipe, was new to me. Pin Black-Eyes Beans Thoran Recipe Ingredients: Black eyed beans - 1 cup Grated coconut - ½ cup Shallots / small onions - ⅓ cup, chopped Dried red chillies - 4 Turmeric powder - 1 pinch Urad dal - ½ tsp Mustard seeds - ¼ tsp Curry leaves - a few Oil - 2 teaspoon (I used coconut oil) Salt - to taste How to Make Black Eyed Beans Thoran...