Posts

Chocolate brownies
Sunday summer afternoons are meant for lazying around, aren't they? Last summer when the heat would be unbearable to do any outside chores, my husband and I used to drive upto a nearby Starbucks adjacent to a California Mission. We would buy some coffee, snacks and then sit under the cool shade of the large ancient oak and beech trees overlooking the mission, savoring our treats and chatting mindlessly about this and that. My favorite treats were the chocolate brownie bites that Starbucks used to carry which I used to LOVE! I say used to because unfortunately atleast in the area where I live Starbucks doesn't carry them anymore. They were the best tiny indulgence ever! Just tiny enough that you won't feel guilty about eating them and oh so tasty! A perfect companion for an impromptu coffee picnic. We would get 3 brownie bites for $1 - one for each of us and the last one was guilt sharing one that both of us would try to pass on to the other but at the e…

Salsa two ways: salsa fresca and roasted tomato salsa
Past week has been crazy! Work-wise, I mean. Don't you always feel like there are so many things to do and so little time. My library books are waiting patiently for me to pick them up. My 3/4th done knitted summer vest is still on the hooks and summer is so fast approaching (guess I should just add sleeves and make it a winter vest, ha!). My brand new painting stand is waiting for its inauguration AND I am having more and more late evening urges to just order a quick dinner outside. Life just seems to be on fast track sometimes.. and this sure seems like one of those times. I don't know about you but sometimes I wonder how we get so tangled up in the walls made out of our own expectations and lure of luxuries. Every time I read a Jane Austen novel it always makes me feel so nostalgic about the good old days when people had time. Loads of it. Time to pursue their hobbies and passions. They seemed to live their life just wonderfully and perhaps, in a more r…

Split green mung daal with green garlic and how not to be predictably irrational
To a foodie like me spring in California means two things: lots of strawberries and a lot of green garlic! Okay, I may be the only weirdo you will see who writes about strawberries and green garlic in the same sentence but I do really love the onionish-garlicish flavor of the green garlic . I don't know about where you live but over at my place I hardly see any green garlic in supermarkets or large grocery stores. Infact I never knew green garlic is available here until I started visiting our local farmer's market where they are in season early spring. Green garlics is just a young garlic. It looks like a slightly big spring onion and has a delicate garlic taste (more a mix of garlic and spring onion). You buy it fresh, then clean it, chop off a bit of top and some tough green ends and slice the rest of the tender whites and greens and use them wherever you would use garlic or spring onions. Today I am sharing a simple split mung daal recipe with green g…

Middle eastern fava bean dip
I had a packet of dried unshelled fava beans lying around in my cupboard for the longest time. I had bought it initially hoping to make Ful Medames but then later I realized that the fava beans used in Ful Medames are Egyptian small brown fava beans and what I had instead was a pack of regular dried fava beans. I put them in the back of my cupboard right next to the fancy cranberry beans and some unknown grains which were also picked up on whim at some such other times. I finally decided I would make a fava bean dip with these dried favas. I soaked the beans Saturday night hoping to have the dip ready by next day afternoon. On Sunday morning, I shelled the soaked beans, mashed them up, added some olive oil, zatar and garlic. The dip tasted so wonderful. Whats even better was that I  just happened to have some whole wheat pitas sitting in my bread basket! Sure a toasted pita chips with fava bean dip was on cards for that lazy Sunday afternoon! I absolutely loved t…

Paatvadyachi bhaji (chickpea flour dumplings in curry sauce)
You know I have a theory. You might become the most famous or the most creative chef out there, but I bet you will still crave your Mom's food (or Dad's - essentially the food you grew up with) every now and then! There is something magical about the foods you grow up with, isn't it.. their flavors stay fresh with us long after we have last eaten them and their aromas draft us towards those golden care-free times of our childhood so effortlessly. Somehow the foods we grew up with get so intertwined with our childhood memories that no matter how great a cook you are, you are always going to crave your Mom's food as long you as live! Needless to say my Mom is a great cook! I wish I had learnt a lot more about cooking from her than I did. In my defense though I grew up as this preppy girl who would refuse to step foot in the kitchen unless it involved munching. I used to always think that somehow studying Mathematic (which was by-far my favorite subje…

30-minute Chana Masala and some blabber
Ever since I heard that a renowned Indian food personality was going to be answering home-cook's and reader's questions on preparing Indian food at home in the  New York Time's dining blog , I was looking forward to the Q&A. Afterall, she is an author of various Indian cookbooks and she also hosts an Indian cooking class so I was interested to hear what advice she would give to the home-cooks worldwide. Unfortunately though I was disappointed. Why? Well, I felt her views were a lot rigid for my taste. For example, she says that store bought spice blends like garam masala (or even cumin powder) have 100% loss of flavor compared to roasting and grinding spices at home and hence one should never buy store-bought blends but instead make our own every 3-4 months. On a question about improvising Indian spices in various dishes, she answers that the spices can not and should not be improvised in Indian dishes; there is a logic to which spice should go in…

Potage parmentier (Julia Child's potato and leek soup)
Simplicity itself.. thats how Julia Child had described this soup - in one of her b&w television episodes which had aired on PBS a while back. And then I picked up the book 'Julie and Julia' and heard Julie Powell rave about this simple few ingredient soup all over again. Now I have never been a minimalist at heart.. I mean, okay, I don't regularly sweat cooking recipes with 20+ ingredients (or may be only rarely when I am crazy enough) but making a soup with mere 5 ingredients (potatoes, leeks, salt, pepper, butter) as a main-dish for dinner needed guts from my part. But then, when you see a great chef like Julia Child convince you in her commanding voice calling this soup 'simplicity itself' and then you hear Julie rave about it in the book, this recipe just becomes too difficult to pass by! There was a problem though; I am one of those people (aptly described in the book as 'wimpy') who cringe when adding generous quantities of …