Posts

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Season's best wishes to all of you from our kitchen at Ginger & Garlic! May the new year bring us all peace and happiness and get us closer to achieving our dreams, big and small :) Here is to wishing all of you lots of delicious cooking, eating and love to spread this season... Here is a Christmas fruit tree I prepared many years ago which still continues to be a huge reader's favorite after so many years.. super easy and always gets the oohs and aahs and wows whichever Christmas party it goes... enjoy!

Vegetable Biryani
Biryani is like the ultimate rich comfort yet classy food for us. It is also a dish I feel is made for potlucks and get togethers. It travels well and is made to be cooked ahead. You can make it as simple or as rich as you want with addition of roasted cashews, raisins and deep saffron. When perfectly spiced, biryani can be as warming to the Indian soul as people would say chicken soup is over here :) I have made chicken biryani a few times but we make veggie biryani a lot more often. I like the veggies slightly undercooked, but if you want fully cooked veggies then just increase the veggie cooking time by 5 mins and check for doneness. Every biryani needs a yogurt raita to tango. Our yogurt raita is usually super simple, just beaten non-fat yogurt, grated half a carrot, few mint leaves torn, salt, pepper and pinch of cumin powder. Mix, taste and let rest in refrigerator. If there are two things I feel are crucial to this biryani they are fresh mi…

Pesto Pinwheels
Holiday season is a time for family, friends, lots of chats and laughter and an endless stream of potlucks!  We kickstarted the holiday season with two potlucks. I signed up to bring appetizers for both. I love to bring appetizers because that's a course which gets the first share of hungry tummys. And besides with a side of a good glass of wine and a healthy appetite, anything tastes super great and gushing compliments are over to the cook :) I brought these pinwheels for both potlucks. They are super easy - I mean really can not get any easier and are guaranteed crowd pleasers. I have always had people ask for more beyond what I made and that I consider as a crowd pleasing appetizer! During holidays I always keep a packet of frozen puff pastry dough from Trader Joe's and a couple of pestos - the usual basil pesto, sun dried tomato pesto - and that's all you need for this recipe. The only forward looking prep is to thaw the doug…

Banana Cake
It was my daughter's birthday recently.. I can't believe how fast time has flown! She is also my sous-chef in the kitchen - she is foodie by birth and just like her mom loves cooking and eating and restaurant hunting :) Every year for her birthday I try to make fancier cakes like almond cake or chocolate cake with frosting but this year I thought of making a simple banana cake. She loves banana bread and after many iterations I have a much less fattier version of banana bread which we love eating. So I thought why not try that into a cake?  The result was absolutely delicious! And we devoured the full cake in a matter of 2 days. This is absolutely going to be my go-to kids cake.  I avoid frosting as much as I can on kids cakes, so we skipped frosting and instead dusted the cake with powdered sugar. But by all means frost away! Vanilla buttercream frosting would be divine with this cake! Recipe: derived from this banana bread recipe …