I know this space has been a bit quiet recently so I thought I'll stop by and say a quick hi.
Incidentally, this is my favorite time of the year! Summer is slowly turning into fall. There is a slight welcoming chill in the air (or may be that's because the summer never really came to the bay this year). I have been working a lot, weekdays and weekend, and cooking whenever I get a chance. Largely though I have been surviving on 20-min dinners and batch-cooked Sunday meals. I haven't been cooking anything fancy or new, just the everyday food that we somehow take for granted and never photograph :)
On the outdoorsy side, the garden is in full-bloom. My tomato plants are thriving; guavas are maturing, squirrels are devouring the figs and basil never looked any better. After a long struggles even the baby hummingbird who had nested nearby learnt to fly!
I know the recipes are missing recently but I am planning to be back very very soon. Yes, I promise :) Till then, leaving you with some of the garden macro shots that my
husband recently took.
The garden weeds:
This year summer never came to the bay. It rained a lot till April and somehow we slipped into a late-winter/fall like weather, skipping the summer entirely. Not that I am complaining. I am one of those people who are perfectly happy spending my weekends cuddled on sofa reading a good book with a cup of coffee instead of sun-bathing on beaches. This weekend we were in store for another such chilly trend. Having put off my plans of an outdoor lunch for a more warmer day, I was resigned to stare into the foggy day sitting on my porch and what better past-time to engage in than mind-lessly browsing through pictures of some old happy chilly days, spent with family, laughing and having fun. That was exactly our last Thanksgiving's Seattle trip!
Visiting Seattle's famous foodie-hangout Pike place market was definitely on top of my list. Seeing those old photos rekindled the memory of that market so much, that I thought I will share a small photo journey with you all.
Pike place market is an old marketplace founded in 1907 near the heart of downtown Seattle. It is a wonderful collection of shops overlooking the bay. It proudly boasts of an exhaustive fish market, a permanent farmers market and various specialty food stores. This market is also home to the original relocated Starbucks store (hence their house blend name 'Pike Place Roast'). Being a bay area resident I thought pike place in nutshell is a San Francisco fisherman's wharf on steroids :-)
We started off with a shop with the most unique dipping oils I have ever seen! It had varieties like this 18-year old aged balsamic, fig balsamic, roasted garlic-rosemary cabernet, truffle oil blends, sesame-ginger and many more! I so much enjoyed tasting these dipping oils with their crusty house-bread and an equally engaging chat with the hostess. After I long tasting deliberation I finally decided to go with the roasted garlic and rosemary cabernet.
At our house we love our Mexican food. Of-course staying at San Diego for years didn't hurt either ;) If you visit San Diego, I definitely recommend visiting an area called
Old Town which is famous for its spectacular Mexican restaurants and fresh produce and pottery markets. Whether you are in mood for some fine dining or merely a roadside devouring of tortilla wraps, Old Town is the place for you! For me the best part of Old Town are the fresh tortilla stalls. There are restaurants on the strip which have an extension overlooking the street where a lady makes fresh
corn and flour tortillas. For about 50cents a piece you can enjoy a tortilla hot off the gridle lightly brushed with butter and seasoned with home-made hot salsa! Heaven wrapped in a foil indeed! The only thing is now you can't be skimpy about eating on the roadside ;)
Anyway, I digress. Looking at some of our old SD photos, I got nostalgic for some Mexican today. Fish tacos can be quite greasy with fried fish and a mayo leaden dressing so I tried poaching the fish instead and made a lemon-vinegar based coleslaw dressing. I must say I was impressed by the poaching technique! The fish cooks very quickly and absorbs all the deliciousness of the poaching liquid. To top it all its even an oil-free way to cook the fish. Overall, the fish tacos were absolutely delicious! The recipe is very adaptive so feel free to add your favorite Mexican condiments: spanish rice, tomato salsas, mango salsa, guacamole, sour cream.. all good :) Now really, if you needed a reason to make a margarita night, this is the one ;)
My work weeks have been so hectic now-a-days that every Saturday morning's farmer's market has become sort of like an unwinding kick-start-into-the-weekend ritual. Sipping a hot cuppa coffee and idly strolling through the stalls overflowing with fresh produce, fruits and flowers is meditating and exactly what I need to melt away the stresses of the week to get into my lazy relaxing weekend mode! Have you seen how all the markets now a days are overflowing with summer squashes and zucchinis? I can never resist staring at those mounds and mounds of neatly arranged zucchinis and colorful squashes. This weekend I couldn't resist but buy a few fresh zucchinis, some leeks and a nice fresh celery.
Once I reached home I googled for zucchini recipes and finally settled on
this zucchini soup from Kalyn. This soup had one more thing going for itself, it used rosemary; ever since I saw that bushel of rosemary growing in the backyard I have been itching to try it out in as many recipes as I can and this looked like a perfect one!
This was a last minute kitchen sink sabji experiment that turned out exceptionally well so I thought I'll quickly post about it. I had one sole
ridge-gourd at hand. Now one is not enough to make a sabji for two so I kept it in the fridge hoping to use it next time with a sambhar or in some mixed vegetable concoction. Now a week later, the ridge-gourd was still sitting alone in the fridge so I finally decided to quickly make a kitchen sink sabji with it. I had some cauliflower at hand so thought of making a cauliflower potato sabji and adding ridge-gourd as an extra kick. A lone red bell pepper was threatening to go bad so I added that too at the end. Overall I wasn't expecting much but the sabji turned out to be really good!
Life has been crazy recently.. well, more specifically, work has been crazy recently. If it felt like I have abandoned you all, that was because of the crazy work schedules for the past few weeks. I have even started batch cooking and freezing on Sundays. Always a sign of crazy times ahead. I don't know though, I have still quite not gotten used to the idea of eating defrosted food. I freeze ~4 different portion size dishes for two on Sundays and defrost a new dish everyday morning before leaving for work. The plan goes well for may be till Thursday; somehow by Thursday I always start feeling that I am eating stale food. May be its just a mental block; it is still freshly defrosted food, right! Do you eat frozen foods much? Do you feel the same way? What do you do to liven up defrosted food?
Anyway, so coming back to the point, last Thursday my mental block came back in full-swing and we finally decided to dinner out to this nearby salad & soup place where I had this absolutely awesome carrot, ginger and roasted leek soup. I ate bowls and bowls of it with their house bread and immediately tick-marked it to try at home for the weekend. So this is my take on this soup. It has a hearty sweet component from carrots and sugar; roasting brings out a wonderful slightly sweet smoky flavor of the leeks and the carrots; and ginger-cinnamon just give your throat that much needed warmth with every sip of this soup. Perfect soup for a tired evening! Well, if it would freeze well that is ;) Enjoy, and assuming things do not get over-powering again, I promise to be around more often now. Happy Sunday.
Of all the beans I got introduced to after moving to US (and wow, isn't there a variety!) black beans are the ones I got adapted to most easily. Black beans are sure an integral part of the Mexican cuisine but their hardy taste and pair-ability with many spices makes them an ideal bean to be experimenting with. In particular, over the years of cooking with black beans I have realized that black beans and dried oregano is a match made in heaven! I always keep a bottle of dried oregano in my pantry just for the black beans :)
This black bean curry was born out of necessity (don't they always say necessity is the mother of invention ;)). One day all I had was a can of black beans and a few tomatoes at home so I made a quick black bean saute with onions-garlic-tomatoes and it was a big hit with both of us. Over the years I have tuned this recipe in more ways than one. It still remains my go-to recipe when I have 20-mins or less to bring something to table. Incidently, believe it or not this curry pairs extremely well with Injeras! Marriage of two vastly differently cuisines indeed.. if ever you do have some extra injeras lying around, do make this curry with some misir wot and I guarantee it will be a meal you will remember ;)
Summer is here and so are the outdoor grilling parties and picnics! Tandoori chicken is one of my go-to grilling dishes (not that I am any good with grilling, I rather prefer indoor roasting). It cooks up super fast with minimal preparation (except the ahead of time marinating) and the best part is, pretty much everyone (yes, even people who generally dislike spicy Indian food) end up loving this simple moist roasted chicken when served with some yogurt mint raita. And not to mention this dish is also very economical to feed a large party because this is one chicken dish where drumsticks and legs actually work better than costlier chicken breats portions. I always buy all-natural organic chicken and anyone who has seen the prices recently will attest when I say that buying organic chicken cutlets enough to feed 10-12 people will cause anyone to go broke ;)
Tandoori chicken is prepared by marinating chicken with yogurt and Indian spices and then roasting it in clay ovens for a moist and tender meat. Traditionally tandoori chicken is cooked in these large clay ovens called
tandoors. Now-a-days having a tandoor is very very rare so an oven with a broiler or an outdoor grill are good alternatives. Yogurt is a natural meat tenderizer so marinating the meat with yogurt and spices is essential for a good tandoori chicken. More the marinating time, the tender and moist the chicken will be. I usually marinade for around 4-6 hrs. It is also said that cutting slits into the chicken pieces before marinating helps the inner parts to get tender and spicy.
After the chicken has marinated you can either grill it, bake it (like the recipe below) or do a broil-bake combination. All three work very well. I do not own a grill and ever since I moved into my new house which incidently is missing the broiler pan, baking has been my only option but feel free to experiment with other cooking techniques.
Copyright and Disclaimer
This page and all of its contents is copyright of Prajakta Gudadhe. All rights reserved.
This is a web catalog of the recipes that I have tried and tasted in my kitchen. While these recipes and instructions have worked well for me, please use all the information and the recipes from Ginger and Garlic at your own risk.
