Let me just say its so nice to be back - cooking, eating and of-course blogging! After many months of craziness I am basking in happiness at getting back my weekends, all the lost sleep and the desire to spend hours and hours planning and cooking something not-everyday. I know I have missed all the action in the past few months, but I definitely plan to get back in the saddle as soon as possible. Thanks to all of you blogger-buddies who left messages and encouraged me to continue to keep posting; you guys are the best :)
Today is a holiday in US and for a lazy brunch I made these banana nut muffins. These muffins are very similar to the banana bread recipe I had posted earlier. They are toasted and crunchy on the outside while still very moist inside. The original recipe called for 1/3C butter and 3/4C sugar; I reduced butter to 2Tbsp and sugar to 1/2C because I like my muffins very lightly sweetened, but you can increase to 3/4C if you like it better that way. As always I love anything baked with banana and walnuts so if you are anything like me, I am sure you will absolutely LOVE these muffins.
Wishing you all a very happy holidays and a wonderful new year ahead!
Here is an edible fruit tree I had made last year, hope you enjoy it too... have a safe festive season.
Check
here for instructions of how to make this edible fruit tree.
Have you ever cooked with a
celery root or a celeriac before? It resembles the shape of misshapen turnip with beards growing here and there. At first glance to be frank it is not very appealing, particularly when seated next to the rows and rows of beautiful pink perfect red carrots of the season; but since I had heard so much about the delicate celery like flavors of these root vegetables, I could not pass up the chance to pick one up in the farmer's market yesterday.
Celeriac is a root vegetable in celery family. For a long time I thought celeriac is the root bulb of celery but that is not quite the case! The stalks and leaves attached to a celeriac are _not_ actually celery; I was planning to use them up in my soup but a bit of Googling told me that they may not be edible so I skipped them and used regular celery instead. In texture celeriac is simlar to the Mexican Jicama with a dominant celery flavor with a slight bit of sweetness like an apple!
Preparing celery root is very easy. First you chop off the celerish stalks attached to the root and then run the root through running water for a few minutes making sure to remove as much dirt as you can. Then using your knife peel of the outer skin as shown in the image below. You can then chop off the celery root into bite sized pieces. The celeriac is fantastic raw in salads or roasted with a bit of rosemary, salt & pepper or pureed in a soup. For my first attempt I decided to go with a simple but absolutely delicious celery-celeriac soup!
Celeriac is in season for a short duration and its not found that easily in supermarkets either, so if you get a chance to try this root vegetable, definitely go for it, I am sure you will love it!
I don't know about you but I have always been a side-dish kind of person. What do I mean by that; well, for one, I usually relish the side-dish just as much as I like the main-dish! Infact, I have been known to be making meals out of side-dishes.. one pot quinoa salad for a quick lunch, smashed yams with a drizzle of honey for desert, soup as the main-course for dinner.. well, you get the idea. Needless to say, whenever I am invited to a Thanksgiving dinner, I am perfectly happy bringing a side-dish. Nothing screams fall to me like this dish with roasted, camelized butternut squash and dried cranberries with couscous!
The dish is wide open to variations and experimentations. I tried it with orange flavored dried cranberries from Trader Joe's and loved the orangy after-taste it gave. Occasionally I also add pumpkin seeds or pistachios for a crunch at times. As for the herbs, I suspect fried torn sage leaves would pair really well with the squash but I haven't tried it myself. I usually add the chives or the oregano from garden and its wonderful! If you are unsure what to bring to Thanksgiving and have been slated with a side-dish, give this a try, I guarantee you won't regret having to bring a side ;)
Pancakes is the ultimate lazy Sunday morning breakfast for me. I get up late (hey, daylight savings ended!) then spend another half an hour gazing over my morning cuppa mindlessly peeking at my friends' posts on Facebook while watching the rains drizzle outside on a gloomy Sunday morning. After an hour or so my tummy rumbles in protest which is when I go to the kitchen and start randomly opening and closing cupboards and refrigerator until I see an about to expire buttermilk carton that I used last week to make some very tasty whole-wheat pumpkin muffins. Buttermilk is not a regular ingredient in my pantry so finding it on Sunday morning meant this was a sign... to make some buttermilk pancakes.
This is a recipe I followed from
Joy of Baking. I usually prefer banana pancakes but having buttermilk at hand I decided to give buttermilk pancakes a try instead. The pancakes were moist and fluffy and had a slightly tangy taste of the buttermilk. You can easily substitute buttermilk with regular milk for regular pancakes and add fruits such as blueberries, slices bananas for an extra edge! Serve with a pat of butter and a drizzle of maple syrup... what else do you need other than perhaps a pot of coffee and your favorite newspaper to make for a perfect Sunday morning.
People deal with stress in different ways. I have a few friends who splurge on chocolates or sweets when they are stressed, then there are others who go nuts for snacks and still a few others (and now the pie-chart is dwindling) who work-out a lot or take walks during lunch-time to beat the stress. I have never been a sweets person (note the 's' in sweets, less you would think I am not a sweet person :D) I rarely if ever crave anything sweet and I like dark chocolate but don't really crave it either. For me it has always been savory comfort food from my child-hood which acts as an instant stress-buster.
It is unfair how a few regional cuisines (like Maharashtra for example) are just so absent in the array of cuisines featured under the global "Indian cuisines" tag. Even in the heart of the bay area, there is hardly any restaurant which serves authentic Marathi food that I can turn to. Anyway, so as a result of a few stressful work weeks, I have been craving and cooking a lot more that usual Marathi food at home, which is why you would likely see a larger share of Marathi recipes on this space, just in case you were wondering :)
Today's recipe is batata rassa or curried potatoes. Batata =potatoes and rassa=gravy. The one unique touch that makes it Marathi for me is the addition of
Goda masala. This is a spice blend common to Marathi cuisine made out of coriander, cumin, sesame seeds, coconut powder and a few other spices. I have never tried to make it at home but thats just because my Mom is really good about sending me a couple of packets of our favorite brand of goda masala every so often that I never seem to run out of it. If you can't find goda masala, feel free to substitute with garam masala; it would still be very tasty, but perhaps won't be equally reminiscent of those idle school nights sitting around the dining table savoring batata rassa with the freshest fulka and nothing else to worry about except perhaps a Biology homework so something silly like that.... whenever did life get so complicated ;)
I have always been the one (shamelessly so you might add!) who sneaks in a new untested recipe on unsuspecting guests. It always scares my Mom whenever I tell her I am 'experimenting' on a new recipe when there are guests in-house. But really, for me, trying out a new recipe is like a cook's reward, something that keeps me going. Sure, there have been a few mishaps and last minute runs to Safeway to activate backups, but more than often the new dish has been a great hit and has kept the fun going for me in entertaining!
So we had an unplanned visit from a few close friends last night. As luck would have it all I had on hand was pumpkins - two small sugar pie pumpkins which I had picked up on my morning TJ's visit. Together we brain-stormed a lot about what to cook and finally decided to be brave enough to make it a pumpkin night.. afterall isn't Halloween just around the corner! I made the traditional Marathi lal-bhoplyachi bhaji (red pumpkin sabji) with some left-over butternut squash soup from a day before. Our sweet ending was the
pumpkin kheer which I was fairly confident would turn out well considering I had just made it the week before... and now my experimentation began! I have been itching to try my hands on this pumpkin dal recipe for quite some time now and what better company to try this on than a few unsuspecting close friends who are always game to be the perfect guinea-pigs :)
On a stormy cold evening we gathered together in the dining room overlooking the pouring rain with a scrumptious meal of rice, pumpkin dal and lemon pickle with a side of a bold merlot and needless to say the freshest batch of gossip and a whole lot of giggling over nothing!
Nothing screams fall like the rows and rows of neatly arranged pumpkins and squashes! The pumpkin display in front of our local Trader Joe's stores is so adorable that no visit to the groceries is complete for me now a days without picking up a new squash to try.
Last weekend I bought a small sugar pie pumpkin for a pumpkin pie. I halved the pumpkin and roasted it for an hour and half until sweet and moist. Just when I was mashing up the pumpkin I realized I had no eggs at hand. A last minute change of plans and some scavenger hunt later, I thought why not try some pumpkin kheer instead...
All I had was non-fat milk at hand but the kheer was still extremely creamy and wonderful tasting due to the freshly roasted and mashed pumpkins. Trust me, I am not a person with much sweet tooth, but this kheer was so simple and tasty that I gobbled half of it myself for dinner and next day breakfast!
Afterall it is the festivities and what better way to celebrate than some sweet pumpkin pudding. Happy Dasara to all!
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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.
