WHAT DO I MAKE...

Mysore Pak - a regular feature in South Indian weddings and definitely in the Deepavali menu - a brick like sweet and a tricky recipe which if you mess up, you could easily end up with your own personal weapon! Now, when I say brick-like, I mean the look and even the consistency of the traditional mysore pak. But all that changed when the famous Sri Krishna Sweets aka SKS came along! I know a lot of people, including me, who never liked this sweet until SKS came out with their ghee mysore pak. A super soft, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth treat full of ghee, so much ghee that after a few nibbles you start to feel guilty. I would never dare to try the traditional recipe and I don't think I want to make the SKS version either but I found the perfect recipe on Sharmis Passions recently. She doesn't use too much ghee so I would assume it isn't loaded with as many calories and it is very easy to make, you gotta try this! I am sure her pictures will make you wanna try this recipe f

As I planned my list, I couldn't help but think of all the combined cooking and potluck with my buddies in Miami the last few years. Well, this year was a different kind of combined cooking, Maha and I synced up through the phone to prepare our spread. While she braved about 10+ items, I kept my menu short and simple with mixture, ribbon pakora & ghee mysore pak.  Mixture I followed Anusha's recipe for the mixture .   I made a few changes, I skipped the boondi, I also threw in some halved cashews and I used Planters roasted and lightly salted peanuts. You will also notice (in the pictures) that some of my cornflakes is fried. Well, I started frying them and realized they drink too much oil so I skipped the idea. Ribbon Pakora I twisted Anusha's recipe from last year's spread a little bit. Ingredients: Besan (kadalai maavu) - 1 cup Rice flour (arisi maavu) - 2 cups Salt - 2 tsp Chili powder - 1 tsp Heeng (perungayam) - 1/4 tsp Unsalted butter - 1

Today was my hiking group's annual party. It's an all day event starting with an early morning hike followed by a potluck BBQ lunch session, games and catching up in the Stevens Creek County Park area in Cupertino. I decided to make a couscous salad, never worked with the fine grain couscous but couscous is very easy to cook and the salad was light and tasted great! I also baked a batch of my tried and tested Apricot Shortbread Cookies  to go along. just trying some different lighting! :) I came across a salad recipe with persimmon but unfortunately I couldn't find persimmon in the stores so decided to skip and make my own combination of ingredients. So, here goes the recipe: Ingredients: Couscous - 2 boxes of the Near East brand (this is the only brand/quantity I found in most stores). I used the "Roasted Garlic & Olive Oil" flavor Canned garbanzos - 1/4 cup Red peppers - 1/4 of a big pepper, finely chopped Red onion - 1/2 of a medium, finely choppe

Looks like I am on a curry spree! One of my favorite cuisines on this planet, even talking about it makes my mouth water...slurp! I suddenly thought about Thai food today and luckily I had all the basic ingredients in my pantry so tonight's dinner was the Thai Red Curry! Aside, I have always been wary of using others' recipes and have had many discussions with my co-blogger and other close friends about copyright and related topics. While we have come across people who steal pictures from the original recipe and claim it as their own (yes, unfortunately such creeps do exist!), I have also seen bloggers who take copyright to a whole new level by picking open fights on blogs and "walls" (we definitely try to stay away from this kind!).I came across a useful  article   today on foodblogforum that talks about recipe-attribution-etiquettes, I thought it might be worth sharing here. After that quick sanity check, back to my red curry :) The curries of Thailand are cat

My find for the week, Zante Pizza and their "The Best Indian Pizza - Vegetarian". Thanks to my friend Ting for discovering this Indian pizzeria in SF's Bernal Heights neighborhood. It's about a mile from the BART on 24th/Mission.  READ MORE  >>>

This was a love-at-first-sight recipe I came across on  foodgawker. Although I was very skeptical about the combination of tastes (sweet, spicy, sour, salt), it looked too good to pass and I had to try it right away! The original recipe is named "curry" and it also looks like one but the final consistency and color of my version was exactly like a morkozhambu and so I served it with rice and a brinjal-onion roast and hence the name change! Mango Morkozhambu Adapted from Nisa's  Cooking Is Easy Mango Ripe mango - 1 big - I picked up mine from Trader Joe's, not sure about the name but the peel was dark green in color! Peel the skin, you should be able to do this with a sharp knife (go slow). Now cut out two bowl shaped pieces from either sides of the seed. Cut each bowl into 6 pieces. Water - 1/2 cup Red chili powder - 1 tsp Turmeric powder - 1 tsp Paste Coconut - 1/4 cup Green chilis - 2 Jeera - 2 tsp Red pearl onions - 5 Turmeric powder - 1 tsp C

Here's a popular burfi recipe with a slight twist! I ran into this Bournvita Fudge recipe on Chitra Amma's Kitchen and figured this would be the best way to use up all the Boost (now that caffeine is 'the secret of my energy'!) sitting in my pantry. Boost Cake/Burfi Adapted from Dibs' Bournvita Fudge @ Chitra Amma's Kitchen Ingredients: Ghee - 3/8 cup Maida/All-Purpose Flour - 1 cup Sugar - 3 cups Water - 1 cup Boost - 1/2 cup (mix the Boost with some warm water such that the consistency is like condensed milk) In a non stick pan heat the ghee on low-medium heat and add the flour and roast till it changes some color and you start smelling a nice aroma. Remove the flour mix and set it aside. The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup ghee. It also mentions that ghee+flour should form a 'thick paste'. I started with 1/4 cup of ghee but had a crumbly flour so I added another 1/8th. This gave me a soft dough, more like a 'thick pas