I love bliss balls. They are easy to make, quick, simple and leaves plenty of room for loads of creativity. My favorite ones are with a peanut butter and date base. You get the stickiness and the sweetness. Then I add a flour to bind these together, and then add any...
Garam masala, unlike sambar powder, is something I use extensively in a lot of non-vegetarian dishes – tandoori chicken, kheema (mince), chicken curries, lamb curries, etc. You can also use it with vegetarian dishes like channa masala, biryani, etc. I grew up with the...
Ah…to make crackers that are crisp, that need so few ingredients, is nutritious and tasty…that’s what these rice crackers are. It’s pretty difficult to find cracker recipes without the need for gluten free flour. I’ve tried the chickpea one and I’m not a huge fan. So...
Pumpkin soup, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin curry, pumpkin pie…there’s a lot you can make out of pumpkin. This was a vegetable I really didn’t like (or eat) in India. That was, until I tasted roasted pumpkin for the first time! After that, this was a veggie I’ve learned to...
I haven’t cooked chicken mince until recently. It’s not something that we cook in India. So my first attempt at chicken mince was the well-known spicy Thai basil chicken (Pad Krapow Gai). That was a failure! It looked so easy on the recipe! I tried it again…it was a...
Chutney puddi (or powder) is a South Indian condiment served with idlis, dosas or mixed in with plain rice. You add some ghee with it. There are more than a 100 varieties of chutney puddi in Bangalore. I’m sure there are much more around other parts of South India. It...
I’m not a big fan of salads, so I like to make them chunky and mix all kinds of veggies, herbs, protein and fun stuff in it. This one came together today as a side to the chicken mince cutlets I made. The apple in the salad gave it a bit of sweetness and the...
Aunty Prema is my mum’s friend – she isn’t my mum’s sister though - we call everyone aunty in India! Everyone is like family. Every time we visited her, she would cook us some amazing food. I distinctly remember her bisi-bele-bath. This is a lentil, veggie and rice...
This dhal reminds me of holidaying at my aunt’s home in the hills in a place called Ooty. This was the place where the British went to when it got too hot in India. She would make this style of dhal and serve it with rice. She would bring out the steaming hot rice and...
I started making these oat bars last winter. I liked to wake up to a warm breakky already made for me (sometime J makes me something if he wakes up first). Maybe it was time to find something that was ready for all of us when we woke up? That’s where these bars come...
There are days I don’t feel like cooking. Or I fancy a change, or the kids want finger foods…these are the days of an impromptu picnic on the grass, or sitting around the coffee table and eating. It doesn’t have to be skimp-on-the-veggies-day though. So I thought I...
Garlic is one of my all-time favourite flavours. I think it tastes awesome in almost any dish (which is why I add fresh garlic in almost every dish!) If I'm ever stuck for inspiration, I first reach for the garlic. Garlic is an amazing medicinal food. There are so...
What is ghee? It is clarified butter. Yup, you make it out of butter. It tastes different though. If you are lactose intolerant, you can easily digest ghee. That's because the lactose and the casein from the butter is removed while clarifying it. Ayurveda has used...
I’m a big fan of cashews now and I’ve been using them in recipes like pastas, steamed veg, Indian snacks, pesto, etc. I came across a recipe for cashew nut cookies, but they used processed sugar and flour which I didn’t want to use. So I tweaked it a lot and added...
I love the challenge of making new gluten free food. This morning I woke up with a mission to make something else besides dosas (lentil and rice pancakes), eggs, museli, buckwheat pancakes...or the same old things. So I decided to make these. With new recipes I find...
Pesto is so versatile, I find myself using it so many times when my mind is a blank and my vegetable crisper is on zero. I also find that it is an easy way to get a whole load of nutrients into kids. I've made beetroot pestos (okay, we can call it a dip!), kale...