Tomato Basil Soup and Garlic Toast

Tomato soup and bread sticks combo is always a popular choice in my house. And we eat it more like main course rather than appetizer. So obviously I need to make one too many servings per person. But the problem with tomato soup is you need way too many tomatoes to get a decent amount of soup. Long time back I had tried using canned tomatoes to simplify the process. The problem there is, if you are using canned paste in any curry or rasam, the (canned) taste is not too prominent as there will be other spices, but if you use it in something like tomato soup, where you taste mostly tomatoes, the canned taste becomes too overwhelming. But recently I got canned organic tomato paste from Costco which surprisingly didn’t have any weird taste in it. I was just about thinking that I should try this in tomato soup sometime, when this recipe popped up on my FB feed. Talk about “law of attraction” or was it just FB reading my mind(like that chappal joke circulating on WhatsApp) 😁

Anyways, two things grabbed my attention in this particular recipe. Firstly the awesome presentation - the blogger served it in bread baskets, how cool is that! 

Secondly, the use of cashew paste. Though we use this a lot in curries, I never ever thought this could be used in soups too! 

Adding this has twofold advantage - 

1. Firstly, it gives a creamy texture to the soup.
2. Secondly and more importantly, it acts like a thickening agent which helps in increasing the quantity of the soup. 

I mostly followed the recipe as it is, only did some minor changes - like I used almond flour instead of cashew paste. Soup turned out very tasty and creamy.

Garlic toast is adapted from Hebbar’s kitchen. 

Enjoy this tasty and healthy soup in this cold weather! 

 

Eggless Marble Cake

 Whew! What a year it has been! What a contrast between beginning of the year to end of the year! Who knew at this time and age a small virus can still have a potential to disrupt the whole world. One can only pray. Stay safe everybody! 

Coming to the recipe, presenting a delicious and cool looking cake - Marble cake. Something to cheer up holiday season. I loved the simplicity of this recipe.  

Do try! 

Happy New Year!! 

Eggless Tutti Frutti Cake

 Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!! 

Enjoy this holiday season with freshly baked Tutti frutti cake. 

The cake turned out super moist and tasty despite no egg. Very easy to make.  Enjoy! 

Pizza

 I used to bake before, but there was always some reservation and I would refer to couple of videos before baking anything, even for the ones I had baked before. All the videos I referred always stressed on getting everything right to get the results right, making me more anxious. 

But then cooking goddess Ashwini entered my life 😄 She has practically tried cooking every cuisine in her kitchen, and knows all the dos and don’ts. And more importantly she has the knack to explain things in simplest of the simplest way possible. 

When I told her that I plan to make pizza sometime and I need to prepare myself for that, she was like “adrallenide.. heege maaDu.. haage maaDu.. ashte!”(what’s the big deal, do this, do that, done!)

And that’s exactly what I did. Result was perfect! And now I don't fear baking! Thank you Ashwini! I really wish you start making cooking videos :) 

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Gulkand Barfi

 Happy Deepavali!!

Presenting an easy peasy barfi recipe which can be done in no time and tastes like store bought ones. I clearly need to work more on how they look :)

It doesn’t need any major prep work other than buying ingredients and it must’ve taken me like 15 min from start to finish. 

I saw this recipe on Oggarane dabbi cooking show long time back. It needs 3 main ingredients - Khoa, Sugar and Gulkand. The original recipe uses sweetened khoa, but since it was not available here, I added powdered sugar. 

Do try! Happy Deepavali once again! 

Bottle gourd(Sorekayi) masala curry

 I always look for new ways of cooking Sorekayi(bottle gourd). Sorekayi sambar is something I don’t want to make. I don’t like the bland taste of it. So this recipe I tried is from a blog I follow on FB(link given below). The uniqueness of this recipe is bottle gourd is marinated before cooking. This gives bottle gourd so much flavor. 

This curry tasted and looked more like Andhra/ Tamil Nadu cuisine, then there’s garam masala too. It has a strong coriander flavor. I added more tomatoes to the curry which complimented the flavors very nicely. It is similar to dal-less gojjus from Karnataka. And most important thing - this  gets done in less than 30 min. Do try!

Don’t throw away peels and pulp. Make sorekayi chutney with it(link below).

Some other ways of cooking sorekayi -

• Bottle gourd chana curry
• Bottle gourd dal
• Bottle gourd peel chutney
• Bottle gourd Barta 
• Bottle gourd majjige saaru 

Methi Pulav

Presenting another flavorful rice bath made with methi leaves - methi pulav. Very easy, very tasty and very healthy. This can be made in 1 pot too. Here’s another recipe for methi leaves rice bath. 

Enjoy!