Happy Ganesha Chaturthi!
Usli is a popular “prasada” at temples and made during festivals. It is basically cooked beans/legumes + spiced oggarane(tadka). I personally love them all, the one made with kadle(brown chickpeas) is my favorite.
This also makes for a great after school snack. Do try!
Both my husband and my daughter love poha chivda. Many buy it from grocery stores, without realizing how easy it is to make this at home. This recipe is as complicated as making tadka :)
Chivda has a pretty good shelf life too, making it ideal for after school snacks, or evening snacks with coffee/tea.
Do try!
Happy Janmashtami!!
We also make kayi sasive chitranna, but differently. This masala uses green chilies and the ingredients are roasted before grinding. I really loved the flavors and the convenience of making this. You can keep the gojju(masala paste) ready beforehand and mix it with rice (just like puliyogare gojju) whenever needed. This is ideal for festivals. Enjoy!
This is one of my favorite tambLis. I love the flavor and color of this particular tambli. To recap (for people who don’t know what tambLi is) - tambli is a buttermilk based south indian dish, which is both cooling and medicinal. You can find other tambLi recipes here.
Enjoy spinach tambLi in these hot summer days to beat the heat.
Making Pav bread from scratch for pav bhaji or vada pav is a tedious process compared to the convenience of buying it from stores. But let me point out the advantages - by making it at home, you can go as healthy as you like. Like instead of adding all maida, I made it half maida and half wheat flour. These taste extremely fresh. The short shelf life of homemade(fresh) stuff makes you wonder the the kind of preservatives that are added to the store bought stuff to keep them fresh for more than 2 weeks, sometimes even a month!!!!
And for convenience sake, you can always make it a day before. Lastly the house smells divine after baking bread!
Try these next time and eat away happily! Enjoy!
Continuing with another Italian favorite of our family - garlic bread sticks. My daughter wanted me to recreate olive garden menu for her birthday, and I had made eggplant parmigiana, breadsticks, minestrone soup and pasta. The link for each can be found here -
Coming to the recipe - Breadsticks are nothing but bread in different shape… may be little less fluffy. Prepare the dough, after proofing, shape them in the form of breadsticks. Once they are done baking, brush them with garlic butter. That’s it! Make sure to brush butter generously though, I didn’t as seen in the picture below.
I followed this recipe online while looking for Olive Garden breadsticks and was very happy with the results(link given below).
Enjoy!
Last year, my daughter asked me to recreate olive garden’s eggplant parmigiana for her birthday.
The recipe is not hard to guess, but I still googled to see if there is anything fancy. I found one in olive garden’s own website(I think) and it was just as easy as I thought it would be. I replaced their egg dip, with maida dip. And it turned out the same. But frying eggplant took forever! Then I found this recipe(link given below) for airfryer. Since I don’t own an airfryer, I did half frying on stove top and remaining in the oven. My friend Ashwini helped me by giving me tips on how to get the airfried effect from the conventional oven.
If you own an airfryer, I think making this would be extremely easy. I am still debating if I should just buy one. I see all drool worthy recipes online, but don’t know how much it'll help with my style of cooking. Don’t want to use up my counter space unnecessarily. Anyways, for those who own one, this is the method mentioned in the blog - After the patties are coated well and ready to be fried, line them on the airfryer tray without crowding them and bake at 390 F for 10 min. Turn them mid point. Once done, put the toppings and bake them again until cheese melts. For more details you can follow the link below.
Enjoy!
