Badam Katli in InstaPot

 Making Indian sweets/ barfis is always a daunting task for me. Bringing sakkare paaka(sugar syrup) to one string consistency is where I get stuck mostly. 

Thanks to my friend Anusha, I got this recipe which uses InstaPot to make sugar syrup. She shared it along with some yummy katlis, which gave me more confidence to try them myself. 

I remember my other friend’s words here that more the gadgets you use in the kitchen, less is the skill required :) 

Earlier cooking needed skill/ experience, now everything seems to happen at a touch of a button - electric rice cooker, InstaPot, Bread machine, Rotimatic.…  

I’m not complaining. This recipe is so easy and fool proof and it turned out extremely good. Make syrup in InstaPot, mix almond flour from Costco, let it cool and done!  

You can make this for any festival/potluck without breaking a sweat. 

Do try! 

Happy Holi! 

Oven Roasted Veggie Enchilada

 Want some simple, filling, tasty lunch/dinner for the weekend? Try these oven roasted veggie enchilada… 

The procedure looks lengthy, but it is not. You can either use store bought sauce or try this easy homemade Enchilada sauce(click for the recipe). Oven does the work of roasting veggies. I personally like refried beans in Mexican dishes, but you don’t have to add it if you don’t have it, or you can add some cooked black beans. Assemble and bake away! 

Puff palya - stuffing for puff pastry

My goto stuffing for puff or sandwich had mostly potatoes and then some vegetables + masala powders. And I would avoid cabbage(and it’s family). And because there was lot of potatoes, masalas would lose flavor by the end of the day.

This stuffing happened by chance. One time while making palya for puff, since I didn’t have enough potatoes, I added cabbage. This turned out exactly like Bangalore Iyengar bakery style puff. Cabbage not only complimented all masala powders very nicely but made it taste more like Indo Chinese.  Super happy with this accidental discovery.. 

Do try! 

Masala Puri - 2

 Want some masala puri? 

This recipe is very similar to the first recipe of masala puri recipe I posted long time back(which can be found here). But there is little change in the procedure and masala. Instead of using raw ingredients for grinding, you sauté and then grind. Very small thing, but I loved subtle difference in the taste. I also liked the usage of pav bhaji masala here(It is my goto masala for many dishes these days). This one too, like the previous recipe, tasted restaurant quality. 

Do try! 

Baked Squash Chips

 I hardly experiment with things I know, leave alone stuff in completely unknown territory… 

When my cousin gave me squash from her kitchen garden, I was completely clueless what to do with it. Upon talking with friends and googling, I found this extremely easy, hard to resist recipe. You just cut squash in slices and bake with some cheese. 

Tada! 

It turned out very flavorful, and the whole batch got over in no time. 

An easy appetizer to go with pasta. 

My daughter was very eager to cook something in the kitchen, so I let her do this completely by herself. 

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!!