Lauki Thepla/ Bottle gourd parata

Generally thepla recipes I see online have wheat flour and besan as main ingredients. This recipe uses bajra flour. I just loved the flavor of it. And bajra is healthy too. Lauki makes it more tasty and more healthy. Do try!

GasaGase Payasa/ Poppy seeds payasam

 Happy Ugadi! May all of you have a blessed year! 

We celebrate Souramana Ugadi and not Chandramana Ugadi. But in our house there is only one way of celebrating, so it doesn’t matter which one we celebrate..  because the only way we celebrate any Hindu festival is prepare special food and then eat. I keep it in front of God, light the lamp, prostrate, that much I do.. 🙏

Coming to the recipe, gasagase payasa is our family favorite. Grinding gasagase is little bit tricky, water should not be added all at once, but little by little for it to grind properly. This is my mother’s recipe, with tips and tricks as she taught me. Enjoy! 

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.