Even though I grew up in Bangalore, the home town of the famous restaurant MTR, I was never familiar with the MTR masalas, powders and spices then. The main reason being that my Mom is a wonderful cook and she made all the powders for sambhar, rasam, vaangi bhaat, pulliyogere etc from scratch at home. Fast forward some years when I got married and came to the United States, I found myself as a clueless cook shouldering the responsibility of cooking. I used to crave for comfort food like rasam, sambhar etc food that I grew up with and that…
Tomato Thokku (Chutney, Pachadi)
It was one of those rare days when Dear Husband volunteered to cook in the kitchen and whip out one of his specialty dish “Tomato Thokku”. Tomato Tokku is the equivalent of Tomato Chutney or Tomato Pachadi. He had tasted this Tokku in Bangalore at his friend’s place and apparently the friend’s mother was an expert in making this. He had learnt the recipe then but managed to remember it even after so many years. I seized this opportunity, silently thanked the heavens and mumbled something about having an important work and disappeared from the kitchen. I however conveniently managed to…
Crispy Urad Daal Vada Medu Vada(Uddina Vade)
Deep frying is becoming a rarity at our house now. Gone are those days when we would have deep fried stuff every week or so and yet managed to keep a tab on weight. OK, OK …..we were young then and we had our fair share of running and playing around and that helped to keep up balance. But then, I do make it on some special occasions. Dear Husband celebrated his birthday few weeks ago and I generously offered him the option of choosing his favorite deep fried food. He agonized as he had a tough job of choosing…