Lettuce Salad with Thai Peanut Sauce Dressing

Next to Indian, the cuisine that we heart is Thai cuisine and we visit different restaurants often. Each restaurant has its own specialty be it Pad Thai, Thai ginger curry rice, sweet sour vegetables, basil noodles etc that we love.  There is this one restaurant that makes an awesome peanut sauce dressing for their salads and so I go there only to eat their peanut sauce.  Now DH thinks it is a stretch to drive all the way just to eat salad and I grudgingly agree. So I took upon the challenge of making this at home.  A few searches…

Instant Besan Dhokla/ Khaman Dhokla Recipe

Khaman Dhokla, a Gujarati traditional dish is a savory snack made out of gram flour. It is steamed (not deep fried) and is typically served during breakfast or dinner. Since it is made out of chickpea flour it is rich in proteins and carbohydrates. Soft, spongy and delicious they also make a great mid-afternoon or tea time snack.  Years ago I used to buy the readymade Khaman Dhokla mix by Tarla Dalal for making instant dhoklas.  The dhoklas would come out pretty good and had a good flavor and texture. We used to have it as a tea time snack…

Indian Flat Beans Curry/ Chaprada Avere Palya/ Papdi ki Sabzi

Indian Flat beans are referred to as chapparada avare in Kannada and as Chikkudu kaya in Telugu, Val papdi in Guajarati. In Bangalore where I grew up, these beans were readily available and my mom used to prepare it often. But here in the US they are not readily available and had almost forgotten about it. However few weeks ago a good friend of mine got a bagful of beans for us and so I got an opportunity to prepare this dish. The combination of this curry along with tomato rasam, yogurt rice forms a comforting meal. This dry curry…