Easy Coconut Rice Recipe, South Indian style

In India coconut is one of the most common offerings to God.  Since is considered ‘sreshtha’ (superior) and auspicious it is offered as a way of prayer. It is first de-husked, broken along with the shell and then offered. After that the coconut is treated as part of prasadam and is consumed by making variety of eatables.  Being a Konkani, coconut is a part of our everyday food. The morning ritual starts by breaking a coconut offering it to God and making some preparations out of it. There are lots of recipes sweet, savory and curries that use coconut. In…

Palak Daal Recipe

The past few days have been an emotional roller coaster ride for me. I did a normal WordPress upgrade on both Redchillies and FoodWorld but that went wrong and crashed both of them. I have done many upgrades before on both of them, but this time I was trying too many things at the same time and guess it was meant to be a disaster. As soon as I realized my mistake, I did some restoration work with the backup that I had taken earlier, but that made the situation even worse and the blogs became inaccessible.  As you can…

Fresh Coriander Chutney/ Dhaniya Chatni

Chutney is a must in our house the day Idli or Dosa is made. Even if I have curry of some sort, to go along I still have to resort to making chutney as we cannot imagine eating them without chutney. Since Idli or Dosa is made every week in our house, there is one type of chutney or the other: be it the plain coconut chutney, mustard chutney or raw mango chutney and I prefer using fresh coconut.  DH loves to have seasoning/tadka in chutney but many a times I feel lazy to do the extra step of seasoning…

Potato, Broccoli Fry/ Broccoli Sabzi

Many people I know are not fond of broccoli. But the nutritional benefit of this vegetable is hard to ignore. At home, we are not big fans of broccoli either, but we try to use it wherever possible. After it is cooked, it tastes more like cauliflower, but with an extra bite. I add some while making fried rice or even pulav. Adding onion to this dish is optional. I usually add onions to all my curries, but while making this I ran out of onions and hence I had no option. But I strongly feel that adding onions gives…

Chutney and Plain Dosa Recipe

In our house Dosa chutney or Idli chutney gets transformed from a breakfast ritual to a Friday Dinner ritual. If it is Idli one week, then it is Dosa the other week. I soak the daal and rice Thursday morning while leaving for work and grind it in the night. So by Friday evening the batter has ample time to ferment. This is the recipe I follow for dosa with good results. Here are some more recipes for Idli and Dosa.  I know Plain Dosa and chutney is an easy recipe for many of us, especially for the people from…

Kid’s Snack: Chana Aloo Tikki

This recipe draws inspiration from the beloved Aloo Tikki, a crispy and flavorful potato-based snack. Tikki, which means “patties” in Hindi, is a versatile dish often enjoyed with chutney or as a filling in chaat recipes. The other day, I had some leftover cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas) and decided to experiment. Combining the idea of Falafel with traditional Tikki, I mixed the mashed chickpeas into the regular Tikki dough to create these protein-packed Chana Aloo Tikki. While the addition of chickpeas doesn’t change the taste drastically, it boosts the nutritional value with plenty of protein and fiber. The kiddo has…

Lauki ki Sabji

  Lauki does not get cooked often in our house. This vegetable along with zucchini has been deemed as having sweet taste when cooked by DH and so they get ignored. Hence they do not find a good place in our kitchen. However recently one of my colleague had brought this curry for lunch and I took a liking to it. I noted down the recipe and made it when DH was away for the day.  It is a simple curry that gets done in no time and forms a good accompaniment with either rice or rotis. Lauki (Hindi) is…