Creating, collecting, and sharing thoughts and ideas. And learning along the way.
Food is love. Plus art. Oh, and it keeps you alive. That, too! You might not find a single recipe here, but you may find the inspiration to go create one. Unless, of course, you’re left speechless because you’re drooling so severely at the sight of these glorious images. Regardless, you are NOT always what you eat.
I would be remiss to not have a blogpost devoted solely to all the sweet and savory snacks that my mother made during her brief visit with me over the holidays.
And so, the objective of this post is to highlight via pictures all the many goodies that were made– many of them typically made during the Christmas holidays in India: karjakais, kalkals, ladoos, chudva, murukus, fruitcakes, the list goes on. Back in the old country, you made them in large quantities so as to have them ready on hand to serve when guests came calling for a friendly holiday visit, or to serve to the carolers after they caroled outside your house, or to serve with tea and coffee during the holiday season. And then for a few weeks after Christmas and New Years’, you’d still have boxes and tins of these goodies neatly stored in your pantry that would tide you over at least the month of January.
Well, my mother came to visit for Christmas, and she did exactly this: she made all these yummy sweet and savory eats that we’re now nibbling on even two weeks later!
Here are some of the pictures in the slideshow below. If you’re familiar with these eats, you wouldn’t care to read the captions that go with each photo, but you’re not, you might find it interesting.
So, if you’ve never heard the name of this dish, it is because it was invented today. For lunch. As the name suggests, it is a chicken dish. Picatta is Italian for thinly-sliced cutlet. Which also happens to be a popular Italian dish by the same name: Chicken Picatta.
Well, today, I decided I wasn’t content with the good old Italian recipe, and looked inside my kitchen pantry and saw an unopened jar of Ching’s Manchurian Stir-Fry sauce. This, I had picked up from our local Indian store, Bombay Grocers a while back. The recipe on the back of the bottle was one for Gobi Manchurian! This is the truth, people! Gobi Manchurian is a popular dish in India which is a spin-off of the Indochinese dish Chicken Manchurian, only you’ll find it made from gobi or cauliflower, not chicken.
So, manchurian sauce in hand, I thought why not make a type of chicken manchurian. Only I didn’t have the requisite cubed chicken pieces; instead, I had the cutlet-style pieces. So, I dredged them in cornflour, and you can see the rest in the slideshow below.
And voila, here was the Chicken Picatta Manchurian. A lovely union of Italian and Indochinese! If that’s not multi-ethnic, I don’t know what is!
Oh, and need I say that it was finger-lickin’ good? 🙂
Yes, that’s right, people! Sambar is associated with plenty of veggies, but I’m here to tell you that you can take any and all veggies you have or like and cook them with your favorite lentil, in my case it is the split yellow-pea, a.k.a, arhar dal, and make a fantabulous dal that can double as a hearty winter lentil soup.
Which is what I made for lunch today.
Again, you have a lovely slideshow to see for yourself what the ingredients are, and the order in which they were used and the technique of cooking. You’ll need no measures, although, you might want to get a pressure-cooker if you don’t have one. All the pictures are labeled for the details on what’s what and what’s happening!
Serve it as a stand-alone soup of the most gourmet kind, or the traditional way over white rice. Either way, enjoy! Slideshow follows:
Oh, and for all you foodies who must know the difference between a dal and a sambar: the latter has lots of veggies like the dal here, but it is also seasoned with tamarind, tomatoes and a number of other masalas.
So, if you know one interesting fact about me, I hope it might have something to do with Hyderabadi Biryani, or in particular, the fact that I can make it. From scratch. The kind that willl leave you stunned at the fact that you didn’t know how impossibly amazing that dish could be. And leave you talking about it forever. 🙂
Well, that’s the kind I make. For all special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc. I obvioulsy made it this past Christmas.
So, this is a step-by-step slideshow of the very many steps of this many-layered dish. You’ll have to get your own recipe, or guesstimate the measures from the pictures here, but the sequence is critical to success. This is a huge degchi (pot) that holds about 20 lbs. The pictures are all captioned so you can see what’s what.
The best part, however, is serving it up with love for the ones you love! Oh, and the papads/appalams, pudina chutney and the boondi raita are the consummate accompaniments to the dish.
Bon Appetit! Or, like we say around here: Yeh Hui Na Baat!
How can you not fall in love w/ such colorful open-faced sandwiches?! Seeing *is* believing!
So, if you’re Telugu, you’ll know what these are. They’re called Pole (pronounced poley), the plural being Polelu. They’re essentially parathas filled w/ an exquisite filling of dal and jaggery. If you’ve had them, you’ve certainly LIVED. If you haven’t, well… I hope you do. 🙂
This stack was made by my mother over the recent holidays. She makes them like no other. That really is the truth and nothing but the truth!
Check out the slideshow below for step-by-step directions on how to make them. (Get a recipe yourself!) That’s my mom’s loving hand in the photos, btw.
