Cooking Is Easy

Beetroot stir-fry with fresh coconut a.k.a Beetroot Thoran . Red beet or garden beet is cooked with coconut and green chilly....perfect combination with hot steaming rice. A vegan side dish with rice.....a healthy vegetarian dish. I make this thoran with the help of my food processor to mince the beets; you can also grate the beets or chop them with a knife.... Do try beans and carrot thoran , which is perfect with rice and a popular Kerala side dish for lunch. Ingredients: Beetroot: 1/2 kg or 2 medium size Green chilly: 2 or 3. Onion: 1/2 (or if using shallots 3 or 4). Freshly grated coconut: About 3/4 cup. Garlic: 2 cloves. Turmeric: 1/4 tsp. Coconut oil:1 tbsp. Whole red chilly: 2, broken Mustard seeds: 1/2 tsp. Curry leaves. Salt to taste. Little water. Method: Cut the beets. Then chop the coarsely. Put into the food processor. And give it a blitz. Now add the coconut, green chilly, turmeric powder, salt, and onion...again blitz...

Hi all, again a small diversion from recipes.  This post is especially for bloggers who use point and shoot camera. Few tips I learned to improve my traffic. I had posted some of my experiences as a food blogger and today, I thought why not write about how I increase my traffic to this blog. As you all know I take pictures with Nikon Point and Shoot Cam, and that I love to take step by step pictures; just to guide you, show you the whole process of my cooking.... the final outcome should be satisfying as it was for me, and to let you all know that cooking is easy. Taking step by step pictures can be tedious at times, sometimes my cam will be stained with that chocolate cake batter or the pizza dough     flour......I cook and take pictures myself except sometimes my kids lend a helping hand. I take pictures using macro settings and during day time, mostly in the balcony or in the kitchen on top of my  washing machine....there is plenty of light ...

Baked samosa, yeah you heard me right BAKED SAMOSA!! Baked samosa filled with vegetable goodness...its vegan...its healthy. I have been trying to make healthy after-school-snacks for my kids....trying to limit the frying especially. As a rule while making samosa I use only whole wheat flour.....even when I make pizza, I use whole wheat flour; though the pizza base wont be as soft and spongy as made with plain flour....I make my kids "like" whole wheat flour based pizza base and samosa (or whatever I make with whole wheat flour) insisting to them the health benefits of wheat flour, and now they does not seem to mind much. Lets get cooking! Ingredients: (For the samosa dough) Whole wheat flour/Atta: 1 cup. Oil: 2 tbsp (I used rice bran oil). Salt: 1/2 tsp. Ajwain: 1/4 tsp. (optional). Little water to knead. (for the vegetable filling) Vegetables chopped: 1 cup. Onion: 1, sliced. Ginger: A small piece, sliced or chopped. Red chilly powder: 1 tsp (...

Today I am taking a break from recipes a small deviation from my cooking to give you some of the knowledge that I have gained through blogging for the last two years. This journey which started on a whim one afternoon, summer of 2010 was actually to store and share some of my favorite recipes. Friends have been asking recipes and I started sending them through email. And one fine afternoon I stumbled on blogger and the rest is history. The very first post is my favorite chocolate recipe which was popular among my friends and relatives...little did I know that I am stumbling into the big world of blogging. Blogging has become an addictive hobby and a place to share my passion for cooking. I was overjoyed when I got the first comment and then slowly without myself realizing my blog started to grow. For me cooking should be easy and fun, I cannot digest long list of ingredients in a recipe, so I try to make my cooking as easy as possible for my readers and friends....my mantra is coo...

The best thing about mushrooms are; they are very low in calories, they have no cholesterol, and less than 1% of your daily value of sodium plus the vitamins and minerals. They are often classified as a vegetable or a herb, but they are actually fungi. While there are over 14,000 mushrooms, only about 3,000 are edible, about 700 have known medicinal properties, and fewer than one percent are recognized as poisonous. It is best to put mushroom in turmeric water before cooking; if the color of the mushroom changes it is not fit to use. Usually store-bought ones are safe. I prepared this pulav with the recipe that I used for my easy vegetable pulav , only addition was 1 chopped tomato after the green paste. Then add the chopped mushrooms, they will shrink once they are cooked Serve hot with papad and raita. For Recipe Click Here. P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW! Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurn...

Hershey's Black Magic Cake....is one of my favorite cake.

Easy vegetable pulav or pulao or pilaf.....can be made in about half an hour....how cool is that?? I use my food processor once a day  noo  twice , thrice, I stopped counting......its the most essential part of my cooking. I made this for lunch a couple of days back.....just put some veggies in the processor and blitz away...  whatever veggies you have in stock, I used carrots, beans, capsicum.... This recipe serves just three and I used my 3.5 litre pressure cooker. This is a perfect lunch box delight for kids, sometimes I make this in the morning for kids lunch, you can always chop/mince the veggies a day before and refrigerate it, also the green masala paste.  Why I mince veggies: my kids are picky eaters when it comes to veggies, they simply remove the veggies (when I chop them) with a grin on their face and keep it aside on the plate. So this way they cannot "pick" veggies and they  doesn't seems to mind the tiny veg...

Kerala fish fry (meen varuthathu) recipe: Avoli a.k.a pomfret is a family favorite....when my achachen visited me 2 days back he bought frozen pomfret all the way from Trivandrum to Calicut....we Keralites are fish lovers, fish is a staple among non-vegetarians. Kerala fish fry is easy to make and frying in coconut oil makes it all the more yummy. I am very particular about the red chilly variety I use, I only use Kashmiri Red Chilly known in Malayalam as "piriyan mulaku". This chilly has very mild heat and the colour stands out....thus there is no need to add any red color to the dish. It is a sort of ritual for me that just before the monsoons I buy kilos of Kashmiri Chilly, sun dry it and powder it in the local mill, as I am a bit weary of using ready made powders. I have marinated the fish with chilly powder,  a bit of pepper powder, turmeric, salt and kudumpuli neeru or juice of kokum   and shallow fried the fish....the result was mouthwatering...my family ...