September 1

Today is the last day of Ganapati. Though this time the festival didn't have its usual sheen but still it feels emotional to bid Bappa goodbye. Our society had planned visarjan in the evening. This time it is supposed to be a low key affair unlike last time where people danced their heart out for about 4 hours straight. The idol was planned to be immersed in the tank created in-house. Fortunately today we didn't have any rains after like 5 days of continuous rain.  So the visarjan happened quite seamlessly. Best part we could see it from our homes through Facebook live. The festive season has already started and it doesn't even feel like it is festival time. Now I am wondering what will be the fate of Durga Puja in the coming months. Even if it is organised I feel it will have the same set of restrictions as Ganpati considering the current situation. I am not expecting a miracle in two months.

Today I got to know that National Nutrition Week is observed every year from 1st September to 7th September to make people aware about the importance of nutrition for the Human Body and well being of health. There are seven major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, dietary fiber, minerals, proteins, vitamins, and water. But whenever we think about healthy eating we get an impression that it will be bad in taste. But this post is specifically about clearing that misconcept. Healthy food can taste good too, just you need to put together things that you like or love.

I myself is not a salad person, but when I made this bowl I really loved it. It had amalgamation of all tastes - sour, spicy, salty and sweet. This is the kind of quick breakfast bowl that’s worth waking up for, take my word for it. And best part you will enjoy putting them all together in the bowl too.

Now a salad bowl practically can have anything and everything you like - leafy vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds, meat, egg, seafood - basically the whole horizon of food. But since I wanted this to be a breakfast bowl hence I limited the number of ingredients to 8.

The main ingredients I used are - Avocado, Chickpeas, Onions, Green Peas, Corn, Chillies, Lemon and Egg. Avocado is a powerhouse of many essential nutrients and minerals. It is rich in vitamin K, B5, B6, B3, E and C. They are also dense in potassium, folate, magnesium, manganese, copper, iron, zinc and phosphorous. Chickpeas are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. The humble onions are rich in antioxidants and folic acid.Corn is rich is in Vitamin B12, folic acid and iron which helps in the production of red blood cells in the body. Green peas contain a decent amount of heart-healthy minerals, such as magnesium, potassium and calcium. Even red chilli has lot of health benefits. Red chillies are jam-packed with Vitamin C that helps in supporting the immune system and combat chronic diseases. It also prevents heart ailments. Eggs are rich in Omega-3. Lastly, Lemons are full of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. The point is, just in a small bowl of salad you get all major health benefits in a natural way.

This is a quick satisfying breakfast loaded with all the essential nutrients your body seeks. Try it out and you wont be disappointed, in fact you might just start loving salad bowls.

How to remove the Avocado core?

Grip one side of the avocado gently on your palm. Using a sharp knife, slice through the avocado lengthwise until you feel the knife hit the pit/ seed. Then rotate the avocado, keeping the knife steady, to make a cut all around the pit. Twist the two halves apart and pull the top part slowly till it comes off clean.

Now remove the pit from the other half by scooping it out gently with a teaspoon. Run the spoon around and under the stone until it pops out.

Now use a spoon around the flesh and scoop out the avocado flesh like ice cream.

How to stop discoloration?

Drizzle the Avocado with lemon juice to stop discoloration if you do not plan to serve the avocado immediately.


Preparation Time : 5 minutes

August 12

Pune is finally getting some rains and it is beautiful apart from the time you need to step out to the market. There is no issue with the market as such, but the road leading to it, is in a bad shape as usual. Pothole riddled , loose gravels underneath pools of water, slushy mud and not to mention the billions of car that ply on this arterial road - life is never easy when you try to walk down to the market. One might say, why to walk when you can take a bike or a car, but its just about a five minutes walk and moreover the lockdown has ensured that we are spending most of the time sitting at home without technically any exercise. So the walk to the market at least gives me some respite from the desk job and I love it, well when it is not raining. The last weekend, I ventured out to get some xeroxes done and get my supplies from the local shops. I had expected though it is just the beginning of formal unlock, people will still be sensitive to the situation and venture out unless absolutely required. How wrong I was! There were at least a million cars trying to hustle through the narrow road. There were hoards of people at the local chai katta without masks, enjoying their cuppa of tea and coffee. There were people thronging the vegetable vendors just like old times. And there were people who coughed nearly on your face without the slightest guilt on their face. Thus it seemed the Covid was just in the newspapers and 9 PM news bulletins; people here have already forgotten it all for good. But that didn't ease my pain of navigating though the traffic and the mud. By the time i reached my society premises, I felt like I just came out victorious from a war zone. I had my battle scars to show in the form of all the mud splashes on my culottes.


Thus even though how much ever I love to be vocal for local and buy from local stores only, the rains are a major spoilsport to my plans. Its really not easy to lug a 5 kg bag while trying to balance on the slippery mud. So eventually the fall back option is the home delivery service of the online grocery stores like BigBasket, Grofer etc just for the sake of convenience. But I don't have any gripe as the products they deliver are 99% of the time very good qualitywise.

So the other day I was just deliberating what to experiment on next. All through the lockdown time I kept seeing people make different kinds of pizza at home. I didn't have any pizza base with me unfortunately, but I did have a loaf of pav which I had just got delivered in the morning.

This is my take on the pull apart garlic bread. If you don't have bread or you can't make bread from scratch, nothing to fret, there is always the good old pav which can come to rescue. Stuff it with the filling of your choice, add in the herbs and brush it off with homemade garlic butter (garlic rosemary butter on the top corner of the picture) Bake it in the oven and you have your own easy peasy pull apart bread right out of the oven. Super easy, super delicious and an instant mood uplifter. You can play with the filling as per your mood and available ingredients and everything comes out as awesome as the rest.


Preparation Time : 20 minutes

1st August

I have always heard about caramelized apples but never tasted them until this year. When I was staying in Atlanta, I had many opportunities at diners to have caramelized apple toppings on my bread but I wonder why I never tried them. Maybe back then, the experimental streak was lesser than it is now or maybe I felt comfortable going with the herd mentality. I followed whatever my friends ordered.

So this year it was by fluke that I made caramelized apple for the first time. I had a some apples which were sitting on the counter top for quite sometime and had begun to age. So finally I took a notice of them and started thinking what to do with them. Now if you know me personally you would also know I am not a very huge fan of fruits. In fact I do not like fruits at all, apart from a few seasonal ones like mangoes or litchies. Hence the predicament of the apples at my home. Well you might be already wondering then why did I buy them? Technically,  I didn't.

I had ordered tomatoes from Bigbasket daily. Now all those who are not familiar with bigbasket, its an online grocery delivery app, which delivers the items pre - dawn (at least for me 5.30 am is pre dawn). The point is, that if they miss out on an item or give the wrong item is is no option of returning it rightaway. One needs to then raise a issue through their customer care. So when I saw apples sitting there instead of tomatoes I didn't know whether to feel happy or sad about it. Technically they were more expensive than tomatoes so it was a profit for me but then I needed tomatoes. There was chicken sitting in the fridge which needed to be cooked in a tomato gravy. So I raised an issue after like deliberating for 10 minutes. The lady out there took a note of my issue and said she is initiating a refund. But I need tomatoes - I kind of wailed on text. She sympathetically said, "I can understand madam, but unfortunately we cannot send replacement now. So enjoy the apples".

The chat session ended and I tried hard to convince myself that apples are always good for health, so I need to have them now that they are already here. But easier said than done. I ate two apples fresh. And then rest of the four kept sitting there for weeks until I again took a note of them. Since I was in no mood to have them raw, I started thinking about ways to use them. Mom suggested I add them to the chicken curry. But I didn't feel so adventurous. So instead I thought lets fry them with sugar. Thus I made the first ever batch of caramelized apples and totally totally loved it. So this weekend I made some cinnamon eggy bread following karmelowy's recipe.




Preparation Time : 20 minutes

Chicken Sandwich

Chicken is a staple thing we have on the weekends, hence I had chicken in the freezer. I had recently found out a very nice chicken store in our neighborhood. Even after one week in the freezer when I defrost the chicken its still soft and fresh. So I decided I would make something with chicken. Chicken sandwich looked like a good option.

I checked on the net, and began searching for a nice chicken sandwich recipe. I specially wanted to avoid the recipes which were all heavy on mayonnaise. But unfortunately most of the chicken recipes I found on the net were either mayonnaise or cheese filled. Some of the indianised versions didn't sound good enough for me. After an hour of futile search I closed the laptop and decided to come up with my own version of chicken sandwich. I speculated between going for an all Chinese recipe or something more Indian. When the confusion between the two didn't appear to go, I thought why not a fusion of both? Thus the following recipe was born.

Preparation & Cooking Time: 25 mins

Chicken Mix

Procedure:
1. Clean the chicken pieces. Preferably select some fibrous pieces if possible devoid of bones.

2. Slice the onion longitudinally and chop the green chilli very finely. (If you are ok with having bigger chilli pieces then you can chop it that way)

3. Heat oil in a skillet and toss in the onion and chilli, fry till golden brown. Keep them aside to cool

4. In a deep bottomed wok take 3 cups of water. Put the cleaned chicken pieces in the water. Add 1 tsp of pepper powder, 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp of butter to the water. Cover the wok and turn on the heat. As the chicken gets cooked, the flavours of pepper and butter will get uniformly infused into the chicken pieces.

5. Boil the chicken pieces for 6-7 mins and then turn of the heat. Let it cool and then take out the boiled chicken on a plate. Note that the chicken should not be all mushy, it should remain a bit hard when you remove it from the heat.

6. Shred the chicken pieces using two forks and keep it in a mixing bowl

7. Add the fried onion and chilli, red chilli powder, remaining pepper powder, 2 tsp butter, curd, soya sauce, ginger garlic paste, oregano, cheesy spread, magic masala and a pinch of salt if required to the mixing bowl.  Mix everything together so that the chicken is well coated with all the ingredients.

8. Heat 2 tsp oil in a skillet. Add the remaining butter to the oil. You can add more according to taste. Toss in the chicken mixture into the skillet and fry it for 4 minutes, occasionally stirring it so that the mix doesn't stick to the bottom of the skillet.

9. Keep the fried mix aside. Take the bread slices, chop off the hard edges of the bread. Butter on side of the bread slices.

10. Now heat the skillet and keep the bread slices one by one, the buttered side facing the bottom of the skillet. Let the bread surface become slightly browned. Do the same for all the breads.

11. Lay the bread on a serving plate, the fried side facing down. Butter the other side of the breads lightly. Spoon some of the chicken mix on one bread and cover it with another bread. A total of 4 sandwiches are made. Cut the sandwiches diagonally and serve with some ketchup and potato chips as sides.

I am very self critical of my cooking. If I am not satisfied with the end result, no matter how much praise I get for it, I am not at peace. Today I was really happy with the end result, just the way I wanted it to be. More Indian and yet having all the right mix of Chinese flavor . Try this one and I bet you are absolutely going to love it.

A delicious evening snack

It has been raining on and off here in Pune - sometimes its pouring like anything and sometimes just a surprise drizzle which catches you off guard. Pune has a pretty dry weather and whenever it rains, the temperature takes an immediate nosedive. Chilly winds make you shiver to the core. But if this is a short spell, the very next moment be prepared to get scorched  by the strong sun. This alternating between hot and cold spells presents the perfect setup to fall ill. And in our home also its not an exception.

Weekend is the only time I get to experiment with my food or make new stuffs. But since I am such a lazy person so I try to think out recipes which are easy yet yummy. I was just recalling the recipes that my mom used to make in evening snacks when I was a kid. So I thought to make the same.


This is one recipe which was one of my favourite 15 years back. After starting to cook myself I came to know how difficult it was to think up of a new recipe everyday for dinner  and to think that mom used to come up with new recipes three times everyday - it leaves me awed every time. She is a whiz in thinking up snacks - I do not remember a single day I did not relish the morning breakfast or evening snacks. This particular pakoda was a hit on rainy evenings when one had to just stare at the rain sitting by the window. And the pet kitties surrounding your feet hoping to get a share of the yummy tid-bits. Those were really the days!

Preparation & Cooking Time: 30 mins
Procedure:
1. Chop the onion, coriander leaf, green chilli finely and keep them aside
2. Remove the sides of the brown bread with a knife and cut the slices into small pieces

Bread plays the role of a binder in this recipe. It makes the pakoras tasty and healthy as well.

3. Skin the potato and boil it. Mash the boiled potato
4. Toss all the above three into a mixing bowl, add red chilli powder and salt to it. Mix everything into a fine paste. Taste the mix to be sure about the saltiness of the mixture before adding the egg.

Mix everything together

5. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add it to the mixture. Mix everything together. It should be a nice and thick mixture
6. Heat oil in a skillet and put roundels of the mixture in the oil
7. Fry the pakoras till golden brown
8. Serve the crispy pakoras in a serving tray and top with a few twigs of coriander leaf. Compliment with tomato sauce or any hot and sweet dip. Since the husband had a sore throat and running nose I served it along with steaming tom yum seafood soup.

Egg Pakodas with Tom Yum Seafood Soup - Perfect for a rainy evening