Trendy Relish

Dec 30, 2008

Best of 2008 - A Memory!

I can’t believe it’s already the end of the year and we are stepping into another new year! Let’s hope the New Year brings us loads of happiness and prosperity. I have started blogging in January this year and I am so glad I took that step into the wonderful blogging world! I have learned so much in cooking, made so many wonderful new friends. I even have improved my photography skills!

I felt so happy to get lovely comments for all my experimental recipes. This sweet appreciation from my blogger friends has given me lot of encouragement to go further in posting! I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my blogger friends and regular readers of my blog for the encouragement and support they have given me so far! I wouldn’t have come this far without your support dears! I also would like to say thanks to my family who stood by me all the time with their full support.

At the end of this memorable year 2008, let me bring back some memories of my best recipes so far! All these recipes are my new inventions and they tasted so great too!

1. Top 10 Recipes of the Year!

2. Best Dish of the Month!

January: Arati Kaya Podi (Plantain Powder)
February: Mango Pickle
March: Idli Fritters
April: Apple Halwa
May: Raisin-Stuffed Apples
June: Basboosa
July: Salubrious Smoothie (Cherry Berry Smoothie)
August: Vegetarian Chili
September: Gongura Pachadi
October: Date Laddus
November: Banana Bread
December: Pumpkin Cupcakes

3. Best Recipe Prepared from Other Blogs!

So far I have tried 10 delicious recipes from other blogs. All of those are the best in my opinion. So here they are:

4. Best Meal of the Year!

Hmm. It is harder to choose one meal! Anyways, here is one of the best meals we enjoyed this year!

Spicy Pesarattu

5. New things discovered this year!

As I told before, this year paved a beautiful path for me to make many new friends and sharpen my skills in cooking and in photography as well! I have learned different cooking techniques too!

6. New Blogs Discovered!

Oh My! I have discovered so many wonderful blogs and sites this year! Each and every one has its own style and beauty!

7. Cooking Resolutions for the year 2009!

Concentrate more on baking and cook more healthy foods to keep fit!

This is my contribution to Srivalli’s “Best of year 2008” event.

This is my last post for this year! So see you all in the New Year 2009 with more new recipes! Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2009!

Dec 28, 2008

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Maggi Pakodas

My little one is a picky eater and never finishes her food. So I always have leftovers. She likes Maggi noodles so much, but never finishes that either. I usually throw away the leftover noodles, but one day thought of making pakodas with them. And ta-da! Trust me, they tasted delicious.

Dec 25, 2008

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Christmas Cookies

Colorful Cookies for Christmas

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Here are some cookies I made for Christmas. We left some cookies and milk for Santa Clause, who was very pleased with the cookies (smile) and left us some presents.

Dec 22, 2008

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Aloo Rasedar

I always look for new curry recipes to go with rotis/puris/rice. Mostly I end up with my own, imaginative recipes. I found this interesting and delicious curry recipe for puris in one of my cooking books. It was filed under Kashmiri Recipes. It tasted so great and was so filling too!

Ingredients:

3 large Potatoes
2 medium Tomatoes
1 medium Onion
1 cup Green Peas
2 Green Chilies
1 tsp Red Chili Powder
1 tsp Garam Masala
½ tsp Turmeric Powder
A small piece of Ginger
1 or 2 cloves of Garlic
A handful of Cilantro
2 tsp Oil
Salt as required

Preparation:

Peel, wash and cut potatoes into big/small chunks. Chop onions, tomatoes, green chilies, ginger and cilantro into small pieces.

In a pressure pan, add oil. When it is hot, add all the chopped veggies and fry for some time. Then add turmeric, chili powder and garam masala and fry for some time.

Finally add green peas and salt. Mix well and pour some water (approximately a cup). Cover pressure pan with lid and wait for 3 whistles. After all the pressure is gone, carefully open the lid and mix the curry well. Adjust salt.

If the curry became too watery, try this trick: Mix 1 tsp of rice flour with little amount of water and pour into the curry when it is still hot, to make the gravy thick. Make sure there are no lumps.

Garnish with some chopped cilantro and enjoy hot with some rotis/puris.

Dec 19, 2008

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Christmas Cupcakes

Colorful and Yummy Cupcakes for Christmas

I love the Christmas atmosphere. Christmas lights and decorations look enchanting everywhere. As the Christmas holidays are approaching, my daughter’s class held a fun-filled holiday tradition called ‘Secret Santa’, where a student is randomly assigned to another student to whom he/she gives a gift anonymously. It’s really a lot of fun to guess who your Secret Santa is! And they’re going to get these gifts and start guessing about their secret Santa on the day of the Christmas party, which is today. For this particular Christmas party, I volunteered to send some cupcakes!

Dec 17, 2008

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Beetroot Pickle

As we all knew, beetroot is an amazing blood cleanser. They are loaded with vitamins A, B1, B2, B6 and C. They also have so many medicinal values as they are rich in iron. I usually make a pickle out of these beets as we don’t like the simple beetroot fry.

Ingredients:

2 cups Beetroot, skin removed and cut into small pieces (I used canned beets)
½ cup Black Gram (Urad dal, Minappappu)
¼ cup Coriander Seeds (Dhaniya, Dhaniyalu)
¼ tsp Fenugreek Seeds (Methi, Menthulu)
1 tbsp Tamarind Pulp
2 tsp Oil
¼ tsp Asafetida (Hing, Inguva)
5 or 6 Red Chilies
10 Curry Leaves
¼ tsp Mustard Seeds
Salt

Preparation:

Cook the beetroot pieces with some water until they become tender, but don’t let them get too mushy. Drain water and keep aside. As I used canned beets, I didn’t have to cook them again.

In a pan heat 1 tsp oil and add the beet pieces. Fry for 5 to 10 minutes and transfer to a plate. In the same pan heat rest of the oil and add mustard seeds. When they splutter, add coriander seeds + fenugreek seeds + red chilies + curry leaves + asafetida and sauté till the coriander and fenugreek seeds turn into golden brown color. Again transfer these into a different plate.

Finally add urad dal and fry till they become golden brown in color. Switch off the flame and let the ingredients cool for some time.

Then, add the mustard + coriander + fenugreek mixture in a blender and grind until they are powdered well. Then add the beet pieces along with tamarind pulp and little water (not too much) and grind into a fine paste. Finally add the fried urad dal and run the mixer again until the dal mixes well with beet mixture. Make sure not to grind the dal into very fine consistency as the crunchiness of the dal gives the pickle a unique taste.

Enjoy this yummy and spicy pickle with hot rice and ghee.

Dec 15, 2008

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Upma Dosa

When I have leftover upma, I don’t like to eat it by reheating. I just turn it into different forms like bondas just like I made Vermicelli Bonda and sometimes pakodas and sometimes dosas like these. I guarantee the taste. This involves easiest preparation with limited number of ingredients.

Ingredients:

1 cup Leftover Upma
1 cup Rice Flour (బియ్యపు పిండి)
½ cup Chickpea Flour (శనగపిండి)
Salt
Oil

Method:

Add all the ingredients except oil in a wide bowl and mix well by adding water to make batter.
The batter shouldn’t be too thick or too thin, but just right enough to drop and spread with a ladle.
To make sure there are no lumps in the batter, use hand to mix the ingredients.
Heat a non-stick pan and pour a ladleful of batter on it and spread out quickly into a round shape.
But don’t spread the batter into a very thin layer. It should be little thin like we do for utappams.
Pour a little oil around the dosa. Leave it for a while to cook and flip it over to cook on the other side. Pour a little oil again around the dosa.
When the dosa is done, take it away from the pan and transfer to a serving plate.
Repeat the same process with remaining batter.
Enjoy these yummy dosas with your favorite chutney.
We ate our dosas with cilantro pickle and some curry powder.

On a Happy Note:

I was declared as the winner of the fun event “Challenge” hosted by Veda Murthy, along with two more winners Soma and Lubna Karim. Meeta of What's For Lunch Honey was the judge for this event. Thank you so much Veda and Meeta, for selecting me as one of the winners. I am so happy for winning this challenge. CONGRATULATIONS TO OTHER WINNERS TOO!

Hema Balaji of Adlak’s Kitchen has passed the “Best Blogger Friends” award on the occasion of her blog’s century celebration. Thank you so much for considering me as your friend dear Hema! So nice of you! Do read her thoughtful and amazing post on the completion of her 100^th post.

Dec 14, 2008

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And the Winner of Riddle #5 is….

Dear friends, thank you for participating in the guessing game! I appreciate your enthusiasm. As I already expected, most of you guessed the answers right, though some of you got confused with the middle picture.

Here are the correct answers for the guesses: Check the Picture!

Many of you have given the correct answers, but as I said before, I would pick the first person who gave the correct answer. So the winner of this guessing game is PAVITHRA KODICAL. She was the first person to come up with correct guesses. CONGRATULATIONS PAVITHRA AND PLEASE ACCEPT THE BATON AND CARRY ON THE FUN GAME! It would be Riddle #6 for you! I can’t wait to see what you would come up with Pavithra! Have Fun!

Here is the list of all the other friends who made correct guesses:

Rekha, Cham, Roopa, Sripriya, Meera, Vaishali, Jaishree, Laavanya, Kamalika, PG, Hema and Kalai

Congratulations to you too friends! But I am sorry I can pass the baton to one person only, so I chose the first person as the winner! Thank you all for having fun with me!

Dec 12, 2008

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Shall We Guess? Riddle Me #5

I recently gave a correct answer to one guessing game held out by Kamalika. But I didn’t expect I would win this riddle, but I did! Thanks for passing me the baton Kamalika! I am the fifth person to carry the baton! Before I proceed, let me talk about rules/steps of this riddle.

Given below are the steps that need to be followed by the sixth person who gets the baton.

And here are some simple steps as set by Manisha, who started this fun event.

Find something stranger than strange and weirder than weird.
Post it on your blog within the next two weeks.
The quiz remains open for at least 1 day and at the most 2 days.
The person who guesses it correctly gets the torch and is the next host for Riddle Me This.
If the person who guesses correctly is the previous host, then that person will get to pick someone to pass the buck to from all those who made a guess.
And so on.
Please use the fabulous logo, designed by the real IFR owner: and link back to the host who passed the baton on to you.
Please do your best to keep this alive. Just think of how much fun it will be!

And now to the fun part, guessing game!

Look the above picture carefully! I placed three kinds of beans for you to guess! I am pretty sure you all can guess all the three names correctly! Isn’t that easy to guess? According to the first step of the rules said I have to give something stranger than strange and weirder than weird. But I couldn’t find that strange or weird thing to post, so going on with these easy guesses, as I am already late in posting this riddle! I will pick the first one, who guesses these beans correctly as the winner and the baton will be passed to her.

So what are you waiting for? Go on with your guesses and be the lucky winner to carry on the baton! Do I really have to wish you all good luck when I am pretty sure that you all could come up with correct answers? Anyways, Good Luck Friends!

HAVE FUN AND HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AHEAD!

Dec 10, 2008

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Chocolate-Banana Delight

Delicious combo of Chocolate and Banana - A Beverage

This is another milkshake that I prepared recently. If you want to slurp it warm for the cold winter, just replace cold milk with warm milk and omit ice cubes.

Dec 8, 2008

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Cranberry Bread with Pureed Fruit

Yummy and Eggless Cranberry Bread

As I was planning to send something for Madhuram’s Egg Replacement event, I was browsing through different baking recipes online and in my collection. Last week when I visited the grocery shop a packet of fresh cranberries caught my attention. A recipe for cranberry bread was given at the back of that packet. So immediately took it and brought home. I have never used cranberries in my cooking, so was skeptical about using them. Anyway, went with the bread recipe to see how it would taste. Madhuram has announced “Pureed Fruit” as the substitute of egg for this month’s event, I used mashed banana in the place of egg and was wondering how it would taste! But, trust me, the bread tasted so delicious and came out perfect and was smelling great.

Check out this site for common substitutions in food.

Dec 5, 2008

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A Treasure Hunt!

OK! Who is ready to peek into my kitchen to see how it is overloaded with treasures? Of course, most of you might have these, but still want to introduce you my treasures! Don’t think there are diamonds and rubies in my kitchen! These treasures mean more valuable than those to me! I have a large collection of steel glasses, spoons, plates and utensils which play very important role in my daily cooking needs. I got all these from India and we traveled together to many places like Hong Kong, Japan and now USA. We’re like best buddies! OK. Enough of blabber! Let me present you my kitchen collection!

Below are some of my steel collections. It’s not that I adore steel, but I just happened to collect so many of them. Now they live proudly in my kitchen. I still have many steel utensils, but I don’t want to scare you all! :)

Presenting my precious (OK not that precious) mandolin and churner!

Finally here is an Italian Moka Express (coffee maker) that I bought in Hong Kong. It brews coffee within minutes and the best thing is it is stove-top.

Have a cup of hot coffee for reading and viewing all my blah blah! :)

This is my contribution to Kitchen Treasure hunt event hosted by Dibs.

Dec 3, 2008

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Vegetable Chowder

This is the delicious and filling soup I have ever tasted. I got the recipe from the book “Zero Oil: Soups, Salads & Snacks”, written by Tarla Dalal, which I received as a surprise gift from Siri and Dhivya for winning the Open Sesame I Contest. It has been a while I received this book, but I haven’t tried many recipes from this wonderful book. I felt angry on myself for not making any recipes till now and started my recipe journey with this wholesome soup! Expect more healthy soups, salads and snacks from this book in future!

Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients:

Low Fat Milk – 3 cups
Corn Flour, dissolved in 1 tbsp of water – 2 tsp (I used Rice Flour)
Crushed Cooked Sweet Corn – 1 cup
Finely chopped and boiled mixed vegetables (Carrots, French Beans, Cabbage etc.) – 1 cup (I used Frozen Mixed Vegetables)
Salt and Black Pepper to taste

Preparation:

Boil milk in a non-stick vessel with 2 cups of water.
Add the corn flour mixture, sweet corn, vegetables and salt. Let it simmer for another 5 to 7 minutes.
Add pepper and mix well. Enjoy this soup while it’s hot! This is perfect for the cold winter.

This is my contribution to “FIC: White” event hosted by Lubna Karim. “Food in Colors” event is originally started by Sunshinemom.

This is also my contribution to "Eat Healthy - During Pregnancy” event hosted by Sangeeth.

Dec 1, 2008

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Pumpkin Cupcakes

Delicious Pumpkin Cupcakes perfect for Thanksgiving Party

We had a nice gathering for this thanksgiving. I have prepared these pumpkin cupcakes for this party. Kids enjoyed these cupcakes so much, not to mention the adults. The credit for decorating these cute cupcakes goes to my daughter. She enjoys helping me with cooking. I found the recipe here and made little changes. I used chocolate chips instead of chopped nuts (as one of the kids is allergic to nuts) and omitted nutmeg (actually forgot to add).