Must try for chocolate lovers 🙂 Serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. The cake batter can be prepared several hours ahead of time and refrigerated. Recipe adapted from marthastewart.com.
Puttu – Rice Steamed Cakes the Hipster Style
I like seeing people eat what I cook. Somehow that’s more relishing to me than just gulping my own stuff.
But this thing called Puttu – till sometime back, was probably my oxymoron equivalent for cooking. Easy but difficult. No two attempts get you the same result. A rice cake that’s supposed to be easy to steam & cook often ends up lumpy and hard. And never did I get a compliment.
All that’s changing today. I am rewriting history, courtesy my mom.
Peasant Bread
Baking bread at home has two advantages.
One it wakes up everyone. The aroma fill the whole town. Its like walking down a quaint German street.
Two, you don’t have to get your better half to go running for bread to walmart at night. This bread unlike a baguette or the normal French breads is actually bake-able.
The peasant bread is perhaps the easiest bread you can do. Make any mistakes with this and I’ll say you can’t bake. It’s that damn simple.
All that’s needed is fresh yeast. Don’t compromise on that. You’ll end up with un-raised dough.
Since we all have convection ovens at home I’d suggest getting a Borosil or Pyrex microwave proof bowl too.
Attribution: The Palo Alto Junior League Cookbook
Au Gratin with Chicken
Gratins are perhaps the best filling dinner bakes of the Euro cuisine. They don’t take much skill to bake and like Fritata’s can accommodate mostly anything as filling.
The key part is to get the Cheese - Bechamel Sauce in right quantity. Once you get a hang of gratins, this will be the major dish you turn to whenever you have an impromptu guest.
White chocolate mud cake with White chocolate ganache
My hubby's favorite one:) Extremely moist and very rich cake! This cake has a thick sugary crust . Adapted from nigella.com.
Kerala Style Fish curry with coconut milk (Meen vevichathu)
Fish cooked in chilly, coconut milk and cocum. A great combination with rice 🙂 Recipe adapted from my mom.
Beef/Mutton Biriyani (Kerala Style)
An Indian one pot meal. Beef cooked in spicy masala gravy and layeredwith cooked rice. A very tasty and delicious biriyani. Eventhough it takes time, definitely worth the effort!
Lemon Syrup
Prepare a refreshing drink in no time. Dilute lemon syrup with water to make wonderful lemonade. This syrup can be refrigerated , airtight , upto 2 months. Recipe adapted from my mom 🙂
Caramel Sauce
A wonderful dessert topping! Be extra careful while caramelizing sugar. It will be much hotter than boiling water. The final mixture will foam up considerably and hence use a pan that is at least 3-quarts big.
Kerala Style Pepper Chicken (Nadan Kurumulaku Kozhi)
Chicken pieces cooked and roasted with pepper and spices. It is a perfect preparation to serve to your guests along with rice or chapati (Indian bread). Never replace whole black pepper with pepper powder in this recipe.
Choco banana pancake with coconut gratings
This is dead simple and yummy snack. A twist on ordinary pancakes 🙂 Banana pancake we had from Phuket always tops my favorite list. And it inspired me to try this twisted one. Hope you will enjoy 🙂
Banana Fritters ( Pazham Pori )
This is a traditional Kerala snack. Bananas coated with flour and fried. It won't taste the same with any banana other than Kerala banana / Nenthram pazham.
South Kerala red chilli shrimp pickle
My mom's creation, favorite the world over. It gets over the minute I show this to my friends. Quick recipe.
No Bake Choco Marie Biscuit Cake
Marie biscuits dipped in a coffee mix and coated with chocolate. This is an incredibly easy to make, yet yummy chocolate snack. You just need all ingredients on hand. It is a simple and quick no bake biscuit cake recipe. And a comfort food for sweet toothers.
Chicken Stew - Kerala Style
This recipe is adapter from my mom. Appam with Chicken Stew is one of my favorite breakfast. Chicken simmered in coconut milk with onion, ginger- garlic and pepper. Great combination with Idiyappam and bread also.