Seasons greetings and a move! December 30, 2010

Hello dear readers, how are you celebrating your holidays?  I know some of us have been snowed in for couple of days in the northeast, due to the weekend blizzard.  And some of you might have been stranded at the airports due to weather delays.  No matter what, life goes on!  It seemed like  just yesterday we welcomed year 2010 and it is already time to say farewell to it and welcome the new year.  Before I welcome 2011, I want to let you all know that MySpicyKitchen has a new home.  It is moving to myspicykitchen.net. Please make a note of it.

I will be moving this blog to it’s new home in a day or two.   I will setup a redirect once I move the blog and all the traffic coming here will be redirected to the MySpicyKitchen’s new home.  I will also change the feedburner feeds so that you do not have to resubscribe to the blog.   If there is a problem with the feed and you are not receiving the feeds after the move, please let me know and will try to fix it.   However, if you subscribed to the blog with an email to receive a notification when new posts are published, not to the feebdurner via email, unfortunately, you have to resubscribe to the blog.  It is the circled subscription form in the picture below.  You won’t see that email subscription widget now because I disabled it.

I would hate to lose my readers and to make the transition easy for those of you who did an email subscription, I can manually subscribe you all to the new blog.  When you subscribe to the blog, wordpess shows me the list of all the emails subscribed to the blog.   Once I add you to the new  feedburner feed via email using that list, all you have to do is confirm the subscription.  OR you could do it (subscribe) yourself.   I apologize for the inconvenience and there is no other way to resolve this issue.  See you all very soon at the MySpicyKitchen’s new home.  Please bookmark the new homepage and  remember it is myspicykitchen.net NOT .com.  See you all very soon!

Wish you all a Happy New Year!

Broccoli & Egg Whites Stir Fry December 7, 2010

Broccoli is a very nutritional vegetable. Until few years ago, I did not like the vegetable and seldom cooked it at home. Once I acquired it’s taste, I like it very much and don’t mind making it at home once in a while. I usually steam it or just saute it in some oil with salt, pepper and some garlic. Lately, I have been making quick stir fry with basic Indian spices and some tomato, to make broccoli  more  flavorful. To make this stir fry even more healthier, I add some boiled egg whites to the fry. Egg whites are mostly for U, who loves eggs & meats, and is trying to eat healthy. Broccoli and egg whites stir fry is certainly a one healthy side dish to go with plain rice!

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Fresh Garbanzo Beans Pulao with Tomato Yogurt Pachadi November 12, 2010

Last week, I visited my cousin for Diwali and she made green chana eka fresh green garbanzo beans pulao.  That made me nostalgic!  Back home, every winter, these green chana, also called hari boot or hari bhoot would make it to the dining table very often.  At times, it was our  breakfast or evening snack as sautéed chana and sometimes  as rice pulao for lunch.

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Savory Onion Crackers ~ Baked Nippattu November 3, 2010

Deepavali or Diwali is next week and I normally do not prepare any savouries and sweets for the festival, unlike the tradition back home. This year however, seeing the preparations of fellow bloggers, I was motivated to prepare some at home. Sunday morning, I baked Nippattu from Red Chillies and she says baked nippattu are very popular in Bangalore bakeries.

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Plagiarism, a new look and some fish patties October 26, 2010

Let me start off with serious business first, plagiarism is something every blogger dreads about.  Every other month, this topic is brought to forefront by bloggers who have become victims or have a friend who has become a victim of this act.  In many cases it is a blogger replicating a recipe and/or a photo from another blog and at times it is the mainstream media that stoops to this  act.

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Indian Cooking Challenge: Punjabi Pakora Kadhi October 15, 2010

I was in India last month and could not part of last month’s challenge. This month’s challenge is Punjabi Kadhi, Simran’s recipe.  Kadhi is  a yogurt based gravy, cooked in several parts of India and each part of the country has its own way of preparing it.  Growing up, I had eaten kadhi at my neighbor’s place but never Punjabi Kadhi.   So, I was excited to make it and also for a  change, it was nice to try out something other than a sweet or a snack for ICC.

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Soya Nuggets Curry October 9, 2010

I am not a big fan of soya nuggets and these nuggets are strangers in my kitchen. However, I like soya granules and cook it once in a while. The reason I don’t particular like soya nuggets is, no matter how much spice I add to it, it always tastes bland and I also do not like the texture of nuggets. I have eaten soya nuggets at my relatives places and it tasted fine. I tried following their recipe but cooking good soya nuggets just wasn’t my cup of tea! I normally soak the nuggets in boiling water, squeeze out all the water from the nuggets and cook it along with a vegetable such as spinach or beans.  No matter how I cooked, it never appealed to my taste buds.

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Chili Yogurt Mushrooms October 1, 2010

I was away from this space for over six weeks and hope all is well with my blog readers and friends! I went back home for few weeks and got back four days ago.  My vacation was okey and it rained everyday when I was in Hyderabad and I hear, it is still raining!

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Indian Cooking Challenge: Bari – Dried Lentil Dumpings August 15, 2010

This month’s challenge is Bari, dried lentil dumplings. These bari can be used in curries and stir fries to spice up and enhance the flavor. Valli picked Mamta’s recipe for  wadi/bari.

Bari are sun-dried until all the moisture in the baris is gone and stored in an air tight container for up to a year. I made half the given recipe, sun-dried half of them  and oven dried the other half. I do get plenty of sunshine but I do not have a balcony or a patio to dry it in the sun. I put mine in my window and dried it for 4 days. The other half that I oven dried, I left them in a 200 degree F oven for couple of hours. I turned them around after 1 hour. Two hours in the oven was not sufficient to dry the bari. So put it in my window to completely dry them. If using the oven, I would suggest baking it a little longer, perhaps 3 hours should do the job.

I found these baris very spicy. The flavor of cloves was overwhelming. As I was preparing it, I knew it was going to be very spicy and was tempted to cut back on the spices but still went ahead with the recipe. I double checked the measures to make sure I was adding the right quantity, as I made half the recipe. It was not the chili spice but the garam masala spice. Since I oven dried one batch of baris, I made tomato curry the following day. For 3 tomatoes, I used 10 bari, added 3-4 green chilies. It yielded about 3 cups of curry and despite adding very few spices, tomato curry was spicy hot! Just be cautious when using these baris. Just 5-6 baris would have sufficed to spice up the curry, for the quantity I made.  I should have know better as Mamta did mention it on her blog.

Source: Mamata.

I am not reposting the recipe here right now as I do not have time to do so.  I shall update it later.  Until then, please  head over to Mamata’s blog.

Indian Cooking Challenge: Kara Sev July 16, 2010

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