Cook. Eat. Rinse. Repeat.
Thambuli is from Udupi, as far as I know. Growing up we did have it made at home with different green leaves – spinach, coriander, amaranth leaves, methi leaves and more. Then there are kinds without the greens like ginger, methi and plain coconut. They all have two things in common – a coconut base and yoghurt. Ideally a summer side dish, thambuli is very cooling and delicious. For people who don’t like consuming yoghurt as it is, thambuli works great.
Brown butter is nothing fancy. It is simply butter that left home but was taken off the train before it reached the ghee station. After watching so many cooks and bakers talk and write about it, I thought I’d give it a shot. Using my old chocolate chip cookie recipe, I halved the butter and made brown butter. Another thing I altered was the brown sugar content. Instead of 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar, I switched the quantities of the two sugars for a more dark and caramel flavour.
From what was going to be a good old Sunday mutton curry, an improv in the ground masala turned it into something totally different and ten notches better than the regular curry. What happened was that a tip from my mother occurred to me – roasting coconut till it is brown gives a rich colour to the curry and makes it a lot more tasty. It was probably that, and the curry leaves I toasted and threw into the masala to grind. This can obviously work with chicken too.
Got any leftover rice? A raw mango? Some coconut? There’s your lunch in a jiffy. Absolutely effortless and utterly delicious this rice dish is. Years ago, a colleague in Bangalore brought this box full of raw mango rice his mother had made using leftover rice. I hadn’t had anything like that before. And being a sucker for anything sour, I loved it. Having no recipe in hand and with no intention of looking up one either, I tried making some myself. This time around I added freshly grated coconut. This is a new favourite. It takes just about 10 mins to put it together. It took me longer to grate the damn mango actually. I paired this with Udupi style curry leaves thambuli and a cheat mango gojju.
First off, homemade harissa is the best. If you haven’t made it, let me tell you it’s the easiest condiment to make with everyday ingredients. And quite fun too. Also, there are so many different dishes you can make based on harissa. I made a salad dressing and it was delicious. You can make chicken wings with it, or simply use it in yoghurt to make a dip and much more.
Yes, there are enough and more hummus and its variations. And you’ll find all their recipes online. I’ve made a couple of them myself – smoked beetroot hummus and peri peri hummus. But we all get excited when we try out a new kind and want to share it. I’m doing just that right now. My roasted pumpkin salad got me roasted a lot of pumpkin and I had saved enough to make a batch of hummus with it. It’s pretty straightforward and tasted delicious. The pumpkin adds sweetness to the hummus so I added some chilli oil along with the olive oil to balance it out. I also found some pounded chilli powder I used to sprinkle on the hummus.
It’s just a simple salad I put together in minutes (barring the 40 mins it took to roast the pumpkin in the oven). Pumpkin has never been a contender of favourite vegetable for me. I grew up picking the pieces out of sambar and curries while pulling my face. It still isn’t a favourite, but I learned how it can taste pretty good with other vegetables or in a luscious soup.
I’ve only tasted harissa in restaurant dishes and have always loved it. Harissa is basically a North African condiment made with different kinds of chillies, garlic and spices. There are multiple recipes out there and most of them have the same base ingredients but different chillies. I happen to follow a former Masterchef Australia contestant Rose Adam on Instagram and she posted an Insta story of harissa paste in the making. It was too easy to pass so I wanted to make some of my own.
There are plums everywhere in the shops and how can I just walk past them? I picked up a box and I knew I wanted to put them in cake. I had bookmarked a recipe a while ago and tried my hands on it last night. It’s very simple but I did replace one ingredient and alter the method of making the batter. It has turned out moist, gooey and the presence of plum is quite prominent. Give it a go and you’ll have another go-to recipe for another chocolate cake.