The expectation on a food blogger is immense. Each time I have guests at home, somehow they come to know that I run a food blog, and then they expect me to give them some awesome food. 😀 I don’t blame them. Nobody seems to understand that what I post on the blog is not even something that I cooked recently. My family will vouch that they haven’t eaten anything that is appearing now on the blog. I hardly make anything special these days. Life has become such a roller coaster ride. Weekends are as busy and time pressed as weekdays are. At the moment, I am focusing on a few more projects, which hopefully will materialize well, InShaAllah. My baking and cooking has literally taken a backseat. I haven’t lifted up my camera ever since my parents have landed. I actually feel sad when my props and…
Chicken Hakka Noodles
Sometime back I had put a poll on my Instagram handle as to know which recipes my readers were looking forward to on the blog. Sometimes, it is good to know if there are any specific recipes that are not there on the blog, but are being searched. I know that the blog misses some basic posts and InShaAllah, I am planning to work on them, but time is more precious now and hence it will take time than expected. 🙂 Anyway, one of them that was mentioned was hotel style Chicken Hakka Noodles. When we cook home food, why do we want hotel style? I am always bogged down by this question. Home food should taste like home food, period. I agree that certain food is made the best by hotels, but I wouldn’t agree to making it the same way at home. Home made food will…
Ishtu ~ Kerala Vegetable Stew
While I posted the Idiyappam/ Noolputtu recipe couple of months ago, I had hinted that I would post the Ishtu recipe too. It was peaking from behind, so it didn’t make sense to delay this post indefinitely. Hehe… After all the combination of these two is quite a hit… I always wonder why Ishtu is called so. I am sure it is the Malayalamized version of the English word “stew”. Can you see the connection? When umma would make this, I would always think that she is making fun of the name, but lately realized that she was saying its proper name. 😀 I guess we all would have thought of it that way some time in our life! Ishtu is basically a potato stew, made with minimal spices and coconut milk. It is very easy to make, but the spices added gives it such a delicious dimension. …
Chai Karak ~ Emirati Milk Tea
With the season chilled, the amount of tea that is drunk during the hours is humongous. I was hearing the number of thousands of cups of chai karak sold on a daily basis during the winter months in the UAE on radio and was literally shell shocked! You will see people who park a few feet away from the cafeteria, roll down their window, and gesture their index finger upwards to the staff watching out. You will then see him quickly running in and coming out with one cup of chai in a covered plastic tray and walking towards the car, so that the driver can enjoy his hot cup. We are pampered with instant services here, you see? 🙂 There are people who will buy in flasks, buy bigger cups (read me and D!) and ask for “without” (no sugar!). The atmosphere around a good tea selling…
Creme Caramel | Flan
I have always written very long posts for almost all my milestone posts on this blog. I have celebrated the blog birthdays, and then each time I achieved a number of posts on the blog, etc. Of late, I stopped celebrating. It started to make no sense to me. Should I say that they started to mean nothing to me? As this post goes live, the blog has completed 6 years old. I should have posted day before yesterday, but I wasn’t in a mood to clog up the posts on the blog. I wanted to give the posts some time, and myself some time too… Last year was a fight of sorts. I fought to keep my spirit of blogging. I fought to keep going. There were so many reasons to it. I started the blog as a diary of recipes for myself, and then it slowly…
Chocolate Persimmon Overnight Oats
I haven’t done overnight oats in a long time. So when I saw Sarah’s information email saying that this month, the theme for the Fantastical Food Fight would be “Overnight Oats”, I just wanted to participate. I love overnight oats and since I have been on a quantified eating of late, swapping my rice with oats was usually not a preferred option, so oats had to take a limited offering at times. I don’t know how better I can explain this. 😀 Anyway, there were this persimmons that I had reserved to try this muffin recipe for the Bakeathon that concluded last month. However it didn’t happen, since I had no mood to bake them whatsoever. Happens, right? I just wanted to eat them rather than cook with them. Hehe… Then I thought, why not I use them in overnight oats? I decided to make a chocolate version,…
Double Bean Sriracha Hummus
I had joined a challenge called “Recipe Swap” sometime back and participated in one challenge. But then, it just fizzled down and didn’t take off. In November, Mir took over the reins of the group and decided to kick-start the challenge. I decided to participate this month and thankfully there was enough time to cook the dish before my parents landed. Hehe… I was assigned Ali’s blog “Fix Me a Little Lunch“. She is a US based food blogger, and as mentioned in her blog, she tries to cook and eat food cooked from organic sources and at home. As is my nature, my first instance was to try a sweet recipe. So I hovered around a few like the Blueberry Peach Coffee Cake, the very intriguing Star Anise Pannacotta and these Mini Strawberry Chocolate Galette. But then I had already baked way too much sweet last month…
Spicy Oven Baked Chicken
If it is the tenth of the month, then it surely has to be the Muslim Food Blogger challenge post. Month after month, it does become a challenge to select a theme and put it forward to the ladies in this small group, but Alhamdulillah, they seem to be enjoying the themes and that is what matters. 🙂 This month as per the usual flow, we were supposed to be cooking from a Muslim blog. The chosen blog for the month was “Afelia’s Kitchen“. Afelia happens to be a Bangladeshi UK citizen and shares some interesting recipes on her blog. I found out the blog when I was searching for the Bangladeshi cooking we did a few months ago, where I cooked the Murgir Korma. I had bookmarked to try a few recipes from her blog during that time and thought it was a lovely blog to explore…
Vazhuthananga Upperi/ Mezhukupuratti ~ Malabar Eggplant Stir Fry
This month, I am joining up with a new challenge. I have joined it up more to push myself to blog. Every time, I feel that my creative juices are getting stuck, so such challenges are good enough to get me thinking out of the box. The posts I am scheduling this month seem to be majorly challenge posts too, hehe… Vidya and Jolly jointly conduct the A-Z Recipe Challenge, where the members cook from an alphabet every alternate month. The beauty of this challenge is you pick up an ingredient which starts with the concerned alphabet and cook with it. I had become a part of the group in October but waited till I would feel fine to join in. When the alphabet “E” was declared for January, I gave my name but I had forgotten that I would have my whole entourage at home and that would…
Paal Vazhakka ~ Malabar Plantain Sago Dessert {Version 2}
Isn’t it such a relief to see a white colored post after an overdose of brown posts in the past month? 😀 At least, I am feeling so much relief to see a change. Hehe… Another year has started, and we inch closer to our end in this world… Does anybody think of it that way? We celebrate each year with so much aplomb, not realizing that every moment that goes by means that we are losing a chance to better ourselves. There is so much that can be written with this regard. But seriously, I am in no mood to write. My head is buzzing with so much that I am feeling tired. I don’t know if it is good or bad… 🙂 I will leave it at that and move on to the post for the day… I have already shared a Paal Vazhakka recipe earlier,…
Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
The last post of the year, and it just happens to be the last post of this year’s Bake-a-thon too! Every last post is meant to be a look back into the year. I really don’t know if I liked 2018. Even though the year started pretty decently, past midway, it came with a lot of stress related to how things are moving. I better not dwell around it – these are things that will happen. We find ways to deal with them and move on. The highlights of this year was surely my weight loss and then B’s wedding. We had a very good time and met up a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a long time, Alhamdulillah. It was a day that went really well and we went off to sleep with such a settled mind… 🙂 And of course the weight loss… I…
Eggless Chocolate Cookie Butter Cake | Chocolate Biscoff Cake
Today’s post for the Bake-a-thon 2018 comes up with a story, but it is a sad one. By the way, can you believe that we are on the second last post for the Bake-a-thon? This time has been super fast. I have totally enjoyed baking, clicking, typing and scheduling the posts for this series with the chocolate theme. I hope all of you loved all the posts that I have done for this series! It has left me drained, literally speaking, but drained in a good way, Alhamdulillah… 🙂 So coming to the story for this cake… I usually bake and take something when I go visit my friends or relatives after a long time. It is like breaking the ice too, right? I always prefer home made goodies instead of buying a box of chocolates. It makes it feel a lot more personalized. I have mentioned before…