There was a time when I used to do some microwave cooking. As soon as we had moved into our current flat, I was left with only an infrared induction and a microwave to manage some cooking. The infrared induction was the biggest mistake of a purchase I had done. It was really difficult to cook with its uneven heating, that I used to get frustrated and give up on it. But cooking on the microwave was a joy. True, for all wrong reasons, microwave cooking is not considered to be a healthy alternative. However, I did find it quite helpful when we used to get bored with outside meals. I do have a list of microwave friendly recipes on the blog, that were successful and just doesn’t include mug cakes. I mean it! My favorite one has to be this rice and chicken curry meal that I prepped…
Madhura Chatti Pathiri | Sweet Chatti Pathal {The Cheat Version}
During the poll on my Instagram profile, after the Bread Kunafa, this recipe garnered the second highest number of votes. A “chatti pathiri” is Malabar’s answer to the Italian lasagna. I already have the savory version on the blog, which is made of crepes, layered with delicious chicken filling, and cooked on stove top till it looks like a beautiful layered cake. Since we don’t have the chatti pathiri in the area I belong to, it came into our family when umma learned it from one of her Kannur friends. She loves making it so much that it repeats on our tea time menus when she runs out of ideas. Hehe… However, the first time I had the sweet version was after I got married. More than the savory version, I would be served the sweet version when I had visited his relatives places as a “puthupenn”. I…
Kadala Parippu Pola | Kadalakka Pola ~ Malabar Chickpea Lentil Egg Cake
Everyone has this habit of making some sort of snacks during Iftar time. In our home, we try not to do it frequently. This year, since my brother’s family is with us, both of us try to experiment something or the other, but in limited quantities, so that there is something to eat for chai time, but not too much to be really heavy. Hehe… But we are always looking to make dishes that are not very time consuming and can be made in no time. So from today, I am scheduling three back-to-back easy snacks that you can make for your family for Iftar time, without spending too much time in the kitchen. I guess that does sound appealing… 🙂 Malabar has its own big share of interesting snacks. Even though I am not aware of majority of it, I have tried to cover all that I…
Apple Pola | Apple Kums ~ Malabar Apple Egg “Cake”
Starting the year on a sweet note is usually what everybody wants to do. Sometimes we don’t realize that the upcoming year is usually a repercussion of what has already happened in the previous years. I really don’t want to muddle over it, but would rather leave you all with a little poem that really made an impact on me during the end of 2019: Miss Me, But Let Me Go When I come to the end of the road And the sun has set for me, I want no rites in a gloom filled room Why cry for a soul set free! Miss me a little, but not for long, And not with your head bowed low. Remember the love we once shared, Miss me, but let me go! For this a journey we all must take, And each must go alone; It’s all a part of…
Baked Sago Pudding
I had absolutely no plans to make this dish, whatsoever. It wasn’t even in the initial or the second list. It sneaked its way into this Bake-a-thon! 😀 Like I mentioned earlier, I initially had decided that I would peep into my pins and word documents saved, so that I could try some of them and include them for this month’s post. However, that wasn’t to happen. I ended up baking more on what interested me during the last couple of months and thought would be interesting to my folks as well. This is one of them that got baked in due course. Baked Sago Pudding is a South African pudding delicacy. It feel like a sago kheer, but in a dessert avatar. I discovered this recipe by accident during some casual browsing and then it just stuck to me. I love anything with sago pearls and this…
Chocolate Creme Caramel
One thing I love about participating in challenges is that it does help you tick your to-do list earlier than later. Ever since I mastered the Creme Caramel, I have been wanting to make the chocolate version of it. I am a chocoholic and so is my elder one. When I had made the creme caramel, Rasha had told me, “Ummi, please try a chocolate version for this!” It’s been a long time since she said that, but when I was planning the Bake-a-thon posts, this request was right up there. I feel that my Creme Caramel is a slightly complicated recipe, so I wanted to make the chocolate version with just pantry essentials – milk, eggs, sugar and cocoa powder. But I was really nervous while making it, since my earlier simple versions have always flopped. I have already noted down that I need to make the…
Nutella French Toast
After a little hiatus, we are back with the Muslim Food Blogger Challenge this month. Of late, we have been looking at easy themes to get in a bit of participation. How much that strategy has helped, I don’t want to comment. 🙂 When it comes to blogging, it becomes the last priority when life keeps throwing things at you on a constant basis. It is happening at the moment for me too. It is just that I don’t want to let my passion die and I am fighting it as much as I can. I have been doing the same for the past two years and so far, I have been successful. But how much I can hold myself up needs to be seen… 🙂 Coming back to the challenge, the theme for the month is “Sandwich”. So what is a sandwich? In layman terms, it is…
Vanilla Bean Custard | Simple Egg Custard
If I had cooked the Dalia Upma and Palak Paneer for HD and me, today’s recipe was made for the girls. 😀 I shouldn’t show any discrimination, right? This week, I am doing three back to back posts for the Blogging Marathon #98 for the theme “Cooking for Two”. Making a purely egg custard has been in my agenda for a long time. But usually, I prefer using whole eggs in my recipes – I did that with my lemon curd, when most of the recipes only use the yolks. I have even made a baked custard which used whole eggs. Somehow it irks me that I have to waste a part of the eggs. When people tell me that they discard the yolks and only cook the whites, I boil from inside. “How dare! The yolks are the tastiest part of the egg!” Hehe… Thankfully, the notions…
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…
Malted Nutella Bread Pudding
With due permission from Valli, I decided to move yesterday’s Bakeathon post to today, since I didn’t want it to clash with the MFB post. I somehow don’t like the idea of having more than one post a day, though I have done that a few times in the past, but not with a full heart. This time, I made sure I asked Valli and as soon as I got the OK, I just went ahead with scheduling the post on the next day. 🙂 The recipe today is an amalgamation of a lot of factors – leftover bread getting stale, wanting to finish a bottle of Nutella nearing expiry date and then not liking the bottle of chocolate flavored Horlicks that I had bought. Horlicks is actually my cheat meal. Especially with nights getting quite chilled now, I always wish for a warm drink before going off…
Banana Cocoa Waffles
The feeling of emptiness is a real tough one. After having a chirping noisy house for the past one month, and a back breaking crazy sessions over the past 12 days, my house is empty. Yesterday afternoon, my kids left for their vacation along with my parents and then at night, my sister and her son bid farewell. It felt all too soon… The house looked so deserted, with everything just left as it is. Today, I have to slowly start putting things in place and make the house look like how it did before. I am looking at the whole thing positively. Last year, my kids and I were apart for more than 5 weeks, but this time, it is shorter. I will be travelling by month end, and it’s not that far away. Moreover, it’s a good time to get back to my routine. The past…
Mutta Urapichathu | Paal Mutta Urapichathu ~ Malabar Egg Pudding
Malabar is the home of so many delicacies, that are slowly moving into oblivion. I am trying my level best to collect, try and post as much as recipes I can, but I believe I am so lazy to work on especially the recipes that need some level of hard work. 🙁 So at the moment I am trying to concentrate and do more of the easy ones, and InShaAllah, as time goes, I will get onto the easier ones. But my task is clear – get in as much as our traditional food on this blog as I can. I got this recipe from a group, and why wouldn’t it attract my attention? I love egg based desserts and this sounded so easy. Most of the desserts in Malabar are steamed or cooked on low flame, like the polas – check out the carrot pola, podi pola…
Baked Blueberry French Toast
We have had some amazing weather over the last weekend. Scheduling posts actually keeps me away from updating the blog with what happens, but sometimes you are forced to, especially when the posts are related to challenges and you don’t want to miss the dates. 🙂 I like to be particular that way, and Alhamdulillah, so far I have been doing well to manage. If you are following me on Instagram, you would have caught up with the weekend weather updates. I tend to post more weather/sky/nature clicks there rather than my food. 😀 Somehow, I prefer to click my surroundings rather than what I am eating, especially when we are at a restaurant. I prefer to dig in right away rather than pull out the mobile, click it till the perfect click is done, and then eat it cold. I can’t take it that way… 😛 The rains…
Balaleet ~ Emirati Vermicelli Egg Breakfast
While I posted the Chebaab as the National Day special, I had mentioned that I would try to recreate Emirati dishes in my kitchen. So far, the process has been slow but steady. I am slowly trying a few new dishes, but not clicking them, since I would like to make them again for the blog and click them well. InShaAllah, slowly you will see a fair amount of Emirati dishes featuring on the blog this year. 🙂 I was introduced to Balaleet by this post of Fami’s. Till then, I was unaware of it’s existence. I was really not sure of how the combination of sweet and salt would co-exist. That was when the breakfast at Logma happened and I got my first taster of this dish. I ended up eating that little portion all by myself without sharing with my friend. 😉 From then, I had…
Iced Chocolate Mousse
A few weeks ago, I had posted a live video of Rasha trying to help me with this mousse on my personal FB timeline. From then on, I received a few requests for the recipe that she tried, or she started to try and then left in the middle, I must say! 😉 I was not intending to do this recipe any earlier on the blog, but then, I thought, since the video had gone live, why don’t I use the opportunity of making this post appear earlier, in the form of a book review? 🙂 Today’s book for review is “Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook 200 Delicious Desserts”, written by Sara Lewis, printed by Octopus Books, UK. This book is a part of a collection of books with 2oo recipes. This was one of the books that HD picked up for me from this year’s Sharjah Book Fair…