When the themes for the Blogging Marathon #84 were declared, I didn’t think twice about the second theme to choose. It had to be “Sinhalese Cuisine”. There was a little confusion when I started with it. We know Sri Lanka as a country, but a little digging indicated that Sinhalese are the largest portion of people in Sri Lanka, and they are Buddhist. Their food reigns majority in the country. There are then the Tamils and the Muslims who have slightly varied ways of cooking. Sounds similar to how it is in Kerala too! So having cleared up the confusion of what cuisine I can look for, I ended up getting so confused with what I should be trying. Somehow the first to catch my attention was their chicken curry and I had to make it. Though the curry feels so much like our style, it is different in…
Meat Olive Pita Pizza
The tenth of the month is always exciting for me. I love to participate in the Muslim Food Blogger Challenge as much as I can. True, I am the one who is moderating it, but sometimes planning and cooking does get a little tough in between all things that are happening! Alhamdulillah, till now I have been able to manage and hope to keep it going… This month, the theme was “Cooking with Olives”. Olives, known as Zaitoon, is one of the fruits mentioned in the Quran. Here are some articles you could read to educate yourself – here, here and here. I have an olive loving family. A big pack of olives can disappear off my counter-top within an hour of opening. Even though I had finalized in my mind what to cook for this challenge, my main task was to hide some quantity required to make…
Herb Crusted Baked Chicken
Some recipes happen to us in very interesting ways. This one happened on a metro journey. Last year, for a few months, I used to take the metro to office after parking my vehicle at the first station close to my house. Later, when we got parking within our office building – such a relief, Alhamdulillah! – the metro trips stopped. There is a weekly newspaper that appears at the stations every Sunday and I would faithfully pick up one copy for my browsing. There would be nothing much to read as such, but it would have some pretty pictures, little titibits and at times, easy recipes too! This baked chicken is what I discovered in that magazine and got cooking as a part of a Friday lunch as side to some corn peas pulao. The recipe comes together really easy. There is no marination required. The washed…
Thari Choru/ Thari Biriyani ~ Malabar Semolina Biriyani
Hangover is for real, isn’t it? We had a long weekend last week for the Milad-un-Nabi plus Martyr’s Day plus National Day, all clubbed together with the weekend, and once that finished, then the next sadness is that it will take a while to get another long weekend like that. We as human beings are never satisfied with our condition, right? 😀 So without cribbing too much, I guess I get straight onto the recipe for today. Have you ever heard of a dish called “Thari Biriyani”? A biriyani with no rice at all, it is basically a jazzed up version of an upma! I am on a lot of food groups on FB where I can’t promote my blog as such but still stay on since it is a source of constant learning of so many new dishes, traditional and otherwise, that my saved drafts are overflowing…
Baked Rice Casserole
For the Bake-a-thon, I wanted to make sure that I don’t have only sweet bakes being posted. So my eyes fell on this delicious baked rice casserole I had made and clicked sometime back. Usually baked casseroles always involve pasta, like this tuna one and sausage one. As this involves rice instead of pasta but cooked in almost the same style, I had to make it. This recipe was part of a cook-along hosted in a lovely FB group that I am a part of, not only that the recipe was shared by someone who is a good friend too, Nuzha. The other recipe I had posted on the blog after learning from this lovely segment was this jiffy pasta. Anyway, coming back to this dish, it involves a little bit of work, since there is some cooking involved of the layers involved. But the recipe was too…
Chutney Chicken
Sometimes I feel that I can go any length to prove that I am a lazy cook. Everybody asks me, how I manage to cook. I must tell you – there are many many days that I really don’t cook, or just do it to survive because eating out all the time is not an option! Before I started blogging, my favorite pass-time was gawking at food blogs. At that time, the craze of cooking was just catching up. I used to go through, save a lot of them up, print them and also wonder how come these bloggers are all thin when they are eating such heavy stuff! 😀 Now that I am a blogger myself and get asked the same question by others, I can’t help but smile. First of all, I don’t make blog-worthy stuff everyday. Most of these posts you are seeing are all what…
Saucy Fish
Fish is something I love to eat, though I am not able to pull it into my diet as much as I would love to. 🙁 The kids are not really fond of fish and neither is HD. Moreover, for them, fish is more of any afternoon affair than dinner. So if I cook at night, then they frown. I don’t understand this mentality. Actually, I suffer from it too. We are fixated with a few thoughts and norms since childhood that we don’t feel like accepting any change, for example, eating upma at night. One day, I came home, pushed my bags and told HD, “Come, let’s make upma and fish fry for dinner.” He gave me a big stare, and asked, “What??? Anybody eats upma for dinner?” I just retorted, “It’s food, no?” 😀 Somehow even the girls gave a very odd look, but we still ended…
Kozhi Vattichathu ~ Malabar Roast Chicken
I don’t know if I would call my weekend “relaxed”, but in a way, it was. After a long day on Thursday, I just wanted to be at home but the girls were adamant they wanted to go to the book fair which is happening at the Sharjah Expo Center. Very hesitantly, I braved the traffic of an hour to be at the fair and we had a good walk. I had already warned the girls that I wouldn’t be buying anything that day, so it was more of a walking and browsing session! Hehe… Friday was a very normal day, very much at home. Yesterday morning, we again headed to the book fair. This time, the girls had a program to attend so I took Humi along with me for company. We walked around, picked up a few books and spent some good time chatting. For the first…
Roasted Chicken, Broccoli and Potatoes
Simple joys of life is what I call this meal – a mix of proteins ,carbs and greens! 😛 We all do this, don’t we? – pick up what’s there in the fridge, pull out whatever is there in the spice section, and just put up a meal. This one was one of those, which was wiped up clean. I normally like to cut chicken on my own, but at times, when I am in a hurry, I order from the supermarket nearby and they cut such small and tardy pieces, since they use a machine. I find it convenient to make curry, since it cooks faster, but you can never make out which is the leg or the breast piece, it all looks the same! 😀 But it cooks really fast, whether on the stove or in the oven, so I do like it for such meals. 🙂…
Jeeraka Kozhi/ Jeera Kozhi ~ Malabar Cumin Chicken
The tenth of the month, so no prizes for guessing – time for the Muslim Food Bloggers Challenge post! This month, the theme was pretty interesting – to pick up a recipe bookmarked or pinned from a Muslimah blogger and recreate it in our own kitchen! It was a tough call for me. I have bookmarks all over the place, and ever since the challenge has started, it has been only increasing. However, a little bit of deep thought and all of a sudden I knew what I should be posting! This Jeeraka Chicken caught my attention as soon as I saw it here. Fathima’s was one blog I followed initially when the cooking bug hit me. I loved her blog for the simple recipes especially the Malabar ones, and the warm clicks. She even did a guest post for me during that time. Unfortunately, the doctor seems…
Aadu Kurma ~ Malabar Mutton Kurma
It is the tenth of the month, so it is time for the Muslim Food Blogger challenge! There was a little bit of confusion while trying to set this challenge. InShaAllah, it will be Eid-ul-Adha at the end of this month-early September. The slaughtering of an animal is an important part of the festival, as a part of commemoration of Prophet Ibrahim (AS) and his inclination to accept and execute Allah’s command, despite it being the slaughtering of his eldest son Prophet Ismail (AS), who he was blessed with in his old age. No wonder Allah calls His “Khaleel” (intimate friend) in Surah An-Nisa, verse 125. SubhanAllah… Since next month would be too late for an Eid post, I thought it was better earlier than later. So the theme for this month is “meat recipes”. During this Eid, since we tend to get a lot of meat from…
Chicken and Corn Quesadillas
The second country I chose to cook from under the “Oceanic Cuisine” theme for the Blogging Marathon #78 was Mexico. The cuisine from this country is so well accepted, thanks to the Nachos and Tacos that do rounds at almost all food courts! The world is coming to like the Mexican twist of adding chilli to chocolate (like this hot chocolate and these shots!) and not to mention, the Dulche De Leche! I have been wanting to try quesadillas (read them as ke-se-di-ya) for quite some time, considering how easy it is to make them. I really wanted to make the tortillas (read them as to-ti-ya)for scratch, but as the dates for the publishing approached, I gave up on myself and relied on making them from store bought tortillas. There is one thing you must never miss in your quesadillas and that’s cheese! It must have cheese. The…