After seeing the picture of the Mocha Chocolate Chips Cupcake in FB, one of my friends, asked whether I have cupcakes n stuff on a daily basis. Its one of those questions that I get asked very often. Because of this blog, most people assume that I cook extravagantly on a daily basis. Let me set the record straight. I like cooking but I dont like slogging in kitchen day in & day out. Given the option (which is once in a while), I prefer to eat out! If by chance you come unannounced to our place, I’ll end up serving you a pile of “Takeaway”-Menus to choose from ;)

Though I like to cook more variety, I or rather we prefer the usual Kerala fare on a daily basis. Mostly when we go for trips, I’ll be all excited to try the different food varieties & eat all exotic dishes. But after two days of the trip, I’ll start craving for some choru (rice) n kachimoru (buttermilk curry) – plain and simple.

Here is the recipe:

 

Well, let me tell you about some ironies of life. Though this little space of mine is called MariasMenu, I’m terrible at deciding menus! Ohh yes… I’ve suggested many menus to you through posts, comments & emails. I’ve even helped a person decide a menu for his brother’s wedding! But if I happen to invite you for lunch or dinner at our place, then all the menu-deciding power of mine magically disappears. See that’s why I always say, I love preaching way more than practicing ;)  Sometimes Jose goes to the extent of even saying that he is scared to invite guests home! Because, once that’s done, he knows I’ll be all over the place with appetizer, main course & dessert ideas. He can expect a thousand questions bombarding him like “should I make this…” or “should I make that…”  or “do you think they will like this more than that…” and the list goes on…. You got the picture right??! Wait… you wanna say something. Ok…., ohh are you saying it sounds familiar?… you also do the same thing!? Good! I’m happy I’ve got company :)

Ok, now to all this confusion confistication (I dont know what that means, I simply say like that ;) ), it gets more exciting when the guests are vegetarian. From this blog, you already know that I’m more partial towards non-veg stuff. So when we invite vegetarians I’m kinda headless “chicken” running around. I always used to wish if I could make a veg equivalent of chicken biriyani, that would be great. So after a long wait, that boon was granted in the form of this paneer biriyani. When I first tried this recipe, I so badly wanted it to come out well. Because it seemed like a good panacea for my veggie one pot meal dilemma. I wasn’t disappointed, in fact I was a very happy person after the first spoonful.

I’m also happy about one more thing, I always get requests for vegetable biriyani recipe, so I hope this paneer biriyani will solve that problem too. Btw, a small note before going to the recipe. Please dont be scared of coming to our place after reading this. We are more than happy to host you :) I promise not to make a drama out of it ;)

Please find the picture of Paneer Biriyani made by Deepa Joshy, based on the above recipe. Thank you so much Deepa :)

Here goes the recipe:

 

What was your favorite part of the day during your school/college days? Was it by any chance the lunch time? For me it was. I always used to look forward to the lunch time & the period just before the lunch interval was the hardest to concentrate ;) Lunch interval is not just about good food, but also quality time with good friends… a great cocktail mix!

Lunch time can also be called as the sharing time. Along with the yummy treats of home cooked food, all major news were also shared. All the latest gossip in school/college like the new IT couple or the latest movie or your latest crush ;) & what not… were all discussed in that small time. It indeed was a blissful time!

So, tell me… Did you have any favorite lunch time food? I used to take breakfast items for lunch. But what’s interesting is that I still clearly remember what my friends used to bring. Yep, there were days that I wasnt very happy about my lunch especially if it was something like upma. On those days my morning prayer usually goes like this: “God please let Jeena bring her mom’s cutlets or Reji bring her homemade butter & sugar sandwich or Harpreet bring her Punjabi kadhi & rice or Anu bring her stuffed chapathi, for lunch (& the list goes on..), along with petitions for the Maths teacher to be absent, because I havent studied for the class test”. It was such a simpler time! All you had to worry about was upma for lunch & some class tests.

Anyways coming back to lunch menus, I particularly remember something called Jaldi fried rice which my friend Jeena used to bring. Its called Jaldi rice because it was made by her mom in a jiffy, when she used to wake up late in the morning. Now you know how my tomato rice got the name “Jaldi tomato rice”. I usually make this when I’m in no mood for elaborate lunch cooking  with many curries. I just make some flavoured rice like this & some curry & spice up the whole menu with raita, pappad & pickle :)

Before going to the recipe, let me wish you a very happy friendship day! Friends are a blessing that you need to be thankful for along with your family.

About the recipe, its just a very simple recipe. You might be making this already. However in this recipe, I’ve used only a few basic ingredients, its mainly intended for those days when you are lazy to cook ;) It’s been sometime I’ve posted a rice recipe, so I thought of sharing this with you.

Here is the recipe:

 

Here is a sweet treat to celebrate Vishu. I think I’ve told you before..that we dont celebrate Vishu on a large scale. I try to make payasam every year and that’s the only special dish on Vishu day. However there is also another celebration for me on this day. It’s my parents Wedding Anniversary. Also it was my brother’s b’day on 12th April and one more good news is there…we welcomed a new member to our family this month. My cousin sis Ammu is blessed with a beautiful baby girl. So all in all, its celebration time :)

I had this payasam for the very first time around 2 months back, during my stay in Kerala.  There was something special about my holiday this time. That was the first time I spent so much time with my Appa. All these years he was very busy with work and once he retired & became free, it was my turn to be busy. But this holiday we compensated for all the lost quality time. Since my Amma is still working, it was just the two of us during the day. Though we mostly ended up debating about almost every topic under the sun (at times, Sarasa checy came running from the kitchen wondering what’s all the commotion in the living room & another time our driver parked the car on the side road saying that he will drive only if we stop arguing..and what were we arguing about…ohh yeah Balakrishna Pillai, an ex Minister of Kerala being sent to jail, now you got a picture right ;)) we had so much fun. We went shopping together, dining out together & was even planning to go for a movie, but that didnt work out :(

 

Usually when I’m at home, I try my best to be at least 10 feet away from the kitchen. Because when I’m on holiday, sweating up in kitchen is the last thing I wanna do ;). So Appa & Amma never had a chance to experience my cooking (except once and that’s another story). I decided to make Gothambu Payasam with a little help from Sarasa chechy, since it’s my Appa’s fav. He liked it very much & I was a happy girl. As I said, it was the first time I had this payasam. I’m a die hard fan of Parippu payasam and always looked down at this as a poor cousin of parippu payasam. But I was wrong. After all I’m game for anything with jaggery, coconut milk & ghee. How wrong can it be :)? Since the excitement factor was too much when I made it at home, I completely forgot to note down the measurements. So I made it today again, just to give you the correct measurements & not because of my love for payasam. See I do take pains & make sacrifices for you ;)

Here is a picture of broken wheat, just in case you are curious, how it looks like…

Wish you a very happy Vishu! Hope you celebrate it with your loved ones. Hope you like our Vishu Kaineetam.

PS: I’m free tomorrow, if  you are making a Sadya & wondering whom all to invite :)

You can check out the Sadya recipes here.

Other Payasam recipes:

   

Here is the recipe:

I always tell you we have loads to catch up on, but I never get around to it… till now. Now that I’m somewhat back to my normal schedule, we can catch up, provided you’ve time to spare, so ready? Ok, so what would you like to have… tea… coffee… anything cold or something to munch on? Since I can only offer it virtually, please feel free to grab one yourself ;)

I wanna share with you three different cooking experiences I had, one was fun, another was adventurous & the last one was a lesson! I’ll start with my apprentice experience, that’s where I had most fun. I worked as an apprentice at a bakery division of a local supermarket, here in Bahrain. I visit that place frequently, say twice or thrice in a week. Every time I go there, I’ll spend sometime in front of the bakery section, just staring at their glass shelves, full of cakes & pastries. As you might already know, bakery is my all time weakness. Well, one day as usual, during my staring session, the bakery supervisor came to me. As we chatted, he suddenly asked me whether I’d like to work there for a few days, just for a feel of the whole thing. Tada! The next thing you know, I was given an apron & a chef cap. Ready, set, wait… the biggest excitement is yet to come. All the employees in the bakery are North Indians and no I don’t have anything against them… but you see Hindi & myself aren’t the best of friends. For a moment, I thought, I became breathless… it was like air being let out of my excitement balloon. Anyways, somehow we communicated and it was fun! They all treated me like a small little school girl who’s on a picnic, thanks to my height. (Btw, I used to hate being treated like a small girl when I was growing up, but now somehow I like it… I guess that feeling is inversely proportional to my age ;) Anyways, back to the bakery… I was offered the first share of every item that came out of the hot oven! And then there were stacks of cakes, both chocolate & vanilla. I could pick any & start playing with it… I mean icing it. There were tons of chocolate ganache, butter cream, praline etc; just waiting for their turn. So just like my 4 year old nephew plays with his play dough I started playing with food :) I had a fun ride for 3 days. Apart from enjoying the hustle & bustle of a live borma, I didn’t learn much. Ok, that’s not true, I learned how to pipe a butter cream rose, now that’s a good thing & I had a gala time too.

Ok, that was a fun ride, now for the adventurous one! Not too soon after, I was asked to take a cookery class for a group of 30 people, for a Malayalee association in Bahrain… the Kottayam Association to be precise. I guess I had an adrenaline rush at that time, because I accepted it without any hesitation! When I told Jose about my new adventure, seeing my excitement about the whole thing, he kept quite for sometime. I was wondering what’s wrong & then he said “I guess the association people are more adventurous by asking YOU to do something like that”… *sigh*! You see… I’m a person who panics when we have guests over, so imagine taking a cookery class! As the day approached, I had my panic attack. Unfortunately then, these Royal sick bags weren’t available, otherwise I could have used them! Why am I so freaked out? Well, you have to know one thing – I haven’t attended a cooking class, let alone take one. I just had no clue. Then I made a huge list of what all can go wrong. Yeah, that helps! I had just relived my MBA days of C++ & Java. I am clueless now as I was then! But you know that feeling… that you are sure to fail, so you dont care what the hell happens, yeah I had that.  And I guess I work the best under such situations! Because somehow once I started the class everything went well  (see on the job training works!) & I did enjoy it. I believe the group also enjoyed it.  Here’s something they gave me as a token of appreciation ;) Thank you so much Dolly Aunty for believing in me & thanks a million to Sudin & Susan, for giving me the opportunity and also for your support.

Here comes the last one… lesson learned: I’m like a duck in water. I was thrown in, and now I’m trying to figure out how to paddle. That’s how my whole cooking experience has been. So that’s what I did next, attend a cooking class to really learn how it should be done. While I was at home in Cochin, I got the chance to attend a baking class. First I thought I could learn some more baking tips and styles, the science behind it, but more importantly I wanted to learn how cooking classes were given. That reminds me, in college whenever we used to study a new subject, it used to start with something like “Management is a science as well as an art”, that kinda stuff? Well, I always ignored the science part & considered the whole thing as art. So that’s what I did in baking also. I never bothered about the science part, like aeration blah blah… but in this class it was explained in simple terms, so that lay(wo)man like me could also understand. I also observed the whole process carefully, about how things should be arranged, how you need to organise the class & stuff like that. So now I’m all set to take another cooking class… are you interested ?? :)

Anyways, the best thing about all these experiences was I made new friends… isnt that great!? :)

Btw, I forgot to tell you about the situation in Bahrain. See that’s what happens, when everything goes well, you take things for granted right? Thank you so much for your mails & messages & the positive vibes you sent :). Situation has improved here since my last post. Things are slowly getting back to normal state.

So your coffee… tea is done? I wont take much of your time. I’ll just leave you with this simple egg & potato curry. The other day, one of my readers, Joyce, asked for an egg & potato curry. Here is something I came up with. It’s a mildly spicy curry, I think its apt to call a spicier version of stew. This curry should help you during lent. Also if you dont eat eggs, you can use veggies of your choice & make it a mixed veg curry. I know you are tired from listening to my ranting, but please dont forget to note down the recipe, ok? (Joyce, hope you’ll like it & you too.)

Here it goes:

Hey, how are you?I know it’s been a long long time…we have loads of catching up to do. Anyways I’m at Bahrain now. The thing is that I reached here last Wednesday & by the time I was ready to settle down, the country started unsettling. See, now that’s what I call …perfect timing! I dont know whether you heard, but some unrest was happening here for the past one month. It got escalated last Sunday & now a state of emergency is declared for the next 3 months.

Amidst all the not so good news coming in, my positive energy signal is very weak. I guess our little chit chat should help me to recharge. Tell me what’s happening at your end. All ok? Yeah..that reminds me, I got mails/messages from you asking about my India trip. I had a fab time back home. I was at home for around 1.5 months. I think I stayed at home for that long after a period of 8-9 years! So I did enjoy it & made most of it :) I did collect recipes, loads of them in fact. But I’m not sure when will I start trying it out. The current mood isn’t helping me to indulge in experimenting new stuff.

Now coming to this recipe, chammanthi (chutney, though it’s not the correct translation, its just to give you an idea) is very much a comfort food for me. What about you? Do you like coming home to a hot bowl of kanji & spicy chammanthi at the end of a long day? I do! I think that the recipe of chammathi varies from one home to another. This is how we make it at home & I love it. Now I’ve got 3 different chammanthi recipes for you, this is the first among the series :) Btw, are you on lent? In that case, do try this, it will definitely spice up your meal.

An update: We are attending this month’s Kerala Kitchen, hosted by Magpie. I thought I will send this chammanthi as our rep, what say? Magpie, hope Ms. Manga Chammanthi impresses you ;)

Here it goes:

I still remember the eagerness on their faces when they entered the room… the eagerness to know the magical number sealed in that small envelope in their Project Manager’s (PM) hands. Those numbers were an indicator of  how much their work was appreciated. This is one of the fondest memories that I have from my very short career life.

As an HR professional, I was a part of the process that delivered those envelopes. Unfortunately I didn’t get an envelope at that time because I was serving my notice period. Honestly, I didn’t care much… I was eagerly waiting for my mega bonus in Bahrain… you know who ;) Moreover I thought I’ll get my envelope in my next job. But Life had other plans for me, though I worked in 2 more companies, envelopes seemed to be an extinct species.

I thought about those magical envelopes again when I was jobless & ‘blogless’ ;) I was sad about missing my chance of experiencing that feeling and wondered whether I’d ever get another shot. Well, I was wrong again. Today, I’m getting my magical numbers on a daily basis. But then I haven’t celebrated the numbers so far. Each time I planned to celebrate, my Project Manager (read Jose) reminded me that what matters is quality and not quantity, (as if I didn’t know) and he gave me new goals & targets like a ruthless PM!

Anyways now I’ve decided enough is enough. Let’s celebrate. I’ve decided to dump the PM & I’d like YOU, my team mate to join me in this celebration. Ohh I haven’t told you what we’re celebrating right? It’s a small number game, MariasMenu FB page has 1,000 + likes. This is the third 1,000 for this site. The first was 2 years ago when we had more than 1,000 eyeballs a day, the second was a few months back… we crossed 1,000 subscribers. I know this is a very small milestone but I’m compensating for missing my chance of the magical envelope ;) Thanks a billion to you!

Btw, since we dumped the PM there is no sponsored giveaway :( I’ve only a virtual sweet treat for you below. Let’s see… I’ll try to convince the PM and arrange some nice giveaways next year… deal?

Since it’s Diwali time, I wanted to share an Indian sweet with you. Gajar Ka Halwa is something that I love. Though I’ve made it several times, I wasn’t able to record the measurements, hence the delay in posting. I’m not sure whether this is the authentic or traditional method, but this is how I make it :). Hope you too will like it. This is something that you can make, to satisfy a sudden sweet craving.

Wish you and your family a happy Diwali! May this festival season brings you joy & happiness & prosperity!

Here is the recipe: