Although its a Wordless Wednesday, I want to write a few words here just to give all the credit for this photograph to my better half! A took this photograph a while back and I love it so much that just couldn’t resist putting it up here. He’s the one who inspires me and teaches me!
Food was in the air this whole of past weekend! So much that I don’t think I should be even thinking of food for a couple days. But what a wonderful and fun trip this one proved to be! This was the first time I was leaving my little monster and was going to be away from her for two full days. I must admit I was questioning myself if I must really go but I am so glad I did. This was my first food bloggers conference and I may be addicted to it now! It was such a great opportunity to meet some like minded people who share the same passion as yours. Food Blog Forum and the organizer Gwen of Bunkycooks made the experience a lot more entertaining and informative for us. I’ve already said this to them a number of times personally but I want to say this again to them in writing “thank you so much Bunkycooks, whiteonricecouple and steamykitchen for putting it all together for us!”. Now a quick recap for those who were not able to join us.
Day Night 1:
All the bloggers met at the Viking Store on Friday evening just to kickoff the conference with loads of food, wine and a few surprises.. Well, good ones!
Environment was relaxed, people were cooking together in the kitchen, sharing their travel experiences over a glass of wine, taking photographs and before we knew we all had made some new friends!
Jaden then spiced things up by introducing us to Chef Kevin Rathburn (from Rathbuns Restaurant) and he was actually going to cook for us!
And do I even need to tell you how insanely good his pork chops were? He gave us a few cooking demos but I can tell you, people were mostly thinking how fast that food was going into their mouths. We were stuffed when we finally said a goodbye to everyone before going back home. It was a great start to a great event.
Day 2:
Next day began with a few more surprises. Again some good ones!
Foodies can’t even think of doing something without a belly full of good food so first things first!
And then began a day full of some really useful info which a new blogger like me who is still trying to wrap her arms around the blogging world really appreciated.
Diane and Todd from whiteonricecouple shared some really cool insights into food photography. Scott Hair of steamykitchen shared with us ways to design a food career, John Kessler from Atlanta Journal-Constitution and James Andrews and Lauren Thomas from Everywhere helped us understand how to work with media outlets and brands.
Then there were two beautiful ladies Virginia Willis, renowned chef and cookbook author and Alisa Barry of Bella Cucina who joined Jaden and talked to us about ways to stand out in a crowd and how to build a personal brand.
Now everyone thinks about how to make some money and if you can do it while doing something you are passionate about nothing beats that! So Jaden spent some time discussing blogging bussiness stratergies.
All in all it was a great wholesome conference!
But you know what the best part of this whole weekend was? No, not the wine or food! It was the people we met and the friends we made in these mere two days.
I want to say this to all my new friends if you are reading this post (you better be!) that I loved spending time with you and knowing each and every one of you! Megan of What’s Megan Cooking, Wendy of The Local Cook and Julie of Mommie Cooks thanks for spending so much time with me and being so kind! Alison Lewis of Ingredients, Inc what can I say? I just wanna be you! Loved talking with you and learning so much from you. Tori of Food Victorian, Melisa of My McDonald Meal and Julie of The Little Kitchen thank you so much for being so warm and friendly. It was great to see your interest in knowing more about Indian food and Tori please forgive me if you don’t like your photograph up here! And finally a BIG shout-out to Jodie of Eating on The Cheap, Amy of She Wears Many Hats, Robyn of Add a Pinch, Debra of Smith Bites, Dana of One Haute Plate and Andrea of Off Her Cork you guys rock! Love to you all and I really hope we get to meet again soon.
Food Blog Forum is holding a day-long conference in Atlanta this Saturday. This would be interesting and informative to bloggers who want to learn to increase their social media presence, do better food photography, monetize their websites and break into mainstream media. There will be some great food bloggers/photographers from around the country coming in and this would be a great opportunity to meet them. And if all this comes with some out of the world food, finest wines and a lot of fun and partying then who will not want to be there? I’m going too!
Hoping to learn a little from Jaden Hair, Diane Cu and some of the other great names in food writing/photography fields and at the same time have a great time. See you guys when I’m back with lots to talk about. Wish you all a happy weekend!
I also wanted to wish all my friends who celebrate the birth of Lord Ganesha a very Happy Ganesh Chaturthi and Happy Eid to everyone!
Today I want to share a couple of good news with you guys. Let’s first start with the food part! The summer fest was supposedly coming to an end with summer or so did we thought! The idea became so popular among the fellow bloggers that Margaret Roach and her friends who started this fest together thought of having some more fun for a little longer so the summer fest is being extended…and will be renamed to Fall Fest once summer officially ends. This week’s theme ingredient was Garlic.
The whole fun about such events is the challenge in it! Although garlic plays a very big and significant role in Indian food but still I wanted to bring something simple to the table that anyone can make. I gave it a lot of thought but then A’s idea sounded brilliant! He suggested that I make Garlic Chicken.
Although I don’t really believe he actually wanted to help me and not just have some chicken for dinner, I still liked the idea. Specially because you don’t need to rush to the supermarket or some Indian grocery store to buy ingredients for this recipe. Its pretty straightforward! For this recipe you just need chicken and tons of garlic along with some basic ingredients like lemon and what you have in your spice shelf. So without further ado, let me just come right to the point. Let me tell you how you can make this beauty in you own kitchen.
Ingredients:
1 pound cut chicken (I used boneless skinless breasts and a few drumsticks. You can use any part)
15-17 cloves of garlic
2-3 thai green chili (you can even use cayenne pepper or jalapenos according to how much heat you can handle)
1 tsp grated ginger
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced red onion
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp turmeric (optional just for color)
6-8 whole cloves (optional)
2 whole cardamom (optional)
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt.
Make a paste of ginger, chili and about 10-12 cloves of garlic. Mix it with yogurt and lemon juice. Add as pinch of salt and marinate the chicken with it.
Let the chicken marinate for a couple hours.
After the chicken is marinated use a thick bottom skillet or pan for cooking.
Smash 5-6 cloves of garlic. If you are using cloves and cardamom along with garlic throw it in the cool skillet. Pour olive oil and turn the heat to medium. Slow heating of the pan infuses the olive oil beautifully with the flavor of garlic and cloves which will be so distinct in your chicken when you taste them (I nearly died when I had my first bite!)
When the oil is hot enough, add onion. Let it saute until golden.
Now add the marinated chicken. If you are using turmeric, add that too.
Add salt when the chicken is half cooked.
Let it cook on medium low heat stirring occasionally. Slow cooking brings out all the flavors (if you think your chicken is taking longer, cover it and cook by stirring occasionally.)
The chicken doesn’t have any gravy and should be done in 20-30 minutes.
Serve with rice or your choice of bread or naan.
If you think you want to know more about the summer/fall fest click here.
Now the second news. Many of you might have heard about DMBLGiT and if you haven’t, let me say in the words of the founder that “it is the grandest foodporn event” on the web! This is a monthly food photography event in which many bloggers participate and then a few winners are announced. And this month yours truly was among the lucky few! Thanks Cooksister for hosting the event and Jaenne and judges for appreciating my work!
We came back home from an awesome trip celebrating our li’l one’s first birthday and it was GREAT!! I was sooo glad to see all your best wishes coming every time I got an opportunity to check my blog. Thanks so much! The li’l one just adores animals. So we decided to take her a bit closer to them this time and see how she reacts when she sees animals (other than mommy n daddy) and she just had a blast. I made a simple cake for her which had to survive hours of drive then two days and nights in a hotel room to be able to cut on her birthday. She loved the cake, she loved the zoo, she loved doughnuts and we all had a perfect birthday trip. I think we will be doing such birthday trips until she’s grown up enough to be embarrassed about taking trips with us!
Just like every great thing comes to an end so did this trip! We came back home a couple days back to a living room full of toys scattered around, a dishwasher full of dirty dishes which I forgot to switch on before leaving and a fridge full of…uuuuh..nothing! Except a bottle of milk gone bad, a couple tomatoes from last week’s tomato dal and a few tortillas. But I had to do something specially for my friends from the US who are looking for something great for the labor day. So I made Kati Roll.
I’m sure a lot of you must have at least heard of it if not tasted one yet. For those who are not aware what a Kati Roll is, its an Indian form of a wrap. You can find these easily anywhere in India (especially North India) from local street vendors to high end restaurants.
Normally Kati Rolls are made with marinated chicken or vegetables cooked on a skillet and then served with some green chutney wrapped in parathas. Some people add a layer of cooked eggs. It tastes divine and is a great Indian fast food. I tried making them a bit lighter though and also more accessible. So I baked the chicken and instead of wrapping them in parathas I used whole wheat tortillas. And trust me, taste was still the same but the experience guilt free!
If you are a vegetarian you can substitute chicken with paneer or tofu and if you don’t have even that handy just use some vegetables and marinate them like I did with my chicken. Then smear green chutney over it, throw all the stuff in, wrap it and eat it. That’s what I love about wraps – you can use whatever you want. Cheese, avocado, lettuce or whatever strikes your fancy although I wanted to keep mine more Indian.
Ingredients:
For the chicken marination:
2 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 tbsp ginger garlic paste (if you don’t find the paste easily, you can also add powder)
1 tsp degi mirch (its kind of an Indian cayenne pepper, only not as hot and gives the marinade a nice red color. If you are not that crazy about the color just add cayenne pepper according to your taste)
1 tbsp coriander powder
1/4 cup yogurt (full fat or low fat whichever you prefer)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp tandoori powder (optional)
Salt
For the wrap:
5-6 whole wheat tortilla
1/4 cup sliced onion
1/4 cup sliced tomato
1/4 cup green chutney
a little chat masala (optional)
1 lime (optional)
Method:
First to marinate the chicken, mix all the ingredients together and pour them over the chicken. Give the chicken long little cuts for the marinade to penetrate and mix well. Let it marinate for at-least a half hour and at most 24 hours.
Pre heat the oven upto 400° F.
Place the marinated chicken on a baking sheet, spray a little bit of cooking spray and cook for 20-25 minutes or until clear juice runs out.
When the chicken is cooked well, take it out from the oven and cover with aluminum wrap for it to rest for about 5 mins. This makes the chicken juicier.
Slice chicken, onion and tomatoes.
Now for the wrap you can either use plain parathas or naan or whole wheat tortillas like I did. Heat them over a skillet.
Smear a thin layer of green chutney and place chicken, sliced onion, tomato & a squirt of lime juice and a pinch of chat masala if you want.
Make a tight wrap and cover with paper or aluminum wrap.
Enjoy it with soda or chilled beer! Have a happy labors day everyone!
This one right here will turn one in a couple days!
Last year, 29th of August became the best date of our lives. When we held her in our hands for the first time and looked at her face we believed she’s gonna remain the same tiny little burrito forever. But nope…She’s growing and she’s growing pretty fast!
She’s one already! We wanted to make this day all about her so we decided to take a couple days off, get away and do what she loves doing and celebrate the most magical one year of our lives. So I’ll be away from this virtual world for a few days but will be back soon with probably some wonderful stories and some more recipes.
See Ya!
Recently I was browsing through food blogs and stumbled upon something really interesting. Margaret Roach and a few more bloggers have joined together to celebrate peak harvest season by a cross-blog event called the Summer Fest. The event invites all interested bloggers to contribute in whatever way they want. So you can swap your recipe or tips about the particular harvest ingredient which is the theme for that particular week.
I thought it was a cool idea and felt compelled to contribute a recipe of mine as well. This week’s theme was tomatoes. Tomato is such an important part of Indian cooking. There’s so much you can do with it and at the same time not a lot you can do without it. I thought of a lot of Indian recipes which are solely dedicated to tomatoes and would have been perfect for the theme but somehow they were a bit complicated for each n everyone to understand.
Then I came down to a few options and decided to make something that everyone can make in their kitchen irrespective of the fact that they are familiar to Indian spices or not. So I decided to make Tadka Tomato Dal along-with Green tomato and cilantro chutney. Its something which is kind of a staple in North Indian homes and is very easy to put together.
Tadka Tomato Dal:
I love any kind of dal (lentils) mostly because I love how something so simple and straightforward gives such burst of flavors. For this recipe I added all kinds of tomatoes I could find in the farmer’s market and added it to yellow lentils and when it was cooked I was so amazed at how dal was packed with the taste of tomatoes.
Chop all the tomatoes mix it with lentils. Add water four times the quantity of lentils add salt and turmeric and cook it.
When the lentils are cooked its time to make tadka. Tadka also called chaunk or baghar in hindi is nothing but tempering. A few spices and some flavorings are freid in a small amount of oil or clarified butter (ghee in hindi) and then added to the main dish which in this case is tomato dal.
Ingredients:
For lentils:
1 cup tuar dal (yellow lentil)
3 cups sliced tomatoes. ( I used all kinds of tomatoes I got my hands into green, red, yellow. You can use whatever you have at home)
4 cups of water
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
Salt to taste
For tadka:
2 tsbsp oil or clarified butter (ghee)
1/4 tsp asafoetida
1 tbsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tbsp curry leaves (chopped)
3 cloves garlic (minced)
4-5 cherry tomatoes (sliced into halves)
1 tsp cayenne pepper
Method:
Wash lentils thoroughly to the extent that water comes clear when added to it.
Add tomatoes, salt and turmeric along-with 4 cups of water and place it on burner on high.( If you are using a pressure cooker place it on medium.)
Once water starts to boil turn the heat to medium low, cover it with a lid and let it cook.
After lentils are cooked well turn off the heat and start making tadka.
You’ll need a small frying pan for making tadka. Heat oil/ghee in the pan.
Add asefotida. When it starts tempering add mustard and cumin seeds.
It will start popping if the oil is hot enough and then add garlic. Let it brown.
Add sliced tomatoes. Cook then for about 4-5 minutes and just before they start to melt add cayenne pepper.
Turn the heat off immediately and add the tadka to hot lentils. Mix well.
Green Tomato & Cilantro Chutney:
This chutney was one of those rare things that everyone in our family loved and so my mom used to make it almost everyday throughout summer and also sometimes in winter. Mostly summer because in India we used to get the most flavorful and fresh tomatoes at that time. Green tomatoes have a slight sour and tangy taste to it and that makes this chutney worth every bite. If you don’t find green tomatoes you can also use red tomatoes and if you think your tomatoes are not sour/tangy enough just add a little bit of lemon or lime juice.
Ingredients:
2 cups of cilantro
1 cup tomatoes
2-3 green chili or jalapenos (seed them if you don’t want it very hot)
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp lemon/lime juice (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds
Salt to taste
Method:
There’s no method to it. Just throw it all in a blender add a little water for the blades to move and make a runny sauce.
If you want to know more about summer fest click here
Also “Come join Soup-a-Palooza at TidyMom and Dine and Dish sponsored by Bush’s Beans, Hip Hostess, Pillsbury and Westminster Crackers”
It was not until a few weeks back when I started getting invites from people for the end of summer barbecue parties that I realized that summer is almost ready to kiss a bye bye. Very soon there will be snow all around and I’ll be sitting on my living room couch sipping coffee, looking outside the window and thinking how fast summer went by.
Since then I’m trying to spend as much time in the pool as I can, have pulled out all my shorts and trying to make as much summery, cool and vibrant food as I can. Ice creams and salads are on top of the list these days. So yesterday was not very different. I made a salad again! A fruit salad. Crunchy cantaloupe salad.
Originally I was planning on making just a cantaloupe salad but these days the little one is liking blueberries. So you know how it goes.. Whatever she likes to eat goes into whatever she would eat. Hence the family is eating a lot of blueberries lately!
This is a nice and refreshing salad that you would love on a hot summer brunch or you could have it for lunch like we did yesterday. Just use some simple, everyday ingredients you can find in your fridge and out comes a beautiful vibrant meal.
Ingredients:
1 medium size cantaloupe
1 cup blueberries
1/4 cup almond flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp red pepper flakes (for a little kick!)
1 tbsp chopped sweet basil leaves ( I wanted to make use of my beautiful basil plant so I used basil, you can use mint too. It will also give it a cool refreshing taste)
Method:
Using a melon baller, scoop out bite sized pieces of cantaloupe. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Toast almonds in a skillet over medium low heat for about 3-4 mins. Almond gives the salad a nice crunch that I liked. You can also use toasted walnut or pecans if you want.
Before serving mix all the ingredients together. Give it a nice toss and the serve!
