Alle Dalitoy, Katpadi Style Ginger Dal

"Ginger" always reminds me of my Dad. He just loved ginger and wanted to add ginger in every kind of food. Back when me, my brothers and sisters were little, we just hated ginger and would unanimously protest. But now, Ginger gives me sweet memories of my Dad, its a reminder of his love and affection and his hard work to raise a big family.

Dalitoy is one of the signature Konkani dishes. Usually dalitoy is made with hing as in here.

Quick Basil Chicken Curry

I am a little admant when it comes to trying out new cuisines. My husband always makes fun of me that I cook food in my plate in the restaurants. I am always adjusting salt and pepper. I had a very hard time initially in US eating exotic foods. By exotic I mean anything non Indian and non-pizza!

For my surprise I just fell in love with Thai cuisine the very first time. The only secret being its so much closer to Konkani food. Yeah, true Thai and Konkani- bhai Bhai..!!

Tere Panna GanTi Butti - Colocasia Leaves in Garlic Coconut Sauce

Its raining cats and Dogs back home in Puttur, where my family lives. When I call home, my Mom always gives a detailed report of the current news and gossips of the town. From past few weeks she has been complaining how rains and floods are effecting their livelihoods. But all I could think about was about those seasonal goodies that grow in the wet rainy fields, making me extremely nostalgic.

A few months into the rainy season, specialty veggies start growing such as many varieties of Colocasia leaves.

Takka Idli - Sweet and Tangy Buttermilk Idlis

Takka Idli translates to Buttermilk Idli. Its a sweet and sour Idli paired up with a spicy side - sweet tooth's delight and a perfect breakfast for all.

Bonda Sharabat - A Coconut Cocktail from Mangalore

Bonda Sharbat - A coconut juice cocktail made with bonda (i.e. tender coconut in tulu, a local language in Mangalore), lime and basil seeds popular as Bonda Sharbat
Summer brings a lot of memories from my childhood. The hot humid weather paired often with power cuts during the day.

Grilled Corn Tricolor Salad for the Independence Day

Happy Independence Day!




I am back into action! I really sorry for disappearing into the thin air without any notice. Thanks to all my blogger buddies and friends for convincing me to get back soon. Special thanks to all my dear anonymous readers who broke their silence and wrote to me. Today as I am posting this, I realize how dearly I like to blog! I had almost given up on blogging. So here I go again..

Today, I have a Simple and delicious Grilled Corn Salad with Carrots. It tastes as good as it looks.

Brown Rice & Barley Dosa

Brown Rice & Barley Dosa served with Sambar
I always try to alter my recipes to make them more healthy. I do strongly believe that white rice, all purpose flour or maida and other refined products do have very few or no nutritional benefits. Hence I often try to modify my recipes to use whole wheat flour in place of all purpose flour/maida and brown rice and rosematta rice instead of white rice. I have also started experimenting with barley since I found out that barley has more fiber than brown rice.

Ever since I made Brown Rice and Barley Dosa, the definition of dosa has changed forever for me. The dosa looks a little brownish unlike the pretty well known snow white dosas.

Chana-Poha or Kadle-Bajil (Chick Peas with Spicy Poha)

Chana with Poha, popularly known as Kadle-Bajil is a popular breakfast in Mangalore. Kadle is Chick Peas, Bajil is Poha in Tulu. Tulu is a local language in Mangalore/Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka. Read as ChaNPhov in Konkani.

As I mentioned in the recipe for Chane Gashi, most of the Hindus have a tradition of eating Chana on every Fridays. My mom makes Chana Gashi and ChaNPov every alternate Fridays.

Blog Cookathon

Past few weeks I have been actively surfing the archives of all my blogger buddies. First I was on a blog surfathon and then on a cookathon. I found a ton of real authentic and creative recipes, a few fusion ones too. I managed to cook a few of them and still planning to continue this cookathon. My family has never been happier about my obsession with blogging. Now that my hubby got to eat all these goodies, he has actually stopped complaining!

PhaNNa Polo (Dosa with a seasoning)

PhaNNa in konkani is seasoning or tadka and Polo simply means Dosa. PhaNNa polo is a quick and easy dosa, that perfectly fits the fast food category.
PhaNNa Polo is my hubbys favorite dosa. But I never used to make it for a long time until recently. The reason..PhaNNa Polo is usually made with maida. And I do not prefer to use maida as it lacks nutritional benefits. Recently I got this idea of making it with whole wheat flour. I really liked the outcome. This dosa is a little bitter or nuttier in taste due to the whole wheat, While the one made with maida is a little sweet.

Homemade Pasta Sauce with Sun dried Tomatoes

I have a great temptation to try a variety of cuisines. But I hardly like any of them. My hubby always jokes around saying I try to Indianize any food served to me. In fact I do that a lot. Even when I try to cook those at home, I try to put some extra chillies or garam masala in everything making it palatable for my taste buds. I tried quite a few times making pasta at home, but never liked those, until this one.

Homemade Pasta Sauce with Sun dried Tomatoes  
Over my weekend shopping, I saw Sun dried tomatoes in a jar for a good price at a warehouse store and was tempted to buy those, reason, I wanted to make something with tomatoes for JFI:Tomatoes, a blog event hosted by RP of My Workshop for the Month of March.

Chapatis & Parathas

Soft Chapathis

I usually make chapthi/phulkas without using oil. They come out soft, but has to be served immediately. I was happy with this results since I always made chapthi after my family is on the table for the dinner. Directly from the tava to the mouth. But it is not always possible to do this 'serve immediate' approach, specially when I have guests over. When made ahead of time my chapathi tend to get hard.

Pan Pole (Neeru Dose) with Rice or Raagi

Pan Pole or Neer Dose is a very special dosa thats easy to make but needs special talent. Pan Pole simpley means Leafy thin Dosa. The whole trick in making perfect dosa is the consistency of the batter and the action of spreading the dosa on the griddle. And off course the choice of your griddle. You may use a non stick griddle, but the best choice is a well seasoned iron griddle.

Rice Pan Pole

Recipe for Rice Pan Pole

ChaNe Gashi ( Chickpea Curry in Coconut sauce)

Chane Gashi or Chickpeas in Coconut sauce is the most delicious konkani curry. The aroma of the chana and the curry leaves just makes the whole meal appetizing. Probably thats the reason why many of them prefer this curry for the festive meals.

Konkani Festive Menu for Ugadi

Wish you all Happy Ugadi!


A path that leads to beautiful future.
Remembrances of a happy years.
Wish you all Happy, Healthy and Prosperous new year.

What is Ugadi?
'Uga' means a year and 'Aadi' means beginning. Ugadi is the beginning of the New Lunar Year. Ugadi is celebrated on Chaitra Shuddha Padya. The name of this samvatsar or the year is 'Sarvajith' which means 'victor of all'

Veggie Patty with Brown rice & Barley

I just love the veggie patty in the Subway Sandwiches. Last week, I was reading the recipe for Aloo tikki on Homespices and an idea just flashed me to make the veggie patties at home. Aloo tikki is an great alternative for the veggie patties, but I wanted it be filled with veggies and high fiber. I peeked in my pantry and found some brown rice, barley and bits and pieces of leftover veggies. I managed to come up with a my own recipe for veggie patty. It was just delicious, I gobbled up a few for evening snack, they were like cutlets.

Mulik (Jack Fruit Fritters)

Its Jack fruit season! Jack fruits always make me nostalgic. I have sweet memories of childhood where my brother would climb the tree in our backyard to pluck the jack fruits and my sisters would be helping him. It was like a mini circus going on every day.

We put almost every part of the jack fruit tree to use. The young jack fruit used in curries, the seed is also used up. Sometimes the seeds are sun dried and stored for the winter. Once the fruits start to ripe first few weeks we would just survive on jack fruits. A few weeks later my mom would make Jackfruit idlis (muddo) and then comes the Jack fruit fritters (mulik). Even the leaves aren't spared. The leaves are cleaned, trimmed and sewn together with coconut leaf stalk to make a container in which idlis called (kotto) are steamed.

Stop Plagiarism

Image by Sandeepa
Plagiarism - it happens again. And this time its Yahoo! and the victim is a Malayalam Blogger Surya Gayatri. Read more here

We have seen many incidents of content theft from the food blogs here and here

Today is the day, we bloggers have chosen to alert and shame all those who copy our content and images.

Dill Potatoes - Quick and Easy

Dill or Suva baji is a very fragrant herb. It has a very strong aroma that overpowers any other ingredient in the recipes. Whats a better partner to Dill than the lovely potato. They just go together like made for each other.

I usually make a simple Dill stir fry with moong dal that I posted in the past. This time I wanted to make something different.

Eggless Dry Fruit Cake

I haven't been baking cakes and cookies for a while. But ever since I saw delicious, scrumptious cakes on Sowmya's Home Spices and Seema's Recipe Junction, I have been craving for those. I could not resist any further.

I had a cake recipe for the caramel cake popularly called as plum cake in South Indian Bakeries. These cakes do not have any plums in them! but that's they are called! The recipe I had was just a starter for me. It had eggs and loads of sugar and butter. I did my own substitutions

Mixed Vegatable Song

From a couple of months I have been making curries, the north Indian way with onions, tomatoes and garam masala. It got quite boring and I decided to ban the garam masala for some time. Thats when this new version of konkani recipe merged.

Batate song is a very well known Konkani recipe. Song in Konkani is a spicy curry made with a red hot chilli and tamarind sauce. Instead of using the usual Potato and Onions combination,

Cabbage Palya

Palya in Kannada is a stir fry or some dry dish. My mom used to make simple cabbage upkari or Konkani stir fry I posted a few weeks back. It is a simple dish chopped cabbage cooked in a seasoning of mustard, jeera, green chillies & curry leaves. This is good on its own, but I wanted to glorify it a bit. I kept searching on the net for different recipes and also happened to see my friend Seemas Mom-in-law making cabbage palya with kasoori methi.

Fried Rice with Brown Rice

Vegetable Brown Rice with Chilli-garlic sauce
Brown Rice is the Kernel of rice from which only the hull has been removed. In White rice all the high fiber & nutrient rice outer bran is milled and thrown away, while the brown rice retains all the good stuff that the rice has. But eating brown rice is not as fun as white rice. This has a chewy texture like whole wheat grain and barley.

Tomato Soup with Chunky Vegetables

Some time back when the price of tomatoes was high, I bought a box of tomato paste and stocked up my pantry. I tried to substitute fresh tomatoes with tomato paste in the Indian curries. It proved to be a bad idea. I turned out to the net seeking ideas to use the paste. Looks like soups are the best. Now I make soup with tomato base very often.

Moreys Seasoned Alaskan Salmon

Moreys Marinated Salmon, Baked
Lately I have been testing a few ready to eat or easy to cook products. I liked a few of them while many others did not appeal my taste. Peeking through the freezer section at Costco Warehouse I found Marinated Wild Alaskan Salmon by Moreys. I am hooked on to this product since few months now.

Vegetable Noodles for the Indian Republic Day

Jan 26, 1950 is a great day for Indian History. Its the day India went Republic and the constitution of India came into effect. My fellow blogger, Pooja with Creative Ideas has announced a Orange ,White & Green Theme of the week to commemorate the occasion. This is my contribution to the event.


Vegetable Noodles

When I read about the event, I was very enthusiastic and started searching all archives for photos with the Tiranga Theme. I found a couple of Interesting ones.

Biscuit Rotti (Mangalorean Kachori)

Biscuit Rotti, A Mangalorean Style Kachori with coconut filling
When I was a kid, eating in the restaurants was a luxury. I usually spent my summer holidays helping my Dad in his little shop. He would get some munchies from the near by Hotel Taj Mahal(thats how we would call restaurants back in India) or sometimes got it delivered by the catering boy. BiscuitambaDe, TairambaDe, Puri Bhaaji, GoLi bhaje and Biscuit Rotti were my favorite picks. Yeah I know, for many of you these names might sound alien. They are just the Mangalorean names for Urad vadas, Dahi vada, Maida bonda & Mangalorean Kachoris in the same order!

3 Things in my life - Meme

I first read the word Meme on a food blog few months back. The word was totally alien to me and did a quick search on my Word Web dictionary. It said "A cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behaviour) that is passed from one generation to another by non genetic means (as by imitation)". This was quite not clear for me. But I just didn't bother to find out more.

Few more days passed by and I happened to come across this "MeMe" word quite often, mostly in the food blogs. I still didnt bother about the word. But last week my blogger buddy Sangeeta posted a meme on her Ghar Ka Khana and tagged me for the meme. Now I had no option but to do a research on meme. The best explanation I found was in an article written by Brent Silby "What is a Meme?". Meme is ideas that flow from generation to generation, evolving and modifying as it passes from mind to mind.

This is a Meme that has been passed from blogger to blogger on 3 things in their lives and here is mine.

3 things that scare me
* Horror Movies
* Snakes
* Darkness

3 people that make me laugh
* My hubby Shiva
* My friends Anitha, Manisha & Seema
* My sisters & brothers

3 things I love
* My husband :)
* My Hometown Puttur
* My family

3 things I hate
* Liars
* Cold, I love summers
* Emotional drama on Karan Johan movies

3 things I don't Understand
* People eating gross things on Fear Factor
* How can people be so naive or good - family drama on Indian TV
* Why NRI kids dont speak mother tongue...err..may be I will know when I have my own

3 things on my desk
* My Computer
* My digital camera
* A bunch of pens & bundle of paper

3 things I am doing right now
* Writing this MeMe
* Eating til-gud from Sankranti
* Wondering whats the 3rd one?

3 things I want to do before I die
* Visit Taj mahal
* See my children grown up
* Own a house

3 things I can do
* Cook, I think so
* sew, manage to alter and mend dresses
* write software, well thats my profession

3 things I’d like to learn:
* Be calm and patient in life
* To pose for photograph
* Cook like my MIL

3 things I never want to listen to
* Anyone talking bad about me
* People abusing and calling names
* Noise

3 favorite foods
* Pathrode
* PattoLi
* Sevei

3 beverages that I drink regularly
* Water
* Tea
* Ginger Ale, my new addiction

3 TV shows I watched as a kid,
well..I didnt have a TV at home as a kid, so these are 3 things I watched a teenager
* Old hindi movies on Zee TV
* Campus - a serial on Zee about college life
* Antakshari

3 books I read as a kid
* Mahabharata by Amarchitra katha
* Kannada magazines
* Stories from the Text books

3 friends I want to tag for this MeMe
* Shilpa
* Dr. Sowmya
* GSB Konkani , not sure the person wants to reveal identity

Well, Now I know more about myself. Hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about me.

Kele Podi (Ripe Banana Fritters)

I love Thai food. When I first arrived in the USA, some of my cousins introduced me to the red and green Thai curries and since then I am hooked on to those. But I have not tried many of the Thai delicacies yet. Actually the Thai cuisine is very much close to the Konkani cuisine. We use bamboo shoots, jack fruits, bananas in the curries based with coconut sauce.

Karate Kismuri (Bitter Gourd Kosumbari)

Many of us hate Bitter Gourd, Karate in Konkani. But there are many recipes that hide the very bitter taste of it and turn it into an appetizing tasty dish.

I often make this Kosumbari with Bitter Gourd and coconut. Another recipe is the Bitter Gourd Rings which I posted in the past. I often make either of these for lunch along with rice and dal.

Surnali (Sweet Dosa or Konkani Pancakes)

Suranali is a Konkani version of Pancakes. It has sweet & tangy taste from the jaggery and the yogurt in it.

Surnali is my hubby's favorite breakfast item. I had never tried making Surnali all by myself before moving to US. My mom in law used to whip up perfect batter and she would make Surnali with delicious ghee and serve with a dollop of soft homemade butter, loNi in konkani. I tried to make Surnali a couple of times but mine came out flat and tasteless. Later I got some tips form my MIL to make a perfect Surnali. Here is the recipe for the perfect pancakes from the scratch.

Moroccan Lentil Soup to start the New Year 2007

This is my first post for the New Year 2007. Thanks to all my readers & fellow bloggers for the support and response shown in year 2006. Hope I will continue to keep you guys posted with more enthusiasm.



Sometime back I had posted the Spanish Lentil Soup and many of my readers liked it. But the recipe used bouillon cube instead of spices. Some of my readers are Vegetarians and its very hard to find a 100% vegetarian bouillon cube. So I did some research on the web and compiled this made from the scratch Moroccan Lentil Soup.