A Babbling Booktrovert

Going through the posts on the facebook page of CAL, I stumbled upon this wonderful 7 minute microwave recipe for khandvi by Ms. Charu Bhargava. I decided to try it out, since it was the simplest recipe I could find on CAL page and least time consuming. How I thought I would surprise the husband, if the dish came out perfect. The joy, when husband came in, saw the dish and simply said, " arre waah, kahan se mangaya " and when I told him, I made it. But the joy was only short lived because when I asked the husband to taste it, he simply said, he didn't like the khandvi much. Well, I said, if you don't want it, its okay. I can have it all since I love khandvi; I picked up the plate and started eating it all on my own. And the husband gave me such a look and said, " zyada pasand nahi hai, lekin thodi to khaunga ". That certainly made my day. Since then, I have been wanting to give this plain and perfect recipe a twist of my own. And today, I finally found...

In my quest to search and cook new things for hubby, I stumbled upon this wonderful group - Chef At Large (CAL). The wonderful people, cooking wonderful dishes inspired me to no end. I had bought a kg of baby potatoes to try my hand at 'dhaniye ke aloo', inspired by my mum in law and my bua saas. That my friends, was a failed first attempt. I will need to go back to those wonderful cooks to learn that recipe properly. So I had these left over baby potatoes and a husband who kept mentioning dum aloo and how he is going to cook the dish one of these days. Being inspired by the group, I fired up my laptop, searched the internet for a recipe, found one - altered and tweaked it a bit to my taste and voila - I had the perfect Kashmiri Dum Aloo! And the real happiness comes when after the first bite husband says - bahut badhiya... oh the joy that filled me! So here's my altered recipe... Difficulty Level : ☆ ☆ Time Required :          ...

So, going home for a long vacation surely has its perks - one of them being - you learn new recipes... these recipes are no normal recipes, because these ones are passed on from one generation to the next... So here's sharing, something I learned over the only month long holiday I got in my two year long PG program (oh well, that didn't need to be part of this). Gobhi Manchurian, one of the many food demands, that the husband and the sister-in-law, make sure is fulfilled. The husband loves it so much, that I decided to learn it this time around and it surely wasn't a bad first attempt, in fact it was a fairly good attempt - that is so, because the mothers (in-laws) are the best teachers and the recipe is that simple As my mum-in-law taught me, its a simple 3+(3+3)recipe - 3 ingredients for the manchurian and 3+3 for the sauce. So here's your recipe... Difficulty Level : ☆ ☆ Time Required :            Preparation - 10 minutes ...

Since its the first thing, that I am putting up, I want to start it on a sweet note, thus have picked up the chocolate cake. In summers, you drink lots of liquids and sort of ignore the food. So here's little something, that will cool your insides, get something solid in you and sweeten your taste-buds - a recipe that has been passed on to me by my mother. I used to bake this cake with mom when I was a kid, but it was only after wedding that I did this cake on my own. And the first time that I baked it, we were going to visit the husband's grandparents. And since we were visiting them during the festival, there were many other relatives too. Oh, what joy it brought me, to bake it well and knowing that everyone enjoyed eating the cake too. But the rendered version with the cake was something that I did for my husband. So here's the recipe. Difficulty Level : ☆ Time Required :            Preparation - 20 minutes       ...