Cooking with My Baby

Although our sense of taste and sight are two different senses, we form our first impression when we have a first glance of our food. Its almost like saying we first eat with our eyes, then with our nose and then with our mouth..To our brains “taste” is actually a fusion of food's looks, smell, touch and taste.                 These buns will entice your eyes with beautiful rose shapes, you can smell the fresh bread being baked in your house right till the street out of your home. Finally when you bite these buns, you will feel teh soft buns melting in your mouth.           We all love dinner rolls, figure of 8 rolls, round buns and all sorts of soft bread to go along with our entree. I wanted to try something new. So came up with the idea of Rose Buns. When we used to make basic felt flowers in school, this technique was used. Making four or more circles and rolling them to form a Rose.. I used the same technique to make bread and they turned out pretty yummy tasty rose

                 Aloo Kulcha is a typical north indian bread usually eaten with curd, pickle n chole. They are made with maida flour dough, filled with mashed potatoes and lots of spices are rolled into a flat bread. Traditionally they are baked in an earthen clay oven called as Tandoor. This is also what you can call Dhabba food..This is a good variation too aloo paratha and is great for feeding your kiddos as well.. Ingredients: dough 2 cups maida ½ tsp salt ½ tsp baking powder ¼ tsp baking soda 2 tbsp yogurt 3 tbsp milk ½ tsp sugar 2-3 tbsp water 1 tbsp oil aloo stuffing 3 boiled and grated potatoes 1 tsp chilli powder ½ tsp amchur ½ tsp coriander powder ½ tsp jeera powder ½ tsp salt to brush on the top of kulcha 2 tbsp kalonji butter/ oil 3 tbsp chopped coriander leaves Method: A)Making the dough Sieve the maida, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and

This papaya and ginger smoothie is a tempting smoothie which also cures indigestion . Slightly spicy of ginger adds a different twist to sweet smoothie and the sweetness of fresh fruits will soothe you. Papaya is an alkaline-producing fruit that aids in detoxification by flushing toxins out of the body. For centuries, traditional medicines have made use of ginger as an aid to digestion. Ginger increases digestive enzymes, protects the lining of the stomach, stimulates bile flow and reduces flatulence.  S E R V E S 4 2 1/2 cups papaya  chunks 1 cup ice cubes 2/3 cup plain nonfat yogurt 1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger 1 tablespoon honey Juice of 1 lemon Refrigerate the papaya until very cold, at least 1 hour or overnight.Blend the papaya, ice, yogurt, ginger, honey, and lemon juice in a blender. Add up to 1/4 cup water, 1tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is smooth and thinned to desired consistency.

             Whenever Italian pasta or pizza is served, the sauce commonly used in India is tomato sauce or white sauce. The green pesto sauce isn't a very common feature in average Indian restaurants yet. I first was introduced to this sauce in form of pizza sauce with feta cheese and almond slivers in Pizza Chicago in USA.. Oh! I absolutely loved that pizza. I have attempted to make pesto sauce here which can be used for pastas or as pizza sauce or as a spread for sandwiches....             Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, fresh basil, and pine nuts blended with olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano (parmesan cheese), and Fiore Sardo (cheese made from sheep's milk).              In India it would be very difficult to find Fiore Sardo and Parmigiano Reggiano is too expensive. I haven't added cheese to my sauce but if you want, you can add ½ cup of Parmigiano Reggiano  

              Me and my Hubby are both great fans of mushroom.. white button mushrooms are pretty commonly found nowadays in India. But when we saw fresh oyster mushrooms in the newly opened Food Hall on 1 M.G.Road mall we were super thrilled. It was first time I could catch hold of fresh oyster mushrooms in India..            Anyways, God must have taken pity on me and we were able to get those oyster mushrooms. By the way did you know that the oyster mushroom may be considered a medicinal mushroom, since it contains statins such as lovastatin which work to reduce cholesterol. One more great reason to eat these umbrellas...                 This recipe I made is simple with few veggies and sauces, but in the end I thought of adding few spoons of roasted crushed peanut powder and it made a great difference to the dish. Ingredients: 400 gms oyster mushrooms 1 large capsicum (sliced thinly) 1 small carrot (juliennes) 1 medium onion ( sliced thinly) small bunch

  Colored yellow by turmeric powder, nasi kuning (malay yellow rice)  is a delicately flavored rice often served at Malay festivals. Its simple recipe which uses coconut milk instead of water and is flavored with turmeric and garlic..     It is a good variation from regular steam white rice which can be served as a side dish for oriental gravies and stirfries... This dish includes cooking the rice using absorption method. I usually prefer to cook rice in microwave whenever I am cooking Basmati rice. The grains are always cooked to perfection, with all the grains on the top layer standing up to salute you, once you open the microwave door. Also, I never have to worry about the rice burning at the bottom layer.  Try this easy flavored yellow rice..... Ingredients: 2 tbsp vegetable/ sesame oil 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped 2 tbsp chopped garlic 1 tsp ground turmeric powder 1 cup long grained rice (basmati) 1 cup coconut milk 1 cup water 1/2 tsp salt (to taste) 1 tsp b

      Good Morning...Its such a beautiful morning... It feels like its gonna rain, cool breeze flowing, birds chirping, and most importantly Neil still sleeping... Its feels like a start of a lazy day. Just feels lazy to do any work... Wanna grab a blanket and just keep rolling on the bed.                 Nothing beats it, if someone gets you a nice warm cup of coffee to wake up from slumbers...And what do you have to say about hot cuppa of spiced black coffee..... Ingredients: 2 cups water 1 stick of cinnamon 1 star anise 1 tbsp brown sugar 1-2 tsp instant coffee powder Boil water with cinnamon, star anise and sugar.. let it reduce to 3/4 th the volume.. switch off gas and add coffee granules.. Serve spiced black coffee with biscuits

                    When we were in USA, I had gone with my cute nephew to four day Los Angeles tour. This tour was managed by Chinese people. So the crowd was Chinese, with just two of us Indians. We were served Chinese breakfast in the hotels were we stayed. One dish that was common for breakfast was snow white buns kept fresh in large bamboo steamers. Everyone used to have it, we were apprehensive and didn’t know how to eat it, so we didn’t try it. Later I realized they were Mantou- Chinese steamed buns.                            There was a nice Chinese shop near our home from where we got seafood. This place had Chinese bakery attached to it. There was a large collection of Chinese buns, Some were baked ans some were steamed. We tried lots of these buns, lotus paste filled, red bean filled, custard filled, roast chicken,,,,, These filled steamed buns are called bao or Baozi..                  According to China Daily, Zh

Bangalore is cool and it drizzles almost every evening,,, it feels like monsoon has already arrived. And if there is something which everyone associates with monsoon in India, its garma garam pakodas.. So one such cool evening, I decided to surprise my hubby with pakodas,,, paneer pakodas,, sounds interesting, wait for the next part, stuffed paneer pakodas (stuffed cottage cheese fritters) They are adapted from cook called as pure and simple by Viddu Mittal. Its a nice simple vegetarian cook book which explains step by step procedures for normal Indian cooking, its great help for someone learning to make Indian cuisine for the first time. Ingredients: 500 gm paneer oil (for deep frying) Stuffing: 1 ½ tsp ginger paste 1 ½ tsp garlic paste 1 ½ tsp green chilli paste 3 tsp coriander paste ½ tsp chaat powder ½ tsp salt ½ tsp jeera powder Batter 1 cup besan (gram flour) ½ tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ½ tsp chilli pow