GMT: Rajasthani Kadhi

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Rajasthani Kadhi | The Novice Housewife A good part of my childhood was spent in Rajasthan. Two of my best friends are also from Rajasthan. One I met in school at Jodhpur and the other during college in Delhi.  Luckily for me, both my friends’ mothers were amazing cooks and I was treated to amazing dishes every time I paid my friends a visit. Neela aunty’s Bhutte ki sabzi was one such recipe. This rajasthani kadhi was another.

Kadhi is a dish made from gram flour (besan) and sour curd/yogurt and actually originated in Rajasthan.Unlike punjabi kadhi, no pakodas (or gram flour fritters) are added to the rajasthani version of kadhi, making this recipe both light to eat and easy to make.

When I was a child, the only reason I was not fond of kadhi (the punjabi kind) was because- one, it used to be laden with pakodas, and two it was too thick. This recipe is neither. And that’s why when I first tried it, I fell in love with it. Read More →

Potato stuffed bread rolls : A Guest post

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Bread Rolls The Novice Housewife

A few weeks back Hetal from the beautiful blog Pretty Polymath asked me if I would be interested in doing a guest post for her series on favorite childhood food.

I thought the idea was brilliant and it gave me the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite childhood food that had somehow lost to healthier breakfast options. My mom’s recipe for bread rolls.

Growing up, we mostly ate healthy. Not much of fried stuff. My mom never even cooked maggi for us telling us it was bad for our brain. Of course, I was not too happy with that. We hardly ate junk, and hardly ate out. My mom would bake for us though- cakes, cookies, madeleines. And sometimes these fried bread rolls. Actually, these fried bread rolls featured quite a lot. I was a picky eater growing up and this was one of the few things I would eat happily and without cribbing.

Bread Rolls The Novice Housewife

The concept of a bread roll (not to be confused with dinner rolls) is pretty simple. Bread rolls are pieces of wet bread that is wrapped around a spicy mashed potato filling and then deep fried. If you think they sound good, wait till you try them. They taste amazing ! Kind of like a samosa, minus the rolling of the pastry dough, filling, shaping, and all that jazz.

There really isn’t much to the recipe and can be adapted to make different versions, and besides breakfast they are great as tea time snacks as well.

For the recipe for these bread rolls, please head on over to Pretty Polymath.

And also do check her blog for other bloggers sharing their favorite childhood recipes which include rice dumpling recipe, carrot-cabbage stir fry, Goli Baje and Hetal’s bottle gourd dumplings recipe.

Bread Rolls The Novice Housewife

Click here for the recipe for bread rolls. 

Garam masala Tuesdays: Minced meat Kebabs

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Tunde ke kebabs (Minced Meat kebabs) | The Novice Housewife So there is a bit of a story behind today’s recipe of tunde kebabs. There are actually two stories. One about tunde ke kebabs and the other about the source of this recipe.

But first for the uninitiated Tunde ke kebabs are finely minced lamb meat kebabs made famous by a one armed chef Murad Ali (nicknamed Tunde because of his one arm) in Lucknow. The original recipe is a close guarded secret but it is believed that the kebabs are made with a mix of 160 spices.* (I don’t think I could name 160 spices, let alone make a dish with 160 spices. But maybe I could. Mental Note: make a list of all the spices I know.)  The cooked kebabs are so delicate that they crumble when you hold them and melt in your mouth as soon as you bite into them. 

The first time I had these kebabs was during my undergrad years. When I was living in a hostel in Delhi. One of my friends, G, was from Lucknow. When she went home or if someone was coming from Lucknow, more often than not these bites of heaven would pay our stomachs a visit too. And since then I was hooked. More than a year back, I ate them again at G’s wedding. Still as good as how I remembered them to be. You know how it is when you have this memory of something or someone making you feel so good, and you keep building that feeling up and when you do get a chance to eat it (or see that person) again you realize you had just overhyped it. These kebabs were nothing like that. They were still every bit delicious. Tunde ke kebabs (Minced Meat kebabs) | The Novice Housewife Now the second part of the story happened a few months back. My dad was still in the Air Force (good times!) and posted at Allahabad. We were invited to dad’s staff officer’s house for lunch and he made mutton kebabs. Flavor wise they were delicious. He served them as tunde ke kebabs. And said he got the recipe from the guy who makes these in Lucknow. And I knew I had to try the recipe. He was generous enough to share and I tried them and loved the recipe.

Now since there are many people serving the famous tunde ke kebabs, so I am not sure how original this recipe is to the original tunde ke kebab recipe. For one, it does not have 160 spices. Just a handful, and I think for most home cooks an easy way to get a good tasting kebab. Two, I doubt such a close guarded recipe would be leaked by the cook in a drunken state, but then drunk people are known to do stupid stuff, so who knows we might have a heavily guarded secret being leaked on this site today!

Since taste wise these were pretty great even though they might not be the tunde kebab recipe, I thought they were worthy enough to share with you all today. Read More →