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. 

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 →

A light and easy to prepare vegan Indian dish (varan) made of split pigeon peas/toovar dal from the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Maharsahtrian varan/Dal | The Novice Housewife #vegan #glutenfree #dairyfree

The days leading up to my dad’s retirement were full of farewell dinners hosted by many of my dad’s friends and colleagues. Each day my parents had a dinner engagement either at somebody’s house or the Mess and to a few of these dinners I, too, was invited. In that one month of dining out almost everyday, we tasted a variety of menus, ranging from a cheese and wine dinner to Kashmiri food to traditional Maharashtrian fare. I don’t think I have ever eaten so much, and of course the weighing scale made sure I never forgot it either. But then, I got to taste so many different things- some new, some old, some good, some very good. In the end it was all worth it.

Maharsahtrian varan/Dal | The Novice Housewife #vegan #glutenfree #dairyfree

As mentioned before, at one of the dinners we were served traditional Maharashtrian cuisine. It was all beautifully served, pre-plated in a Thali, a total of close to 15 dishes, each prepared by our very gracious hostess. My mom particularly loved the dal and the kadhi and asked for both the recipes, which the hostess was kind enough to share. While certain Indian dishes have been made more popular worldwide, there are a lot of Indian dishes that are unknown to most people and what you see being served in restaurants abroad are mostly North indian favorites. So, I hope you enjoy this recipe that I am sharing with you today, which comes from the western state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai and to the famous Bollywood industry. Read More →