Garam Masala Tuesdays: Kothimbir Vadi or Cilantro Cakes

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Another few days and I will be back to the US. I should be more excited given that I have been away from my home for more than 3 months, but its a mixed bag of feelings. I always hate leaving India. Though I have friends and my husband in the US, India is still the place I would truly want to be. Family is here. Friends are here. Life is here. Both countries have their own charm, but being an Indian at heart, I have never been the kinds who has been able to stay away from India for extended periods of time. And that is why whenever I come, I stay in India as much as I can (since I can afford to). Thankfully I have a husband who understands that and for the sake of my (and his) sanity lets me spend as much time as I want here.

Since I am almost ready to go, I thought I will get some recipes from the awesome cook we have at my parent’s place. Plus, its a delight to be able to take step by step photographs of someone else making the stuff, in comparison to what I have to do in the US, where I stop midway, clean my hands, take a picture, get back to the next step and repeat the same process of cleaning, capturing and then moving on to the next step.

So now I have a lot of masala for Garam Masala Tuesdays and hopefully unlike the past few months where this series was put on a back seat, we will see some seriously good stuff on the blog. Read More →

Garam Masala Tuesdays: Mathi/Mathari

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This post has been lying in my drafts for a long time. I made these during Diwali (November of last year) and wanted to post them before Diwali but somehow that never happened.

Since I am hardly cooking here in India, (I do bake though and am learning a little from the talented cook my parents have at their house), I thought I should make use of that fact and post recipes that have been pending for a long time.

Mathri or Matthi is a very famous indian tea time snack option in North Indian homes. They are crisp, flaky, buttery biscuits/cookies/crackers, usually salty but can be made sweet as well. The basic mathri is a blend of hot melted ghee, salt and refined flour to which one can add a variety of spices such as ajwain(carom seeds), kalaunji (onion seeds), kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves), shahjeera(caraway seeds) and even peppercorn.

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Garam Masala Tuesdays: Gluten Free Ragi paranthas

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I have been trying to perfect this recipe for some time now.

Growing up, in our family and in even in V’s, chappati, roti, phulka were interchangeable words for the same thing. When I came here, my friend who is from the south of India said that for them there is a difference between roti and chappati. She said, that in the south, chapati is traditionally made using a 3 fold process turning the dough into a triangular shape and then rolled out into a circle. Each layer is well oiled, resulting in thin layers. In my family (and even V’s), this is how we make a plain parantha.

A roti (or what we north indians also call chappati or phulka) are kind of like indian styled tortillas. Roti is a traditional unleavened whole-wheat bread which, depending on the cook, can be as thin as paper or thick as pita. Small portions of the dough are rolled out into discs much like a Mexican tortilla, using a rolling pin. The rolled-out dough is thrown on the preheated dry skillet and cooked on both sides. Sometimes after partially cooking it on the skillet/tawa, it is then put directly on a high flame, which makes it blow up like a balloon. The hot air cooks the chapati rapidly from the inside. In some parts of northern India (e.g. Punjab), this is called a phulka (that which has been inflated). After cooking, the top of the chappati/roti can be slathered with some ghee or butter. Deep fried versions are known as “poori”.

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