In our small mining town, we are a total of eight people from India; three couples and two bachelors, one of whom is actually a forced bachelor, since his wife is in California doing a one year course.
Its nice to have people from your country in the same city, especially in a place like this. And more so when it means you get to eat home cooked Indian food that is not cooked by your own hands. So every time we get a dinner invitation from our Indian friends I get super excited. And the joy is double since both the couples belong to states in the south of India, and since I am a complete novice with cooking south Indian food, I revel in their dosa, biryani, sambhar, and curd rice.
Its not that I have not tried my hand at South Indian cooking. During the first few months of our marriage, I tried making dosa, but it was a complete disaster that ended with me throwing the dosa batter away. After that misadventure, I have kept my distance from cooking anything that is south Indian totally relying on my South Indian friends here to satisfy my idli-dosa cravings. And it doesn’t hurt that my friend makes amazing food.
I know, I have been making a trend of doing belated GMTs. But it’s been crazy busy with me and when its not been busy, sitting on the computer has been last on the things I feel like doing. I have been cooking and photographing- just not getting enough time or will to pen (or in this case type) it down.
The reason why I could not blog yesterday for GMT (again) is that Tuesdays have become busier than other days. I have joined Art Class, giving me no time in the evening. And since I am getting up at 5 am everyday to exercise, most afternoons I try getting a quick snooze in. I still thought I would be able to do a quick post yesterday, but my cold (which thankfully is better today) and a visit from my friend threw those plans out of the window.
Another reason, besides my triathlon (which FYI is this Saturday) training, my posts have been so sporadic is that due to a recent easy recipe plugin update, all the recipes that had the print it option were missing text and photographs. The easy recipe plugin guys have come out with an update that claims to take care of the problems with the previous update, but not before I manually fixed the recipes myself. That took some time and thus I had to take some time off blogging new recipes.
I promise next week onwards, I will be more regular and you will have a GMT that is posted on a Tuesday and not a Wednesday!
But for now, to compensate for my absence, I am sharing two old recipes that I posted around the beginning of my blogging days. If you remember I mentioned that I will be revisiting old recipes- one, to check whether they are spot on in terms of instructions and ingredients and two, to shoot better photographs and give them the exposure they deserve.
It’s the only thing that V has cooked for me (besides Maggi), and even though V doesn’t cook often or at all, this dal of his is my all time favorite dish. My friend B has also made this dal and every time she makes it she asks me to thank V for the recipe. Yes, this is THAT good. And since its made in the crockpot, it’s the easiest thing to put together. Click on the picture or here for the recipe.
The other recipe I am sharing today is my mom’s quick channa masala. Going with the theme today, this too is an easy recipe to put together. Somebody who tried the recipe, commented that “it was the best chole i have ever made. the perfect punju taste that i always attempted to get”.
I love this recipe not only because it tastes great, but because its really easy to put together. You can find the recipe here or click on the picture to take you to the post.
The day I made the chhole, I had a few ready to fry channa dal samosas in the freezer. So I decided to make a favorite Indian street food- Samosa Chaat. I have made it before with a different recipe for the chickpea dish and homemade samosas. This time I used my mom’s quick channa masala recipe and ready made samosas. The end result was pretty good. You can find the original recipe here.
the perfect punju taste that i always attempted to get”.
