Growing up, the fall-back evening snack in my house would be a biscuit. Biscuits to me are what cookies are to kids that grow up in America. They were sold in all shapes and sizes, with different flavoring and the queen of them all was the “cream biscuit”, in which flavored icing was sandwiched between two thin biscuits. These baked goodies were not loaded with sugar or fat and were a reasonably healthy after-food snack for kids or tea time snack for adults, or when you just felt like nibbling on something. There were several popular brands (Milk Bikis, Marie come to my mind) and also, equally famous was the neighborhood bakery store-bought no-brand name, what we used to call, “butter biscuits”. These are very similar to these shortbread cookies by Meeta. After reading Meeta’s post, I really wanted to re-create those biscuits that were part of my childhood and the cookie bake-off that happened during the holiday season was the perfect excuse. I did some more research and found this recipe at Arusuvai (in Thamizh), meaning six tastes, which turns out to be pretty similar to Meeta’s recipe. The recipe from Western Europe and from the heartland of South India are uncannily close - may be it was the British influence. Whatever be it, these uncanny culinary or other such similarities never cease to amaze me. Read more…
It has been a long time since I wrote anything on this blog; and it was not because of lack of ideas :) Lots of cooking happened during the holiday season with friends & family coming over. There was also, of course, Thiruvatharai & Pongal which was celebrated with the traditional dishes. During this time, a few of my blogging friends bestowed me with a few awards as well. Apologies for not acknowledging them right away - somehow all this was not enough to get me out of my blogging hiatus 
I don’t know what made me go into a hiatus just like I don’t know what is prompting me to write now. As has been the case with this blog, I intend to write whenever I feel that there is something to be shared with my readers & friends - may be a dish that I made or a book that I read or a movie that I watched. Without much further ado, let me share the awards that I was presented with - Thanks Dinesh & Apar.
I have been writing here for a little over a year now; and write I do in an off again and on again fashion. If there was an award for the most inconsistent blogger, I guess I will win hands down Unfortunately, the award I am talking about today is for a different category.
I have been nominated and selected to be in the top-5 for the beautiful header award @ Avant Garde Bloggies. Thanks to Apar for nominating me in this category (in a weird coincidence, she is in the top-5 as well ).
When I got married and moved here, I didn’t think too much about having K’s sister and her family live in the same locality as well. Over time, we have grown to cherish each other’s presence in our lives, look up to each other for guidance / advice and forged a lovely relationship. Her husband likes to be called Nalan (of the famous Nala-Damayanthi story who is supposed to be a great cook), atleast in the blogosphere and not without reason. He is an awesome cook; his vegetable biryani is to die for and he makes one of the best (home-made from scratch) pizza, I have ever had.
K and I land up in their house almost every other weekend (if not every) under some pretext or the other; why would we not when we get awesome food every time we go there He had made this pasta for a potluck family night dinner and when I tasted it, I knew I had to post this on my blog. It is such an easy, simple and healthy dish that is extremely kid-friendly; my nephew and niece will attest to that.
The weather has definitely gone cold here and I can feel Winter fast approaching. Well, with the way temperatures have gone south, it already feels like Winter. These days, it is almost like we have only 2 seasons these days - summer and winter, whatever happened to spring and fall, I wonder! All I want to do these days is to snuggle on the couch with a throw thrown over me and vegetate like a couch potato. For a Wintery day, what is better than having lip-smacking good, peppery rasam!
Rasam is a light lentil-tamarind-tomato based South Indian dish that can be eaten as is like a soup or with rice accompanied with pappadum or a dry veggie side-dish. Rasam is usually a sour dish and its sourness mainly comes from tomato with a little help from tamarind or lemon. Rasam is the go-to dish when you are under a bout of cold or fever, as it is not as lentil-heavy as sambhar and very soothing for the throat.
Buoyed with the success of Mysore pak, M and I started thinking of the next sweet that can be made. We were totally unprepared, so it had to be something that we could make with the ingredients we had in hand (can’t go shopping at 11:00 in the night ). After brainstorming a few potential candidates, we zeroed in on payatham Urundai (aka Moong Dhal Balls) - all it requires is payatham paruppu (split moong dhal), ghee and sugar - ingredients that are available in every desi household.
At 11 in the night, M & I started roasting payatham paruppu, as we were chatting or rather reminiscing our (childhood) memories on Deepavali. How our moms had their trademark snacks that they prepared without fail for every Deepavali (for my mom, no doubts here, it was Mysore Pak and for hers it was Chocolate cake, which I am hoping to make soon) and ended up creating their own tradition that we try to follow, tweak to make ours. It was an interesting evening with a lot of girly chatter and catching up that ended in a promise, or rather hope, that we try and do this for every Deepavali.
Two of my fondest memories of Deepavali are the smell of fresh, hot-off-the-stove mysore pak within the house and the fumes from firecrackers outside. My mom would spend the day before Deepavali in making various kinds of sweets and savories that culminated in dinner(the high point) - poori-masal - poori with potato masala, one of the most popular dishes in South India. She always started with Mysore Pak - a simple sweet, containing just 3 ingredients yet complicated in its own way and hence, difficult to master. It also happens to be one of my favorite sweets (well, I am a self-confessed sweet-o-phile ), so I try to follow my mom’s tradition and make mysore pak first and stop right there, as well - he he!
This year, M (who comments here regularly) and I decided to get together to make the Deepavali bhakshanam(snacks). M’s mom (who again is a regular reader / commentator of this blog) had already made yummy omapodi (thin sev flavored with ajwain) and “Deepavali marunthu”, literally means “Deepavali medicine”, which is quite unique to Deepavali. Made of medicinal elements like pepper and ginger, a small bit of this marunthu goes a long way in healing indigestion after gorging during the festival.