24 June 2009

I made this!


No recipes today. But I wanted to show off some of the mugs I made at pottery class. As you can tell, I am quite proud of them :) Many hours (weeks, in fact) went into making each one of them, and you never know how they will look like until they come out from the kiln. It is so nice to be able to have them in the kitchen. It is extremely gratifying to sip coffee from a mug you made yourself. I have also made bowls, but I have to say, I love making mugs. I am planning to make more so that I can give one to everyone in my family. I just signed up for more hours at the pottery studio. Last week, I gave one to my mom and one to my sister, which they both seem to appreciate. I will post pictures of my bowls next when I use them to serve my cooking.



04 June 2009

Dakshin dinner


I made a Dakshin (South Asian) inspired dinner a few months back and have been meaning to post the pictures. Here it is. An all vegetarian fare. All the recipes were from my favorite vegetarian Indian cookbook entitled: Dakshin Vegetarian Cuisine from the South India by Chandra Padmanabhan. Upik had recommended this book to me and I absolutely love it. The recipes are well-explained and there are wonderful pictures to inspire you in this book.

Here I made: Stuffed Eggplant Poriyal (pg. 38), Mashed Green Gram Dal (pg. 14) and cucumber raita and Bean Poriyal (pg 32, not in the picture above, forgot to serve it until halfway through dinner!). And I also made some chapatti to go with the dishes. Also to accompany the dishes a medley of pickles--manggo, chillie and lime.

The eggplant (Ennai Kathirikkai), I have to say, was the star of the show. Stuffed with grated coconut, chillies, tamarind, and dal, it was absolutely delicious, even if I have to say so myself.
If you like eggplants, I would highly recommend this dish. Lovely!

02 June 2009

Migas



Hola! The dish above is called Migas--it is a Tex-Mex dish that is great for breakfast or brunch. I have little experience with Tex-Mex cuisine but I saw Rachael Ray make this one day in her show and it looked really yummy (anything with avocado seems yummy to me!). The next day I saw that I had the approximate ingredients in the fridge and decided to give it a go. I say approximate because I liberally substituted many of the ingredients, like pita bread for corn tortilla and brown lentils for refried beans. I also did not look up the recipe, just relying on memory, so it is Tex-Mex reintepreted.

Here is Rachael Ray's recipe. http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/mighty-migas/

My version is vegetarian, it has onions, garlic, cut up pita bread, cooked brown lentils, cherry tomatoes, fresh red chillies, cheddar cheese, avocado and eggs, and I topped it with some indian yogurt. As Rachael Ray would say: "Delish!"