Sinful Curry

These specialty crêpes of the Andhra Cuisine can be made of either yellow mung dal or from whole green gram.If you use the former you get a golden yellow crêpe and if you use the latter you’ll have yourself a green crêpe. Both taste great. Personally I prefer using the yellow dal vs the green, purely for aesthetics. Hey, after all your eyes do most of the eating don’t they? Unlike the traditional dosas these are relatively faster to make for the obvious fact that they don’t have to go through the long hours of fermentation. And since they are not sour, in my opinion you need to complement them with sour chutneys like the tomato, gongura or tamarind to excite you palates. Ingredients 2 cups mung dal soaked in water for about 4 –5 hours, if you are using whole green gram, soak overnight  1 tsp roasted cumin 1/2 tsp chopped ginger  6 sprigs of cilantro  1/2 cup raw rice soak along with dal 3 green chilies 1 big pinch of asafoetida 1 medium sized onion chopped salt to taste D...

These specialty crêpes of the Andhra Cuisine can be made of either yellow mung dal or from whole green gram.If you use the former you get a golden yellow crêpe and if you use the latter you’ll have yourself a green crêpe. Both taste great. Personally I prefer using the yellow dal vs the green, purely for aesthetics. Hey, after all your eyes do most of the eating don’t they? Unlike the traditional dosas these are relatively faster to make for the obvious fact that they don’t have to go through the long hours of fermentation. And since they are not sour, in my opinion you need to complement them with sour chutneys like the tomato, gongura or tamarind to excite you palates. Ingredients 2 cups mung dal soaked in water for about 4 –5 hours, if you are using whole green gram, soak overnight  1 tsp roasted cumin 1/2 tsp chopped ginger  6 sprigs of cilantro  1/2 cup raw rice soak along with dal 3 green chilies 1 big pinch of asafoetida 1 medium sized onion chopped salt to taste Directions Grin...

The nice part about a chutney recipe is that no ingredient or their amounts are set in stone. You can mix match and omit. And each time you would have created a novelty. Just go with what your taste buds desire. If you like cilantro, throw in some of it. If you don’t do mint, omit it. If you think coconut is unhealthy, replace it with peanuts. If you want a raw bite, use roasted gram.  If you are into ginger-garlic, a dash of it will do the trick. If you want a tang there is curd, tamarind or lemon. If you are looking for a spicy tone,  green or red chilies should work. And most important of all, if you can’t hold back your imagination, let it flow!    I’ve got myself a lean mean wet grinding machine earlier this month and there has been plenty of idlis, dosas and adais happening at home. So don’t be taken aback by the sudden surge of chutney recipes on this blog. Trust me it doesn’t take long before I’m bored. You might have to put up with it for only a few days or maybe if your plane...

A reader recently commented on one of my posts saying, The recipe was bland and only after I added salt it tasted fine. I looked up the recipe and realized that though I’d mentioned Salt to taste in the ‘Ingredients’ section, I’d forgotten to state when salt was to be added in the “Directions”. Never would I have imagined that this oversight could pose such a problem. I soon figured that most of my recipes had this slip.  Though I did update that particular recipe, and though I promise to keep in mind the need to cite add salt in my future recipes, my nonchalance in such matters and the fact that my middle name spells LAZY makes it quite obvious that there is possibly no way I would even consider updating 100 and odd recipes as an option. So here’s a disclaimer I’d like to make for all my old and probably future recipes — All my recipes recipes call for salt – ‘to taste’. Unless and until I mention a  “pinch” (like in cakes and desserts)  or unless and until salt i...

  Acclaimed author of many cook books, Food and Wine editor of  Town&Country for over two decades, James Villas wrote in an article called Unsung Sardines –   Ounce for ounce, sardines provide more calcium and phosphorus than milk, more protein than steak, more potassium than bananas, and more iron than cooked spinach.  Now, even if I hadn’t read that, I still would assume that these little silver slender beauties had to have high authority in terms of nutrition in order to find their way to my health freak sister Sony’s table every other day ;).  Frankly for me, the nutrition aspect is just an added bonus. I simply love them for their unparalleled flavor. Fresh sardines are found in plenty in Kerala and hence are cooked very often, usually poached or grilled. Fresh sardines however have been hard to find for me over here. But I do manage to get some good ones at Whole Foods or at my local Chinese market. All my recipes use fresh sardines and since I’ve never used t...

  Acclaimed author of many cook books, Food and Wine editor of  Town&Country for over two decades, James Villas wrote in an article called Unsung Sardines –   Ounce for ounce, sardines provide more calcium and phosphorus than milk, more protein than steak, more potassium than bananas, and more iron than cooked spinach.  Now, even if I hadn’t read that, I still would assume that these little silver slender beauties had to have high authority in terms of nutrition in order to find their way to my health freak sister Sony’s table every other day ;).  Frankly for me, the nutrition aspect is just an added bonus. I simply love them for their unparalleled flavor. Fresh sardines are found in plenty in Kerala and hence are cooked very often, usually poached or grilled. Fresh sardines however have been hard to find for me over here. But I do manage to get some good ones at Whole Foods or at my local Chinese market. All my recipes use fresh sardines and since I’ve never used the canned k...

South Indians very rarely make plain Dal. We usually add a vegetable or two in them and call each of them with different names even though they might have the same kind of lentils and involve the same process. If you think – that is one big bag of stupid, it really isn’t. Each different kind of vegetable gives a different flavor and identity to the Dal that you can’t help but christen it with a new name :). The Mathanga Erissery, a sure dish of an Onam Sadhay is made of yellow pumpkin or squash and Red Chori or Azuki Bean. Traditionally the consistency of it is usually very thick almost like mashed potatoes. But I  make it into a gravy and relish it with rice, papadams and lemon pickles. Ingredients 3 cups diced yellow pumpkin 1/2  cup Red Chori/ Azuki Beans, soaked in water over night 1/2 cup grated coconut 7-8 finely sliced shallots 1/2 tsp roasted cumin powder 1/2 tsp of chopped garlic 1/2 tsp ground fresh pepper 1/4 tsp chili powder-1/4tsp 1/4tsp turmeric powder 1/2 tsp blac...