Me and my World

I am staying with my brother, sister-in-law and their three year old daughter who is crazy about chocolate. To indulge her sweet tooth, I made chocolate fudge. It's a simple recipe from Hershey's that I changed a little bit. I reduced the sugar a little since my niece will be eating. She watched me make this recipe and was very excited asking when she could eat it. She absolutely loved it, saying yummy a few times! :) Ingredients: Unsweetened cocoa powder - 2/3 cups (I used Hershey's dark cocoa powder, unsweetened) Sugar - 2 1/2 cups Milk - 1 1/2 cup ( I used whole milk) Salt - 1/8 tsp Butter - 4 tbsp ( room temperature) Vanilla essence - 1 tsp *Mix cocoa powder, sugar, milk, and salt in a large saucepan. Make sure saucepan is big, since the mixture has to boil and reduce. *Bring the mixture to a boil on medium heat, stirring continuously. Mixture tends to precipitate if it is not stirred continuously. *When the mixture starts to boil all over, not just t...

There was this one week a few months back when I wanted to eat only Asian food. With my fridge door open and looking at what I had in hand, decided on Thai green curry. It's simple to make and requires nothing special. So here is my simplistic version of the green curry. For an Indian, my taste buds are happy with mild to medium heat, so my thai curry is somewhere about there. Ingredients: Zuccini - dices, about 2 cups Bamboo shoots - dices, about 1/2 cup * Coconut milk - 1/2 can ( store bought thai coconut milk), about 200 ml * You can use any vegetable you want as long as they don't disappear when completely cooked. I didn't have any tofu, but if you do, you can add about 1/2 cup for this recipe. For Green curry paste: Green Chillies - 1 (I used Serrano peppers) Curry leaves - 1 sprigs, about 10 leaves; use about 3-5 for garnishing Coriander leaves - 1/2 bunch, with stems Ginger - peeled, diced, about 1" Garlic - 1-2 cloves Sugar/ Brown sugar ...

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. I have been away from blogging my recipes for such a long time, so decided to start again in the new year with a fresh combination of south and north of India. Yellow pumpkin (mattan) by it self is sweet when cooked. My mother adds just a tinge of red chillies for the light spiciness and some lentils for the protein. Generally in south yellow pumpkin curry is a side dish for sambhar or rasam. On the contrary, in the north yellow pumpkins are cooked with a lot of spice and served as side dish for puri or kachori. I am using butter nut squash, here is a simple recipe: Ingredients: 2 tablespoons chopped coriander (cilantro) 4 cups of sliced squash 1 cup split bengal gram (chana dal, kadala paruppu) 3 tablespoon oil 1/8 teaspoon asafetida (perungayam, hing) 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeeragam, jeera) 1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds (vendayam, methi seeds) 1 tablespoon coriander powder (malli podi) 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (manjal podi) 1/4 ...