Zucchini Thoran (Kerala Style Zucchini stir fry)

BM# 63: Journey through the Cuisines 

Week 4: Kerala Cuisine 

Day 25: Z for Zucchini Thoran

It is the last and final day of this month's mega marathon and time sure flew right by. For letter Z, I knew I had to make something with Zucchini, but it took me a while to finalize on what to make.

After discussing with Rajani about the possible zucchini dishes to make, I finally made this zucchini thoran from Kitchen Mishmash. Thoran is a very simple and basic Kerala dry curry that can be made with just about any fresh vegetable. I make cabbage thoran quite often, so I tried making zucchini thoran this time.

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Yam Fry (Kerala Chena Mezhukkupuratty)

BM# 63: Journey through the Cuisines 

Week 4: Kerala Cuisine 

Day 25: Y for Yam fry
Today's letter was probably the easiest to decide. Y for Yam curry, that's it -- I didn't even bother to look for more options. I love yam and always have a few frozen packets in the freezer.

There are quite a few different versions of yam fry online. Some were deep fried while some recipes needed marination, some had onion while some didn't. I settled on Maria's recipe with onion and garlic.

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Potato Curry leaf Curry (Aloo Karivepaku Podi Kura)

It is quite frustrating when you can't find that one ingredient (or that one thing) you are looking for -- in my case it's curry leaves. They have been MIA from most Indian groceries in NJ for more than 1 month now. With the mega marathon cooking in full swing, I needed curry leaves for some of the dishes and they were no where to be found. I am thinking of growing curry leaf plant this year in my container garden.

Well, I made today's dish couple of months ago after watching a Telugu cooking show. This was the last of the curry leaves I bought couple of months ago. A spice powder is made with the curry leaves which is then used to flavor the potatoes.

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Pepper Poriyal using Poriyal Powder(Dry Green Pepper Curry)

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 2/ Day 3

Theme: Dry Vegetable Sautes

Dish: Green Pepper Poriyal

For the final day of this week's blogging marathon, I made yet another poriyal from Dakshin cookbook. This recipe is flavored with a homemade poriyal powder and is quite different tasting from yesterday's masala beans poriyal.

Poriyal podi aka curry powder is made with dals (lentils), coriander seeds and dry red chilies. Making a big batch of this makes it easy to make quick dry curries. It can be used to make potato fry, arbi (colacassia, chamadumpa) fry and so on.

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Green Beans Masala Poriyal

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Dry Vegetable Sautes

Dish: Green Beans Masala Poriyal

This green beans curry is spicy and is a great variation to regular green beans curry that I make at home. Recipe is from Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan.

Poriyal is Tamil name for fried or sauteed vegetables. In our home, anything made with a vegetable is called 'kura'. If it is a dry curry it is called podi kura, gravy based curries don't usually get any prefix and they are simply called kura. So it is interesting to hear the various names for curries in other languages -- poriyal, thoran, palya etc etc.

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Chayote & Carrot Dry Curry

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 2/ Day 1

Theme: Dry Vegetable Sautes

Dish: Chayote & Carrot Dry Curry

We are starting a brand new week of blogging marathon and my theme for this week is 'Dry Vegetable Sautes or Dry Curries'. I just realized that all the themes I picked for this month require easy to make, everyday dishes which was just perfect because with the upcoming festive season, it is going to be a food fest wherever you turn :-)

This first curry doesn't even need a recipe, it is extremely easy to make. Just saute the chopped veggies until tender and sprinkle some grated coconut on top. My mom used to make a lot of dry curries like that using cabbage, carrot, green beans, snake gourd, chayote and so on.

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Dry Potato-Cauliflower Curry (Sukhi Aloo-Gobhi Subzi)

Blogging Marathon# 57: Week 4/ Day 2

Theme: Side Dishes for Rice/ Roti

Dish: Dry Aloo-Gobhi Curry

Today's side dish is with a popular combination of Aloo and Gobhi (potato and cauliflower). If you have watched 'Bend it like Beckham' movie you know how important it is to learn to make Aloo-GoBHI in Punjabi families :-)

There are quite a few different ways of making this curry. This particular recipe is from a Telugu cooking show and the chef said this is dhaba style of making this dish. I never ate in a proper dhaba, so I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the curry, but all I can say is it tastes amazing.

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Potato Curry

We are a potato loving family. They are happy if I make anything with potato, which is great because I add it to dishes that they normally wouldn't eat and the potato in it lures them to eat it. For example, which kid really likes wheat rava upma (godhuma rawa upma)? At least I didn't while growing up, but my kids eat it without fuss when I add potatoes to it -- happy mama :-)

Today's potato curry is super simple and my kids absolutely love it. It tastes great as is, but tastes even better with mor kuzhambu. Give this combo a try, you'll know what I'm talking about.

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Methi Paneer Dry Curry (Fenugreek Cottage Cheese Curry)

Blogging Marathon# 55: Week 1/ Day 3

Theme: Healthy Family Dinners

Dish: Methi Paneer Dry Curry

For the final day of this week's marathon, I made a dry curry made with methi (fenugreek leaves) and paneer. This is a simple dish that can be whipped up in no time and is a yummy when served with roti or as a side dish to rice.

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Fresh Green Peas & Carrot Curry with Coconut

Blogging Marathon# 52: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Seasonal Veggies & Fruits

Dish: Green Peas & Carrot Curry

Fresh green peas in the pod are something I look forward to buy in Spring. They are super sweet and delicious. Even though peeling them is time consuming, I think well worth every minute for these little jewels.
I add these fresh peas in simple ghee rice, or jeera rice. I don't like to add too many spices and overpower the taste of the peas, so I usually keep the dish very simple.

Today's dish is a dry curry with sweet green peas, carrots and some grated coconut. This is a very quick and easy dish that gets done in a jiffy. Fresh green peas hardly take any time to cook and if diced small, carrots don't take too long either.

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Zucchini Dry Curry (Zucchini Pesarapappu Podi Kura)

Blogging Marathon# 49: Week 3/ Day 1

Theme: 1 Vegetable - 3 Dishes

Dish: Dry Curry -- Zucchini Pesarapappu Iguru

My theme for this week of blogging marathon is to 'Pick 1 veggie and make 3 dishes with it'. I had to think really hard on what vegetable to choose and after a lot of internal deliberations, I zeroed on Zucchini. Zucchini, courgette, green squash a staple along with potatoes and tomatoes in my kitchen and I thought this is a good opportunity to post some recipes that I frequently make at home.

Zucchini is available almost all year round and I make sure to buy them whenever I see some good looking ones. They are pretty bland by themselves and I almost always use them along with other veggies -- roasted or stewed with eggplant and peppers. It is very versatile vegetable and can be used to bake bread, cake and cupcakes too.

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Carrot Poriyal (Carrot-Kobbari Kura)

Here's wishing everyone a very Happy, Healthy & prosperous New Year -- 2015.
Hope everyone had a fun filled joyous holiday. Fun means lots of food in my book and I sure had lots and lots of fun for the past couple of weeks. After all the delicious bakes and holiday specials that I posted at the end of the year, I wanted to start the New Year with a healthy & simple dish.

I watched this recipe on a Telugu cooking show and loved how simple it was with very few ingredients. My mom makes dry carrot curry with coconut, but this recipe uses grated carrot along with some ginger and coconut making it a little different from what I'm used to. I bought a bag of shredded carrots from Trader Joe's for a shortcut, but shredding it yourself will be a good bicep exercise :-)

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Nepali Curried Spinach (Saag)

This is probably the simplest recipe. Sauteed spinach with garlic cloves and curry powder.

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Spicy Eggplant Curry (Vankaya Masala kura)

Today's dish is made by my neighbor aunty and since it is an eggplant curry made in a different way, I had to click to pictures and post the recipe for future reference. One of the perks of living in India is the loving neighbors who share their homemade dishes and recipes. 

When I signed up for this month's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge', I knew I might have to bother my mom to make some of her signature dishes so that I can share them with you all. But luckily I have more than one source here and thanks to my dear aunty I have a yummy eggplant curry in my repertoire. 

This curry is partially made in the pressure cooker and then finished off in the saute pan. This method helps in cooking the curry with minimum oil and also expedites the cooking process.

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Thotakura Thelagapindi Kura (Amaranth Greens-Sesame Curry)

I have a very simple and healthy curry today. I watched it on a Telugu cooking show and made it right away. I made this last month in US when I had a bowl full of fresh amaranth leaves that I harvested before leaving to India on vacation. I think this curry can also be made with other greens like spinach, kale or swiss chard. 

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Spicy Cabbage dry Curry

There are some vegetables that get treated the same way ALL the time. In our household, cabbage is one of them. I usually make a dry curry with grated ginger and coconut which tastes great but after a while I got bored of cooking it. So I bookmarked this recipe from the 'India Cookbook' by Pushpesh Pant.

This is a huge cookbook with 1000 recipes (out of which may be 500~600 are vegetarian) and since I'm borrowing it from the library, I don't have too much time to even go through the recipes in detail. Luckily there are pictures of the dishes at regular intervals in the book and I looked through them to find the dishes I want to try. Even with that I have more than 20 recipes to try and I think I can keep the book till the end of this month. I'll be happy if I can try at least half of what I bookmarked.

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Mashed Potato Poriyal (Urulaikizhangu Podimas/ Mashed Potato Curry)

My husband is a big potato fan and leave it to him, he can eat potatoes in any form for all meals. SO I'm always looking for interesting recipes with potatoes. I'm not sure why it took me this long to make this super simple curry from Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan.

This is basically mashed potato curry not unlike the one I make for dosas, but the addition of grated coconut at the end is new for me. I think this curry tastes good even with rotis.

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Alugadda Vepudu (Spicy Potato Fry)

I wanted to keep the theme for this month's Cooking from Cookbook Challenge same as the theme for the on-going month long marathon, which means I will be posting some Indian dishes from cookbooks every weekend.

For the first week, I'm cooking from 'The India Cookbook' by Pushpesh Pant. This is a HUGE book with around 1000 recipes from all over India. I remember borrowing this book from the library couple of years back, but returned it without cooking anything from it because I was literally overwhelmed with the number of dishes in the book and couldn't decide what to make before I had to return the book.

This time I borrowed it again, hoping that it would help for the A-Z Indian states marathon. I couldn't find many recipes from the states I was looking for, but ended up bookmarking other dishes that I wanted to make for CCChallenge. Unfortunately I sat on the book for too long not doing anything with it that I had to return it to the library yesterday. I was able to make only 1 dish from it. I went ahead and requested it again, so at least I can make the dishes that I bookmarked.
I was inspired to make a thali after looking at the amazing thalis on Rajani's and Manjula's blogs. I have a very very simple Andhra thali and is nowhere close to comparison to either of their thalis. Here's what I made for the thali:

• Paalakura Pappu -- Spinach dal
• Vankaya Ulli kaaram -- Eggplant in Onion gravy
• Alugadda Vepudu -- Spicy Potato fry
• Pappu Chaaru 
• Avakaya
• Perugu -- Yogurt
• Pista burfi & murukkus -- storebought

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Sorakaya Thelagapindi Kura (Bottlegourd Curry)

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. We are on our way to my cousin's place in Delaware for the weekend, so this is going to be a short post today.

I had a small piece of sorakaya (bottle gourd) in the fridge that needed to be used up before we left for the weekend and I also had thelaga pindi (powder made from sesame pulp after squeezing the oil) in the fridge. Luckily I remembered watching a cooking show where the chef  used both the ingredients in a curry and so that's what I made. Thelaga pindi can be used just like sesame seed powder to sprinkle on curries.

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Kerala Cabbage Thoran & Sambar

Blogging Marathon# 35: Day 1/ Week 2
Theme: Regional Dishes - Course Specific
Dish: Kerala Cabbage Thoran & Sambar

We are starting our Week 2 of Blogging Marathon# 35 and my theme for this week is 'Any Regional with Course Specific dishes'. After seeing Rajani's Kerala Sadya recipes during the mega month long marathon, I have been planning to try my hand at Kerala dishes. Finally I made 3 dishes for this week's marathon.
The twist that Valli put to this seemingly simple theme is that we have to post a different course every day. So for the first day I'm posting 2 Kerala Lunch dishes, a simple Cabbage thoran and a hearty Sambar.

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