Tomato & Mozzarella Crostini

For this month's International Food Challenge, Priya Suresh @ Priyas Versatile Recipes is taking us on a culinary journey through Campania region of Italy. There are various regional cuisine in Italy and Campania is one among them. Campania is a highly populated region in the southern Italy, located on the Italian Peninsula, with the Mediterranean sea to the west. Best known around the world for its Pizza.

Campania's exuberant cuisine relies on sun-kissed vegetables and herbs, salty capers, dried pasta, and fresh farmhouse cheeses, chief among them water buffalo's Mozzarella. Campania is home to over 80 percent of Italy's water buffaloes, so the Campani produce a number of delicious water buffalo's milk cheeses. Though none as wide spread or beloved as their Mozzarella di Bufala.

Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes and a First Birthday celebrations

This post has been due for over a month now. My daughter turned 1 last month and I wanted to share the pictures with you. But September was dedicated to 'A-Z dishes from Andhra' and with the other things that were going on in  couldn't post this earlier. It is better late than never, so here are with some pictures of my little one's first birthday.
Since it was a late Summer birthday I wanted a backyard party. We were lucky to have a perfect day weatherwise. I wanted to have a Minnie Mouse theme -- just because I wanted too :-) Our friend N did all the decorations. Only thing we made (actually it was my idea, but the whole project was done by my husband) was the time-line garland with the pictures of the birthday girl from every month (in the first pic)

Time-Line garland with birthday girl's pics from 1st to 12th month

This was the 'Focus' wall

Minnie Mouse Cupcake Stand

Zeppole (Eggless Version)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: BM# 32 Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Zeppole by Sandhya Ramakrishnan

As I was looking for a dish to make for the final day of BM# 33, I narrowed down my search by looking for recipes made with X, Y & Z instead of the starting from A. Isn't that smart?? I think so too (patting on my shoulder right now :-) 

I got super excited when I saw Zeppole from Sandhya's blog in the list for Z and made it for our evening snack today. I've seen Zeppole in many street fairs but never tried to make it myself. This recipe sounded simple enough to try. I'm so glad I tried these because they were sooo good, we gobbled them all up in one sitting and wished there were more.. lot more.

Zeppole are also known as Italian donuts. Flour, butter and eggs are mixed into a dough and then deep fried. This particular recipe uses ricotta cheese and mascarpone cheese instead of butter. The resulting fried zeppole are so airy and fluffy that you lose count of how many you ate.

Vyborg Pretzels (Eggless version)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: BM# 32 Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Vyborg Pretzels by Chef Mireille

I am revisting my fellow bloggers posts from the A-Z Alphabet marathon for this week of BM# 33. Like I said yesterday it has been tough finalizing this week's 3 dishes. I still have no idea what to make for tomorrow from the very long list of short listed dishes. I've to check my pantry and the fridge to see what can be made with th time I have. I wish I can try all the recipes, but alas I can't.

So for Day 2, I made Chef Mireille's Vyborg Pretzels. These pretzels are popular in the city of Vyborg, which was previously part of Finland. These pretzels caught my eye the minute I saw them. I've been planning to make pretzels for quite some time now and when I saw these I knew this was going to be my very first pretzel recipe to try. I wasn't disappointed. This recipe makes 4 huge challah bread style pretzels that are soft, slightly sweet and super flavorful from the addtion of saffron and cardamom.

Changes I made were, use egg-replacer in place of eggs, brush with heavy cream in place of egg yolk-milk mixture and sprinkle some turbonado sugar on top for some extra sweetness and crunch. My pretzel shape did not turn out as professional as Mir's, but they tasted amazing especially when eaten warm. They stay fresh when wrapped well and stored at room temperature for couple of days.

Oatmeal with Honey & Dates

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 4/ Day 1
Theme: BM# 32 Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Quick Oatmeal with Dates & Honey by Sreevalli

We start our last and final week of BM# 33 for this month and my theme for this week is 'Bookmarked recipes from BM# 32'. This was probably the hardest theme for me this month. I had a very tough time selecting 3 dishes to make from more than 550 dishes.

Finally after a lot of deliberation, I decided on 3 dishes based on the ingredients I had in my pantry. So for the first day I made this quick, simple and healthy Quick Oatmeal with Dates & Honey from Sreevalli's Ammaji's Recipes.

This was one of the recipes that I knew I would make right away because I love oatmeal and keep trying new recipes. The combination of dates and honey sounded very appealing to me and I wondered why I didn't think of it earlier.

Sreevalli made it in the microwave and called it quick oatmeal, but I made it on the stove top which takes a few more minutes than microwave. Either way this is a very quick and healthy breakfast that gets done in less than 10minutes. I generally use soy milk in my oatmeal, but any milk or even water (for a less creamy oatmeal) can be used.

Basic Vegan Chocolate Cupcake

After these Vegan Vanilla cupcakes, the other cupcake recipe that is made quite often in my house is this vegan chocolate cupcake. This recipe is also from 'Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World'. I tried other eggless cupcake recipes, but this recipe has always given me consistent results. The cupcakes are moist and fluffy and they hold up to butter cream frosting.

I made these cupcakes for my son's birthday and sent them to school. His class has kids who have very severe peanut allergy, so I always make sure that all the ingredients I use are peanut free.

Eggless Black Forest Cake

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Black Forest Cake

For the third day of BM# 33, we are celebrating my husband's birthday with an eggless Black Forest Cake. He was travelling on his actual birthday, so we are celebrating it over the weekend. 

Black forest cake brings back fond memories of enjoying time with family and friends back home. This was the usual pastry that we used to order at a bakery next to our school and this was also our favorite cake to order for birthdays and other occasions. Cool cakes, like this Pineapple Cool Cake, are quite famous in India. I remember black forest cake to be cool, moist and juicy -- not too sweet with super light frosting that was simply to die for.

It has been a very long time, infact many many years, that I ate this cake. But I wanted to recreate the cake as I remember it. So first I looked for an eggless chocolate recipe and found this Moist & Soft Chocolate Cake recipe @ Rak's Kitchen. Then I looked for black forest cake recipes for the filling and frosting ideas. After reading through a number of recipes I came up with below recipe.

Eggless Mango Cake with Mango Cream Frosting

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Mango Cake with Mango Cream Frosting

Second Cake for this week is a very moist and addictive Eggless Mango Cake. My cousin and her husband have their birthdays within a week of each other in October and we celebrated with this yummy cake at my other cousin's place. I baked the cakes at home, wrapped them up and took them to my cousin's place, then frosted the cake at my cousin's house.

Recipe is adapted from Vaishali's Mango cupcakes recipe. I made the cupcakes once before and for this cake I doubled the recipe to get 2 8" round cakes. This is yet another simple recipe to make, just mix wet & dry ingredients separately then mix them together to make the cake batter.

I actually wanted to make a Mango cool cake, but the cake itself was so moist I didn't want the cake to fall apart, so left it as is. The final cake was a super duper hit with everyone. 

Paneer Veggie Curry in Coconut milk Gravy

Did you know that this week, October 13 - 19 is National Curry Week in the UK? Who you would have thought that there is even such a thing as curry week. Well, it is good news to food bloggers like us - yet another reason to cook up something yummy for your family.

I saw the lovely ladies @ Blogger's buzz team announce about the 'Curry week' on Facebook and really wanted to join in the fun. What's not to love about curry??

After looking through my bookmarks, I found this Paneer-Vegetable Stew recipe from Ecurry. It seemed to be a simple dish with not many spices, so I made some changes to make it more of a curry and less of a stew and served it with some bread for dinner tonight.

Eggless Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange Cream cheese Buttercream frosting

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 1
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange Cream cheese Buttercream frosting

September & October are birthday months in my house. Both my kids are September born and my husband is October born. So when I saw the theme 'Eggless Cakes' for this edition of BM, I knew I have to take it up to try new cakes to celebrate the birthdays.

For my daughter's b'day I made - Pistachio Rosewater cupcakes & Chocolate-Vanilla Marble cupcakes. Both of them were a hit at the party.

For my son's birthday which is exactly 15days after my daughter's I knew I had to make a chocolate cake. I asked my son if he had any preference and he said he wanted a orange flavored chocolate cake. His latest favorite show is Pokemon and can talk about the characters for hours. So I made him a Orange-Chocolate Cake with Orange cream cheese-butter cream frosting and I tried to add one of the Pokemon characters in the frosting.

Raj Kachori ~ Rajasthani Chaat Recipe

For this month's Indian Cooking Challenge, Valli & Vaishali wanted us to make Raj Kachori, a Rajathani chaat item. When Valli announced the challenge, I read the recipe and thought it was really elaborate with quite a few components to be prepared and then completely forgot about it. Then suddenly this past weekend I realized it was almost time to post for ICC and I didn't make the dish. I knew I had no sooji in the pantry and gave up on the challenge. But when I checked again I found a small container of sooji (!!), I'm not even sure where that came from. Anyway that meant I was going to make this delicious chaat for this month's challenge.

It is definitely an elaborate dish and cannot be made in a rush. So make sure that you read the recipe completely and plan to make the components ahead of time or plan to give yourself enough time to complete them.

Basic Vegan Vanilla Cupcake

Today's post is for 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge', an event started by Valli @ Cooking4allSeasons. This basic vegan cupcake is my go-to recipe and I was surprised that I haven't posted it here yet. I have made these a number of times and they have never failed me. Recipe is from 'Vegan Cupcakes take over the World' by Isa Chandra & Terry Hope.

I made these recently for my son's birthday and took pictures to post them. This is a multipurpose, no-nonsense cupcake that is great to bake for birthdays, bake sales and baby showers.

Quick Tawa Rice

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Favorite Celebrity Chef Recipes
Dish: Tarla Dalal's Quick Tawa Rice
One of my favorite Indian Chef is Tarla Dalal. I still remember watching her show on Sony TV from 12~15 years back and noting down the recipes. I used to bug my mom to buy the ingredients from super market to try the recipes. I love the way she makes all the dishes so simple and easy to make.
So for Day 3 of BM# 33, I made this quick Tawa rice by Tarla Dalal. I used to print out recipes from Tarla Dalal.com some 6~8 years back. I neatly them put in a binder and kept it safely in the basement. While looking for recipes for this week, I looked through the binder, but couldn't find anything to make with the ingredients I had on hand. A quick Google search landed me on this recipe and Tarla Dalal's Youtube video. I made it right away for lunch and really liked it. This dish is going to be on our meal rotation going forward.

The dry red chili - garlic paste gives this dish so much flavor and it smells heavenly while cooking and even after cooking. My addition to this dish is a spoonful of pav bhaji masala, other than that I kept it close to the original.

Pasta with Asparagus, Mascarpone cheese & Walnuts

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Favorite Celebrity Chef Recipes
Dish: Giada's Pasta with Asparagus & Mascarpone cheese
My Celebrity chef of choice for Day 2 of BM# 33 is Giada De Laurentils. She is an Italian chef and is a regular on Food Network. Her Italian recipes look doable and easy to make with every-day available ingredients.
I learnt a lot of Italian recipes watching Giada's shows. One of the fancy ingredient I started to buy after watching her is Mascarpone cheese. She uses it in both sweet & savory preparations like cheesecakes, pastas etc. I buy a tub on mascarpone cheese when on sale and use it in various dishes.

Today's dish is Giada's Farfalle with Asparagus & Mascarpone. I was making this for my sister who doesn't eat mushrooms, so I used peppers instead. Also I jazzed up the recipe with sauteed onion and garlic for added flavor. Addition of walnuts was the highlight for this recipe and I really enjoyed the crunch. Final dish was colorful, creamy and filling.

Halloween Whoopie Pies (Eggless Recipe)

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, our host of the month Nalini Suresh @ Nalini's Kitchen chose 5 spooky & yummy Halloween treats. When I saw the challenge the beginning of the month I felt like I should make all of them. But of course time slipped through my hands and in the end I was scrambling to find time to make at least 1 of the treats. After much deliberation, I ended up making these Halloween Whoopie Pies.

I've never made whoopie pies and this challenge gave me a chance to make these cakey cookies. I didn't have orange nonpareil, so used yellow glittering sugar which doesn't make the whoopie pies look too Halloween(y). In any case whoopie pies turned out great and we all loved them. 

Mango Chutney

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 2/ Day 1
Theme: Favorite Celebrity Chef Recipes
Dish: Mango Chutney
We are starting 2nd week of blogging marathon# 33 today and my theme for this week is 'Favorite Celebrity Chef Recipes'. For the first day, I have Alton Brown's Mango chutney that I actually made couple of months ago in the middle of summer. Saved it in the drafts and totally forgot about it.
Alton Brown is one of my favorite chef / cook on Food Network. I love to watch Good Eats show where he explains the science of cooking in a way that is easily understandable to everyone. He's very knowledgeable and very funny.
My husband and I love mangoes (husband LOVES them way more than me) and we make sure to buy ripe mangoes when in season. We bought a pack of 6 from Costco and the first one we tasted was so sour that both was us were very disappointed. Since it was almost impossible to eat them raw I wanted to turn them into a yummy chutney. I had bookmarked this recipe from Alton Brown quite sometime back and after a quick trip to the grocery store made this spicy-sweet mango chutney.

I bought mango chutney for this recipe and a small jar costs a fortune. I've used that chutney in salads, sandwiches, also great with naans and even quesadillas. So instead of buying a small jar, I now have 2 jars full of my home made mango chutney.

Shahi Arvi (Taro root/ Colacassia in Creamy Sauce)

Hope you are having a great weekend. We are enjoying the weekend at our cousin's house in Delaware, kids are running around and the adults are catching up on what's happening in life. Tomorrow we will all be back to business. My 6 year old wants 2 day week and 5 day weekends and sometimes I have the same feeling too, though I don't say it loud to him :-)

Our super talented blogger friend Valli @ Spicing your life & Cooking4allseasons has started another blog event called 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge', so starting today a group of bloggers will be posting recipes on the weekend from cookbooks, recipes jotted down from cooking shows, paper clippings etc. Like everybody I have a ton of cookbooks, 5~6 diaries filled with jotted down recipes from various sources, so I was thrilled when Valli announced this event. This will be a perfect way to try as many dishes as I can from my books and folders. 

For the first week, I have a rich and creamy gravy curry that I made during the A-Z Andhra Dishes. I served it with Zafrani pulao and Kadhu ki Dalcha and it was a super hit at home. Recipe courtesy is a cooking show called 'Just Cooking' n Maa Gold.

Original recipe had the arvi/ colacassia deep fried, but I didn't see the need for deep frying. I shallow fried arvi in couple of tablespoons of oil and the end result was quite tasty. 

Adzuki Beans & Brown Rice Burger with Sweet Potato Fries

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 1/ Day 3
Theme: Combo Dishes - Tikkis/ Burgers
Dish: Adzuki Beans & Brown Rice Burger with Sweet Potato Fries
It has been unseasonally warm for the past couple of days and we are totally enjoying this weather. I took my mom, my almost 3 year old niece and my 1 year old to New York city (NYC) yesterday. We live about 20 minutes away from the city, but never go there to actually see places. I usually go there on business, either for a meeting or a seminar, never as a tourist.

I always wanted to take the NYC bus tour and finally did it yesterday. Its fun to sit on the open top double decker and see the sights of the city. I enjoyed the tour, but I want to do it again without the kids, so I can enjoy the city even more :-)

Well we came back home ravished and good thing that I had these adzuki bean-brown rice burgers frozen and ready to cook. All we had to was to bake some Sweet Potato fries and chop up some veggies for topping and in less than 30minutes we had a filling and delicious lunch.

Whole Foods sells Adzuki bean-brown rice burger. I never bought them but wanted to try that combo for a long time. Adzuki beans need only 2~3hours to soak and cook pretty quickly. In addition to the beans and rice, I added some bread crumbs, flour and a flax egg for binding. I flavored the burgers with Indian spices like kasoori methi and kitchen king masala. My focus group (my mom, sister and husband) liked them.

Falafel (Eggless, Lower fat recipe)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 1/ Day 2
Theme: Combo Dishes - Tikkis/ Burgers
Dish: Falafel with Pita

Officially it is Fall season in our neck of woods, but it feels like summer for the past couple of days. Not that I'm complaining, but I had planned to make baked falafel for day 2 of BM# 33 and had to change plans and shallow fry them because I didn't want to turn on the oven. Baked or fried these falafel are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. We had these for lunchl served with store bought pita bread, creamy tahini sauce and crispy lettuce and cucumber salads. 

I already have a recipe for falafel that has egg in it and I've been looking for a recipe that doesn't have any egg and does not use as much oil. So when I saw this recipe @ Cookie and Kate, I knew I had to try this recipe. It is super simple to put together. Interestingly the recipe uses soaked chickpeas that do not need to be cooked, that saves time and is much more convenient.

Aloo Tikki Wrap (Potato patty wrap)

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 1/ Day 1
Theme: Combo Dishes - Tikkis/ Burgers
Dish: Aloo Tikki Wrap (Potato patty wrap)

After our month long Mega marathon last month with A-Z Andhra dishes, we are back to our regular 3 days a week Blogging marathon this month. My theme for the for the first week is 'Combo Dishes' involving tikkis and burgers. When I signed up I wasn't sure what I would be cooking for this week. After all the planning, cooking and blogging non-stop for a whole month, this week feels so unplanned and on the spur of the moment. I haven't cooked the dishes for next 2 days, hopefully they will be done on time.

My mom and my sister along with my niece are here with us. I'm enjoying the company and my mom's Andhra dishes. In turn I'm trying new recipes on them -- it's a win-win situation for me, not sure if they think so or not :-)