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May 31, 2012

Grilled Eggplant Sandwich with Tomato Pesto (Chutney)

This month, my blog completed 6 years. I wanted to celebrate by making some sweet, as is the Indian tradition, but lack of time has let me down. But I wanted to celebrate in my own way by making my favorite eggplant sandwich (you know I'm all about simple pleasures :0) ). Actually I was looking for recipes to make for Dish It Out: Eggplant &Tomatoes event and this one seemed like the perfect fit for both the event and the celebration.

This is a very simple sandwich with toasted bread spread (rather generously) with the tomato pesto (chutney) and layered with grilled eggplants, onions and lettuce. Pesto was so good that I was eating that by spoonfuls before I made the sandwiches.
 
If outdoor grilling is not your thing, veggies can be grilled on stove-top grill pan or roasted/ broiled in an oven or even sauteed in a saute pan. If you don't like eggplant (but why wouldn't you eat an eggplant......hmmmm), then you can substitute with zucchini or peppers. Don't let anything stop you from making this yummy sandwich, especially the pesto.

I used canned fire-roasted tomatoes for the pesto, but if you have abundance of good fresh tomatoes, then slow roasted tomatoes would taste excellent too. Pesto recipe is a fusion between Italian pesto and Indian chutney, you will see why from the ingredients and the method I used to make it. This is a great accompaniment to many Indian dishes like idlis, khichdi and even plain rice.


May 30, 2012

Eggplant-Tomato Kurma (Vankaya-Tomato Kurma)

I'm hosting this month's Dish it Out event on my blog this month and the 2 ingredients I chose are Eggplant & Tomatoes. Eggplant is my all time favorite veggie and that was the first thing that came to my mind when the event creator, Vardhini, asked me to choose ingredients for the event. I didn't want to miss this chance of making new dishes with  my favorite veggie. 

The last day to submit your entries is TOMORROW, MAY 31st. Please rush in your entries before the end of the day tomorrow. 

The first dish I tried is this delicious kurma. I found the recipe for Tomato Kurma in Mallika Badrinath's "100 Gravy varieties" cookbook and I added the eggplant to make this creamy gravy curry. Here's how I made this dish:

May 29, 2012

Broccoli Pulihora (Lemon Rice with Broccoli)

Peanuts are one of my son's favorite and he loves Lemon rice (pulihora) with lots of peanuts. So to make traditional pulihora a little more nutritious, I added some cooked broccoli. My son seemed to like it with some extra crunch from veggie straws.
Being from South India where rice is the staple food, rice features in almost all of the meals. Growing up, we used to have left over rice made into pulihora (lemon rice) or daddojanam (curd rice) or aloo bhath (potato rice) and the list goes on and on. 

This is my last dish under "Breakfast" theme for blogging marathon #16. As usual it was fun running the marathon and looking forward to the next one that is coming up in June in a new format. Big thanks to Valli for organizing these marathons and coming up with interesting and challenging themes.
 

May 28, 2012

Waffles with Chocolate Malted Syrup

Going back to work after a long weekend is quite an effort. Weekends always seem to be so short, but I'm happy that I got to do some cleaning and arranging things around the house and make some dishes for the blog. We also watched "Men In Black 3" in the theater, an evening show with our son for the first time. We took him to the afternoon shows since they are less crowded, but this time we took a chance. He slept after watching the previews and may be about 15minutes of the movie (oh. well......)

I was raking my mind on what breakfast to make for blogging marathon this morning and I asked my son if he wanted pancakes or waffles. He said he wanted chocolate waffles and added that he would help me make them too. 

A quick google search landed me on this recipe from Williams Sonoma, I had all the ingredients on hand except for semi-sweet chocolate, so I used a combo of unsweetened and milk chocolate. Waffles came out perfect and the chocolate sauce is to die for. I'm looking forward to use the sauce on ice-creams, pancakes, bananas,.....
I added half a measure of whole-wheat pastry flour and used Vanilla soy milk instead of regular milk.

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