Simple Spicy Chicken Kuzhambhu/Chicken Curry

This is one of my hubby's favorite non vegetarian side dish. Sunday morning breakfast will usually be either chicken curry with hot idlis or dosa and chicken soup combo.. :) The traditional way of making this chicken kuzhambu needs roasting of onions, grinding and stuff like that. But when I am lazy to do all that, I use this quick version of it... ;) Just a can of hot Mexican tomato sauce would do the magic. My hubby doesn't know about this secret and he still thinks that I make the kuzhambu in the traditional manner.. :D

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Turkish Rice pudding - Sutlac

Every cuisine seems to have their version of rice pudding. One such Turkish version is the Sutlac, which is a light, creamy  and easier pudding to make. This Turkish pudding has two versions, one is the normal stove top version called Sutlac and other is baked pudding called Firin Sutlac. I have made the stove top version and it was really yummy.

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My first muffin - Blueberry Muffins

This is the first muffin, I baked at home. I have been wishing to make my own muffins for a longer time, but it just turned out right today.. :) I was really happy about, how my muffins turned out. I made blueberry muffins because those are my hubby's favorite. I made a very small batch of just 3 muffins, as I didn't want to take risk.. ;) But the muffins were so good that they were gone in few minutes. My 16 month old son really enjoyed it for his evening snack. I was fun watching him eat his muffin with those cite little hands.. :)

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Carrot Lemon rice - Spinach Lima Beans rice - Coconut rice

I had some left over rice cooked for yesterday's dinner. Didn't want to waste it and also I was not in a mood for long cooking hours. So thought of adding few veggies and some flavor to the left over rice and made it into a delicious colorful variety rice for our lunch. A plate of colorful variety rice will always be perfect with some raita, chips or appalam. I didn't want to make the usual lemon rice or puliyodharae. So just modified the usual stuff to add extra flavors and so came our lunch plate with Carrot lemon rice, spinach Lima bean rice, coconut rice. It was a perfect combo of tangy-spicy-rich rice dishes.

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Cucumber Mint Dosa

Are you in mood for a different dosa.. Thinking what to make for dinner without dosa batter.. Then here comes the easy yummy dosa that can be made in a jiffy. When ever I am out of my usual dosa/idli batter, I keep experimenting by combining all the dals to make a new dosa/adai. In that process, came my cucumber mint dosa which tasted really good and is a great fix for breakfast and dinner when we are short of regular dosa batter.

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Tomato Poori with Mushroom Potato Curry

It has been very long since we had pooris. I guess we had it sometime back in India.. :D My hubby usually don't like fried stuff and so I avoid making deep fried stuff. But today there was something that was making me of pooris.. I don't know why.. So I decided to make poori and mushroom curry for our dinner. Just thought of adding some tomato paste, few spices and ginger garlic paste and made a spicy tomato poori.

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Milagai Kootu/Chilly kootu

I had few chilly peppers left in my fridge after making the spicy bhajjis/fritters with them. These light green to yellowish colored peppers are usually refereed to as ' bajji milagai' in South India. That's these peppers are commonly used to make the spicy fritters, which is a must in all the fares and beaches in south India... :D  The spiciness of these peppers is little bit more than bell peppers.  I just thought of trying some kootu with the left over peppers. It turned out to be really good and my hubby enjoyed it with his kuzhambu rice.

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Turkey Cabbage Kheema Curry

I usually make the kheema curry whenever we buy turkey. But this time I tried some turkey pakodas and had some left over turkey meat in the freezer. This was not sufficient enough for our lunch. So I decided to add some filler to the meat and make it up for our lunch pate.. ;) So came the turkey cabbage kheema curry. Here I have used purple cabbage, but the recipe can be adapted with normal cabbage too.

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Cabbage Mullangi Poriyal/ Cabbage Radish poriyal

Thinking for simple side dish to go with sambar rice, kuzhambu sadam or even curd rice... Here comes the simple and delicious cabbage radish poriyal. I was just left out with some chopped cabbage and radish in my fridge. So I just grabbed them both and made a simple poriyal to go with the sambar rice.

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Urulaikilangu Yennai bathai/ Potato Fry

This is one of my hubby's favorite vegetarian side dish. He likes it with his vendakkai sambar. Sounds a perfect combo right.. It's my MIL's recipe and I don't make this often, as it needs to be cooked with really a huge amount of oil to get that yummy taste. The name itself says 'urulaikilangu yennai bathi' meaning potato slices soaked in oil. Hope you get the taste of the yummy, spicy potato slice fried in oil just from its name.. :)

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Steamed Eggless Banana Cake

I have read about the Chinese and Japanese steamed cakes. In a curiosity to taste them, I tried this steamed banana cake with the ripen banana I had in my fridge. I followed this original recipe and the cake turned out to be really soft and light. I would call it a healthy cake making used of very less fat and also less sugar. But next time when I make this cake, I am sure to increase the sugar and also add some flavoring extracts like vanilla or almond . We can also try adding some chocolate chips, nuts or raisins to make the cake taste rich.

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Simple Sundal

Thinking what to make for evening snack, I found some left over frozen peas, corn, black eye peas, carrots. I then decided to grab them all into a healthy delicious sundal. Sundal is one of the easiest and healthy snack that will make our evening tea time great.

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Spicy Tofu masala and Tofu Spring rolls

This simple tofu masala cooks in few minutes and is great to be enjoyed with chapathi, bread or rice. This masala  also serves as great stuffing for spring rolls, bondas or even dumplings. I made tofu spring rolls using this masala. It tasted great. My hubby really liked it and said that it was almost like egg poriyal or scrambled egg.

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Aviyal/ Mixed vegetable stew

This is simple and tasty mixed vegetable stew usually makes a good combo with adai or the pancakes made using multi-dals. It also goes well with sambar rice. The real taste of the aviyal is from the coconut oil used for seasoning. But I didn't have coconut oil and curry leaves here, instead I used ghee for seasoning and it tasted good. Except for the smell of coconut oil, the rest was same as the usual aviyal and we enjoyed it with adai.

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Almond Barley payasam/ Almond Barley Kheer

When thinking about the CWF- Barley event by Kiran of Sumadhura, this recipe came to my mind. Thought of adding the barley pearls to the payasam instead of the usual sago. In order to make it richer, I have added the ground almond powder. Barley together with the almonds in the milk turned out to be a great dessert.

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Simple Spicy Chilly Chicken (Dry without gravy)

This is my version of the Chinese chilly chicken. I have not deep fried the chicken and also have used skinless breast pieces. I would call it a healthier version of chilly chicken without compensating for the taste and flavor. It goes well with fried rice, noodles and pulavs.

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Fish bhajji/ Fried fish

This is my first fish recipe. Its a simple and delicious crispy fried fish that makes a great combo with sambar, rasam or curd rice. It also serves as a good starter by itself just with ketchup. I have used white pomfret fish which is commonly know as Vavval meenu in Tamil. This recipe can be used with any kind of fish and requires a  marination time of just 15 minutes.

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Instant Oats dosa - Tried and Tasted

Yesterday after getting back from shopping, I was in hurry to fix our dinner. I was just left with the fish curry made for our lunch.. :( No dosa batter too.. Then I decided to make the oats dosas, I bookmarked from Usha's Veginspirations sometime back. I just followed her original recipe and in few minutes yummy healthy oats dosas were ready on our dinner plates.

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Spinach Capsicum stir fry/ Keerai Capsicum poriyal

This is a simple and healthy side dish that could be made in a jiffy. It goes well with sambar rice, kuzhambu sadam or even curd rice. It also serves as a great rice by itself. Mix the poriyal with rice and add a spoon of ghee and serve with pappad... It will taste great and quiet nutritious too. The flavors from capsicum and garlic together makes the spinach to taste great.

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Drumstick bengal gram kootu/ Murugankai kadalai paruppu kootu

My hubby was asking me to make this kootu for a long time. But it's not usual to get drumstick here. Luckily we found some fresh drumsticks in the nearby Chinese store and my hubby made me to make this kootu for our lunch Yesterday. Its a very simple and healthy dish and the taste of the kootu comes from the flavor of drumsticks that are cooked slowly along with the dal.

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Drumstick Eggplant Prawn curry/ Murungakai kathirikai eral kuzhambhu

This is my mom's simple kuzhambhu recipe. I make this combo curry, when ever I could find good drumsticks here. The curry is dominated by the flavors of fresh ginger added to it. Adding raw mango to the curry will also make it taste great.

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