My cooking experiences .....

Since the time I have landed here most of my time goes on watching the idiot box & surfing...Here I do keep trying different stuff which is either a HIT or a Disaster....So I thought I would write about my cooking experiences.... A little background... I love cooking but it is mood specific & I m a health freak cook which means I would NOT be able to pour more of butter, oil or any kind of fats....

As per my Mummy seems I have helped her make roti or parantha since I was barely 10 yrs old.... Please dont misunderstand the above line as a self-praise, it was merely to emphasize my love for cooking... I even used to cook potato subzi with tomato sauce & bread as a kid and take it to school .... So yes I have loved cooking always and have loved to see people eat... I love when some people take interest in food and enjoy it thoroughly.. I have a few examples, my senior Mr. Kapil Kedar, my friends Saji, Snigdha, Jey, Murali, Ashish.... (people, this is a compliment and is definitely meant as one)

Ok now coming back to my title for this post...Here they are, the dishes I have cooked in the last couple of days and the way I feel about them....

Chhole...A Disaster.

Believe me, I had put in a lot of effort into this. Preparing lunch for your darling hubby on a monday morning coupled with the fact that there was no grinder to grind the onion & tomatoes was a pretty tough job... But  it did not taste even one percent of how it looks.... I dont know what went wrong but somehow all my hard labor was not justified... 

The learning : Dont cook more than u need... I had made a whole lot of it :( ... & International chick peas dont compare to Indian chick peas ;-)

Vegetable Noodles - Second disaster  :(

I took 5 full days to recover from the Chhole Disaster & jumped right into the next one on friday. By popular demand (Ofcourse theres no one else here to demand but Gomes) I made Chowmein. I am actually well appreciated for my Chowmein. It was even mentioned as better than a professionally cooked noodle from Mainland China, by my Brother In-law. But this time... at 10 in the night... a total disaster...

Horrible... Poor Gomes had to suffer with this as his dinner ....

Lesssons Learned : Taste & Measure soya sauce & vinegar esp when using a new brand...

Pani Poori - Super Hit

Finally something awesome. Thank god finally my husband had something good to eat and something he really liked too, Pani poori. BTW I just made the masala, Pani & Poori were ready made, that we got from the Market ;-). Although be aware that I have made the poori as well, once along with my sister during my Sister's wedding :).... Happy Happy Happy 

I AM the Custard Queen...

A lovely couple & their daughter ( Precisely Jey's Sis & Brother In-law & lovely Aashika) had been over for lunch this noon & guess what was dessert..... my very own, tried & tested, Custard ( ON DEMAND)... And here, in US, it comes out all the more tastier, with all the variety of Fruits that we can get..... Yummy Yummy yummy...... 

Lessons Learned : Just be humble & keep making it Yummier ...;-)

Dum Aloo - My Mumma style...

I have to tell u the story about this... This is the Dum aloo that is made every diwali by my Mom , My Cooking Queen, that we enjoy with Poori for dinner, right after the Diwali Puja... I dont know how, but my mom makes it with the exact same taste every year, take my word for it, and it is the BEST.... This morning I woke up not knowing what to cook for our guest, so I called my mom & asked her for THE recipe... I'm sure mine was nowhere close to Mom's signature taste, but it was very good..... Atleast my Husband says so :) ....

Paneer Masala - My "Star" Masi's recipes

In my life I'm blessed to be surrounded by awesome people who are also amazing cooks.. and in this list of sisters, aunts & friends, my Masi ( TARA MASI, rather Dr. Tara Dugar) takes first place, hands down... She is just an amazing cook who can cook or bake anything, from Mexican to Italian to Chinese to Indian, Mughlai .... Just about anything & everything and Pure Vegetarian ... She can turn ur dream dish to reality....:) And when I didnt know what to cook I got the recipe for this Paneer from her..... Even though I'm not a Big paneer Fan but still anything for the guest... Masi, sorry I didnt follow your recipe fully and ended up with an "almost" perfect dish.... this was purely cos of my Health conscious cooking (I didnt use as much oil as I should have :-( ...)

Lesson Learned: Follow the recipe to the word, esp when serving the guest....

Pulao... Yum...

Somehow I can never make Pulaos after making the rice separately cos it never gets cooked properly... it becomes sticky or it breaks while I mix in the other ingredients... Shankar (My friend) knows this when I had cooked for my whole team in Chennai & the rice became a disaster.... So I prefer to make it in the cooker directly with the veggies.. and this one, with my Mom's idea, came out great... Happy Happy Happy....

Poori --- Looks good ??? It tasted even better... :)

Happy Happy Happy... again

So now after this long post of mine if U r hungry please go and get yourself a glass of water, dont get tempted and have anything unhealthy ;) ... 

I hope I can achieve the same level of success in all the varied cuisines that I hope to cook. Now all I got to do, is get myself to cook the different dishes.... :-)

The week that went by....

Hmmmm even though I m jobless here I mean nothing BIG to do still I could not find time to write this post... This was due by this monday.... Anyway now that I m writing it , I m thinking back and revisiting my activities over the whole week that went by... Monday was very boring and tiring, just did not feel like getting up since the temperature here dips any time... Tuesday I was determined to not waste and go out, so there I went for my regular routine walks around our apartment....and made vegetable soup and bruschettas for dinner.. Was happy that it turned out well.... Wednesday & thursday went on some reading, and movie watching ....Here comes Friday and this is what I wanted to write about.... We invited Gome's old roomies for Dinner and I starting thinking what should be the menu....

Asked couple of friends... Interestingly I have friends who have real good culinary skills, so took some tips from them and I was glad to read couple of food blogs shared by my friend Anita who herself blogs http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/ . Thanks Anu for sharing those... Finally I made up my mind to make the following for dinner:

1. Dahi Dum Aloo
2. Mixed Vegetable dry
3. Thyme Paranthas
4. Sprout Salad
5 Custard (On Demand by Gomes ;) )


One of my friends dad had a surgery, so the morning went on calls, from parents to inlaws and to friends... Without having a hint of time it was 4 pm and I was wondering when would I start preparing for dinner since only custard was made by then....

One interesting thing I noticed from 4 pm to 6.30 pm I was done with everything without binging on which I normally do since there is not much to do for me....And I was happy...Sharing some pictures of the food that I cooked for the dinner...

Sprout Salad

Mixed Vegetable Dry

Dahi Dum Aloo 

Thyme Paranthas

Custard

 No wonder we had fun and the party went on till 11.30 in the night... Super tired and satisfied we hit bed... Weekend started with an awesome news.... :) .... followed by we eating at a restaurant called RAJNI ( Inspired by Rajnikanth - The super star) ummm.. The hot sambhar vada was wow.....and then we saw X -MEN first class....Sunday was just lazing around and watching Padaiyappa ( a Rajni Hit) and Chupke Chupke a superb comedy ....

Yeah this was all about my week......

My first week in America - The land of opportunities ( ;-) as called in the movie Flavours)

So finally after 3 and half months , now that I m writing I realise it is exactly this period of being away from Gomes I get to meet him.... here in US to be specific in JFK ( New York airport) ... The journey from India to US would be coming shortly in my next post ( I hope so) ... Oh god the feeling of seeing him after this long period cant explain in words... AWESOME...just a hug and it says it all.... no words just stare.... staring at each others eyes ... Ok ok... wont bore you with our eye to eye thing....
Next I knew we headed to the Parking lot... interestingly theres no Ground floor concept here... its called Level 1 ... So we headed in terminal 8 Parking lot and I saw our car.... Nice cherry red ... so we started on our way back from New York to New Jersey where I m living currently...
I was in America... For the last couple of years I always wanted to get here and work here.. dont know whats so great about it yet but yes I wanted to come and WORK here...

So we crossed the so called New York Skyline and also the streets but trust me I have not noticed them then cos I was just busy looking at him... The traffic was bad that day thats what Gomes says since it took us nearly 2 hrs to get back home.....So finally we arrived at Gateways @ Randolph thats our apartment... Now this place is a little hilly area, so we parked our car and I was super excited to see our home which till now I had seen just in Webcam... and realised that we have to drag the super duper heavy luggage which I have got after paying extra at the airlines from India.... Some how we pulled the suitcases to our first floor apartment and my house is beautiful... well ventilated and nice....

Interestingly till now I didnt feel tired or no signs of jetlag as well... So we got freshened up and were on our way to drop one of his Friend to the airport ... while on our way back we went to SUBJI MANDI (Its Indian Store) ... U get everything there right from Parachute oil to Ganthia and MDH masalas.... So shopped for some groceries.... Interestingly last weekend here was a long one Monday being the Memorial Day... So we shopped stuff and on our way back home I dozed off in the car... Came back home and had dinner... Trust  me when any one lives alone I would not mention Man or a Woman.. The fact is if either of them live alone in any part of the world they intend to cook less and eat more of Frozen stuff ... So here I m with my Fridge loaded with Frozen paranthas.. All kinds from Naan to Roti to Phulka everything.... So yes we had them since I was in no mood to cook that day....

Next day we went for some furniture shopping... The place we went IKEA was so huge that we went in at 12 pm and got out at 8 pm... This is a whole 8 hr shift that we did... But satisfied we came home....decorated the house, settled our stuff.....

Next day we went to Temple it was lovely rather such a wonderful feeling to just see god..... a sense of peace and happiness.... All idols are there from Venkateshwara to Shivan , Durga to Seeta and Hanuman... There was some big Kumbhabhishekham was going on so it was very crowded but still I loved it...

Next day we went and had lunch at Hotel Saravana Bhawan .... and its only now that my jetlag started showing its existence eveyrthing I ate was tasteless and I was so drowsy and felt pukish almost all the time... Its 10 days now and I m still figuring my taste buds out...

When Tuesday came only then I knew that all I have in hand is to do some walking and then watch TV endlessly and cook... This is pretty much what we did over the whole week..

As I mentioned earlier I wanted to WORK here... untill I get to do that I can just say I miss India.... Just tooo much..... Theres nothing better than My INDIA..... and more so I miss all my Family, In laws, Friends a lot....

Hope this week I would spend more interestingly and U guys too....