a special treat for a special person What is ravioli? Its small pasta envelopes that contain a filling and is served with a sauce. We all are familiar with the savoury variety filled with meat, fish, cheese or vegetables and served with tomato, cheese or creamy sauce. Or just drizzled with loads of olive oil or melted butter. I am drooling as I love ravioli. For the February shhh cooking secretly challenge I was paired with Sathya Priya Karthik. The two ingredients she gave me were pasta and strawberry. When I read the two ingredients, I scratched my head and thought ‘not exactly a lovely combination for Valentine’s day’. The first thing that came to my mind was salad. Pasta salad with strawberries. But…
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Continue ReadingI love these secret ingredients Challenges come in our lives for a reason. They teach us, make us stronger and wiser. Some challenges can be pleasant and some very difficult. However we all have to face them and get through them. Our cooking challenges are not scary or difficult to face. They are fun and exciting. Every month I look forward to the shhh cooking secretly challenge. As soon as the participants are paired I eagerly wait not only to get my two secret ingredients but also to give my two ingredients. Unfortunately out of the 6 I have participated in so far, only one partner has cooked with the ingredients I gave to her. Not really complaining… they may have not cooked the dish…
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Continue ReadingLeave the innocent children alone Time and again we are facing with news and reports of cruelty towards innocent children. Forced labour, ill treatment, child trafficking, children soldiers and now the shootout at Peshawar. A few days ago a video went viral online showing a Ugandan maid force feeding a toddler, and when the poor child vomited, the maid kicked the child like a football, stepped on the fragile being and basically just went mad. The child is fine and the maid has got a jail sentence. All this was caught on camera which the maid probably had no idea that the parents had installed in their house. Today the world faces the news of innocent children shot at an army run school in Peshawar.…
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Continue Readingfull of vegetables The recipe for vegetable handvo has been in my recipe book (followers may recall that all my recipes since I started cooking, are jotted in a big diary given to me by my dad) even before I got married. My friend’s mum use to make this very often as a snack or as a meal. When Padmajha Sureshbabu of Seduce your tastebuds gave me corn and sesame seeds for the shhh cooking secretly challenge, I immediately thought of the vegetable handvo. Obviously there were so many other corn recipes popping up in my mind as I love corn, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to blog one of my written recipes. Before I proceed to the recipe, I must mention that Padmajha’s…
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Continue ReadingI have come a long way I remember whenever I would try out a new recipe on my own or with my friends or kaki, we would follow the recipe word to word. But that was when we were learning. Now its getting the main ingredients and the method correct and then the recipe turns into my way, my method etc. Now, I have the confidence to explore and find easier ways. Don’t get me wrong, certain recipes do have to be followed precisely. Can you imagine not adding baking powder or soda to the cake, over fermenting the bread dough, adding more liquid to the roti or paratha dough, adding more salt to the curry, etc etc. There are so many…
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Continue ReadingI missed my salads My dream holiday to Italy was worth ever penny. I cannot thank hubby dear enough for organizing the trip. It was the first time we booked the whole tour through Cosmos, and what a wonderful experience. Organized tours have advantages and disadvantages, but the advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages as age creeps up on us. We met people from different cultural backgrounds, different countries and maybe some may develop into friendship.During our daily briefings, everyone complained about having to get up really early, but next day everyone would be on the bus 5 minutes earlier all eager to discover Italy through the eyes of our ever smiling and friendly tour leader and our very capable and careful driver. Italy is all…
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Continue ReadingEVENT: SHHH COOKING SECRETLY RECIPE: HOMEMADE BOUNTY CHOCOLATE Homemade Bounty Chocolate, so easy to make, absolutely delicious. Maple Syrup and Vanilla flavoured soft moist coconut coated with dark or semi sweet chocolate. This Homemade Bounty Chocolate is so much better than ready made one as it is less sweet and one can add any flavouring of choice to the moist coconut centre. Most people love homemade chocolate and if gifted to them it is even more appreciated. I prefer making edible gifts for festivals, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. SHHH COOKING SECRETLY #2 I recently joined this awesome group where food bloggers are paired and they give each secret ingredients to cook with. This is my second post for Shhh Cooking Secretly since I’ve joined. My partner…
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Shhhh cooking secretly# 1 I joined this group of enthusiast bloggers just recently. The initiator of this group is Priya of Priya’s Versatile Recipes. She pairs members each month and they send each other two secret ingredients.We get a month to prepare the dish, be it a sweet or savoury one. The fun part is when fellow bloggers post the picture on the group’s facebook page and we have to try and guess the secret ingredients. Sometimes, the secret ingredients are obvious but most of the time very difficult to guess. The exciting part was waiting for the partner to give you the two ingredients. As soon as I got mine from Sandhya Ramakrishnan, broccoli and barley, the first thing that…
