The weekend turned rainy, and we hardly saw any blue sky at all. By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around we were all in need of a little pick-me-up. That's when I remembered Raji of Talimpu's wonderful recipe a few days ago for Aratikaya Bajji Chat.

What could be better on a gloomy day than the golden color of bajji with the taste of sunshine inside, mixed with the freshness of the onion, chilli and coriander leaves that will explode in your mouth?

So, off to my bookmarks, pulled up the recipe and printed it out (if you haven't yet tried it, you should take a look at Raji's cool "Print" button that creates a copy perfect for printing), then downstairs to start the preparation.

Like many other favorite recipes, this one is simplicity itself, relying on the innate flavors of the ingredients and their interaction with one another to produce a great-tasting result.

The first part of the recipe calls for making little golden coins of plantain bajji. That is simple enough, and the bajji were good enough just like that that we were sorely tempted to forget the rest of the recipe and eat them right then!

We had a little bit of the batter left, and no more plantain, so we sliced thin discs of zucchini and made bajji of them as well. Those we did eat right away - after all, you can stand only so much temptation, don't you think?

Ingredients for the chatNext we filled the kitchen with the aroma of roasting peanuts - I lightly stomp them with mortar and pestle first to split them in half, but not so hard as to break them into little pieces. After letting them cool, I rubbed them lightly between my palms to loosen the skins, and went out onto the deck to blow them away. The old ways still work the best!

Mixing it in a large bowl with the chopped bajji, we could already tell it was going to be a winner. We added a few pinches of chat masala at this stage, just before squeezing over the lemon.

On the plateI didn't bother making tamarind chutney for this, but used a lovely store-bought tamarind-date chutney instead. What I did make was just a quick yogurt sauce: on 1.5 cups of yogurt I added half a teaspoon each of cumin powder and coriander powder, a quarter teaspoon each of black pepper and red chilli powder, and salt to taste. After stirring it up, we served it over the chat to complete the experience.

Simple and brilliant! Thanks Raji for the recipe.

Anapakayi KuraOkay, confession time: once upon a time I used to use my pressure cooker only for dhal and rajma, rice and soups; all the boiling-type stuff. You can stop laughing at me now; I know that you most likely have been using your pressure cookers constantly in wonderfully versatile ways.

But I have caught on; I might be a late bloomer, but I learn my lessons well. See, I was always scared that I would damage the cooker in some way, and when I saw others serving up dishes from the pressure cooker, I would be amazed, but too timid to ask for the technique.

And then one afternoon almost ten years ago, browsing through Odyssey in Adyar, I found a little book that changed my life. It was called Quick and Exciting Pressure Cooking (Vegetarian) by Anuradha Sinha, published by Nita Mehta books. The book captivated me with its possibilities, and I could not leave the shop without buying it. But as we all know our relationships with cook books can be difficult; if you start off on the wrong foot, no amount of making up can ever erase that first bad impression.

Just as well then that the very first recipe I tried from the book turned out to be an absolute winner! It was titled "Ghia Lajawab" which I have translated (honoring the spirit if not the letter) as "Incomparable Bottle Gourd." It remains a standby dish for me to this day, and over the years I have changed very little in the recipe. This makes a great addition to a thali, or it can be served as a lighter meal with some raita and chapatti.

Today I have four different pressure cookers including a Western one - where the weight doesn't give a whistle, but rather a long, continuous hiss - that is stuck in the back of the kitchen cupboard.
Whenever we (or anyone else we know) go for a visit to India, we always bring back some new rings (gaskets) and spare safety valves, trying to nurse the pots along. If one gets to a stage where we think it might no longer be safe, we retire it from pressure duty and use it as just an ordinary pot; they have served me so well, I can't go so far as to throw them out.

It definitely looks as if Autumn has well and truly set in, Fall has fallen. The trees around here have blushed into red, or have been gilded with bright golden foliage, and more than a few of those leaves are covering the ground below. The nip in the air is getting to be more pronounced, and the rain has become a regular fixture.

I like the cooler temperatures, and I love the rain, but I get nostalgic for the Summer when I think of all the ripe fruit that we could get fresh from the trees, not some hothouse variety - bred for durability in appearance rather than taste - from the supermarket.

As a rule we don't go to the Farmers Market (and we have several very good ones in this area); instead, we go directly to the farm.

This dessert is so simple that I am not sure that it can really be called a recipe.

• Take some ripe dessert peaches (these are Albertas), remove the stone and slice them in wedges.
• Lay them cut side up, and sprinkle a little sugar over them.
• Optionally sprinkle a little marsala (or sherry) over. If using the wine, sprinkle it before the sugar, or it will just wash it away.
• Let it macerate for at least 30 minutes, and then serve as a light, fresh dessert.

You can serve a little cream or even some french vanilla ice cream with this, but really, the tastes are so wonderful that it doesn't need anything else. It is a little sunshine on your plate and on your tongue.

I felt in the mood for something with a Persian taste. A colleague of mine brings these wonderful stuffed vegetables - hollowed out potatoes and zucchini etc. - that his wife has made to potlucks at work, and I started looking for a recipe online. The only recipes I could find though were non-veg, stuffed with meat and egg, while my colleague's wife makes it with a pure veg stuffing.

Playing around on the Persian cooking sites, I did find a couple of other interesting recipes though. One of them was very appealing because I could almost taste the flavors on my tongue just from reading it. The problem was that it asked for something found only in Middle Eastern stores, and I had no idea where to start looking. So, I decided to adapt the recipe into its current form as something we can easily make at home.

I found it very difficult to make this soup; now don't misunderstand me - physically everything is supremely easy, but I needed to enter into a different mindset to make this. As I cooked, I kept wanting to add coriander or cumin, a chilli or two, some lemon juice. I had to keep fighting myself to stick only to the flavors in the recipe. Every time I would taste it, thinking that I might need to add something that I am more used to cooking with, and every time the taste would be so wonderful that I would leave it as it is. In the end, the only thing I did add was some more mint, and salt.

The recipe is quick, easy to make, delicious and full of protein; it is just the ticket for the evening when the family is asking for "something different."

Note: The recipe calls for dried mint. The flavor is more intense than that of fresh mint, and it has another intriguing fragrance in the dried form. If you only have fresh, you will need about a cup to replace the dried herb.

Back when Angel Face was two years old (she just turned seven on Saturday!), she was in tears one day when picked up from daycare. One of the kids there had white-gold hair that shone in the light, and some truly remarkable large bright blue eyes. After some probing, it turned out that several people had come to visit the daycare that day, and every single one of them had made a big fuss about this boy's beautiful blue eyes. And Angel Face was crying her heart out because she only had "ugly brown eyes."

With a lot of gentle discussion, she was made to see that she was extra-special, because she had "chocolate eyes," and chocolate is the yummiest thing on earth; she ended up being thoroughly consoled by this. To this day, if you ask her what color her eyes are, she would say "chocolate" or perhaps "chocolate brown."

She also happens to be highly intrigued by black-eyed peas for the same reason, and so this recipe was prepared especially for her.

My husband selected the recipe while browsing through Jyothsna's wonderful blog, Curry Bazaar. It is a traditional Punjabi dish, and we played around a little with the cooking method for the pulses, and the spicing. Black-eyed peas are not a staple in our house, but it makes for a wonderful variation in the diet.

One thing that became clear is that the recipe scales really well; we used one cup to feed four people, serving it with rice, a bottle gourd curry, plain curds and some avakayi.

My husband has an eye for a bargain; at least that is his story.

He has been known in the past to buy things from these direct marketing TV ads; you know the type: "But that's not all. If you call in the next 17 minutes, we will give you another one, absolutely free - you just pay shipping and handling; that is a ****-dollar value for just three easy payments of $39.95!" When they arrive, he opens them once, and then store them away, never to be touched again.

Now when one of these ads come on the TV, I just change the channel very quickly!

A little while ago he came home lugging a 25 lb bag of onions. Twenty-fi-i-ive pounds! And since then we have been trying our best to find ways to use up these onions.

Everybody in the house have pretty hectic lives - there are some days when the only time we are all together under the same roof is when we are sleeping. On days like these, it is important to have an easy meal that is quick to prepare and filling. Now that the weather has turned colder, we often turn to thick and hearty soups to fit the bill.

This particular soup again comes from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World - I have previously referred to it when I made the Roasted Vegetable Soup. The more I use this book, the more I like it; the recipes tend to be straightforward and well-illustrated, and more importantly, they work.

We've made a few minor changes, mainly in the spicing and the cheese biscuits. Yes, this meal includes a recipe for really quick and delicious cheese biscuits - totally delicious.

Note: The parmesan cheese can be replaced by sharp cheddar instead.

Well, the blog's name is Hunger Pangs and hunger pangs are indeed what we were suffering last night. I had to work late last night, and 6 p.m. the phone rang at my desk.

Me (after checking the incoming number on caller ID): "Hello darling."
Him (sounding forlorn): "Still working, hmm? Any idea how long it will still be?"
Me (in a tired voice): "I still have a few things to finish up; hopefully not too long now."
Him (sounding desperately hungry): "Any ideas for supper?"

Which is when Rajitha came to the rescue! I had just commented on her blog earlier that day, and had been working on an idea in my head (inspired by her entry) on the Gujurati restaurants I've been to that had the best food (you'll have to wait a bit for that post, I am afraid) and so, while desperately thinking what to feed my hungry family, her entry on Dhal Banjari jumped into my mind.

Now, let me tell you, this is a wonderful recipe. I asked my husband to start pressure cooking the dhals, and to take out some frozen corn (that recipe will follow a bit later). This meant that by the time I reached home, the dhal was ready for the rest of the recipe - perfect timing.

We left out the cinnamon stick, and we used whole urad, so after everything simmered together at the end, I used my power stick sparingly - dipping it here and there into the dhal and "zirring" it for just a moment, resulting in a lovely mix of some creamy consistency with still lots of whole urad. Right before removing it from the heat I stirred in some cream (you could use a little rich curd as well) to ensure it was liquidy enough and to give a little richness to the dish.

It was finger-licking good - thanks Rajitha for the rescue and the recipe!

If you are wondering what it is that I served it with (remember the corn?), you will have to keep watching the blog.

So there I was on Friday night, thinking desperately what to serve the family for dinner at such a late stage, and the idea of Rajitha's Dhal Banjari presented itself (see previous post). That was a huge relief, but then the question of what to accompany it remained.

Now, ideally I would have rounded out the Rajasthani meal with makki ki roti, but coming home so late, I wasn't really looking forward to rolling roti. So I started free-associating, and ended up turning rava idli into corn idli.

I mean, why not?

The concept basically involved replacing some of the wheat rava with corn rava, and adding corn kernels to the mixture. The important thing to note here is that in the US, much of the corn rava (and corn flour) that is available is the so-called "hominy" kind. The adjective hominy is applied to corn when the bran and germ has been removed by soaking it in a lye solution. Many people (especially in the South) grow up eating it and loving the taste.

Personally, I cannot stand it, and when I buy any corn flour or corn rava, I check to make sure that it isn't hominy, or I just won't buy it.

For defrosting the corn (or any vegetables for that matter) I believe in placing it in a bowl and adding cold tap water to it (well, filtered water in India of course). After a few minutes, I might give it a little stir to encourage some of the clumps to break up and if it is a dense vegetable, I might change the water once.

But I never, never put hot water on the frozen vegetables - unless of course I intend to cook them that way. Counter-intuitively, cool water defrosts items much more quickly than hot (think of the inverse square law) and it doesn't spoil the texture of the food.

For this recipe you could replace the frozen corn with a can of whole corn kernels, well drained. Of course, if you are in the lucky position of having fresh corn on the cob to hand, slice off the kernels until you have a cup full, and then boil them quickly for three minutes and drain well.

Traditionally rava idli recipes call for baking soda (also known as bicarbonate of soda, soda bicarb etc.); this reacts with the acid in the curds and forms the leavening of the batter.

The problem with baking soda is that just a little too much (or a little unevenly mixed in) soda turns the mixture brown with a horrible brackish taste. So, I replace the baking soda with baking powder which is a much more stable and reliable mixture, needing only liquid as a catalyst since it has all the reagents in itself.

If you insist on using baking soda instead, and if you are better than I am in controlling it, this amount of rava and curds would usually take a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda.

The amount in this mixture was enough to make four plates of idli.

I am working on my entry for the Click! event after a pretty eventful weekend at our house (no pun intended).

Angel Face had her birthday two weekends ago, and all this weekend we have been celebrating Nini's birthday which actually happens today. (Happy Birthday, Nini!)

This meant there are actually loads of foodie pics waiting to be uploaded and matched with recipes.

For the moment though, I am putting up a picture of the roof of the historic Fairmont Vancouver Hotel at sunset, from our trip there at the end of August.

See you soon with a more food-related entry :-)

Are you any more decisive than me?

I brought these three ostrich eggs back with me from South Africa, and I have always been fascinated by their texture.

I took some pictures of them about three years ago, and when the Click! event was announced, I thought I would pick one of those. But in the meantime I got a new camera, and I wanted to play around with the eggs.

Big mistake. I messed around with it and took far too many pictures, and even after discarding the majority of them, I can't decide which one to submit - and remember, the event allows only one entry per person.

So, perhaps you can help me decide. (In the spirit of play, I am also including a couple of just-for-fun, whimsical pictures.)

Candidate 1

Candidate 2

Candidate 3

Candidate 4

Candidate 5

Candidate 6

See? I told you so! Here we are with summer still a warm memory, and already the fresh peaches are almost $5.00 a pound.

Frozen peaches are a better alternative than canned, because to my palate the canning process alters something fundamentally in the taste of the peaches. Don't get me wrong: canned peaches are good for some things like Curry Coronation Couscous Salad (remind me to give you the recipe for that sometime), but when you want that fresh peach taste sans the fresh peaches, frozen is the only way to go.

This week-end a cake was baked for Nini's birthday: a lovely bundt cake whose recipe will soon follow. But it is not the kind of cake that requires icing - in fact, it is the kind of cake that should not be iced.

In honor of the festive occasion we did however top individual slices with whipped cream and peaches.

To prepare the pieces, the frozen wedges were places on a plate and sprinkled (lightly - or not so lightly if you prefer) with sugar. As they defrosted and macerated at the same time, a lovely light syrup formed on the plate. The wedges were then sliced into half-inch slices, and the syrup was drizzled directly onto the naked cake slices.

We whipped a cup of cream with two tablespoons of confectioners sugar and an eighth of a teaspoon of orange essence; when forming stiff peaks, we folded in some orange zest. (The cake itself had lots of orange zest and a little orange essence. The flavors go remarkably well with the fresh peaches)

Then we piped whimsical dollops of cream onto the cake after dotting it with the peaches. I can tell you that the cake didn't last very long, and that Angel Face ended up with cream on her face and crumbs on her shirt!

I am submitting this to AFAM Peaches, hosted this month by Mansi.

PS: There is a special reason why we celebrate Nini's birthday with peaches. In the southern hemisphere, October is spring time; while growing up our father used to say that peach blossoms were Nini's birthday flower, because the two huge peach trees in the backyard would be covered in blossoms when she had her birthday.

We commemorated his 25th death anniversary last month, and I think it is memories like this that keeps him alive for us.

Well, I promised I would post the recipe for the Orange Bundt Cake that played the supporting role in my AFAM Peaches entry, and the foodblogging community did not let me forget that.

One of the weekly magazines in South Africa has a column where readers send in their favorite recipes. They run it through their test kitchen, and if it works, they publish it. After they have collected a good number of these, they publish them in a volume of "champion recipes." A few years ago they selected the best from those volumes, and published "the best of the champion recipes:" Die Beste van Huisgenoot se Wenresepte, edited by Annette Human.

The basis for this recipe comes from that book, but over the years we have adapted it to our tastes. It is basically a "never-fail" recipe, rich and moist without being too dense. Its appearance is rustic - which makes it beautiful to my eyes, just like the unevenness of kadhi is part of its appeal.

If you insist you can certainly ice it, but to me that is gilding the lily. Serve it as it is, or make a simple syrup to which you add the juice of an orange and a couple of drops of orange extract to pour over it, serve it with cream or ice cream, add some fruit or some fruit syrup - the options are many.

Note: The recipe scales really well. Our bundt pan is very large, so we double the recipe. After the first 30 minutes in the oven we check, and do 15 minutes more. That usually is enough, but if not, we add five minutes at a time.

Jugalbandi's Jai and Bee created a food blogging photo competition event extravaganza:

I needed a lot of help to decide which picture to submit, and I thank you all for your input. Taking the various opinions into account, and my personal leaning, I finally decided on candidate six.

But first I needed to post this little fella for Sandeepa (and everyone else who liked him). Yes, both caps belonged to Angel Face (she's just recently outgrown them), and I loved the touch of whimsy. It is a miracle that this picture got taken at all though, because my camera's focus markings were superimposed on the egg in such a way when looking through the lens that the lower semi-circle and the cross-shaped center appeared to be a smiley face on the egg. I was giggling so hard I couldn't keep the camera still, even with a tripod!

Finally, here is my entry for the event. I took it with my Olympus eVolt e-500 with Zuiko 14-45mm lens 1:3.5-5.6

No other filters apart from the UV filter which is fitted on all my lenses for purely protective purposes. In fact, I won't take a new lens out of the box before I have purchased a UV filter for it, and the very first thing I do upon opening the lens is fitting the filter. If the filter gets scratched, it costs a couple of bucks to replace; if the lens gets scratched it is several hundred dollars down the drain.

Saffron Trail's Nandita created an event which is one of the highlights of each month for me: The Weekend Breakfast Blogging (WBB) event. This month it is being hosted by Kanchana from Married to a Desi, and the theme for the sixteenth WBB is Omelettes.

I've had my share of omelettes in restaurants: some good, some so-so, some horrible. A well-made omelette is a thing to treasure, and it evokes a fervor among its devotees. A bad one is not worthy of the name.

Now, in many houses like ours people have started eating eggs while remaining veg; some will eat the egg when recognizably an egg (boiled, fried, omelette, quiche), while others will only eat it when unrecognizably inside something (pasta, cake etc). My husband is the latter - he cannot stand the smell or taste of egg, and so won't even eat the fried rice in Chinese restaurants in the US because of the scrambled egg they add.

For the rest of us, egg has proved to be an additional source of protein and something which widens our options on the menu when we eat out. When cooking an egg dish at home, we take care to prepare something separately for my husband.

I learned how to make the best omelettes in the world from my mother.

Now that might sound immodest, so be sure that I am not claiming the ones that I make are the best, just that I know what the technique is that is employed in making the best omelettes in the world :-)

• Establish how hungry each person is, and based on that take either two or three eggs per person (so either four or six eggs for two people).


• Take out two bowls. Take a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice, and swirl it around the larger bowl, then rinse thoroughly with water and dry with a paper towel; this gets rid of any residual oil that might be in the bowl.


• Separate the eggs, putting the whites in the bowl you prepared above, and the yolks in the other bowl.


• Whisk the egg whites first, having made sure that your whisk(s) are also free of any residual oil. It is ready when the whites form soft peaks that bend back on themselves.


• Now whisk the yolks until well-combined; you can do this with a fork.


• Get your frying pan ready: heat it with a teaspoon of oil or butter.


• Then fold in the yolks into the whites, combining well but not overworking it.


• Important: Do NOT add salt to this mixture. Salt in the egg will cause it to draw water while cooking, and you will end up with tough stringy egg-protein and grey water - not appealing at all.


• Ladle enough mixture onto the pan to cover the bottom, and after twenty seconds or so start to lightly jiggle/shake the pan. The omelette will start to come loose and slip around a little.


• From here on there are two options to complete the omelette:
  
  • The traditional way is to next score a line through the center of the omelette with your spatula, then flip over one half onto the other along the line (perhaps sprinkling some grated sharp cheddar first) and then sliding it onto a plate to be served.
    The result is what you see in the picture on the right - a fluffy soufflé of an omelette.
  
  
  • Personally, I like my eggs more well done (and Angel Face should not eat it runny until she is twelve at least), so for ours I slip the whole omelette flat onto a plate, then turn the pan upside down over the plate.
    With the plate pressed to the pan, I flip the whole thing over so that the omelette has been turned over, unbroken.
    Cook for a little bit on the other side until the egg is set through.
    Now sprinkle cheese and fold over, sliding onto a plate to serve.
    The main picture at the top of this entry shows the appearance when made in this manner.
  
  

I have to issue a warning though: after you have made omelettes this way, your palate might be spoilt for any other type, so proceed at your own risk.

Monsoon Diary

by Shoba Narayan

Like many of the Desi diaspora, the biggest culture shock she experienced once she reached the US was in terms of food. Suddenly ingredients that were ubiquitous back home were difficult to impossible to find (not to mention ludicrously expensive). When one does find one of the scarce Indian restaurants (at that time), they tended to be geared toward Western palates, bearing little or no relation to the dishes for which one yearned.

Small wonder then that Shoba Narayan's memories of home are intricately interwoven with the flavors and fragrances of Indian food; each anecdote includes a meal, a treat or a festive occasion, and culminates in a recipe relevant to the piece.

I have tried a few and they are "housewife" recipes: they work and produce a reliable result. Of course, for some of the items we prefer our own recipes, but then again we are not Tamilians, and our own yearning is for subtly different spice combinations.

Overall, this is a lovely book, and one that will be read for the tender memories, the precious photographs, and the delicious recipes.

Those of you living in the US would surely have encountered the standard American macaroni and cheese (or mac & cheese): the bright orange-colored gooey stuff only a kid would eat, coming either from a (blue) box with "cheese powder," or made with "processed cheese food" otherwise known as Velveeta.

Well, scrap everything you think you know about macaroni and cheese, and open wide for a helping of the real traditional version.

This is a dish with few ingredients, relying only on basic techniques, and yet it is guaranteed to become a firm family favorite on those cold winter evenings; truly a comfort food.

You start off with white sauce, which I had earlier shown you step by step with loads of pictures how to make easily and flawlessly using the microwave. (Just click on the link for the instructions).

• While waiting for the microwave to ping, bring a large pot of water to boil.
• Add salt and a teaspoon of oil to the boiling water, and then a cup of macaroni or other short pasta. Cook until tender and drain.
• When the white sauce is done, add salt to taste and half a teaspoon of black pepper powder and mix well.
  I also add a quarter teaspoon red chilli powder and a teaspoon of strong mustard powder.
• Add a cup of grated cheese to the white sauce (I prefer sharp cheddar) and stir until the cheese has melted and mixed in well.
• Now add the cooked macaroni and mix well.
• Spoon the mixture into an ovenproof dish (I use Corningware).
• Sprinkle more cheese over the top, and
• bake for 20 minutes at 350 F (180 C) until the cheese has melted and started to brown.

Note: You can use vegetarian cheese, eggless pasta and soy milk to make this completely vegan, or any combination of these to suit your requirements.

This is so easy, it can't really be called a recipe.

But first, let me set the scene. The nearest decent Indian grocery store is about 40 miles from where we live. Oh, there are a few within a couple of miles of our house, but they are small, poorly stocked, and ridiculously expensive, so we use them only for emergencies.

So, when we tackle the 80 mile round trip to the decent grocery stores, we normally stock up for quite a while, getting some frozen Indian vegetables along with the dhals, spices, tea (dh drinks only Taj Mahal), rice etc. They have lovely fresh vegies as well, but we have to be careful to take only as much as we can eat before it will spoil. The other "fresh" indulgence we have is buying some of the fresh batters - Idli Mavu, Dosa Mavu etc., packed in containers the size and shape of yoghurt containers. (I don't have a wet grinder, and my texture is never quite the same as the "real" thing).

Anyway, on the weekend, people were clamoring for something different, and so I thought to use these fresh batters in a different way. I took three parts idli batter to one part dosa batter, mixed it together and called it uthappam batter.

Chopped half an onion, two small tomatoes, and defrosted half a cup up frozen peas.

I made some full-size uthappam, but then started making a few of the smaller ones. They were so cute, and it had the advantage that everyone could get a hot one at the same time, that I just continued this way. And of course, Angel Face loved the idea of "mini-uthappam."

Don't you just hate it when you're eating a dosa or uthappam that by the time you get to the last half it is already cold? This way you can finish the whole thing before it starts cooling down.

Note: One thing I do with my uthappam that is not quite the usual thing: before I take them out of the pan I flip them over for a few seconds. That makes sure that it really is cooked all the way through, and the extra heat on the tomato, onion and peas make a big difference to their taste.

Srivalli made these wonderful rice parathas for the WBB Breakfast from Leftovers roundup. We knew as soon as we saw it that this would be a recipe we would like to try; a week or so later, we did indeed try it. And we absolutely loved it.

We did have a few challenges in trying to make it, the chief one being that I don't have cast-iron fingers. This meant that I wanted a batter that could be spread with the back of a spoon onto the hot tava, instead of pressed with my fingers. This meant adding water bit by bit until I got the right consistency. But making the batter that thin meant that the parathas lacked body, so I added a little baking powder to give it body and lightness.

Now it is all very well to fiddle once with a recipe; the big challenge is to see whether you can now follow your altered recipe from scratch and end up with satisfactory results. (In other words, the family was clamoring to have me make these again).

So this past weekend I did. And we loved the result. Since I am confessing here, I will tell you that first, we didn't have leftover rice, we made "leftover" rice; i.e. on Saturday night we cooked some rice with the express intent to use it on Sunday for these parathas! Second, I tripled the recipe, and there was barely enough to everyone's satisfaction.

What would I change? When I tripled the recipe, I didn't quite triple the onion. That was a mistake - the onion plays an important role in the taste of this dish, and you could even add more. If you like heat, you could also add sliced rings of green chilli to the batter.

An astute reader - Laavanya - asked with what I served the rice parathas; this provided the perfect segue for my next entry: a Gujurati style potato and chickpea curry.

Once I had made the decision to make the rice parathas, the question was indeed to find a good kura to accompany it. I knew that the family would be perfectly capable of eating the parathas by themselves - especially Angel Face, the little monkey that she is - but that would hardly be a proper meal.

The thing that popped into my head was Gujarati style channa masala; a new Indian restaurant opened here about a month ago, serving thalis for lunch and this is always one of the katoris on the thali. I started looking for a recipe, but didn't get very far, until I decided I would use a recipe for Bateta nu Shaak as a starting point.

From that point I just "winged" it, and we were ecstatic with the results. It does not taste quite like the one in the restaurant, and I am not making any claims that this is authentically Gujurati, but the taste was delicious, and the serving dish came back empty from the table.

Note: For the cup of cooked chickpeas in the recipe, I used one can of cooked chickpeas/garbanzo beans.

Appeal: If anyone has an authentic Gujurati recipe for kabuli channa in a very liquid gravy, I would appreciate it if you could point me towards it.

First off: to all of you in areas that are affected by the Southern Californian wildfires: our hearts go out to you, and we hope that you and those dear to you are safe.

The company I work for has a huge presence in the San Diego area, right in the middle of the worst hit county there. While the company buildings are fine, the site has been closed all week to allow employees to take care of their needs: a large percentage of them have been evacuated, and several have lost their houses.

We were watching the news with the scary flames, and Angel Face was sitting with eyes getting bigger and bigger. When they showed the maps, she asked where that was, and we told her.

Now, back in March I took Nini and Angel Face to Southern California when I had a business trip to San Diego. We left the weekend before, and went to Disneyland (all of our first times), and then at the end of the weekend, they flew back home, and I went down to San Diego for a couple of days of meetings.

I had planned the whole thing as a huge surprise: I only told maa chellelu three days in advance that we are going to California - and then only because she needed to pack for Angel Face and herself. When we got to the airport, Angel Face still thought that she was only there to see me off. Now luckily she doesn't know that only passengers are allowed past security, so she checked happily through security, and they came "with me" to the departure gate. It was only when the flight was called that she realized that they are coming to California with me - she was so excited she almost cried.

I had told neither of them that Disneyland was on the itinerary, so early on Saturday morning I just told them to get ready because we're going to go out and do some fun stuff. They only realized where we were going when they started seeing the flags. And then I couldn't get the little one to stop talking; she kept running through a litany of the things and people she might see and do.

Her day was utterly exhausting; by the time it was time for us to leave, she was limp, and still she wanted to stay - you know what I mean, don't you?

And since then, every writing assignment she has at school she wants to write about Disneyland.

To get back to the original story: when we told her where the fires were, she said "That's where Disneyland is!" We had to explain nicely that it was in that area, but that it was not Disneyland itself that was burning.

Now, every time the fires come on the news, she looks very sad and scared. Last night she was asking "Is it the castle that is burning? All the towers will make a big fire." At least we can tell her that in among the many sad and scary stories, a little bit of magic has stayed intact.

I knew a guy whose name was Joshua, known to one and all simply as Josh. Online his nickname was Rogan. Just that. And it was only the desis (and to some extent the limeys) who got the wonderful pun: Rogan Josh! I still happen to think that's the smartest online name I have ever seen, but then I'm funny that way.

Sra from When my Soup came Alive posted a recipe she'd found in a cookbook for Vegetarian Rogan Josh. And so in honor of that pun, I decided to try it.

Now, this is one recipe where we just couldn't manage to follow the instructions - or even the ingredients. We tweaked it so much, I doubt it could even be called the same dish, so go on over to Sra's blog and check out the original recipe at the link above.

It starts with the fact that we didn't have red pumpkin on hand; we did however have bottle gourd, and given the fact that they are all part of the same extended family, we swapped that in.

Next came the fact of the proportions of the spices: we had to lessen the chilli powder or Angel Face won't eat it, reduce the percentage of aniseed powder since the flavor is pretty dominant, and substitute powdered asafoetida for asafoetida water. And as a final deviation, we substantially increased the amount of yoghurt.

What can I say? Sometimes the inner tweaker just takes over. And it was delicious. The yoghurt really separates with the oil rimming the edges. Depending on your preference you can stir it back into the dish before serving, or try and serve the pieces while catching as little oil as possible. Remember though that the oil serves as a vehicle to disperse the spices, so a lot of the flavor of the dish is in there.

The accompaniment for this is obvious: Kashmiri pulao of course. What was that? You don't have a recipe for that? Oh my goodness, I just might have to scratch around a bit and see if I can dig up mine again...

The seasons were observed more on the calendar than in nature where I grew up; in summer it was green with some rain, in winter all the grass went yellow and it was chilly. Most of the trees were evergreen, so few were bare in winter, which also meant that there were few who got tender new leaves in spring. Sure, there were a a few blossoms around in spring, and there were a few bright leaves in autumn, but nothing too remarkable. And I had never seen snow where I lived.

And then I came to the US and fell in love with the seasons. For the first few years I was mostly in the midwest with the large swings; very hot and humid in the summers, foot upon foot of snow in the winter, stark bare trees that suddenly get a green fuzz at the first hint of spring to explode in a pastel dream of blossoms everywhere, and autumns where entire streets look aflame in hues of red and rust, orange and gold, yellow and blush.

We lived in the Bay area for a year, and found the weather too even, with very little to mark the passing of the seasons.

Now we are living in the Pacific Northwest, where the change of seasons is a little milder than the midwest; the heat is not as high in the summer, the cold is not as severe in winter, and we get a little snow once in a way, but we still have the brightly blossoming spring and the riotous colors of fall. In other words, the perfect combination!

And even though Washington is called the Evergreen state, there are plenty of deciduous trees
around to provide for spectacular autumns.

I don't know where this recipe came from! Maa chellelu Nini found it online about six weeks ago, but she copied and pasted it, and now it doesn't have any URL information - or other distinguishing characteristics - anywhere. It could have come from a blog, or from an Indian recipe site like bawarchi.com, or a generic recipe site like cooks.com. I have no idea.

If you recognize this recipe - either as your own or from somewhere else - please let me know. First and foremost I would like to give due credit, but secondly: this recipe is fantastic! I would like to know where it came from so we can cook more of their recipes.

The biggest change we made to this recipe was to use butternut squash instead of pumpkin because that's what we had on hand. It turned out deliciously; the combination of the natural sweetness of the butternut combined with the distinctive tastes of the coconut and the curry leaves created a lot of happy people around the table; not to mention the richness added by the cashews.