Beetroot Thoran/Beetroot Stir Fry ...step by step.

Beetroot stir-fry with fresh coconut a.k.a Beetroot Thoran.

Red beet or garden beet is cooked with coconut and green chilly....perfect combination with hot steaming rice.

A vegan side dish with rice.....a healthy vegetarian dish.

I make this thoran with the help of my food processor to mince the beets; you can also grate the beets or chop them with a knife....

Ingredients:
Beetroot: 1/2 kg or 2 medium size
Green chilly: 2 or 3.
Onion: 1/2 (or if using shallots 3 or 4).
Freshly grated coconut: About 3/4 cup.
Garlic: 2 cloves.
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp.
Coconut oil:1 tbsp.
Whole red chilly: 2, broken
Mustard seeds: 1/2 tsp.
Curry leaves.

Salt to taste.
Little water.


Method:

Cut the beets.

Then chop the coarsely.

Put into the food processor.

And give it a blitz.

Now add the coconut, green chilly, turmeric powder, salt, and onion...again blitz for a minute.

Heat 1 tbsp of coconut oil in a pan, add 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, curry leaves, and 2 whole red chillies..

Add the minced beets....add little water and scrape all into the pan. Cover and cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until done.

Healthy Beetroot Thoran is Ready......Serve With Rice.

P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

How To Increase Traffic To Your Food Blog.

Hi all, again a small diversion from recipes.

 This post is especially for bloggers who use point and shoot camera.

Few tips I learned to improve my traffic.

I had posted some of my experiences as a food blogger and today, I thought why not write about how I increase my traffic to this blog.

As you all know I take pictures with Nikon Point and Shoot Cam, and that I love to take step by step pictures; just to guide you, show you the whole process of my cooking.... the final outcome should be satisfying as it was for me, and to let you all know that cooking is easy. Taking step by step pictures can be tedious at times, sometimes my cam will be stained with that chocolate cake batter or the pizza dough     flour......I cook and take pictures myself except sometimes my kids lend a helping hand.

I take pictures using macro settings and during day time, mostly in the balcony or in the kitchen on top of my  washing machine....there is plenty of light on these two places....except on a cloudy day. I usually do not plan a photo shoot, it just happens.

Okay coming back to my traffic, I know foodgawker is a major traffic boost "IF" the picture gets accepted; sadly my pictures does not get throu, I have a whooping 83 rejections with just 9 approved, the same with tastespotting. I still submit pictures and get rejected....no issues...the option available is to change my P&S cam, but I still prefer P&S, ....so then I started looking for otherways to improve my traffic.

Once Dassana, mentioned about FB page; and I wondered why I did not utilize the existing page that I had created, so I started working on that page during mid August and the result was encouraging. Thank you dassana again and my FB followers...you guys inspired me.

Then I had a fair amount of twitter followers and get good traffic from there too.

During August my daily stats was somewhere around 1250 and this past week it increased to 2500 to 3000 that made me say WOW!. So I thought I would let you know how my traffic improved, this is basically for bloggers who use P&S camera.

I came to know about tumbler.com and www.findingvegan.com and submitted my pictures and link and traffic just flew in. Finding vegan is only for vegan recipes, the whole wheat coconut pancakes picture I submitted is bringing about 200 visitors per day...wow! Imagine that picture which was taken on the spur of the moment while I was making breakfast (without any preplanning) and does not have any chance of getting accepted in foodgawker or tastespotting or tastelogie or any of the big food pron sites....brought me a good amount of traffic from tumbler, facebook, twitter, and finding vegan.

If you are already using tumbler do add me also and lets connect on facebook and twitter too..

Other food pron sites where you might have a chance to get accepted are:

Dishfolio.
Dessert Stalking.
Savory Sights.
Kitchen Artistry.
FoodEpix.
Knapkins.


An Update: 26/09/12.
A visitor had commented about this site, foodpron.net. Just upload my pictures...do try that too.

Still if there are some more ways you know please leave a comment, I just shared what I have learned through this blog.

You might also like to read the Journey of a food blogger.

Have a great day..




P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Baked Vegetable Samosa (whole wheat).....Step by Step.

Baked samosa, yeah you heard me right BAKED SAMOSA!!

Baked samosa filled with vegetable goodness...its vegan...its healthy.

I have been trying to make healthy after-school-snacks for my kids....trying to limit the frying especially.

As a rule while making samosa I use only whole wheat flour.....even when I make pizza, I use whole wheat flour; though the pizza base wont be as soft and spongy as made with plain flour....I make my kids "like" whole wheat flour based pizza base and samosa (or whatever I make with whole wheat flour) insisting to them the health benefits of wheat flour, and now they does not seem to mind much.

Lets get cooking!

Ingredients:
(For the samosa dough)
Whole wheat flour/Atta: 1 cup.
Oil: 2 tbsp (I used rice bran oil).
Salt: 1/2 tsp.
Ajwain: 1/4 tsp. (optional).
Little water to knead.

(for the vegetable filling)
Vegetables chopped: 1 cup.
Onion: 1, sliced.
Ginger: A small piece, sliced or chopped.
Red chilly powder: 1 tsp ( I use Kashmiri Red chilly powder).
Turmeric powder: 1/4 tsp.
Garam masala: 1/2 tsp.
Dry Mango Powder/Amchur: 1/2 tsp.
Salt to taste.
Coriander/Cilantro leaves.
Oil: 1 tbsp.
Cumin seeds: 1/2 tsp.
Boiled and mashed potatoes: 250 gm.

Method:
In a pan heat 1 tbsp oil, add the cumin seeds, onion, ginger; fry for a min or two and add the red chilly powder, turmeric, and garam masala.

Add the chopped veggies to it......add little water cover and cook, (put some veggies like carrots, beans, capsicum, cabbage etc into food processor and blitz away).

Add the boiled and mashed potatoes....add the dry mango powder, mix well. Add coriander leaves....and allow it to cool.

For the samosa dough:

In a bowl take 1 cup of atta or whole wheat flour and add salt, ajwain seeds, and 2 tbsp of oil. Simply rub the oil into the flour till it resembles bread crumbs.

Add little water to knead it into a dough, the dough should not be very lose...should be on the harder side because I am not going to add any flour to it while rolling it out. After about 10 minutes rest you can grease your hand in oil and again knead it (sorry I forgot to take that pic)

Divide the dough into equal sized balls, rolled out into rounds and cut in the middle with your pizza cutter. I did not dust with flour, just flattened into small rounds....well this one was not actually round (my daughter's skills are getting better)...but it does not matter for samosa....still if you want to see a perfectly round one; the one I made for the spinach samosa.

Place a tablespoon of the veggie/potato mix on one half of the dough.

Simply cover it into a cone shape. Just press the sides with your finger tips...no need for water or dough paste to stick the sides...just press into the dough at the seams.

Grease a baking tray and line butter paper on it.....place the samosas on it and brush oil lightly on top.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree C for 15 minutes and then take out the baking tray and turn the samosa to the other-side and again brush oil and bake for another 15 min or until done....it is best eaten warm.

My kids loved this healthy samosa.

Hope you will enjoy baked samosa as much as I did.

TIP: If you are making with plain flour, the outer covering will be more crunchy and flaky.
Powered by eRecipe.com


One year ago: Whole wheat spinach samosa; fried version.
                      Whole Wheat Garlic Rolls...baked version.

P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Journey of a Food blogger.

Today I am taking a break from recipes a small deviation from my cooking to give you  some of the knowledge that I have gained through blogging for the last two years.

This journey which started on a whim one afternoon, summer of 2010 was actually to store and share some of my favorite recipes. Friends have been asking recipes and I started sending them through email. And one fine afternoon I stumbled on blogger and the rest is history. The very first post is my favorite chocolate recipe which was popular among my friends and relatives...little did I know that I am stumbling into the big world of blogging.

Blogging has become an addictive hobby and a place to share my passion for cooking. I was overjoyed when I got the first comment and then slowly without myself realizing my blog started to grow. For me cooking should be easy and fun, I cannot digest long list of ingredients in a recipe, so I try to make my cooking as easy as possible for my readers and friends....my mantra is cooking is EASY!

I have come to know a lot of people through this blog, Prathima, Aparna, Sharmi, Priya, Jay, Biny, Faseela, Shabs Binu, Radhika, Akila, Deepa, Tina..... and I have to mention Dassana, when I came to know that she was a web developer I wrote to her a few of my doubts and she replied back with tons of information....half of it I still have to understand....like the word "optimize your meta tag" and a lot more . Unknown persons suddenly becomes your friend....and try to help...that  connection is because we all share the same passion.

Initally when I started I did not know about picassa, (remember I graduated from college long before IT revolution) I used to upload each and every picture from my computer to blog.....that was time consuming. Then I found out about picasa and was happy that I could edit them after I upload them from my cam and even upload them to my blog from picasa...yes that was great!. You can download Google picasa from here. I did have some hiccups with picasa; like once when I saw too many of the already uploaded pictures, I thought why not delete some pics and save the space on picasa after all the pics that I needed are already uploaded in the blog and I promptly deleted some many of them....the result was that all the pictures automatically was deleted from the blog too....it was a hard lesson for me....imagine my patience....finally again I uploaded them back to its place...whew!

I thought after 1 year of blogging that, I have learned everything, but the truth is even now after 2.5 years of blogging I am learning something new each and everyday, some of you might have helped me in this travel; I thank each and everyone who has helped me in some way or the other.

If you have learned something new please share with me.......

P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Mushroom Pulav/Pulao/Biriyani

The best thing about mushrooms are; they are very low in calories, they have no cholesterol, and less than 1% of your daily value of sodium plus the vitamins and minerals.

They are often classified as a vegetable or a herb, but they are actually fungi. While there are over 14,000 mushrooms, only about 3,000 are edible, about 700 have known medicinal properties, and fewer than one percent are recognized as poisonous.

It is best to put mushroom in turmeric water before cooking; if the color of the mushroom changes it is not fit to use. Usually store-bought ones are safe.

I prepared this pulav with the recipe that I used for my easy vegetable pulav, only addition was 1 chopped tomato after the green paste. Then add the chopped mushrooms, they will shrink once they are cooked

Serve hot with papad and raita.

For Recipe Click Here.


P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Black Magic Cake.....step by step.

Hershey's Black Magic Cake....is one of my favorite cake.

I love it for its deep dark rich cocoa colour with a tinge of coffee flavor.....and so the name suits the cake.

The first time I baked them I didn't like it.....the recipe had asked for hot black coffee to be mixed with the flour....and I don't know why ...but the cake was a disaster.....and the recipe forgotten. Recently while I was browsing my recipe file I came across this and  thought why not try this again, but this time I used cooled black coffee and the cake came out.....YUM!...to be precise one of the best chocolate cake I have ever made.

After that I made this for my mother-in-law's birthday with choco-coffee icing and boy! that rocked the whole house!!

A piece of black magic cake which I baked for my MIL.

Then again .... chocolate magic loaf for my kids.

The cake is moist and dense with a tinge of coffee flavor.
You can top it with ice-creams, butter icing, or plain chocolate satin icing......

Lets get baking...

The recipe comes from Hershey's with some changes that I have made.

Ingredients:
All purpose flour: 2 cups.
Cocoa powder: 3/4 cup.
Sugar: 2 cups.
Salt: 1/2 tsp (omit if using salted butter).
Baking powder: 1 tsp.
Baking soda: 1 1/2 tsp.
Butter: 1 stick, melted.(100 gms)
Eggs: 2.
Buttermilk: 1 cup.(Use 1 tablespoon white vinegar plus milk to equal 1 cup)
Strong black coffee: 1 cup, cooled. (I added 2 tsp of instant coffee powder to 1 cup of warm water).
Vanilla: 1 tsp.

Method:
Sieve all the dry ingredients together and keep aside.

Melt butter.

Add sugar and give it small blitz.

Add eggs

Cream it with buttermilk for a minute.

Add the coffee and run the beater.

Now add the dry ingredients to this.

Beat on medium speed for 2 min scraping the sides. The batter will be very thin.

Pour batter evenly into prepared pan and bake at 180 degree C for 30 min or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

This one is frosted with chocolate and coffee butter icing.

And this one with satin chocolate icing.

P.S. Like my post?? Get the latest updates straight to your email! Subscribe NOW!

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner