ShobisKitchen

Preparing lunch on a working day is quite challenging. Even more challenging is deciding on what to cook - isn't? Well, mint pulao is one of those recipes you can make easily on a weekday and pack it for lunch, that too for kids. You can have it with cauliflower pakora or masala vada or with pickle, fryums. Let's see what are the ingredients needed. Ingredients: 1 cup mint leaves 10-12 cashews 2 green chillies 1 bay leaf 1 cardamom 1-star anise (optional) 3 cloves 2 tbsp ghee or oil 1 cup basmati rice salt to taste 1 tsp ginger garlic paste 1 big onion, thinly sliced 1/4 cup chopped carrots 1/4 cup corn Steps: 1. Wash and soak the basmati rice in cold water for about 20 minutes. 2. In a heavy bottomed pan or a pressure cooker, add ghee or oil. Once ghee gets warm, add cloves, cardamom, star anise and bay leaf. Saute for 30 seconds. 4. Then add ginger-garlic paste. Saute till raw smell of ginger-garlic paste goes away. 5. Add thinly sliced...

Idly is one of the staple food in south India especially TamilNadu.  Idly is a rice cake made out of fermented rice and black gram batter. I recently moved to California, its been almost 6 months now. In India, I have idly/dosa for my breakfast. After moving here, i either have corn flakes or bread sandwich. On few days i prepare sprouts for breakfast. Over the period of 6 months we got bored of these 3 breakfast dishes and we ended up skipping our breakfast altogether which is not healthy at all. Meanwhile, i have put my hands at making idly/dosa with the rice i get at local stores. And even with sona masoori rice, the idly batter doesn't turn out well. It's always a failure attempt for me. The lesson i learnt from all my mistakes is "Rice really does matter" for idly batter consistnecy and a good idly/dosa. Hence i ordered idly rice from  walmart  and it worked well. Since then onwards we are relishing on idly, dosa, egg dosa, aapam...