Easy 10-Min Rasmalai | Diwali Sweets | Diwali Recipes

My mom-in-law makes a quick and easy rasmalai using milk powder. While that's great for days you don't have time to make the chenna from scratch, etc, there's another trick for making super easy rasmalai in 10 mins! This is perfect for festival days when you are making a variety of dishes and also have to cook your regular meals.

To make rasmalai from scratch: you need to split whole milk using a lemon, vinegar or curd, much like we make paneer at home. That cheese is then hung and squeezed dry, kneaded well, and shaped into balls which are then cooked in a milk base and soaked.

It's delicious and not as difficult as it is time-consuming but when you can get a similar result in 10 mins, I am not picking the longer route. I am just not that kinda girl!

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Paneer Pepper Masala | Pepper Paneer | Paneer Recipes

Except for the one time my sis shared her Blueberry Yogurt Muffins Recipe, I haven't really had guest posts in Edible Garden. I hadn't given much though to changing that fact either.

However, I have some really sweet readers, some of whom send me recipes that they think I will like. Recognising my love for paneer recipes, Vinitha Vasanth, a dear reader of mine who also actively engages in my Facebook page, sent me this recipe for Paneer Pepper Masala which she adapted from a pepper chicken recipe. She also attached a delicious-looking picture with a disclaimer that she is not good with food photography. Well, I beg to differ.

This looks pretty good, doesn't it?

I can literally smell the pepper and the masala mixed so harmoniously with the paneer. She shared this with me so I can try the recipe. I asked her if I can post her Paneer Pepper Masala recipe as it is on the site and she agreed. Thankfully! So here it is, from Vinitha and me to you all.

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Methi Leaves Yogurt Curry | Vendhaya Keerai Mor Kuzhambu Recipe

I love pretty much all forms of mor kuzhambu (spiced buttermilk curry), especially the Kerala-style moru kachiyathu. It's extremely simple to whip up and tastes great with rice and a spicy side dish.

Also check out the green mor kuzhambu with coriander leaves.

I also love cooking with methi leaves (fenugreek leaves) and the lovely aroma it gives to the final dish. So when I saw this rural Andhra mor kuzhambu (called Thonthana in telugu) in Cooking with Pedatha that uses dal in the mix along with greens and yogurt, I was totally hooked until I tried it.

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Jeera (Cumin) Moong Dal | Dal Recipes | 660 Curries

This is yet another super easy dal recipe from 660 Curries. There really isn't anything special or secret about the ingredients, yet following Raghavan's recipe lead to this great basic dal recipe that goes superbly with rotis or a simple pulao.

Being vegetarian (Amrith) and mostly vegetarian (me), lentils are an integral part of our meals and bringing in some variety always helps. This uses the same base (moong dal cooked to a mashed pulp) as the sweet and sour moong dal recipe but the taste is significantly different by altering a few of the ingredients.

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Instant Vegetable Noodles Recipe | Quick Snacks

In the interest of complete disclosure, let me tell you that this is just a fanci-fied Maggi noodles dish. During my childhood, Amma would make Maggi noodles once in a while but always stressed on the fact that it's.not.healthy. Especially the tastemaker masala that came with it which has MSG and for Indians, MSG is equivalent to cyanide in small doses. Who wants to feed that to their kids, right?

There are opposing views and different schools of thought on MSG (also knows as Aji No Moto after the brand that made it popular) but that's for another day. Let that not come in the way of us and this hot steaming plate of maggi noodles with vegetables.

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Sweet and Sour Moong Dal Tadka | 660 Curries

Towards the end of last year, I decided to cook my way through Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries. Then I decided to wake up and get a life. That project, if I'd gone through with it, would have killed me for sure. I did make over a dozen recipes from the book as a start and this simple sweet and sour moong dal tadka is one of my favourites which I've made repeatedly since the first time I tried it almost a year back.

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Ganesh Chaturthi | Vinayaka Chaturthi Recipes 2012

Modakam or Vella Kozhukkattai is one of our favourite snacks back home, especially for my brother and I. In fact, we love pretty much anything made with jaggery. Although we don't restrict modakam to Vinayaka Chaturthi, it's a great time to make yours if you haven't already or are craving some.

Here are some easy recipes for dishes you can make this year to celebrate Ganesh (Vinayaka) Chaturthi this year. Click on the image or the links below to get to the recipes.

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Suyam | Susiyan | Suzhiyam Recipe - Tamil Nadu Style

I wasn't aware of this version of Susiyan until MIL told me about it. The suzhiyam, or suhiyan as we call it, made in Kerala is very different with whole moong dal and jaggery for filling and using maida as an outer cover.

I had also heard of making poornam (filling) with cooked channa dal, coconut and jaggery but using the same filling as vella kozhukkattai (which we make for Ganesh Chaturthi or Vinayaka Chaturthi) was new to me.

So when she offered to make it one day, I jumped at the opportunity to learn this new way, probably the method followed in Tamil Nadu, of making susiyam.

There are a few variations too, you can check notes. Also, I am not claiming this to be authentic or THE method of making susiyan, so no yelling at me over this, ok? Ok!

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Lauki Kofta Curry Recipe | Lauki ke Kofte Curry | Step by Step

I love pretty much any kofta-based recipe and lauki kofta has been on my mind for ages now. Although lauki or bottle guard is quite easily available in Singapore, I'd never cooked with lauki (bottle gourd) before this. Since I really love any recipe with chow chow, I was positive this would be a good idea too. Decided to follow Sanjeev Kapoor's lauki kofta recipe as a base since he adds a small dot of tamarind in the middle of his koftas before frying. Interesting idea, eh?

Since the koftas are deep fried, I kept the gravy relatively simple yet creamy. Let them soak in the gravy for a bit and it tastes every better.

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Gokul Vegetarian Restaurant, Singapore | Restaurant Reviews

When Anu visited us for 2 days, she wanted to have good vegetarian Malay food in Singapore. I hadn't really looked around for asian vegetarian food in Singapore, we mostly just get Indian when we eat out or maybe Mexican or Italian. A quick search brought up Gokul Vegetarian Restaurant in Upper Dickson Road, near Little India, and boy, it was a treat!

Their menu is extensive, and when I say extensive, I mean extensive! They have Asian (Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Singaporean) vegetarian food and also North Indian and South Indian food, including starters. Everything is 100% vegetarian and the dishes don't even contain egg, onions or garlic.

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Kai Murukku | Raw Rice Murukku | Step by Step Diwali Snacks Recipes

Ah. Kai Murukku or Sakkiram, as we Kerala Reddiars call it, is one of those things that holds so many memories for me. This is one of those foods I associate with my maternal grand mom. Back when I was a kid, making Sakkiram was always an event. The rice would be carefully selected (my dad was a rice dealer after all), the process of soaking and drying and powdering carefully handled, the oil bought, the single-burner gas stove brought out and set on the kitchen floor, the largest steel plates brought out, washed, dried and oiled to be used as the base for the murukku, and the kitchen cleared out one day early afternoon for the murukku making to commence.

As I type this, I can visualise those humid Kerala evenings when the house would fill with the aroma of coconut oil and the sizzle of the sakkirams will reach us kids where we are playing or whiling away time doing pretty much nothing useful.

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