Food, Life and Photography
The best Restaurant-style Chicken Manchurian with Gravy that you can make at home in under 30 minutes! There’s Chinese food, and then there’s Indian Chinese, agreed? Spicy, no added MSG, just loads of flavour that relies on ingredients that you probably already have at home – this Chicken Manchurian comes together in one pot and is my slightly healthier version.
This Apple Cake made with powdered jaggery is moist, not very sweet, and makes for the perfect snacking cake!
Creamy, without any cream or roux! This recipe for Cream of Mushroom Soup makes use ingredients that you already have in your pantry and secret ingredient that makes it super healthy. Made extra simple in a pressure cooker!
Rich, buttery brioche that can pass-off as a bread-cake! Baked it for Papa Bear’s birthday with whatever I could find at home – used Amul butter, raisins soaked in Frooti and gondhoraj zest. It’s the perfect cake for a bread lover and great for the holidays when you can leave this at the counter to snack on all day long!
Rasmalai is an Indian dessert, and here I’ve adapted Melissa Clark’s recipe for Rasmalai Cake to make my version. It’s amazing how one bite of this cake will you feel like your are tucking into the richest, best ras malai you can ever find!
Ukdiche Modak are steamed, gluten free, sweet dumplings that are made on the occasion of Ganesh Utsav or the Ganpati festival in India. Here, you’ll find a step by step guide and tips for making these modaks that are made of rice flour and sweetened with jaggery. Of course, I had the luxury of using the stand mixer to knead this hot dough!
 Nankhatai are Indian shortbread cookies that are made with clarified butter or ghee instead of butter and get a rich flavour with the addition of chickpea flour or beasn. I make mine a tad bit more special with the addition of chocolate chunks and cardamom powder. These are eggless and are perfect festive cookies or desserts. They store well in an air tight container 
 Leftover chocolate cake gets a major makeover when you add some dark rum, raisins that have been soaked in rum (it’s all about rum, here) and coat it with some dark chocolate. For me, the ONLY rum for rum balls has to be Old Monk, and there’s a bit of condensed milk in there too!
 A one pot rice dish that is hearty, fragrant with spices full of vegetables – that’s Tehri or Taheri for you! My version is cooked in mustard oil which adds so much flavour; and a bunch of spices. This one pot rice dish hails from the Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and what I love about it is how you can make it your own by using your favourite vegetables, or leftover veggies from your refrigerator!
This weekend was a bit of a first for me, trying out live videos on Facebook and I want to give a big shout out to all of you for watching and chatting with me. I had never planned to do YouTube videos, the opportunity came my way and now I realize just how much I love shooting recipes. Live videos just takes things a notch higher and I feel the same sort of excitement doing these videos as I do while shooting recipes. If you’d like to see what I’ve been up to, head here to the Facebook page…