mayurisjikoni

What is Indo Chinese?     The 37th #FoodieMonday#bloghop theme is #Indo-Chinese. What is Indo-Chinese? Indo-Chinese dishes feature in most Indian restaurants that serve fast food, Indian cuisine and you will find it as street food too. Indo-Chinese is one of the most favourite cuisine for Indians. The Indo Chinese mania has spread as far as America, Europe, Australia, Africa, basically to all the the continents. Basically its Chinese food with Indian flavours and ingredients that are popularly available in India. It is nothing like the authentic Chinese food that uses bok choy, choi sum, watercress, chinese broccoli,chinese water spinach, chinese amaranth, napa cabbage, ji cai, tofu, Sichuan pepper. Indo-Chinese cuisine uses bell pepper, cabbage, corn, baby corn, carrots,cauliflower etc. Indo-Chinese cuisine uses sweet and sour sauce, oyster, sauce, soy sauce, black bean sauce, hoisin sauce, szechwan and manchurian sauce just to name a few.   How was India introduced to t...

Save our Planet     My hubby dear has his breakfast pretty early but I prefer to have it after I have bathed and done my pooja. While having breakfast I usually watch the news channels, catch up with the whatsapp messages and also make phone calls that I have to for the day... call for the gas cylinder, social calls, whatever needs attention for that day. Anyway what really caught my attention was the news that in some Scottish stores the use of plastic bags has dropped by 90% since they introduced the 5p charge for bags. 500 billion to a trillion bags are used every year by the world. Without thinking we gather several bags when we go shopping and usually just throw them away in the dustbin. Stop and think what happens to those bags you have just thrown. It fills up the landfill sites. This land could be put to better use. Plastic finds its way to the ocean and eventually finds its way into the stomachs of the marine life, killing them. Plastic bags are found at the country s...

Food for the soul    Good books, good music and good movies are like good food for the soul. Some make us cry, some make us laugh, some stir our hearts to the core and some make us thankful for the good things God provides us with in life. Some movies make you appreciate the talents of others, be it singing, dancing or art. This lazy Sunday, after a meal of thin crust pizza and strawberry gelato,(at the famous Yuls/Aquadrome) hubby and I watched the movie 'Step up Revolution - We are The Mob " on telly. Its amazing how dancers are able to control every muscle in their body to perform a robotic dance, or the women appear to flit around like butterflies performing a contemporary routine or the dancers are so agile and acrobatic while performing hip hop.  Getting a social or political message across through dance is like a peaceful revolution. I enjoyed watching the movie and forgot about blogging for a over an hour. Watch the movie, you will surely love it. And of course wh...

crunchy and healthy  It has been a long time since I have made stir fried vegetables at home. It was a common request by my father in law to make some of it along with fried rice and spring rolls. A visit to one of the greengrocers in Nairobi for just strawberries and I nearly bought the whole shop. Fresh, crunchy vegetables and the first thing that came to my mind was stir fry vegetables. I made some noodles to go along with it as my hubby loves noodles. Any combination of vegetables can be used for stir fries and its quick and healthy. Some Chinese restaurants in Kenya serve chinese dishes loaded with cornflour. They presume that a thick sauce with loads of cornflour makes the dish appealing. I hate the cornflour taste. Some restaurants charge the earth for a dish and use loads of cabbage. I would recommend Bangkok Restaurant to anyone visiting Nairobi. They are the best. The vegetables are crispy, fresh and tasty. None of the dishes are overly spiced. Till you can reach a nice C...

The best things in life are free  Recently a good friend of ours shared the above picture on Facebook. I had to share it with my blog followers for many reasons. The first being that many times during the day we forget about the best things in life and concentrate too much on our other meaningless, frustrating and stress giving issues. As soon as I saw the picture, I thought about it and it dawned on me that I am truly blessed. This made me instantly forget a harrowing and frustrating incident that I went through yesterday. It was an eye opener for me as it showed how threatening, menacing, mean and arrogant some people can get about the position they hold be it in the society, in a company, the government or any work place. Looking at the above picture and the thoughts that followed made me forget the humiliation and look forward in life. Hugs: I get plenty of that from hubby dear and from my children whenever we are together. Hugs from my dad, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, co...

yummylicious snack I had sesame honey chilli potatoes for the first time at a food court in one of the malls in Bangalore. it was so delicious and yummy and I was baffled that potatoes too can be made into a yummy Indo-Chinese snack. Paneer, tofu, cauliflower, mushrooms, mixed vegetables, baby corn are all used regularly but potatoes.. that's surprising. However, nowadays its not new for most indo-chinese restaurants to use potatoes as a starter or for a main course. I have made this dish a number of times and never get fed up of it. I have tried both the versions, frying the potatoes and also shallow frying them in little oil. Both taste equally good, but the stir fried ones are a bit soft and the fried ones more crunchier. I love using baby potatoes whenever they are in season. SESAME HONEY CHILLI POTATOES 4 servings 500g potatoes (use either normal or baby potatoes) For the coating: 1 tbsp garlic paste 1 tsp red chilli powder 2 tbsp tomato sauce (ketchup) ½-¾ tsp salt 2 tbsp cor...

very nutritious We are back to soups for dinner. Besides making soups that have already been blogged I am always trying to make new soups. I hate repeating any of the dishes within a week. Call it being spoilt for choice or having time on my hands or whatever. I love cooking and new recipes excite me. For a very long time I have been meaning to try out a simple and quick sweetcorn and mushroom soup. Finally the day came. I made the soup  last night for dinner. Ajay loved it (remember he is my main critic). There have been recipes that he has rejected completely e.g. my tomato bread! When I ask him what is wrong with the end result, he cannot pin point exactly but just says either the taste is wrong, or the texture is not proper or the combination of spices too overpowering or bland. I have to figure it out. So still working on the tomato bread. So coming back to the soup, when he sipped the first spoonful and said yummy, I was itching to blog the recipe. Unfortunately, our internet...