mayurisjikoni

Kemcho? Avo maare gher. ( How are you? Welcome to my home)    March was when the Shhh Cooking Secretly group (started by Priya of Priya's Versatile Recipes ) ventured out to cook some Gujju (Gujarati) food. The general misconception is that Gujarati food is sweet. Yes we do use sugar and jaggery but it has to be a balance of both sweet and sour. Modern times with much health awareness, many Gujarati homes do not use sugar or jaggery in their daily cooking.     The land of Lions and Legends has countless varieties of dishes. As a Gujarati I can make out from which region the food has originated. For example kadhi made by Patel Community maybe so different in taste and texture from the one made by a Shah. Besides the slight variations, Gujaratis are so proud of their ever popular snacks. Some snacks prepared are steamed like dhokra , muthias , arvi na paan, khichdi to name a few. Khandvi batter is cooked with no oil. Oil is used to smear on the surface to spread ...

Happy Diwali    For most Gujaratis the Diwali celebrations began from yesterday with  Rama Ekadashi, whereby if you fast on this day, all your sins are forgiven and you attain salvation. However, in typical Gujarati style, fasting food or agyaras food is prepared. No grains or beans, onion, garlic, many vegetables are not allowed. However sabudana khichdi, moriyo, potatoes, etc are prepared.      Today is Vagh Baras or Vase Baras. On this day the cow and calf are worshipped. Vagh means debt and today all debts are cleared and new transactions are done in new ledger books after Labh Pancham. The word Vaak Baras is mispronounced as Vagh Baras. Vaak or Vani means  Goddess Saraswati, the one who blesses us with language and knowledge. On this day Goddess Saraswati is worshipped. It is believed that Goddess Lakshmi only comes to bless our homes if before we worship her, we worship Goddess Saraswati. One must worship Goddess Saraswati on this 12th dark day o...

Let's break bread internationally    What is bread? Bread is basically flour and water mixed together and then either baked, roasted or fried. Different parts of the world use different flours and different ingredients are added to make it soft, with crumbs, with flavor and to give it a required texture. Most part of the world considers some form of bread as their staple diet except for East Asia where the stable is rice and some African countries where the staple is cornmeal cooked into a porridge like consistency. We have the more famous brioche, baguettes, rye breads,naans, parathas to less heard of breads like dorayaki, kaya,lahoh. The list of different breads all over the world is endless.    For the month of September, our host Wendy who blogs at A Day in the Life on the Farm suggested we make International Breads, preferably from another country and not your own. Wendy thanks for the exciting theme. It was really diffic...

MEGA BLOGGING MARATHON -SEPT 2017 #80TH BLOGGING MARATHON THEME: PROTEIN RICH DISHES DAY:3    The whole world jokes about how Gujaratis need to carry their food wherever they travel  in the world. Some joke that one would probably find theplas, dokhlas, muthias, fafda, patra, etc even on the moon if a Gujju lived there. Well, okay I don't carry these things with me when I travel but I do take the handvo flour to Canada or Bangalore. This time round I forgot to carry some handvo flour  to Montreal. Soaking the rice and lentils overnight and then making handvo is easy. But coming to muthia, I required just a small amount and I really didn't want to go through the whole process of soaking the rice and dal, drying it and then grinding it. And also all I could think of is how to make muthias protein rich. Obviously the big bag of green mung or moong kept of beckoning me.    When I soaked the whole moong beans in warm water, I seriously had no id...