Green Chicken

This is another one of our experimental recipes that turned out great! The gravy can be green or brown depending on how long you cook it, and whether you add fresh green chillies or red chilli powder. We don't know what else to name it, so we're open to suggestions :)

The whole thing took about an hour and a half. If you're quick at prep, it will take you less. We're super picky about peeling the garlic, and we want to wash the coriander at least 4 times, plus we hate chopping onions so we had to take frequent "my eyes are watering" breaks!

You will need:

500g chicken
2 tbsp ginger garlic paste

5 tbsp yoghurt

1 cup almonds, made into a thick paste

1/2 cup grated fresh coconut

2 cups of Coriander

3 Onions, sliced

6-7 cloves of garlic

1 inch of ginger

3 tsp of red chilli powder (or use green chillies, like we did)

1/2 tsp of turmeric

Chicken masala (any brand is fine. The one we used had the following ingredients: coriander, chilli, garlic, fennel, cumin, star anise, black cardamom, shahi jeera, cinnamon, poppy seeds, dry fenugreek leaves, dry mint leaves, black pepper, clove, bay leaf, nutmeg)

Oil
Lemon juice (optional)

Salt to taste

Method:

1) Marinate the chicken in ginger garlic paste and yoghurt.

2) Meanwhile stir fry onion and coconut in oil until golden brown. Let it cool. Then make a paste in the food processor/mixer along with coriander, ginger and garlic. You will need to add water in small increments.

3) Fry the the above paste and the almond paste in oil until fragrant.

4) Add the marinated chicken.

5) Add chilli powder, turmeric, chicken masala and salt.

6) Stir and simmer for five minutes.

7) Add hot water and let simmer until the chicken is cooked. You can add the water until the gravy is the consistency of your liking. We prefer a thicker gravy.

Serve hot! :)



Tips:

You can use cashews if you don't have almonds.

You can add mint leaves for a variation of the recipe.

No-yeast Cinnamon Rolls

Okay, so Snigdha and I share a weakness for certain ingredients. Cinnamon is our favourite when it comes to baking/desserts. Snigdha is so gaga over cinnamon, that she did a mini-version of the Cinnamon Challenge without even realising it. No, really. In fact, we went a bit overboard with this recipe too, but we have a fix for that so no worries!

Cinnamon rolls are usually made with yeast but I know a lot of people (including me) are too impatient to wait for the dough to rise. So this recipe is brought to you by...the magical properties of baking powder! It's not perfect because the yeast makes a more spongy roll, but hey, it's delicious!

We'd both been craving cinnamon rolls for months (months!) but there isn't any place around that makes it. I finally looked it up and, honestly, if I'd known it was so easy, we would have made this ages
ago.

Healthy Date and Almond Bites

The other day my sister challenged me to make something for her mid-morning snack. These were her conditions:

1. It should be nutritious. 

2. It should be small enough to politely eat in office. 

3. It should be delicious, because she was sick of the roasted peanuts and sprouts and other foods that are typically recommended as healthy snacks. 

4. It should be relatively easy, in case she wanted to make it herself later.

With these conditions in mind, I scoured the internet for recipes. One of Tarla Dalal's recipes stood out to me - Date and Almond Balls. While simple enough, it tasted of just dates, as they overpower everything else.

So this is my slightly altered and renamed recipe and it's full of iron, vitamins, antioxidants, minerals and dietary fibre. Yayyy for your immunity and haemoglobin! And yes, my sister was very happy. :)

5 Minute Microwave Cake!

Tanvi and I both LOVE instant food. Any delicious recipe that gets done within 15 mins is literally close to our hearts. Microwave mug cakes are a blessing from heaven!

Sometimes you just crave chocolate. But a bar of chocolate is too sweet or too bitter. And chocolate milk is just not what you want. You want chocolate cake and you want it now! So what do you do?

You make a microwave cake! Yes there are a lot of recipes online for the same. But trust me, this one is tried and tested for perfection. Oh so rich and heart warming (I swear, it literally does)!

A warm cup of rich choco awesomeness!

This recipe takes 5 minutes in total!

Pancakes/Crepes

Pancakes for breakfast! Pancakes for lunch! Pancakes for dinner! Pancakes for midnight snacks! Yea yea yea! I'm addicted to pancakes and crepes! I don't think I can get enough of these guys *sigh

No wonder they have a day dedicated to pancakes! But I guess its Happy Pancake Day for me every day! Hail Pancake!

I still remember, the first time I ever made Pancakes, Tanvi happened to be around. We were both so excited over the achievement that we didn't really care about how they were a tab bit salty. Instead we sent a couple of vanilla ice cream scoops over them and ah! We were twinkly eyed for the next several minutes.

They're absolutely easy to make, literally take about 5 mins. And ah! Such comfort food. Makes your insides all happy :D

Crepes with honey strawberries and bananas and blueberries! Yum right?

Pizza Sauce

Who loves pizza? Everyone does! And we love going out to grab some. But then there are days when you just feel enthusiastic enough to custom make some for yourself with your favourite toppings, jussst the way you like it!

This sauce is brilliant and crazy versatile, goes well as anything- pizza sauce, pasta sauce, use it as the base for open cheese toast, eat it with potato chips, fries, the list just goes on!

So make this yummy sauce in bulk and store it in your refrigerator, scoop out a spoonful and put it to good use as and when you be starvinggg!

So lets just get straight to it!

Our oblong rectangular pizza, all set to get baked!

Pizza Base

Who loves pizza? Everyone does! And we love going out to grab some. But then there are days when you just feel enthusiastic enough to custom make some for yourself with your favourite toppings, jussst the way you like it!

So let's just get straight to it!
[For our delicious pizza sauce recipe check: Pizza Sauce]

Teriyaki chicken stir fry (includes recipe for sauce)

This is a recipe I made up after buying random ingredients from the supermarket with no idea of what could be done with them. A friend casually mentioned she was making stir fry and so I decided to do the same. I made this as a main meal but it could be a starter if you want!

So bear in mind this is an improvised recipe which came out REALLY well on the first try itself. And I'd never made stir fry before either. I know, it's shameful. The point is, this is easy, especially if you have beginner's luck. 

So I used teriyaki sauce (here's my recipe) and boneless chicken breast which are the absolute essentials. The rest are really up to you. You can use peppers like I did, or mushrooms, or fried peanuts and/or cashews, shredded cabbage, etc. 

Quick and Easy Teriyaki Sauce

Okay so yesterday I was craving this particular kind of chicken stir-fry I'd made while studying abroad, and the main ingredient was teriyaki sauce. Unfortunately, none of the shops around here (you know, regular grocery stores) have even heard of teriyaki sauce. The shopkeepers insisted that I meant to ask for soy sauce/soya sauce, and was simply confused.  

So I caved and bought some soy sauce, and decided to make my own teriyaki sauce at home! Now traditionally it's made with either mirin or sake, but after the teriyaki sauce-finding debacle I was quite certain that neither of these ingredients were an option.  

This particular recipe has super-convenient ingredients and makes a wonderful sauce which can be used for stir-fry or barbecue.

Now I realise I used a dark saucepan for a dark sauce and so the photo is really dark, but just trust me on this. 

Any flavoured Muffins :D

For the longest time I had this misconception that I couldn't bake or I'd just be baaad at it. I think it was mostly because baking sounded like this tedious, patience testing process. Okay, probably I was being plain lazy!

So one day (only due to this uncontainable craving of course), I thought of baking myself some muffins. I looked up a couple of recipes online and mixed them up according to my convenience and availability of ingredients and voila!

Well that's the story of how I took my first few steps towards baking! Big leap I must say.

Microwave Mug Cake with a Ginger Latte twist

Despite our love of baking, sometimes Snigdha and I are just too lazy to wait for dessert and need a quick sugar fix. One such chilled out evening, we were watching a rerun of Friends in which Monica was baking.

I'm extremely impressionable when it comes to TV food (The Big Bang Theory is evil with all their pizza and Chinese) so I had an instant craving for cake. Meanwhile, Snigdha decided she wanted some sort of coffee. And in a fit of inspiration, the Ginger Latte microwave mug cake was born. Took all of 10 minutes total, and was really tasty! Plus it was quick, which was more important at that point of time.

It also smells AMAZING, which you'll find out soon enough (I'm estimating 10 minutes after you read this recipe).

Basic salad with a mindblowing dressing!

Trying to go healthy? This has got to be the MOST delicious option for you.

The salad before adding the dressing and mayonnaise

Made with easily available ingredients. So lets go!