Tomato Soup - The Restaurant Style

Some recipes, we do not want to deviate even a bit from the restaurant or the traditional ones. Somehow, I do not prefer even enhancements in the recipes. Such recipes are also always on the top wanted list of our food choices. One such is the tomato soup, I have hunted for some recipe in so many, so many places but never came to my satisfaction. The below recipe was shared from one of my friends, who's friend is a chef. And he shares the tricks and hints to restaurant style flavors.

I'm always fond of Hot and sour soup, but somehow love to taste and enjoy the tomato soup every-time. In many times, I have tasted more of sugar in the soup. I do not like the sugar taste in anything but sweets.

Masala Papad Rolls

Papad snacks are so tasty and very yummy to eat. I used to prepare the masala papads as starter. I love to prepare this papad roll with your kind of stuffing. For kids, you can fill with paneer masala or veggie masalas. I generally make the masalas with potatoes.

Papads with potato masala are light to have and goes on great with the Urad dhal papad. I made this as a starter for my son's birthday party. Everyone loved the starter, unfortunately there was only one for each. They are simple and easy to prepare on a everyday basis.

Masala Idlis

Tingle your taste buds with our Traditional and Mouth watering South Indian Masala Idli Recipe.
A very tasty snack of left-over idlis. Masala Idli is quite easy to prepare.When the idli batter in the end gets hard to prepare idli, this should do wonders! Most of us in our house are dosa fans. So, only these kind of variations in the idli would attract everyone, and all ages!

Masala Vada

A very healthy snack made regularly in my mother's home. The dhal content is very good for our health. When my chithi makes it, we used to put away our work and just sit beside her in the kitchen and munch as and when the vada comes out from the hot oil. Hhhmmmm, so yummy, one more, one more, and it goes on!
And back to my home here, I have tried her version of the Vada and sundu comes to the kitchen to munch one after the other.
This time I stopped him right away, just for a simple silly reason. I have to click some nice pictures for my blog! He is just waiting for the session to get over and there he comes for a bite!
The recipe calls for,

You need:


Thoor Dhal - 2 cups
Channa Dhal - 1/4 cup
dry red chillies - 10 pieces
Ginger - 1/2 inch chopped finely
Curry leaves - Few
Onion finely chopped- 1/2 Cup (Optional, it is must for masala vada)
Salt - To taste
Hing - A Pinch
Oil - For Frying the Vadai,

Mix all the dhals and Soak the dhals in water for about 2 hours. As we do not want to make a paste. We want to coarsely grind to get nice crunchy tasty vada. After 2 hours filter the water and keep the dhal for about 30 mins.
Keep 3 table spoon of the dhal separately in a bowl and grind the remaining dhal with salt, red chillies and a pinch of hing without adding water. Add the above ground mixture with the 3 table spoon of the dhals in a bowl along with onion, ginger, and curry leaves. Heat the oil in a kadai and once the oil is hot, make small rounds of ground dhal and press it flat and fry it in the oil. Fry it in medium low flame.
Once the Vadai becomes reddish brown color take it out in a bowl with a paper towel to dry the oil and serve hot.
Serve hot with chutney of your choice.

Masala Dosa

A very simple recipe for any day when you would like to have something other than the routine dosa and the chutney. Some people stay away from Masala dosa as they have the potato filling as I do. But I tell you, it does not make you feel heavy as they are prepared at home. Some how we can never eat more than one or couple of masala dosas from hotel. And it is not like that when it is prepared at home.

You need

For the filling
Potato, medium sized - 4 nos
Onion, medium sized long thinly sliced - 1 to 2
Small green chilies, just split them at the center - 4-8 nos
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Salt to taste
Mustard - 1/4 tsp
Urad dal (black gram) - 1 tsp
Chana dal (yellow split peas) - 1 tsp
Curry leaves - 2 bunch
Coriander leaves or Cilantro - 2 springs
Ghee - 1 tbsp
Oil to saute

Heat oil in a skillet. Add mustard and allow it to sizzle. Now add urad and channa dhal and saute until golden color. Now add the chopped curry leaves and then the chillies. Add the onions and saute for about 2 -3 mins. Now add the mashed potato to it, with salt and turmeric. To the mixture add little water and cook until the masala is done. It should not be in gravy form. Finally add the chopped cilantro and a tsp of ghee.

To prepare Dosa
I always use idli batter to prepare dosa with a little addition of water so it is not as thick as the idli batter. And it comes out very well without sticking to the pan.
Take 1 laddle of the dosa batter. After the dosa pan is heated for a while, pour the batter and swirl to make a circle. Let the dosa be very thin and crisp. Crispy dosas taste great when filled with masala.
Cook in medium flame. Once it is done on one side, flip it to other side. Cook on low flame and remove from stove. Keep the masala filling in the center of the dosa and fold.

Serve hot with chutney of your choice.

Paneer Rolls

Almost a month since I sat at my blog. Not too busy though, but I have not been cooking anything different from my routine.

I have been wanting to prepare this paneer rolls recipe (adopted from Tarla dalal) for a quite long time, but found time to make them only now. pretty simple and very yummmy! You have try this once, and after that I'm sure you will want to prepare it again and again. 

For the wrapper
2 cups all purpose flour (or use wheat flour)
1 tbsp ghee/oil (optional)
Salt to taste

For the Stuffing
1 cup crumbled paneer
1/4 cup approx of finely chopped red onions
1-2 green chillies, chopped finely (or as per taste)
1/4 cup tomatoes, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped cabbage
1/4 tsp chopped green pepper
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
1-2 drops of lime juiced

few sprigs of cilantro, chopped
salt to taste (little since wrapper also has salt)

Add the flour and salt. To this add enough water to make a pliable dough. Knead well to make a smooth dough. Once done set aside. 

For the filling, in a saute pan, add oil and onion and saute for a min or until tender. Now add the ginger garlic paste and saute for 2 mins. Now add the other ingredients. Saute this untill the cabbage and other veggies are tender. 

Finally add lemon juice and saute for 2 mins then add cilantro springs. Finally add the paneer and saute for a minute.

Take the dough (divide into two or  three smaller pieces) and roll it out into a large rectangle. 

Cut them into smaller rectangles. 

I made some random rectangles. It does not matter much. 

As you can see, The thickness should be medium – not too thin nor too thick (too thin will break after u fill it up with stuffing, too thick will not make a crunchy snack, but will be more soft). 

Take one piece. Add the stuffing in shorter end of the rectangle making sure to leave few inches near the edges.

Roll it twice, bring the edges of the filling together (this is to prevent the filling from seeping out during frying).and then continue rolling until you reach the end. You can use water mixed with flour mixture to bind the dough. 

I applied flour water mixture at the end. And roll till the end. Now fry these up in hot oil. Serve hot with ketchup or chilli sauce of your choice.

A bite of the roll is just yummy. I do not want to empty it before sundar comes. And I always like to eat together with him beside me, it adds more taste to all my food! So just wrapping the rolls and storing in air tight containers.

Bread Pizza - Delight in every bite!

A lazy weekend morning begins quite late after friday midnight movie. None of us like to have a regular rice or even dosai for that matter! Of course we all want cook something healthy. We most of the time purchase only multi-grain bread without HFCS.  So, without anything different on this bread will be really mind-numbing. Bread pizza is a very popular snack, an instant gratification as a snack, for killing our craving for pizza.
I would be happy to have any snack at any time of the day! Nothing else gives such a contentment than a snack esp., on a weekend. When sundar wakes me up with a coffee in the morning, and milk for kutti sundari, anything in this world would go for this!
Bread Pizza is a slight heavy for a snack! Still, if it is going to be a weekend morning I would go for it. Less time consuming and less work intended.
Sundar was hurrying to his friends house shifting and I need to prepare something before that! There is no time for big baking or deep frying. And there were almost 8-9 loafs of bread. I have been looking for the bread pizza recipe all over but never felt a satisfying one! I have already made pizza, so lemme do this myself.

You need
8 slices of bread
3 tspn of marinara sauce for each bread
1 pack of shredded Mozzarella cheese
Capsicum cut into 1" squares (2-3 squares for each bread)
Onion sliced (as per taste)
1/2 cup pitted Black olives
Crushed red pepper to taste
salt to taste

On a baking tray, brush with olive oil. Place 4 breads, and apply marinara sauce lavishly, I used 3 spoonfull for 1 multi-grain bread and do this for all the breads. And now keep all the chopped veggies over the sauce.

Finally, add the shredded cheese, remember to use the packet of cheese to be used for 8 breads. If you add extra cheese, it might not get cooked well. Bake at 420F for about 10 to 15 mins. For Hasini, I added a slice of cheese after baking, and it almost melted over the pizza by the time she was about to eat.

Top with salt (we wanted to have little, as we used low fat shredded cheese), and crushed red pepper. Serve hot with tomato sauce.

I'm sending this recipe for the Kids delight even celebrating their 3rd anniversary