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Appreciation post : Songs of the River Ganga

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  This is an appreciation post for the travel documentary Songs of the River Ganga . It is not a review, it is just a record of what I liked about the web series Out of the blue, a friend messaged, “ Watch Songs of the River on Disney Hotstar”. Usually her recommendations are good, so I made a mental note of that. But then I did not have a subscription. “You won’t need one”, she said. It was free to watch. A couple of days on, I clicked the trailer.  The trailer featured Shantanu Moitra.“The music director of Parineeta”, I noted.  He went on a cycling expedition. Interesting!  Few thousand kms . Wow!  From Gangotri to Gangasagar. Very interesting!  I decided it was worth giving it a try. Episode length - 45 min. Will definitely need to set aside time for this. After all these mental notes, I made time and started watching. From the first episode itself, I realised that the tale is special. It is genuine; it is an unhindered sharing of emotions and experience. I will indeed accompany Sh
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Recipe : Sfouf (जेव्हा Lebanese लोक रवयाचा केक करतात तेव्हा त्याला Sfouf म्हणतात!)

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The way I hit upon this recipe is a bit weird. I was actually looking for the recipe of an extra smooth hummus (Which i have never been able to make to perfection you know!). Then once you hit upon those Mediterranean foods, you see so many things!!! I saw "sfouf" and I thought the name was so interesting! Then I looked up ingreients: Semolina or rava, wow!! Then i read further, and it had no egg!!!!! (That means no beating ;) ) Then I searched more for Sfouf  and I found hundreds of recipes there. Then I remember I had preserved one Femina Cookbook issue from 2010 which my sister in law had gifted me. I vaguely remembered having seen a Lebanese dessert in that.And Viola! Sfouf it was. Actually as per people on the Internet, this is a tea time accompaniment. I would also prefer it tea time, though nothing hurts if you serve this as dessert! I decided to stick with the Femina recipe. But it had one catch. The chef, Manu Chandra had used weights and mililiters f
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Recipe : Whole wheat bread

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Taking my baking experiments furthur, i decided to try the humble loaf bread. Simple, plain bread. I always suspected that bread available at stores had fair amount of refined flour though they also had whole wheat flour. Digging up the internet for many whole wheat bread recipes revealed the same thing. Then I thought of venturing all by myself, with a little help from the internet! The starting point was our plain old chapati atta. The kind I get milled if I happen to be in Pune, or if I happen to buy readymade, i buy Aashirwad or pillsbury You can also use the multigrain atta. So what i wished to try was the atta mixture we use for chapati, plus the yeast! And that is exactly what I tried! A note on yeast. There are so many brands of yeast available, and different types too. So far with my limited baking, i have bought sachets of instant yeast. This is different from active dry yeast. I have put the procedure of the yeast I use. I suggest while adapting this recipe to your needs, r
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Raw Banana and brinjal curry in coconut milk

Ingredients Raw bananas (ash plantains)  - 2 medium (about 6 inches in length) Brinjals, purple, long slender ones - 2 medium size. (you may wish to replace these with 5 smaller ones) ginger - 1/2 inch garlic - 2-3 big cloves or 4-5 small cloves shallots - about 5 green chillies  - 2-3 or according to taste black peppercorns - 1 teaspoon cumin seeds - 1/2 teaspoon curry leaves - 1 twig or two turmeric powder - 1/2 teaspoon thick coconut cream - 3-4 tablespoon oil - 2 tablespoon oil for frying salt to taste Procedure 1. Keep  oil in a pan and place on a gas stove (for frying). You may also choose to shallow fry, it will take a longer to get the crispiness, and less oil may mean less taste 2. Peel and cut the banana in 1/4 inch size pieces, and immediately put to fry. If left open, banana tends to turn black. Fry the bananas on a very low flame until crispy. This is a bit tme consuming and needs to be done patiently. If fried on a high flame, bananas will become s
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Musings of "1 year old" housewife

Life had been a big chain of new experiences and changes last full year. I was so busy doing things that there was hardly any time to think. The six months after I quit were difficult ones, a family member struggled with cancer, finally giving in to the disease. The loss left us numb for a while, but the decision to move to a foreign land was seemed good as it would definitely help healing. Life in the new land was full of excitement, surprises, learning. It was as if there was a system reset! I got to define my needs, wants, and got to set all the priorities in life right. Thinking about my life as a professional did happen, though occasionally. But frankly, I was enjoying the new responsibilities just too much to give a serious thought about it. I definitely was not missing being a professional. It was only since few days ago, i started realising that maybe, somewhere I was missing life as a professional. I did miss the technical part a bit, but more I missed was the pressure, th
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Eggless chocolate cake (dairy free)

For an eggless cake with butter, check here.   My friend Smriti first sent me this dairy and egg free cake recipe. It is mighty useful to kids who are allergic to dairy and/or eggs. I have included few variations ahead, where one is fine with milk but only wants an eggless version. Ingredients All purpose flour (maida)      1 2/3 cups Brown sugar                         1/2 cup granulated sugar                    1/2 cup (you may use 1 cup of granulated sugar too) cocoa                                    1/4 cup Baking soda                           1 teaspoon salt                                        1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil                          1/3 cup water                                     1 cup vinegar                                  1 teaspoon vanilla essence                       1/2 teaspoon Procedure Heat oven to 350deg F or 180deg Celsius. Mix flour, brown sugar, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt with fork. Mix in remaining ingredients. Pour int
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Eggless chocolate cake (with butter)

For a dairy free eggless cake, see here Lot of friends asking for recipe. So i decided it's time I write a blogpost :) Ingredients (The following are portions for a 9 inch dia round baking tin. I usually use half the proportions for 6-7 inch tin A cup is 200ml volume All purpose flour (maida)                2.5 cup cocoa                                             1/2 cup sugar                                              1.5 cup butter (unsalted)                              1 cup milk                                                1 cup baking powder                               2.5 teaspoon baking soda                                    1/2 teaspoon honey                                             2 teaspoon vanilla essence                               1.5 teaspoon If you wish to make a plain cake, replace the cocoa powder with flour, and add 1/2 teaspoon more of vanilla essence. If you wish to make any other flavour, say mango, you may have to adjust the por
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