Andhra Shrimp Dry

Shrimp seem to be everyone’s favorite. But my first bite was a disaster. I was eight, visiting family friends in Mumbai—Bombay, back then. They served shrimp curry for dinner. The flavor was mild, almost timid, but I hated it instantly. One bite in, and I was running to spit it out. Right there, I swore I’d never touch shrimp again.

That promise held for years. Growing up in Jodhpur, seafood was never really on the table. Fresh catch was a rarity, and shrimp didn’t exist in my world at all.

It wasn’t until my early twenties, back in Mumbai with my parents, that everything changed. My father took me to a small restaurant in Juhu and ordered tandoori shrimp. Reluctantly, I tried it. Oh my God—what a revelation. Smoky, spicy, charred just right. In a single bite, all those bitter childhood memories were erased. I was in love. To this day, I thank my late father for insisting I give shrimp a second chance.

Years later, after I married and moved to the U.S., shrimp became more than a dish—it became a staple. As Muslims, our meals were halal or seafood, and shrimp quickly took center stage. I started experimenting in my own kitchen: pasta tossed with shrimp, sandwiches, wraps, rolls. Before long, I was simmering shrimp curries and skewering shrimp kebabs. Each new recipe felt like another chapter in a love story that had once begun with such a rocky start.

One of my favorite ways to cook shrimp now is Andhra style. It’s spicy, crispy, and absolutely delicious. I go heavy on curry leaves, mustard seeds, and dried red chilies, layering in all those bold flavors. The result is a dish that’s simple to make but bursting with character. It pairs beautifully with daal chawal—comfort food elevated by a punch of heat and crunch.

Curd Rice

Curd Rice is a meal from Southern part of India. It’s full of probiotic goodness and cooling properties , just the kind of meal you need when you want something simple, easy to digest, fast track food and a nutritious meal. Curd Rice is a creamy and traditional preparation of soft pre-cooked rice and thick yogurt all combined together and crowned with a South Indian style tempering.

Curd Rice is a gluten-free, savory Indian dish prepared with yogurt and pre-cooked rice. For the flavor, it is often tempered with ghee, mustard seeds, urad daal, ginger, asafoetida, cumin seeds, curry leaves, green chilies and dry red chilies.

Curd Rice is great for digestion, since the good bacteria in the yoghurt/ curd may help the body digest food easier and smoother. For generations, in South India, this has been the cure for an upset stomach or gastric issues including constipation and bloating. This dish also happens to have a milder version made with thinner curd or even buttermilk and is excellent for fighting acid reflux. Curd rice balances out the internal temperature of your body and is an excellent coolant during the hot summer months. Since it is served cold, one can almost immediately feel the respite from blazing temperatures even externally, before the nutrients begin to break down in one’s system. This is relatively low in calories and can still be eaten by itself as a meal and is quite filling, you can include this in your low-calorie diet as a menu choice.

All you need for this simple preparation is boiled rice, I usually throw away the water, but you are free to add less water in boiling the Rice and let the Ric soak it all up. Just make sure you use small grained Rice, as its a better option when it comes to over cooked and mushed up Rice. Basmati Rice is better with Biryani and Pulao. The Rice needs to be at Room Temperature, so make sure you give it at least an hour on a wide dish so it cools down completely. You can also use leftover steamed rice for making the dish. If using leftover cooked rice, add a tiny amount of water and mash it to a soft consistency (like broken wheat consistency). Soft rice that is overcooked or slightly mushy is perfect for making creamy curd rice.

 Full-fat Yoghurt is great if you want super soft and creamy curd rice, but you can use low-fat Yoghurt as well. Although the traditional Curd Rice is cooked with slightly sour Yoghurt, but I prefer the regular one.

 The tempering for the Curd Rice is a typical South Indian style packed with cumin seeds, mustard seeds, urad dal/ chana dal, curry leaves, ginger, green chilies, whole dry red chilies, and a pinch of asafoetida (aids in digestion). You can mix grated carrot or pomegranate as well in your yogurt rice for that extra crunch and freshness.

It is always ideal to combine chilled yogurt and room temperature rice to make creamy and delicious yogurt rice. If hot rice is combined with curd, it affects the nutritional properties of yogurt, and the digestion problems are bound to happen. Also, the curd might turn sour after mixing the hot rice. Hence, it is best to enjoy yogurt rice cold or at least room temperature.

Masala Upma

This dish is a recipe from Mr. Parveez. As I have mentioned in my other write ups that Mr. Parveez is a fabulous cook and he just doesn’t cook food from the recipes passed on by his family, but some of the recipes have been his own invention. The best part is that none of the recipes are like those “Bachelor Recipes”, in fact they are some super great dishes which make to the table when the lady of the house, that is “me” needs to be treated royal and get my days off. I always enjoy and look forward to those days.

So, this particular recipe happens to be one of his best dishes ever. I have always loved it and look forward to days when he makes it. This Masala upma goes best with Sambhar. Though this dish is best for breakfast, but we love it for light dinner as well.

Chhole Tikki Chaat

I belong to Rajasthan, the land of flowing ghee, beautiful people and the most colorful state of India. Marwaris love chaats, specially the ones that are fried and warm and trust me, no one can make chaats and sweets better than Marwaris. That’s the reason we always see most sweet vendors and chatwalas as Marwaris.

I have been a big fan of chaats and this happens to be one of my favorites. It takes a little time to make it, but one bite into this awesomely delicious food and all the effort seems totally worth it. This chaat is also close to my heart because this was the first dish that portrayed my culinary skills and he felt proud that he is getting married to a promising cook.

Now, I learnt to make this chaat through a family friend, who would offer to cook food for us every Ramadan. Honestly, that was the first time I realized that such good street food can also be cooked at home as well. I was 11 then, and I would always be a little helper. With time, I learnt how to make it by myself and it always has pleased everyone who tried it.

The tikkis are made with boiled potatoes mixed with spices and rolled in mix of Maida and Corn Starch Powder, before pan frying. The corn starch makes the tikkis super crunchy and that is exactly how you want them to be. Specially once you add on hot chhole, the tikkis can get soggy very quickly. Corn starch helps it stay crunchier for longer.

The chhole have to be spicy and tangy, giving that perfect chaat taste to the tikki chhole. Adding Tamarind and dry pomegranate powder to chhole makes it taste just like the street foods in India. I usually soak my chickepeas, boil them and once cooled down, I pack them in separate ziploc bags and freeze them. I like to make loads of chaats that include chickpeas and this is one of my favorites. So, not having chickpeas, since they need to be soaked overnight, is the last thing I need to worry about if I feel like making chaat.

Assembling this chaat is what makes it taste more delicious. You can make the best Tikkis and chhole, but if you don’t assemble the chaat the right way, it wouldn’t give you flavors you are looking for. It has to be served warm on top of potato tikki and further garnished with chopped onions, coriander leaves, Tamarind date chutney, Green chutney and thin sev.

Beetroot Chhole Sabzi

We were watching a TV show that was showing places and foods. We love watching those TV shows and we also make a mental note to go to those awesome restaurants if we ever travel to those places. We have visited some of those places and also to those awesome food places. And, other times when we watch these shows, I love seeing things and try to make them at home.

This dish is inspired from some restaurant in Kerela, India. The blogger went to a random restaurant which served authentic vegetarian food and tried Beetroot with chickpeas. It is a different combination and I found it weird to be honest. I do make Beetroot curry and Chhole but separately, never thought of them to be together.

So, I could never get an idea of the recipe except that it was beetroot shredded and had chickpeas. I added spices keeping Kerela flavors in mind. I added onions, a little tamarind and coconut. The end result was great and looked almost same as the curry we saw on TV and with taste, anyone who has tasted Kerela food can feel the connection.

Its an easy curry to make as long as you have Boiled Chickpeas. I usually soak and boil chickpeas, divide them and put them in ziploc in the freezer. I just prefer using them than using canned chickpeas. Its just a personal preference and won’t make any difference to the curry flavor.

Carrot Masala Toast

This masala toast is a famous snack from Iyengar bakery, which I had never tried. Being from North India, there are these few things that you miss out on. Like the fresh made veggie toast. Ohhh!!! Don’t get me wrong, I love the north Indian malai bread and potato sandwich or paneer sandwich, but I still fell completely in love with this iyengar bakery masala toast.

This was first made by my husband, Mr. Parveez when he wanted to flaunt his cooking skills, show casing how breakfast can be made quick, delicious, light and above all, healthy.

This toast can have variety of veggies put but, the authentic iyengar bakery toast only has carrots, tomatoes, onions with a few spices and chilies. It’s a perfect breakfast for on the run, or a perfect snack for warming up those after school/evening cold winters with a warm drink.

Green Bean Curry

Green beans is a family favorite for  us. I normally made green beans with potatoes  until, I decided that a lovely vegetable like these beans deserves to be served by itself. I also make potatoes and green bean filling for my famous puff pastry. They always come out nicer than the plain potato ones. in fact, these were the puff pastries I made, when initially I started making puff pastries.

And then of course the curry with potato has always been the easy and go to curry. But Mr. Parveez isn’t a big fan of potatoes and he loves green beans. So I tried experimenting with this curry and it came out super fab. I have since then even tried to make it in a few different ways to get them in more flavors. This is one of the easiest and the fastest way to make them. It goes great as a side vegetable or main and tastes amazingly delicious with phulka or poori.

Makki Palak Sabzi

After my successful experiments with chhole palak and Palak daal, I started working on more recipes and ways to feed greens to my little monsters. After all, no one can have too much of greens and none of us moms ever get tired of feeding healthy to our kids, in fact we never get tired of feeding/ over feeding our children. But, between all those over fed meals are times when we realize that they need to eat healthier and better and we work more towards nourishing their body.

My boys are pretty picky and not great fans of veggies. Basically, if they see no chicken/meat on the dining table, they feel their mom has enjoyed a free day or wasn’t really in a mood to cook…LOLzzz . I learnt one art pretty quick as a mother and that was that if you want your kids to eat veggies, you should not keep a substitute on the table and definitely, any kind of bribe doesn’t give a very good example. Like, I never promise them ice cream after dinner. What I do is, make a promise to cook anything they want for school lunch the next day. Our dinners mostly has these veggies, one reason being that dinners should be light and secondly, that’s the only meal we eat together as family. So, feeding vegetables that time cuts down my stress as Mr. Parveez handles the situation better.

Now, for kids who find it hard to gulp down veggies, its even more important to make dishes that look and taste great. Hence, the experiments and varieties. Your health is your most prize possession and so is the health of your family. Studies suggest that 80% of your health is from the food that you consume so, let that food be freshly cooked without preservatives from the “freezer aisle” of your grocery store or your favorite restaurant. These recipes are simple, quick and nutritious and so delicious that they will be a favorite in your family as much as they are in mine.

Vangibhaath

Mr. Parveez has always been a big fan of the south Indian Food varieties, mainly the vegetarian food. One of the rice dishes, were Vangibhaath. Its basically eggplant cooked with spices and a few other ingredients and mixed with rice and served with peanut chutney on the side.

He had been making this dish since he started cooking in USA and back home, this dish was one of the few dishes that his elder sister would make at home. Soon after we got married, on one of his “Special Breakfast weekend”, he made Vangibhaath. Now, I am not a huge fan of eggplant, but I decided not to tell that to Mr. Parveez since the dish was made with so much love. I tried and I was more than happy to not bring up my dislike for eggplants.

This dish is amazing. The eggplants are completely cooked and merge really well with the spices of the dish. The cashews and chana daal ad a lot of crunch to the dish and lastly the flavor of tamarind is so well blended with the dish that all you would ever taste is a delicious rice dish made with little effort and a lot of love.

Tomato Rasam

The first time I tried Rasam was in Dallas, Texas. Funny, right??? We were newly married and after 2 weeks of coming to USA, Mr. Parveez was offered a 2 week project in Dallas and he took me along. There happened to be an Indian restaurant very close to the hotel where we stayed and we would visit that place for lunch almost every other day. The non vegetarian food in that restaurant was not halal, leaving us with the only option of consuming vegetarian food.

After a day or two of being there, I came down with bad cold.  I was in a pretty bad state and all I needed was a some nice warm soup. We were back for lunch to the same restaurant and decided to order some Tomato soup and while going through different soup options, Mr. Parveez came acrossTomato Rasam on the menu and he ordered it for us. I still remember looking at the soup bowls that looked like they contained colored water with tadka. My expectations were really low and honestly, somewhere in my mind I wasn’t too happy with Mr. Parveez performing experiments with my taste buds while I suffered from bad cold.

Anyways, the first spoon of the Rasam in my mouth and I had a party of flavors in my mouth. The spice was so mild, yet so prominent to make its mark and leave that tingling sensation on your tongue. The taste was so delicious that while you have a spoonful in your mouth, your soul craves for another one. And, the best part was the reaction of my sinus. My nose block just opened up and I started feeling so much better since now, I could smell the lovely flavors as well. From that day, till the day we stayed in Dallas and were in that restaurant for lunch, we would order the Tomato Rasam everytime.

And, after I returned home, I started my research on Rasam and discovered that Rasam is made in different flavors, Tomato Rasam is just one among the many and from there started my journey on making different rasam at home. We enjoy it more during winter and fall. My kids love it with boiled rice and every sinus congestion, cold and flu season…Rasam is always a part of our meal.