Never met anyone who doesn’t like Butter Chicken. Simple, flavorful and so divine. But most of time people never try and make it at home and Butter Chicken becomes an eat out special. Many times I have read where people tried the recipe following a famous chef, but the dish still does not come out as good as the ones at restaurant.
The recipe below and simple to make and the closest you can get to the authentic Butter Chicken flavor.
I have always loved Kaju Katli/ Kaju Burfi. I belong to the city, which is considered the heaven of sweets. There is no Indian popular sweet that you won’t find in my city.
Kaju Katli was always my favorite. The sweetness of cashews makes the kaju katli nutty, creamy and delicious. Earlier Mr. Parveez wasn’t a big fan of kaju Katli, but he would make sure that every time he would find them at a sweet store, he would buy some for me. Time went on, the boys tasted Kaju Katli and it was my older one who became a fan, so every time we were in India, I would buy enough to have him enjoy. On our way back home, I would always bring our favorite sweets including these yummilicious diamonds.
So, the last time I was in India, we had so much baggage while returning that I only got 1 Kg of Kaju Katli. We return and after unpacking while my older one was watching TV, I gave some to my older one to eat. A few minutes later comes in my second one and is all curious as to what my older one is enjoying so much. He gives it a try and we have another fan. He started munching on the Kaju Katli like chips and believe or not we finished the whole box in 4 days…LOLzzz.
Now, with kids who love Kaju Katli so much and living in a place where the sweet stores aren’t as good as India, I had to get down to experimenting and making my own. As much as I was excited about achieving success in making my favorite sweet, the best part was when Mr. Parveez tried them, he loved them too and he said that they actually taste better than any store bought burfi that he has ever tried.
Since then, there have been no more store bought Kaju katlis in our house ever. This recipe is easy to make and you will love them. Just follow the recipe properly and enjoy the wonderful homemade Kaju Katli.
This Halwa was an idea that I had after I made badaam ka halwa, which is pretty popular in India. I felt that Almonds or badaam have been given a lot of importance when it comes to nuts, where as , walnuts are very healthy, but not liked a lot due to their taste. Its easy to see moms feeding their kids badaam ka halwa, when kids refuse eating plain almonds with milk. Indian mothers and their never ending love that always displays in the food and the amount of food that we serve our kids. Its amusing how one bowl of badaam halwa takes place of 7-8 almonds/badaam…LOLzzz.
So, the mother in me wanted to feed walnuts to my boys and thats when the idea hit me. Initially, I planned on working with walnuts only, but then realizing that they might not taste as good by themselves as I would like them to.
Finally, I decided of experimenting walnuts by adding a little cashew to it for that creamy texture and nut sweetness. It did the trick. This is one of best Halwa that I have cooked. The recipe is sure to impress everyone.
Lucknow food is food of the Nawabs and I love the Kebabs, curries and of course, the Biryani. Lucknowi Biryani uses a lot whole masalas and requires the chicken to be marinated in whole spices, powdered spices and Yogurt.
I have been to Lucknow once, with my parents in 2002. Though we didn’t stay for too long, but few days were enough for me to love the flavors and food from Lucknow. I wasn’t a complete cook back then and as much as I loved the food, I wasn’t so keen about doing a research to find out or look for recipes and try them out. Its much later, few years ago when I decided to get on the band wagon of cooking varieties of Biryani and started my journey of getting minute details about everything, is when I discovered the details about the Lucknowi Nawabi Cuisine.
This particular recipe happens to be one of the most old and original recipes from the Khansamas of the Nawabs. There were a few books in Urdu that described the times of Nawabi culture and traditions and how posh the era of Nawabs were and how beautifully and exclusively served food and how delectable the food used to be. The article gave an idea of how the Khansamas marinated the meat/ chicken and the ingredients they used and following the notes, I came up with the recipe as close to the original.
I have also tried making Lucknowi seekh and Galouti kebab and if you check the Kebab section, you will find the recipes for them. This Biryani doesn’t use tomatoes, but uses a lot of coriander leaves, mint leaves and green chilies.
This Biryani is one of my family’s favorite. This was my first dish from Lucknow and from there on, its been pretty regular in our house. This is a wonderful recipe. Like I say for most recipes, Please read the complete recipe properly before you try this out. Its a sure hit.
While I am always on a lookout for new Biryanis that have been made since the invention of this awesome dish, some recipes are just so fascinating that when you read about how they were cooked in olden days, its just hard to not try cooking them.
The land of Hyderabad offers so many varieties of Biryanis and this Biryani happens to be one of the delicious Biryanis that it offers. The Nawabs are always known to have food that is rich. Using cashews and poppy seeds not only adds a lot of flavor to a dish but also makes the yakhni very creamy and rich.
Biryani is inspired by cuisines from Persia. Recipes that have cashews and poppy seeds resemble the closest since the Mughlai recipes had loads of dry fruits and nuts added to their cuisine. Down south, Hyderabad serves the most Biryanis. This recipe is not like Hyderabadi dumm Biryani and not too spicy either but the taste is still lovely and the flavors are divine.
Hyderabad is popular for its food, especially for the Biryani. But did you know that Hyderabad itself offers at least 100 varieties of Biryanis. And trust me, each Biryani is completely different in taste from the other. The cooking style, the spices and different times of adding the spice changes the complete taste and to understand that better, you have to be a Biryani lover like me.
This recipe is among one of my favorites, honestly I think they all are and it gets really hard to choose between them. My younger one loves the idea of having potatoes in his Biryani. I have no idea which side he gets it from because me or Mr. Parveez are strictly “meat lovers only” when it comes to our Biryanis and as much as my younger son loves Potatoes, he wouldn’t ever eat vegetable Biryani to save his life. Yupp!!! Its quiet funny . So, this Biryani is one of his favorites.
Korma is essentially , a yogurt based curry to which musk melon seeds, poppy seeds and cashew nuts have been added. It is to this curry that rice is added making the flavor amazing.
Its always worth trying a new flavor. Just make sure you read all the instructions and follow the steps strictly to enjoy the same taste as we did. You can always contact me if you miss out something or need help.
Hyderabad is the fist place that comes to our mind when we think of Biryani in India. But, did you ever know that Hyderabad itself makes numerous kinds of Biryanis and every Biryani differs from the other one.
Though I have never been to Hyderabad, I love the Biryanis that I try at different places. Hyderabadis love using coconut, poppy seeds and nuts in their Biryanis and while reading more about the authentic Biryani recipes, I found that khuskhus or poppy seeds make an important ingredient to one of the Biryanis. I felt the idea was different and the Biryani would come out slightly creamy since poppy seeds give creamy texture to a dish when added. Also, the fragrance of saffron and star anise is a beautiful touch to the dish.
I have always loved saffron. The fragrance, the flavor, the texture and the ability to bring out so much color to a dish is simply amazing. Unless you have used saffron, you’d never know how magical a few strands of this super expensive spice is.
Growing up, my mom always had abundance of this super expensive spice. My maternal grandmother would always send loads as gifts or bring them each time she would visit or when we visited her in UK. I have never seen my mom run out of saffron. So, my love for it has been before I entered the world of cooking. One of the most annoying things I did, once I started cooking was using saffron for making tea. My mother never liked it much but then the tea would be so amazingly delicious that she would forget to tell me off after a sip. It was much later when I realized how expensive saffron is and that it should be used sparingly. But even that didn’t make much of a difference to me using saffron. It sounds ridiculous, but I had my hubby buy 500 gms of saffron from Spice souk in Dubai…LOLzzz
So, finally I got things ready and decided to make the fabulous khuskhus Biryani. It was an instant hit. This Biryani is also great for people who do not like their Biryani too spicy. Though I have tried to make this Biryani in a simple manner so its easy for everyone to follow, but at times it gets a little complicated and therefore I wouldn’t recommend this to be your first Biryani. But, do eventually try it.
As a kid, I had at least two trips to Delhi every year. The lovely restaurants in Purani Dilli served awesome Biryanis like, Doodh Biryani and Sponge Biryani, and my favorite Dumpukht Biryani.
I love the way the the Biryani is slightly soft and have strong taste of spice as well, since it has Mace as one of the main spices. The screw pine water and saffron gives out a lovely fragrance and makes the Biryani look and smell even more delicious.
This Biryani requires you to marinate the chicken and you can do it overnight as well. The cooking time isn’t too much and its a great recipe for beginners.
Hyderabad is very popular for its Non vegetarian food, mainly Biryani. Hyderabad is the first place that comes to our mind when we think of good Biryani. When I started researching more about Biryanis, I found out the numerous Biryanis that Hyderabad offers, which are not just Non vegetarian but also vegetarian.
I have tried a variety of Hyderabadi Biryanis and each one is delicious and completely different from each other. The recipes also has “Baghare Baingan”, an eggplant dish cooked with peanuts and tamarind and “Khatte Baingan”, another recipe of eggplant, where eggplant is cooked with tomatoes and tamarind. Biryanis are served with different sides including Raita and Dalcha too.
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.
