Chicken Tikka Masala

To be honest, i tried the butter chicken recipe but later it ended up like this . I grilled the chicken ,did all stuff  from the enormous recipes i got for butter chicken and finally i felt this is same as Chicken Tikka Masala. So i opted out the last butter part and this was a perfect match with chapathi. Actually what is the difference between butter chicken and chicken tikka masala ? I think i have to do some research on this .Anyways this dish was good and im happy with the response from BJ & Malu.

Prawn Roast

My husband likes this sea food items very much and thats why i see my posts are mostly related to fish, crab, squid etc. And for all curries i have a roast/masala recipe too :) Anyways Prawns are very good to roast and luckily Malu also likes this. She doesnt eat fish /crab, but prawn is her favourite.Thank God, i dont have to think about other menu for her whenever i make prawns at home. Its very difficult to decide the menu with seperate item for each. Father is happy with fish while daughter is very unhappy, prawns make everyone happy. Long live Prawns :)

It's nice to have some cocunut slices in this gravy, but i didnt have that.

Crab in coconut gravy

My recent explorations are again with Crab. This time i was fed up with the usual roast/masala recipes so tried the regular coconut gravy and this was a hit. BJ liked it better than the roast one , but i like the other version. This goes very well with chapathis, kuppose or even with some plain rice.

Crab Masala

Crab came into our house menu very recently, not more than 6 months. In my childhood or till i got married i never came across a single crab dish in any of my/relatives house. Pappa had a strong dislike for these stuff like crab, squid etc and i also considered them as some dirty creatures.

After coming to Kuwait we stayed for sharing accommodation with one Telugu family. They used to cook crab every now and then and i had to run out of the whole house due to this stingy smell and i stayed away  from the crab section in the fish market. To my horror BJ was interested in these items, but he never forced me to buy and try. Last year when we went to Dubai, i told my sister about this Crab Mania and then she ordered Crab masala from some hotel, i tasted a little and it was amazingly delicious. It was more to the sweet end and i liked it. But the cleaning part made me hesitant to make a try. Recently i learned my maid is an expert in Crab. Wow, so here starts the explorations!!

I bought crab 2,3 times now and she cleaned it very nicely , the cooking part is not that much tough, but i felt the eating part is much more difficult. Still i havent tasted the good crab flesh taste because i take long time to break all these shell and after a few minutes i gets irritated and chew all the stuff together. Anyways BJ is having a good time , thats enough for me .

I followed Mishmash's Crab Roast  with some instincts from myself and it turned out really good .

An Anniversary Attempt

Yes, it was for our 7th Wedding Anniversary. :)

I'm happy!! After a long list of terrible failures I finally succeeded in baking a good cake. And this was my first attempt of icing..I know the decoration doesn't look that much nice, but for a first trial this is ok. I could have waited till the green icing on top to set, but my daughter was so impatient to cut it. She was looking so eagerly and was trying to bunk her dance class just to cut this cake , i finally decided to make things fast. I just poured the red jelly and it too didnt come as a nice heart, at least in this picture it has a slight resemblance of a heart right :)  Yeah , it is my heart full of love to my man,forget about the shape and those holes in between, this is only a model ;)

All cakes i baked till now were always hard, and almost i withdrew from my efforts of making cakes. Why should i waste all these time, flour and other ingredients. And to increase my disappointment my sister showed me the beautiful cakes she bakes.. hmm i gave up, baking is not my area.

May is my month, My birthday, husband's birthday, our wedding Anniversary , so which other month i have to celebrate and  above all  my cuitie's desire for home made cakes, so this time i refereed all blogs and decided to have one last attempt. May be due to my prayers or what this turned out well. I didnt beat the cake flour with my hand mixer, instead i just used a spoon to mix it..Does it make a difference..I dont know.. Anyways the cake was soft and it was almost brown at the top too .. I forgot to take a photo of the cut portion. Hmm.. i have to give proper attention to my photography skills, or at least to generate a skill :)

Karimeen Mappas

Just tried to make some Karimeen Mappas and it was not that bad. I have very nostalgic memories of karimeen and other backwater fishes. In our childhood, one guy brought fresh backwater fishes  in a small pot  exclusively to our house. Though i hated that guy, his fishes were really good. We (or mostly amma) always had a tough time to clean and prepare those fishes. They were still alive, so amma had to kill them with the back side of the knife, it was hard. And cleaning was old fashioned, we have to run the halfly cleaned fish on a rubble and tried to remove the scales. Though this cleaning process was tiring, the taste just removes all frustrations. We always had kappa(tapoioca) along with this fish curries and fries.

I have another embarassing memory with this backwater fishes too.. Just when i reached kuwait, in our honeymoon time, i found some varal in lulu and forced my husband to buy that. He was confused whether i know to cook that and i proudly declared i am a master in all these fish items. We bought a long varal and came home. Next day after he left to office i slowly took out the varal and stared at it, it was such a long and large fish and slowly it resembled like 'Anaconda' to me. I was alone in the house and i had watched anaconda very recently, though i told my mind to be calm , i couldn't control. The fear and loneliness just killed me and i became so scared and jumped out of kitchen.Soon i called my hubby and told him that im so scared because of that anaconda in the kitchen.. hmm ...later whenever we see this fish, my husband starts laughing and teasing me :)

We get Kerala Karimeen from our local store on thursdays and also the frozen one's. Sometimes it will be good and sometimes very bad. Initially i had too much difficlulty in cleaning the scales and however i cleaned, it always had some smell..Later i learned how to remove the skin. Its tricky and it takes away the majestic look of karimeen, but the taste comes good. So now a days i always remove the skin.I always think about karimeen pollichathu in a vazhayila, but never tried it..

Happy Vishu !

This year vishu also finished. This year we had my parents here, so we both took leave and celebrated it grantly. Every year i will be so tired after the huge rush in lulu before the vishu day, but i cannot escape. We get leaves and konna flowers only if we go there on that time.This year lulu people didnt give the konna flowers good.For a small cover we had to fight with fellow malayalees, even after fight we didnt succeed and atlast one guy sympathetically offered 1 cover to my poor mother. reached home too late and by the time i started the kani preparation i was very tired. But dont know from where, all memories rush to my mind when i prepare the kani and so the enthusiasms too..

Back home, my siister used to prepare the kani till her marriage, after that me .Only one person prepared the whole decorations and in the morning pappa will first see the kani and call us one by one. I still remember the blue color of the stone in his ring, which he used to put as an addition to our decoration. I always cherish all those fond memories of life. This was the first vishu where i got a chance to call my parents to see vishu :) I took amma the same way she used to take me in my childhood ..I felt great. I always want my child to get atleast some of these type memories as i got in my childhood. She was quite excited before she went bed when i told her that amma will call you, dont open the eyes , you have to see Krisha Ambotti first..I got up at 4 Am , and called my husband, then parents and then went to her.She smiled on my first call , poor little kid, i dont know how much she saw the kani that time , anyways watching her small eyes in wonder was very cute.

Actually we should not sleep after seeing the kani, but this time i couldnt suppress the laziness of a holiday ahead , so we all slept back ..Hmm i know it was not good but what to do.Again the action came back for breakfast, vishu kaineetam etc. I made the nostalgic Ila Ada which i think we can dream only on any occasion like this. It was so cute to see malu going near everyone and asking for money. I told her to get blessings from pappa and ammachi when they give money , to pappa she put her hand on his legs and then she remembered oo i dint do this to ammachi and ran to ammachi and snatched her feet :) My husband was out for something, so she called him and aked when r u giving me money ? The ila ada was really good, i even forgot the taste of real ila ada.


I had planned to make agrand sadya and had listed the curries before. After coming to Kuwait, i found myself googling for all typical kerala dishes and this time also the story repeated. Back at home, i rarely remember a time when my mother made mambazha pulissseri, though we had bunches of mangoes in our house.But now i search for good mangoes in lulu and make mambazha pulissery for every onam, vishu ..I never gets fed up in the cooking jobs for an occasion like this..amma was staring at me when i said her we can make a theeyal more after making some 10 curries :)  This time i wanted to try one more dish - pineapple payasam. Always in marriage sadya, that too only in our area, we used to get very sweet pineapple pradhaman, i really like it so this time i wanted to recreate that. But unfortunately we bought the wrong pine apple for that and it was a little meshy, we couldnt saute them well so the appearance was not that appealing.Still the taste was good. As usual my photosession went bad, everyo one was excited in the feast and only i was interested to make some snaps.I forced my kid not to eat anything till i take one snap and clicked this..I never get a satisfaction on phot session after any function at my home, Hmm....

My Menu
upperi, sharakarapuratty, Rice , Parippu,pappadam, ney , sambhar, mambazha pulisseri, beetroot pachadi, vellarikka kichdi, payar mezhukkupuratti, aviyal, cabbage thoran, inchi curry, naranga achar, Adapradhaman, Pineapple pradhaman .