Rajma Aloo Masaledaar/Kidney Beans & Potato Tomato Curry

Chickpeas and Kidney beans are our favourite legumes and i cant survive without these both beans. Obviously my pantry will always have these both dry beans while my freezer will always have already soaked and frozen beans. I have already shared about how to make frozen beans in few of my posts. And those frozen beans are really handy if you dont have enough time to soak your beans or if you have completely forgotten to soak your beans. Just pressure cook those frozen beans and your beans are ready to cook with. You doesnt even need to thaw those beans. How easy na, i have been following this method since a while and i dont regret for preparing these frozen beans whenever time permits.

Jaggery Phirni

Phirni/Firni is a delectable creamy dessert which is completely gluten free. Its a super easy dessert which is a must in Northern part of India especially during festivals. Phirni is prepared with soaked and grounded rice, cooked in milk and sweetened with sugar. Its quite a fabulous delightful dessert to serve after a meal which makes a prefect sweet dessert to enjoy or else to enjoy with your near ones during a festival.

Kashmiri Phirni/Kong Phirin/Kashmiri Semolina Pudding

Phirni is a delectable dessert prepared with rice as the main ingredient. Traditionally phirni is prepared on special occasions like Diwali, Holi, Karwa chauth and Ramazan etc. Coming to this fantastic Kashmiri Phirni, this pudding calls for semolina though many Kashmiri phirni calls for rice.This dessert has a super thick creamy texture and tastes absolutely delicious when served chilled. Kong means saffron and Phirin means sweet pudding. This semolina pudding calls for milk and khoya, which turned out this ultimate pudding more delicious and highly irresistible. Whoever loves Milk based sweets, will definitely fell in love with this beautiful pudding.

Elachi Malai Ladoo/Paneer Laddoo

Malai Laddoo aka paneer laddoo is a fabulous Indian sweet prepared easily with condensed milk and grated paneer. Trust me this ladoos are seriously very easy than the traditional boondi laddoos. Malai laddoos have their own place in most of the sweet platter. Since this delicious sweet balls are easy to dish out, you can prepare these laddoos anytime. If you are supposed to dish out something sweet to serve your loved ones or to share a sweet with your friends for any occasions/for any festivals, then check this laddoos. Just with three ingredients, these delicious laddoos gets ready very much easily than you can imagine.

Rasawala Bateta Nu Shaak/Rasawala Aloo/Gujarati Aloo Curry

Anything cooked with potatoes will definitely make everyone happy. Dunno why potatoes are our most favourite vegetable, i cant just stop cooking with them. Twice a week, potato curry makes its humble entry in our menu and we just love it. Obviously if i get a chance to cook a different dish with potato i wont miss that chance. I love Gujarati cuisine very much,whenever i love to make a North Indian meal at home, i'll check definitely to make a different dish from this cuisine. I have bookmarked this Rasawala aloo curry from here long back, as this curry aka gravy calls for easy cooking. Very simple to make, this rasawala aloo takes hardly less than 15minutes if you cook this curry in Pressure cooker.

Mushroom Masala Stuffed Kulcha/Dhingri Kulcha

Kulchas is a cousin sister of Naan, made with baking soda/baking powder instead of Yeast which is usually used in making naans. This Indian flat bread  made with leavening agents are stuffed sometimes with spiced vegetable stuffings or else served simply as plain kulchas .Kulchas is quite a typical Punjabi recipe and Amritsar, a city in Punjab is famous for its kulchas and Naans.Usually eaten with chole aka channa masala, Kulchas makes a filling breakfast or dinner. If they are stuffed, they doesnt even need any side dish to have with.

Basundi - How to make Basundi

Basundi is a one among the popular milk based dessert you can easily find in most of the marriage menu. This rich and delicious dessert is made simply with full fat milk, yes milk boiled in low heat with sugar until the milk gets reduced to half of the quantity makes this extremely delicious Basundi. Its quite a fantabulous sweet, one can enjoy along with some deep fried pooris, actually basundi makes an excellent pair with pooris. However people enjoy basundi chilled as much as like rabdi, an another milk dessert prepared almost like basundi. Basundi prepared with whole fat milk tastes absolutely divine and this dessert will definitely please everyone's tastebuds especially if you have sweet tastebuds.

Parath Parantha - 16 Layered Paratha

Parath Parantha - this paratha is quite famous in Delhi especially from Prathen Wali Gali in Chandni Chowk, Delhi. Parath means layers, hence this paratha is named as Parath Parantha. These parathas can be made in any size with different shapes, though i sticked with a square shaped one. The best part of this paratha is the spice mix used in making layers.This paratha have 16 layers, once rolled the dough, a spice mix with chilly powder, cumin powder, garam masala and chaat masala is spread over the rolled dough and cut it as 16 pieces. Once stacked, this paratha is rolled either as round or square shaped paratha.

Malai Baingan/Eggplant in Creamy Tomato Sauce

If youare serving rotis for your dinner, you need an excellent side dish to serve along with, trust me my today's post is definitely that kind of side dish. Easy to make and delicious to relish along with phulkas or rotis. This creamy Malai baingan aka eggplants cooked in creamy tomato sauce goes for easy breezy preparation, no chopping is needed. Also this dish goes under no onion no garlic recipes. Sliced eggplants deepfried or shallow fried in oil are much needed to make this lipsmacking gravy. Actually i was searching for an interesting eggplant gravy few months back in google and i landed to Riya's Malai Baingan which i bookmarked immediately and tried it few days back for our evening dinner.

Dahi Baingan/Dahi Baigana

Dahi baingana is a traditional Oriya recipe prepared simply with yogurt, deep fried eggplants and tempered with mustard seeds, curry leaves. This eggplant in yogurt sauce is spiced simply with chopped green chillies, roasted cumin powder and thinly sliced ginger. Served along with a hot steaming rice, you can have this incredible dish or else simply as a snack if you love eggplants. This dahi baigana gets ready very much quickly than you can imagine. One of the easiest and the simplest dish i have ever cooked with eggplants. Many varieties of dahi baigana exists, i went on searching for a prefect traditional Odiya style dahi baigana and finally i landed to Oriya Food and loved the simplicity of this dish.

Aloo Tikki Chaat/Potato Cutlet Chaat

Chaat foods are my weakness  and i can survive for many days with chaat foods. All chaat foods are my favourite, i can have them even at midnite but unfortunately we dont get chaat foods here easily. Chaat foods are only available at home if i make them myself else its definitely a hard task to get them from stores, yes we dont have chaat food stalls here. If we crave for some chaat foods i'll make myself everything from scratch at home. Earlier my H wasnt a fan of this fingerlicking foods but now after having couple of homemade chaat foods, he became an ardent fan of this street foods. Needless to say Chaat foods are royal feast for us eventhough i try to make quite often at home.

Balushahi / North Indian Doughnuts/Tikari

Balushahi ressembles as much as like our South Indian popular Badushah aka sugar glazed maida flour doughnuts. Actually Balushahi is a traditional dessert/sweet in North Indian cuisine, Pakistani cuisine, Nepali and Bangladeshi cuisine. Balushahis are simply prepared with maida, clarified butter aka ghee with baking powder, baking soda. When deep fried and dipped in sugar syrup, these balushahis makes an excellent dessert or sweet to share or eaten with other savories or sweets.However i found that there were some differences between the Badushah and this balushahi, yes the dough for Balushahi goes for curd, baking soda,baking powder and ghee with maida while badushah is prepared mostly with dalda or ghee,maida with baking soda. However the shape and method is quite similar apart from the kneading part. Badushah goes for a smooth kneaded dough while balushahi's dough doesnt go for kneading. Baking powder and baking soda helps a lot to give a flaky texture to this Balushahis.

This Balushahis goes for  this month's Indian Cooking Challenge,a monthly event where we cook dishes from various regions of India.For this month's challenge, Srivalli suggested us this popular dangerously addictive Balushahis.I followed Manjula's recipe and prepared these gorgeous Indian doughnuts and enjoyed thoroughly,none cant just stop with one inspite of maida,ghee and sugar.

1cup All purpose flour/Maida
1/4tsp Baking powder
1/8tsp Baking soda
1/4cup Cold calrified ghee/Butter
1/4cup Yogurt (cold)
1cup Sugar
1/3cup Water
1/2tsp Cardamom powder
1tbsp Chopped pistachios
Oil for deepfrying

In a bowl, take the flour,baking soda,baking powder together, add the cold clarified ghee and mix until the mixture turns crumbly.

Slowly add the cold yogurt and mix everything to form a dough, dont knead the dough.

Cover the bowl and keep aside for half an hour.

Meanwhile take the sugar, water in a pan and heat in medium flame, bring it to boil.

Add in the cardamom powder, let it simmer until the syrup turns one thread constitency.

Take the dough knead for few minutes, and divide the dough into 10 equal balls.

Roll the balls and make a deep dent in the center of the balls.

Heat oil for deep frying in medium heat, once the oil is hot enough, drop balushahis one by one, dont overcrowd.

Cook on both sides until they turns golden brown (dont turn the balushahis more than three times).

Remove the fried balushahis and drain the oil with a paper towel.

Now drop the balushahi into the already sugar syrup, let them sit for few seconds, remove them and let it cool completely.

Garnish the balushahis with the pistachios.

Serve.