cooking tips

The holiday season is already here and I am feeling very festive. I took a leave for two weeks and wanted to really have a laid back end of the year. Movies, baking, cooking, shopping and decorating are the major activities I am indulging into. I never knew baking could be so much fun despite being messy :P.  Yes I am quite messy with the kitchen when I am baking. Still need to get the hang of the stuffs and do things systematically. Its usually the recipe sheet lying on one corner, newspaper laid out for straining the flour, mixing bowl, chopping board and ladles and whiskers , well the list is never ending. But still I'm in love with baking. From the time I got the microwave I was planning on baking something savory, muffins to be precise. I wanted to bake something with my favorite veggies, but getting a good recipe was the main task. Then one i really liked which had mushrooms. Read it here . But then I tweaked it and added all the veggies I wanted or had in pant...

Winter is here and everything is already so beautiful. Winter is a time for going on a gastronomic frenzy as the produce you get at this time of the year are simply so fresh, flavorful and tasty.  I am having a gala time in my kitchen exploring many new dishes, adding new dimensions to existing traditional dishes, creating fusion of Bengali and Marathi cuisine, its just too much fun!  When I am alone I usually avoid preparing leafy vegetables as its a hell lot of hard work to clean them. At the same time I just love the greens. Give me any leafy vegetables and I am a happy person. But the amount of hard work deters me every time. This time since mom is visiting me, I dared to try out a number of leafy vegetables. Chola shaak or Chole ka saag or Harbhara is such a thing. Mom says, I have had chola shaak as a kid. But by seeing the shaag I couldn't recollect. Only when I tasted it did I remember that I indeed had tasted it earlier. Usually other years we get the whole bush of Ch...