Pakoda | pakora is a popular tea time snack. It is usually made using rice flour and gram flour. I have shared Ragi pakoda recipe in my Millet cookbook published 7 years back. On a recent visit to Chennai, I happened to taste the popular street style Keerai pakoda in a roadside tea shop. That time I decided that I should share the recipe of keerai pakoda in Jeyashris kitchen....

Tamil New Year is celebrated on 14th April every year. Generally, we do raw mango pachadi, and neem flower rasam for Tamil New Year. While casually talking with my friend’s mom a few weeks back, she was talking about this ripe mango pachadi, and when she was talking about that itself I was so tempted to try it out. When I saw the ripe Alphonso mangoes in the nearby Indian shop a few days back, I immediately picked it up and tried it today at home....

Welcome to Day 11 of the inaugural Holiday Salad Marathon, where I’m sharing 30 salads in a row through to Christmas Eve – just for something different to the usual sugar-loaded baking countdowns!! Today, something quick and easy for when asparagus is abundant and cheap: Roasted Asparagus Roasting is an excellent way to make any cook-able vegetable tastier with very little effort. All you need is a drizzle of oil, salt and pepper, then enough time in the oven so the vegetable cooks through to your taste (tender-crisp is the case for me, most of the time), and gets a bit of colour on it....

This recipe for ropa vieja is so easy to make – it’s a dump and cook recipe, which is basically the best kind of recipe there is. There’s minimal prep too. The hardest part about this recipe is waiting for it to finish cooking. If you use a slow cooker, it’ll take all day, but if you cook this in an Instant Pot, then you’ll only have to wait a couple of hours....

Salmon Salad Regular readers know that my website is dominated by Brown Foods. Think – curries, stews, gravies, roasts. Brown, brown, brown! Delish, delish, delish! 😂 I simply share the food I truly love. I don’t share food because it photographs well ….though I really do try to pimp up all my brown foods with a teeny sprinkle of parsley!! So sharing something as colourful and vibrant looking as this Salmon Salad is a real treat....

Sathu maavu | Health mix, we make usually at home. I have posted the recipe of my Mom’s Sathu maavu kanji podi recipe in Jeyashris kitchen. Though we get the health mix powder in stores, homemade ones are always the best. Sathu maavu ladoo with jaggery is one of the healthy protein-rich sweet. We can make this for festivals, also prepare this for kid’s snack box too. Usually, we make rava ladoo, besan ladoo with sugar....

I make this using a store bought seafood marinara mix – prawns/shrimp, mussels, fish and calamari. But you can use any seafood you want! Creamy with no cream. The editor of Super Food Ideas magazine calls it a Nagi Special. 🙂 Because I do so many creamy-no-cream recipes! I make most of my creamy dishes and sauces without cream using a béchamel sauce using melted butter with flour (a roux) to thicken milk to create a creamy white sauce....

I love using spices in smoothies (see: Mango Chai Smoothie). Just a pinch adds so much depth to a smoothie… and yes, smoothies can absolutely have depth. This green smoothie is made with spinach, avocado, cardamom, banana, and your choice of milk. The avocado makes this drink so rich and creamy. I usually make smoothies in my nutribullet (it’s fancier than a magic bullet but less expensive than a vitamix)....

Stuffed shells I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but stuffing hot cooked pasta shells is a nightmare. Slipper suckers that they are, and they break so easily. There’s no need to suffer through all that! It’s much easier to stuff raw, uncooked pasta shells and cook them in the oven simply by covering them in a LOT of sauce. It 100% works. It’s the way I’ve been cooking cannelloni/manicotti all my life....

This light and fresh seafood dish is perfect for summer. The sauce is made with plenty of of buttery ghee and garlic! And fresh mango puree and white wine! Snack on this outdoors and pretend you’re at the beach (and if you actually live near a beach, I’m jealous)! Mussels are so simple to make but they seem so fancy don’t they?! This would be a perfect recipe to make on a romantic date night or for a birthday, anniversary or any special occasion....

Last week I bought a box of strawberries to make a fruit salad for a kid’s party near the poolside and I was left over with a few strawberries. When I was thinking of making Strawberry smoothie, Varsha gave me the idea of making a milkshake and even I thought to go ahead with that idea so that I can click the picture for a post too. I added store-bought strawberry milk and Hershey’s strawberry syrup too....

Thai Lettuce Wraps – Larb Gai Thai is one of the most popular Asian foods in Sydney. And there’s so much to love about it – noodles, curries and soups, grilled chicken, fried rice and Thai Fish Cakes. And of course, everybody’s favourite Thai Chicken Satay with peanut sauce! But when you feel like something lighter (read: lower cal!) but still loaded with Thai flavours, these Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps are fabulous....

Thakkali kuzhambu Tomato pickle Tomato 2 ripe Toor dal 1/3 cup Sambar powder 1 and 1/2 tsp Tamarind a gooseberry sized Turmeric powder 1/4 tsp Asafoetida 2 pinches Mustard seeds 1/4 tsp Oil 3 tsp Onion 1/2 (optional) Curry leaves few Coriander leaves few Salt to taste Green chilli 1 Video on how to make tomato sambar Chop the tomatoes and cook them along with toor dal and turmeric powder in a pressure cooker till 5-6 whistles....

In a pan add oil and add in the urad dal and roast it till it becomes golden brown. Be careful not to get it burnt. Transfer it to a plate when done. Add in the red chillies and nicely roast them. Dry roast the scrapped coconut till it gets evenly golden brown color. Keep it aside and switch off the flame and saute the salt and asafoetida in the same pan for few seconds....

This tray bake dinner combines beautifully spiced lamb kofta meatballs with colourful roast vegetables for a Middle Eastern dinner that’s as versatile as it is delicious. Stuff into warm flatbreads, make couscous or rice bowls, or serve with roasted cauliflower for a substantial low-carb salad meal! Lamb kofta meatballs tray bake There’s a lot less sheet pan dinner recipes on my website than one would expect for someone who tells “everyone” that she mostly shares dinner recipes....

Tuna Croquettes or cutlets are like fancy fish sticks for adults. These tuna croquettes are sweet, spicy and incredibly flavorful. They’re shallow fried in ghee and have a delicious, buttery and crispy crust. Whatever you call them – croquettes, cutlets, or tikkis – they make for the perfect appetizer. These little fried patties are a finger food and they’ll have you and your guests/family wanting more. If you eat beef, you should try my beef cutlet recipe – those take a little more prep work though whereas these tuna cutlets are incredibly easy to make....

Plus, my cheeky tip for how to darken gravy to make it a beautiful deep brown colour, as well as how to make gluten-free gravy. This turkey gravy recipe is for oven roasted turkey OR slow cooker turkey! Turkey gravy recipe When it comes to turkey, there are those in the Cranberry Sauce camp, and those in the gravy camp. Me – I’ve got a foot in both camps. There’s nothing quite like the combination of turkey with sweet-tart cranberry sauce....

Welcome to Day 10 of the inaugural Holiday Salad Marathon, a series where I’m doing the polar opposite of the usual sugar-loaded baking countdowns out there: I’m bringing you a new salad recipe every day through to Christmas Eve! Today, it’s a salad that’s an ode to summer! Vietnamese Chicken Salad While this exact salad is not strictly authentic, the flavours, texture and spirit of the dish I drew heavily from traditional Vietnamese food....

Okay so I know the twelfth day of Christmas is actually 12 days AFTER Christmas but – I wanted to equip you with some awesome Paleo Christmas desserts before the holiday. So here it is – a round-up of 12 awesome Paleo Christmas treats (plus maybe a few extras at the end): More Recipes: 2 Ingredient CaramelRum CakeSkillet Garam Masala Apple CrispChocolate Coconut Butter CupsCarrot Fudge3-Ingredient Paleo Hot Chocolate

I’m excited to be back at My Heart Beets today to expand on this post and talk about how you can regrow your own garden from food scraps you normally throw away. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 31 percent of the 430 billion pounds of food produced in the United States goes uneaten (source). In 2012, more than 36 million tons of food waste was generated and only 5 percent was diverted for composting (source)....