The Finish Line

It is here, the finish line, the end of 7 days of non-stop cooking, eating and blogging by the marathon cooks. Are you ready for the last potluck for 2009?

If you are still in the holiday mood and want to reach out for the festive dishes, try some rajma with jeera rice, pav bhaji with freshly baked pav and plenty of butter or rotund puris with potatoes and chutney. Curries are often part of

Stuffed Chillies and the Many Colors of Food

The marathon cooks can almost reach out and touch the finish line, this is our penultimate day!

Today, we celebrate the many moods of foods, the colors that catch our eye, the palette that tempts the palate.

Yellow: Mustard oil tinges jhaal muri and turmeric gives khaman dhokla and paneer bhurji its characteristic warm color. Toor dal adds some mellow yellow to banana flower kootu. Eggs and

Korean Pancakes

The marathon continues on day 5 and the marathon cooks seem to be dipping into their pantries today to use grains, flours and vegetables in so many ways.

Starting with some grains that are pantry staples on their own and as noodles and flours-

Oats: granola mix

Rice: rice walnut risotto and "dirty" rice

Broken wheat: comforting soupy dalia

Noodles: vermicelli as seviyan halwa and rice

Lentil Soup with Harissa, and Cheesy Bread

It is day 4 and the theme with the marathon cooks seems to be all about flavor- spices and seasonings and pantry ingredients that add a punch! (and I hope y'all like lentil soup, because we have three versions)...

Cumin: Middle Eastern Lentil Soup and Tiranga Jeera Rice

Saffron: Foccacia and Carrot Kheer

Nigella: Naan with Nigella Seeds

Garam Masala: Upma, Cauliflower Peas Curry, Gobhi ki

Radish Makai Roti

Day 3 of the recipe marathon is a mixed bag but quite heavy on Indian fare.

Let's start with a choice of two tasty appetizers- zucchini fritters and quinoa hash browns, and then a sweet potato-saffron protein shake to fortify us, and we're ready for a journey through India.

Once we arrive in the subcontinent, there are a couple more appetizers waiting for us- raw banana patties and baked

12 Cloves of Garlic

Today, the marathon cooks are getting serious about eating their vegetables, and their fruits and their grains too.

Some of the recipes use well-known and well-loved vegetables like corn in corn bhajia, peas in matar curry, okra in stuffed bhindi, mushrooms in mushroom methi, peppers in stuffed bell peppers and eggplants in vangi pohe.

Some of the vegetables are rather unusual and exotic ones

I Can't Believe It's Fruitcake

The 7-day recipe countdown to the new year has kicked off with a sugar rush, with fruitcakes leading the way. We have an eggless christmas cake, fruit 'n nut cake, Christmas rich fruit and nut cake and a winter-ready snowy white coconut cake. If you like your sweets in controlled portions, try these sugar cookies (some in a cute bouquet), ginger cookies, vanilla and chocolate muffins, squares of

A Crusty Loaf

About 3 years ago, the no-knead bread recipe was published in the New York Times and it took the food blog world by storm. I remember the time very clearly because I could only watch silently from the sidelines; I was on a blogging break at the time, neck-deep in writing my dissertation and eating suppers of Pepperidge Farm bread and peanut butter, washed down with orange juice.

I missed the

Recipe Marathon: The List of Runners

Starting tomorrow, we kick off a countdown to the new year with a recipe marathon.

From the 25th to the 31st, each of these 25 29 bloggers have signed up to post 7 recipes on their blogs. That's 203 recipes; this is going to be a fun week for me!

Here they are, in the order in which they signed up-

Anna Parabrahma: Anjali

Home Cook's Recipes: Lavi

Food for Survival: Unpredictable

Daily

East Meets South-East

Two of my favorite foods come together in this recipe- noodles and curry. We have a spell of gray and dreary weather going on here, and the idea of piping hot noodles in a colorful curry sauce was exceedingly tempting.

My recipe countdown to the new year is in its home stretch and Recipe #10 is Curried Udon Noodles, from the acclaimed cookbook Veganomicon (an appropriately heavy-sounding name

A Mini Fiesta

We had friends over for dinner on Saturday night, and the menu has a bit of Tex-Mex flair. I made vegetable-bean enchiladas smothered in a thick spicy sauce, an all-natural queso (cheese) sauce to be scooped up with crisp tortilla chips, and some colorful Spanish rice as an accompaniment. These were all recipes that had been long bookmarked and were just just waiting to be cooked up for the right

Snack Attack

A little cubby in my galley kitchen is dubbed the snack corner. It is home to a couple of bags of tortilla chips and potato chips, bananas and ripening cantaloupe melons, the occasional box of cookies (often triple ginger cookies from Trader Joe's or good old Parle-G) and boxes of homemade snacks. This way, people who complain that they are hungry an hour before dinner, friends and neighbors who

Mix and Match Subzi

There is a modest list of vegetables- cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, eggplant, peas- that I consider the "old faithfuls". They are available no matter what the season is, and we seem to like them cooked every which way. If you get tired of a vegetable by itself, you can always mix and match it with another to keep things interesting.

And that is how the cabbage from the crisper teamed up with

Winter Supper: Two Savory Tarts

In the winter months, I keep the freezer stocked with a couple of pie shells because the craving for savory quiches and tarts seems to hit us regularly. 

Recipe #19 is Caramelized Onion Quiche, inspired by this recipe on Simply Recipes. I actually don't have a picture for this one. I made the quiche last weekend, intending to take it along with me to a trivia game to share with the team. I

Potato and Sweet Potato Latkes

I needed a quick side dish for dinner last night and spied a lonely potato and a sweet potato in the hanging wire basket. In the spirit of the season, it seemed only fitting to shred them quickly and fry up some latkes.

That's how Recipe #20 is Potato-Sweet Potato Latkes, inspired by Lydia's recipe on The Perfect Pantry.

The traditional latke is made with potatoes and the sweet potato is a

Weekend Brunch, and Blogging by Mail

Blogging by Mail (BBM) is a food blog event with a difference, where bloggers escape from their virtual world and send each other "real" packages using snail mail.

The incredible Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness hosted yet another version of BBM this month and the theme was to send your five favorite indulgences.

My gift came all the way from Australia, from ms fifkins. All the gifts she chose

Zucchini Soup

We have some serious soup weather going on here; winter has announced its arrival loud and clear. I rummaged in the crisper for something to make soup with and found one zucchini and one yellow squash. And, helpfully, in the bookmarks folder, I found this, which is how Recipe #23 is Zucchini Soup.

This one is yet another case of restaurant envy; the blog that this recipe comes from is in St.

Thai-Style Peanut Curry

My fridge door is home to a couple dozen jars and bottles holding all kinds of strange and smelly sauces. They are key tools in putting together quick dinners like the one I made tonight. Recipe #24 is Vegetable Peanut Curry with Thai flavors.

The not-so-secret ingredient in this curry is Thai Basil. I bought Thai basil this summer at a local nursery. The first time I cooked with it resulted in

Birthday (Cheese)cake

It is V's birthday today and since the birthday boy has a massive sweet tooth, the occasion calls for a homemade cake!

Last week, I pulled up 6 cake recipes that sounded luscious to me and asked V to choose the one he would like for his birthday cake this year. 3 were for layer cakes (one was layered with a tangy lemon curd, one had milk chocolate and peanut butter frosting and the third was

A Pre-Ballet Supper

"Don't try a new recipe on your guests" is an oft-repeated mantra of entertaining, and a rule that I flout ALL the time. As far as I am concerned, the main incentive for having friends over is the chance to have a bunch of unsuspecting folks to test new recipes on.

About three times a year, I get together with my friends for an evening at the ballet. During the holiday season, it is usually The

Chocolate Banana Bread

On Monday nights, I often watch a TV show that fills me with shock and horror but compels me to keep watching (not you, Khloe Kardashian), it is called Hoarders. Compulsive hoarding is a serious issue for some people and this show is as real as it gets.

It so happens that my own tendencies lean to the opposite of hoarding; I tend to throw out stuff ruthlessly and don't really have a sentimental

Another day, another curry

Hello, December! Don't tell me you're here already!

I go through all kinds of food phases on a regular basis. A few months ago, it was the turn of whey smoothies and so I stocked the freezer with bags of fruit. Several smoothies later, the enthusiasm fizzled out and a bag of frozen mango chunks (from Trader Joe's) has been languishing in the freezer.

Last night, I was looking for a simple dish