These stuffed peppers with rice and ground beef is a breeze to make. It’s simple and looks amazing ! The trick is to use passata (tomato puree) for that silky sauce you can make in seconds to cook the peppers in.
Mains
Mildly Spiced Chicken Biryani
I love biryani. They aren’t confined to special occasions or days, they’re a comfort food. It warms my soul and nourishes my body. It saves me from those days where I stare at an open refrigerator wondering what vegetables to pair and what to cook. No,I’m not good at meal planning. So, having an easy recipe with ingredients I mostly have in my pantry is a relief.
The only two ingredients I didn’t have until now are the white poppy seeds and dried plums. But ever since I started making biryani this way they’ve become part of my pantry. For my Irish readers, poppy seed is available in most Asian stores. They come in a 200g pack and will last for a long time, I mean a very long time. Unless you use it to make lemon poppy seed muffins all the time. A favorite of mine which I should blog about. And the dried plums. They are different from prunes and comes with the seed. It has a sweet and mild sour taste and that too can be found in Asian stores. It will be great addition to any curry. The hulled white poppyseeds and dried plums can be seen in the picture below.
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Fish Curry Recipe
Looking at this fish curry,evokes the memories back in the day . Specially tuna, it had to be my favorite fish. Because it resembled meat,sturdy and held it’s shape. I despised fish of all sorts except this. I hated the tiny long bones fearing that it would get stuck in my throat and the fish smell . I’ve always been a meat girl. Chicken was very rare those days, you get to eat it only on special occasions. It was always beef and fish on rotation.
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Beef & Rice Conjee/Porridge
After a long silence in my blog,here I am reviving it again. Come what may,I realized I couldn’t abandon my blog. I sincerely thank all my readers who messaged me,inspiring me to keep the blog alive. Also a shout out to my husband who designed this lovely header. Felt like coming back to a newly decorated, good old home filled with memories. A lot happened during the past year,and I thank the Almighty for giving me courage and keeping me going.
It’s the blessed month of Ramadan. A month of fasting,not feasting. This year,Alhamdulillah,I made a resolution to keep our meals to a bare minimum. Not that we had extravagant meals all these years,but the focus was always been on food rather than more on worship. It’s always been what to cook for Iftar(Breaking fast),what to make for Suhoor(Early Morning meal),how many iftars do I have to organize and so on and so forth. But starting my higher studies on Islam, getting myself bombarded(in a good way) with all the updates about the true essence of Ramadan by the social media and various groups that I’m part of, helped me realize the true spirit of this blessed month.
Now in Srilanka, the staple Iftar meal is the Conjee or the rice porridge.
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Chicken and Vegetable Pie
Here’s wishing all my readers a blessed Ramadan. This holy month is a time to look inwards, cleanse our soul, connect with Allah and hopefully continue to do the same for the rest of the year. This is also the time where we turn into our favorite comforts foods. These food adorn our Iftar table every single day and we take immense pleasure in making and serving it to our friends and family. One such meal that me and my family come to love is this simple chicken and veggie pie.
I submitted this post to a lovely food blog Yummy Food by Lubna who is hosting the event “The joy from fasting to feasting” where she features recipes from Muslim food bloggers around the world this whole month of Ramadan. Now that’s something worth checking out.
One snack item that regularly adorns our Iftar table is Patties with a chicken,beef or fish filling. These half moon shaped dough pockets are filled, sealed, then deep fried till golden in color. But this year I’m trying to wean myself and family from fried foods. So I tweaked the recipe and turned it into a pie. Making a pie is so much easier than making individual patties.
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Easy Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
What you see above is a totally unplanned shot of our lunch last week.
I wasn’t planning to shoot anything that day but when I plated the meal it looked photogenic and I had beautiful early afternoon light streaming through my kitchen windows that was just perfect.I had to click.
It all happened too fast,with this dish. I had almost half an hour to cook lunch before I dash out the door to pick my hungry kids. A quick search online brought me this recipe which I was satisfied with as I had just the right ingredients,beef and broccoli..tada..
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Prawns in Mild Coconut Curry
This month has been hectic so far. My elder son Ammar,one of the twins,came down with the fever. I should have expected this,with the weather change. We were sand blasted for a couple of days. The winds scattered copious amount of sand in to the roads and to our balcony too. A sign that chilly mornings and nights will be changing into warm ones. When that and it’s opposite happens-that is,warm days turn in to chilly ones-kids fall sick. It always catches me off guard.
Koththu Roti-The famous Srilankan street food
I recently fumbled upon Bee’s site RasaMalaysia.Being a Srilankan I was so delighted to find many names I was familiar with like Sambal and Roti.Did you know that “Rasa” means taste in our local Sinhalese language?
Bee was gracious enough to accept my request to do a guest post on her site,to introduce her readers to a bit about Srilankan food. Lankan food is a mix of many Asian cuisines,influenced by the migrant South Indians and Malay workers and also from being under colonial rule by the English,Dutch and the Portuguese.
Srilankan Milk Rice-kiribath
Happy New Year to all of you! I wish you a happy 2012 filled with lots of love,joy and laughter.
Here’s to new beginnings with a traditional Coconut Milk Rice or Kiribath,the way we Srilankans celebrate new year, be it Roman or the traditional Sinhalese new year. Kiribath makes it’s way into every important event or auspicious moment in a Lankan’s life.
Sweet and Sour Chicken and Vegetables
Hoping you all are enjoying the holiday season and spirit.My kids were on winter break and their mornings are spent sleeping till eight or nine.Which gives a much needed me time without the hustle and bustle of waking up in the wee hours of morning cooking and trying to get the kids to school.I’ll be up watching the sunrise with a mug of steaming hot coffee and my favorite bran crackers, savoring every moment of the peace and calmness, looking forward to the day ahead.
Curried meatballs with tomato sauce
Sometimes you wish for uninterrupted “me time”- the most precious word and activity in the world of motherhood.Oh yeah..! .To cook the food,to shoot some pictures,to blog about it,you need peace.But Alas! when I have all the uninterrupted time in the world now that the kids are asleep,suddenly I realize it’s too late at night and I’m dozing off,that I have a whole lot of shopping and cooking to do tomorrow for Eid.So,I’ll leave you with a simple and easy to make recipe that have made it’s way into my weekly menus which goes well rotis.
I’m not much of a minced meat user,but was tempted to buy it after I saw a cooking program in which they were turned into beautiful burgers.But I do make my Mediterranean Rice with Minced Meat and Chickpeas which is a family favorite quite often,to which the recipe will follow later.
Soft and delicious Ghee Rotis
Chappathi or Roti(pan cooked flatbread)as we call it,sans the ghee,has been my food in need,the food that came to my rescue when I didn’t have enough time to spend in the kitchen with two newborns to tend to.The food I can eat with almost any curry,veggie or spread I had, in any form be it stuffed,wrapped or just shredded.
I’ve been making roti ever since I was introduced to it by my Mother-in-Law.It helped me through my working years in Doha(first time away from home),during the infant and toddler years and still during the growing up stage of my young ones.
I normally make about 25 to 30 rotis in one go,all cooked,freeze them up and take out the required quantity and reheat it in the pan again.My boys love to eat the roti’s rolled up with cheese or the favorite Nutella.Yummy!
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Shrimp String-hoppers Biryani
There’s so much to do in this blessed month of Ramadan.First let me wish my readers a Blessed Ramadan,even though this comes pretty late it’s something I had to do now that I have followers.Thanks guys for making my days!!
Even though what I am not going to say next is not in anyway related to food blogging,I need to get it out and across.You must have heard about the famine in Africa,specially in Somalia.There were about 29,000 child deaths in the past 9 months.Having lost a baby brother when growing up and as a mother of two little kids I felt strongly about this.Specially knowing that,this could be avoided with a bit of help from all of us.Here in Dubai,we have SMS services that donate money and Government sites where you can login and deposit your Sadaqatul Fitr or charity online.Spread the word around.Please ask dua for them specially when breaking fast. And find out how you can help from your country or area.
Having said that,in this holy month there are always Iftar get together’s to look forward to.Back at home,a quite popular Iftar dinner menu is string hoppers made with either wheat flour or rice flour cause it makes a light dinner.Making it from scratch looked quite labourous to me,but the elders enjoyed it and it was team work.How I miss those days!
So,here in Dubai,I was happy to find ready-made string hoppers making it easy for me to throw an Iftar dinner without much hassle.This is what I did when one of our friends came for Iftar the other day and it made a tasty light dinner perfect for Ramadan nights.
Chicken curry
I love cooking chicken this way.This is how the chicken curry is made in our household as far as I can remember.The spices that are crushed and added in final stages of cooking brings out such a nice flavor and aroma which I defenitely look forward to enjoying.
Ingredients
1 whole chicken cleaned and cut into pieces
2 ” cinnamon pieces
1 bay leaf
2 cardomom and clove pods each
curry leaves
1 green chilli chopped
1 large onion chopped
1 large tomato chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 pods of garlic and 1′ inch ginger crushed
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp kashmiri chili powder
some cumin seeds,fennel seeds and pepper corns crushed(save for last)
1/4 cup of thick coconut milk
oil
2 ” cinnamon pieces
1 bay leaf
2 cardomom and clove pods each
curry leaves
1 green chilli chopped
1 large onion chopped
1 large tomato chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 pods of garlic and 1′ inch ginger crushed
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp kashmiri chili powder
some cumin seeds,fennel seeds and pepper corns crushed(save for last)
1/4 cup of thick coconut milk
oil
Method
- Heat 2 tbsp oil in a pan and add cinnamon,bay leaf, cardamom,clove and curry leaves.
- Add the onions,a pinch of salt and cook till the onions turn soft and add in the crushed ginger garlic paste.
- Fry for a while till it turns light brown in color and add the chopped tomatoes and the spices.
- Add a little bit a of water and cover and cook for till the tomatoes are soft.Add in the tomato paste,chicken,a cup of water,salt and cook till the chicken is done.
- Stir the coconut milk in and heat it through.
- Two to three minutes before you switch off the fire add the crushed spices.Adjust seasoning.
*Notes:
- I have reduced the amount of chili powder because i feed this to my kids and added tomato paste to retain the reddish color.You can add more chilli powder if you want to fire things up a bit.
- When I’m too lazy or pressed for time to extract the coconut milk I use about 2 tbsp plain yogurt.
