Hint of Saffron – Hint of Saffron - Tasty Cuisines with Indian Spices

Papdi Chaat (Puffed Poori with Potatoes and Chutneys)

on 05.04.2011 / by Sanjay / 5 comments in Appetizer, Vegetarian

It has been a while since I posted a recipe. Life in the past several months has been too busy due to several things happening since our return from India last December. I have not had time to do much cooking. To tell you the truth, I miss cooking every weekend and posting the recipes. Finally things are beginning to stabilize and hopefully they will stay that way and I can start posting recipes again. At the same time, I have been busy re-doing the layout and theme of the blog. The blog has been converted to a food, photography and travel blog to make it more interesting. Please leave comments regarding the layout and let me know what you think of it.

The recipe for this week is part of the Mumbai street food which has its origins from the street vendors of Mumbai. The foods is supposed to be really spicy though to cater to different taste buds, this recipe is modified so it can be eaten by most people :). Continue reading through to get details.

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Caramelized Sweet Potato

on 02.02.2011 / by Sanjay / 1 comment in Dessert, Gluten-free, Gluten-free Dessert, Vegetarian

One of my favorite sweet potato recipe is the one my mom used to make. She would cook the potatoes first in a pot and then pan fry them in ghee. This recipe is a modified version of the original. I have modified the recipe by baking the sweet potato in the oven first and then pan frying it in ghee with brown sugar to give it some crunch on the outside and soft on the inside. The use of oven or range is not commonplace in India even today and hence cooking is done without using an oven.

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Bread Bowl with Dal (Spicy Red Lentil)

on 26.01.2011 / by Sanjay / 2 comments in Appetizer, Dal, Lentil, Vegan

It has been a while since I posted a recipe. Life has been busy since I came back from India. I have finally settled, I am going to start posting recipes every week. I made two recipes this weekened and will posting those this week and the next. Also, I had promised that I would post a video of the Chivda recipe that I posted several weeks back. Unfortunately, the video editing software still is not working right. I am in the process of cleaning up my computer to free up disk space and remove unnecessary programs from it. Hopefully, after that the software works fine, I can edit the video of the recipe. My plan is to start posting videos for recipes where it might help to make the steps clearer. It does add a significant amount of time to the posting of recipes as now I have to worry about taking the proper videos and also editing them! In the end though it might be worth it it makes the recipes clearer to understand to the readers as video is worth a thousand words.

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Chivda (Spicy Flattened-Rice Snack)

on 26.12.2010 / by Sanjay / 0 comments in Gluten-free, Gluten-free Snacks, Snack, Vegan, Vegan Snacks

It has been a while since I posted a recipe. This time around, I decided to cook one of the recipes that my mom taught me. It makes for not only a healthy but very tasty snack. It is so tasty that once you start eating, you can’t stop. With all the activities in India, I was somehow able to learn a few recipes from her – snack, dessert and two chutneys. We also visited quite a few excellent restaurants not only in new Mumbai but also during our travels to South India – Munnar in the state of Kerala and Madurai and Rameshwaram in the state of Tamil Nadu. Traveling in the smaller towns of India can be a challenge, especially for my wife, who is not used to eating spicy food. In Mumbai however that was not a problem. We ate at quite a few excellent restaurants both in and out of the malls.

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India Trip 2010

on 09.12.2010 / by Sanjay / 6 comments in India

I returned a week ago from a long trip to India with a break in South Korea. It was nice to visit family after a 4 year hiatus. Within India, my wife, daughter and I traveled with my family to South Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed seeing scenic beauty including tea estates, lakes, mountains, a spice garden, and temples. We ate at various restaurants along the way, but they were hits and misses, since some of the places were in the middle of nowhere and there was no way to get any ratings with my iPhone.

South Indian Thali

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