My rendezvous with Aparna's Diverse Kitchen

It was such a wonderful surprise to me that Srivalli chose My Diverse Kitchen for Tried and Tasted Event, a brainchild of Zlamushka, currently taken over by Lakshmi. I have been following Aparna's space ever since I registered myself to Blogger.com, which is much before I attempted posting anything!

I cannot define the exact reason why I find her posts very attractive, it is every aspect, her introduction, the recipe and the pictures all of them put together, I must confess. Many a times I have been inspired to try my hand on baking reading these posts.

I decided I would use Srivalli's invitation to give myself a bit of indulgence this August. I tried few recipes from Aparna's kitchen...some adjusting just a bit and some following to the letter.

This post is an whole day's cooking of only dishes from her blog. I chose a weekend as it is easier to have a heavy breakfast, a lighter lunch ( I can afford to carry the stuff over, if they were excess), tea with snacks and an indulging dinner and the added advantage of having husband around to click pictures!

I spare you my drone and writing up recipes again. That is just a click away, taking you to Aparna's pages. I do this with a purpose, that I want readers of this post to enjoy her write-ups.

I am one who will not throw even the daily sheet torn off the calender without reading the contents therein. So, I can assertively state that if you want some good reading along side some good food, hop there right away.

My breakfast was Vellayaappam and mixed vegetable stew. I make my aapams regularly, this was a bit saving the soaking and grinding time. The result was aapams with truly lace-like fringe to the spongy fat porous centres.

Lunch was a Palakkad Iyer recipes. Though there isn't much of a difference from a Tambrahm menu, subtle changes to the recipe make a difference in taste.

I made vendakkai vathakkinathu, keerai mulagootal in the microwave, varatharaitcha sambhar ( she had used vendaikkai, I had to replace it with murungaikkai for obvious reasons) and tomato rasam.

The keerai mulagootal, she mentioned having pressure cooked thuvar dhal and having added to the keerai. I simply substituted thuvar dahl with masoor dhal which cooks easily in the microwave.

That was lunch friends with the usual rice and curds!

Tea time was funtime with her vanilla yo-yo biscuits. I did my tweak to the filling. I used some Tang orange juice powder to the ingredients and made orange cream! I prefer black tea and these were perfect after tea.

Dinner, my husband was looking forward to most! The house was filled with aroma of freshly baking pav. I reduced the recipe to half the ingredients she had listed. But I had to bake them in my bread tins which would hold three in a row, dividing the dough further would have given me bite-size pavs, I feared. So I got six slightly bigger pavs.

Now, they no longer qualify as laadi pav ( a friend told me that laadi pav is made sixteen numbers in all usually in the tin) but I can safely list them as pav bhaji. We could have only three pavs between the two of us and saved the rest for the next day with a different curry.

I was very thrilled to watch my husband wipe the bowl of bhaji with a last tiny piece of the pav.

I enjoyed the menu, both cooking and relishing the food thoroughly.

I have tried few more from Aparna's recipes, which will need to be featured in future posts. Await them in the next few days.

Srivalli is also currently celebrating the third anniversary of her ever popular MEC event and is calling for dishes cooked in microwave to feature in the la-carte of the Potluck party. Look out for the Keerai Mulagootal there too.

Have a good day!