I tried to just take this as a compliment

Here are five recipes from around the internet that I’ve been making. Check them out!

1. Simple Asparagus Soup – The two things that I love about this soup are that it is truly simple to make and that the curry paste gives it a gently kick of heat which makes it light but also belly warming. And it’s very simple to make.
2. Rigatoni with Easy Vodka Sauce – We love a saucy rigatoni in vodka sauce, but I had never tried to make it at home before. True to its name, this recipe is easy. It’s also finger licking good. The double concentrated tomato paste is a must.
3. Crispy Shallot Spring Rolls with Seared Tofu – The light, rice paper wrapped rolls are a perfect appetizer or side for a dinner of red curry and rice, which is what we had. The crunch from the crispy shallots makes them that much more delightful.
4. Instant Pot Butter Chickpeas – This easy Indian recipe from one of my favorite Indian Instapot bloggers has been appearing on our dinner table at least once every two weeks. I opt for canned chickpeas instead of dried chickpeas (less planning required) which means you only need to pressure cook for 5 minutes instead of 35 minutes and can reduce the water by about half. I’ve also substituted paneer for the chickpeas and would try potatoes as well.
5. Spinach Lasagna – I made a vegetarian version of this Spinach and Beef Lasagna (I substituted crumbles for the beef). The layering instructions in this recipe result in light, thin layers of cheese, sauce and filling. The butter cubes on the top are a bit decadent but they did give it a really nice golden crusty top.

I like ordering in (who doesn’t love to slurp up lo mein from a paper carton?), and I love eating at restaurants (bring me food and do the dishes for me? yes please.) but it doesn’t compare to cooking in and eating in my own kitchen.

We live in a busy world packed with noise. Slowing down, cooking a meal with your own two hands and enjoying it in the comfort of your own home is about self care. It’s creative, fun and the best gift I can give to the people I love.

So if you’re like us and love cooking in, here’s five recipes for you to try out for the coming week and a few of my favorite food sites to follow on Instagram.

Yes, Instagram. It’s become my main recipe discovery tool. My feed nowadays is 50% food. The other 50% is friends, dogs and a bunch of sports figures that my daughter added.

A few of my favorite Instagram food follows:

• @nytcooking 
• @minimalist baker
• @bonappetitemag
• @seriouseats
• @epicurious
• @pinchofyum

Any others that I should be following?

For cooking in this week, here are five recipes to try:

• Baked Crispy Peanut Tofu from Minimalist Baker – I followed this recipe as is except that I sauteed one large eggplant which I combined with the tofu. I also added about a half cup of water to the peanut sauce. We paired this with quiona for a flavorful, filling and quick meal.
• Roasted Broccoli from NY Times Cooking – This is a no recipe recipe from Sam Sifton at the NY Times. It’s become a go to side dish for weeknight dinners. So far, my favorites are EVOO+Salt+Pepper+Soy Sauce and EVOO+Salt+Pepper+Balsamic Vinegar.

• Spinach and Paneer Curry from Piping Pot Curry – This is like creamed spinach’s Indian best friend. A foolproof recipe that you can throw into the Instant Pot. It’s a great reason to buy a hand blender if you are looking for an excuse.

• Mushroom Tacos with Kale, Guac and Chipotle Peppers from Evergreen Kitchen – We’ve made these TWICE. Do I need to say more? I added less chipotle peppers (because kids) and also sauteed long cubes of tofu to boost up the protein. We also put out a bevy of toppings – feta cheese, corn and tomatoes.

• No list is completed with something sweet. We were pleasantly surprised by these Almond Flour Cookies Loaded with Chocolate Chips and Chewy Oats from the blog Peanut Butter and Chocolate.

I can’t say it is Roald Dahl’s fault, but I think we could agree that he played a hand in it. Cabbage soup for lunch. Cabbage soup for supper. Watery cabbage soup that left you with a horrible empty feeling in your stomach.

Remember that from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? I adore Roald Dahl and his books, but I hate that cabbage is such a strong contender for the most unloved vegetable award. Cabbage needs the same publicity campaign that took brussels sprouts from a punishment you threatened your children with to star of the farm to table movement.

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So let’s start the campaign. Here’s my case for cabbage.

First, the health benefits. Cabbage is known to be a preventer of type two diabetes, has antioxidants known to decreases risks of cardiovascular disease, supports the digestive track, provides high fiber density at a low calorie count and some of the red cabbages are high in anti-inflamatory anthocyanins.

If you need to take a short break here to add cabbage to your grocery list, please do so. Go ahead.

Second, cabbage provides a mild sweet, crunchy, fresh and quick to cook canvas. This recipe is for an easy, traditional South Indian vegetable sauté, or kura. We eat it on a weeknight with rice and rasam or sambar followed by rice mixed with yogurt and a side of spicy pickle.

With the combination of just a few ingredients, you can really make any South Indian vegetable sauté. You can substitute cabbage for another leafy green vegetable like brussels sprouts, kale or spinach or a root vegetable like potatoes. For a heartier dish, combine a leafy green with a root vegetable and adding in diced garlic or ginger and shredded, unsweetened coconut.

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The menu generally centers around a decadent eggplant parmesan or Indian main dishes prepared more richly than normal (read: cream in lieu of low fat yogurt and ghee tempering). If you’re looking for vegetarian Thanksgiving ideas, here are ten of our favorites that you can work into any menu:

Ten Vegetarian Thanksgiving Recipes

1. Brussels Sprouts in Honey Butter with Chili Flakes – I once ate a pound of these by myself without even realizing it. It was like I started and just couldn’t stop. 
2. CousCous with Lemons and Haloumi Cheese – Preserved lemons are one of my favorite ingredients to brighten up the taste of pretty much any type of grain or noodle dish. They also add a beautiful and sophisticated touch which will help back up that story that you spent hours slaving away in the kitchen. If you can’t find preserved lemons, use regular lemons. Haloumi cheese adds a nice salty taste with a chewy texture and makes this a more substantial side dish. You could substitute feta cheese for the haloumi.
3. Stuffed Mushrooms – These make a regular appearance at our Thanksgiving dinners. They are kind of like the brussels sprouts – once you start eating them, you can’t stop. The main challenge with these is keeping them coming out of the oven at the pace at which they are being eaten. A plus here is that you can make these ahead of time and bake them right before ready to serve.
   
4. Farmer’s Market Vegetable Tian – A tian is an easy, crowd pleaser which you can modify based on vegetables that are seasonal at the moment. Because leftover potential should also be a factor in deciding on what to make for Thanksgiving, it feels like I should mention that tians are great in sandwiches – hoagies or open face – the next day.
5. Puff Pastry Samosas – This quick samosa recipe has been a life saver ever since I discovered it as an “emergency appetizer”. You know those moments where you realize that you need to serve something but have almost no groceries and no time? Puff Pastry Samosas are your answer. All you really need are potatoes, frozen peas and a package of frozen puff pastry. You can serve these samosas as an appetizer or even a main dish. I’ve made them both as individual triangle samosas but also as a larger loaf to save cooking time. Both are big hits.
6. Crispy Spinach Chaat – This recipe is an adaptation of a popular dish at the restaurant, Rasika, in Washington D.C. After I made it for the first time, I received the cookbook and was able to see the real recipe. Mine is a little simpler so I’m sharing that one here. Also, maybe I should have led with battered, fried spinach and had you at that.
7. Vegetarian Chicken Wings – These are also an annual tradition when we get together with my side of the family. We order a huge frozen bag from May-Wah in New York City. Over the course of the Thanksgiving break, we try out different seasoning marinades. Some of our favorite are a yogurt-tikka masala blend, teriyaki and sometimes just olive oil-salt-pepper.
   
8. Whole Cauliflower in Makhani Sauce – Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables because it can be transformed into so many shapes and textures. A whole cooked cauliflower is a great vegetarian main dish option. This version drenches a blanched head of cauliflower in a creamy, tomato spiced sauce.
9. Grilled Cauliflower with Spicy Tomato Sauce – I told you I love cauliflower! Here’s another way to serve it up either as a whole blanched head of cauliflower (using the same technique as above) or cut into smaller pieces and grilled and served with a piquant tomato sauce.
10. Eggplant Parmesan – Our Thanksgiving dinner is often anchored around Eggplant Parmesan. This is a version that I learned from a chef in Costa Rica (of all places). The differentiator with this recipe is adding a few dollops of pesto with each layer of the dish and using as high a quality parmesan and mozzarella as you can get.

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I’m good with it though (and based on how my family devoured it, I would venture to guess they are too!). The skillet lasagna did not disappoint. In a traditional lasagna, all of the ingredients – ricotta cheese, sauce, veggies and crumbles – are forced into a rigid layered order and packed in. In this lasagna, they are allowed to run free in what is essentially deconstructed lasagna.

But I was missing a key ingredient…Harissa – a spicy Tunisian condiment that makes everything you put it on infinitely more delicious.

I decided to make it at home, which I based off of this recipe from the Kitchn. It was quick and much more flavorful than the store bought harissa. It will last for about a month in your fridge.

A little bit of harissa will go a long way so this will last. We have been dropping dollops of this in soups, on quinoa bites, egg and cheese sandwiches, frittatas and a vegetarian version of this skillet lasagna.

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It’s been rainy, windy and cold in Hoboken and NYC. It’s the kind of weather that makes your bones cold. The kind of weather that you cannot really warm back up from even if Mother Nature surprises you with a 70 degree and sunny day of weather amidst the cold.

As we head into the winter, a little jar of this harissa is just what you need to spice up pretty much anything you are eating (I cannot think of anything it does not go with) and keep yourself warm.

And try out that skillet lasagna. Even my almost 9-year-old who believes strongly that noodles should be coated in nothing other than butter and cheese agreed. “Mmm that’s actually really good.” I don’t know how it is in your house, but in ours this is considered a 5-star review.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your sweet thoughts and hugs on my post about my Dad and his language of love. I look forward to sharing more of his favorites as foods to remember.

Food is an interesting thing when you lose a loved one. Eating it, thinking about it, writing about it – it all seems trivial compared to the loss. On the other hand, my connection to food is so deeply grounded in my relationship with and memories of my Dad.

Food was my Dad’s language of love.

My Dad learned to cook out of necessity. He spent much of his adolescence as an orphan – my Dad’s mother died when he was a toddler and his dad died when my Dad was in his 20s. He learned over that time to become proficient at South Indian cooking.

My Dad made me after school snacks of buttered lima beans, cheesy broccoli spears and peppery green peas while he and my mom made South Indian meals that we ate each night. As a mom, I see the value in the healthy eating habits he set for me. And I have to hold back when my daughter complains that we’re eating Indian food “again” (my response: WE’RE INDIAN. We eat INDIAN FOOD.).

Family weekend outings were to the international farmers market and Indian grocery store. A farmers market, Asian grocery store or even the international vegetable section of the FreshDirect app still gets me excited in a kid in a candy shop kind of way.

As a college student, my trips home were met with all of my favorite foods. My bags always contained goodies to take back. When Rajat met my Dad, they bonded over Rajat’s love of South Indian food – dosas, idlis, gun powder, rasam (even if he did drink it from a bowl!) and dahi vada. It was the foundation of not only my Dad’s love for Rajat but my mom’s too.

The language of love through food spread to my daughter, Surya. Dad would send me recipes for making kohlrabi, noting that it helped breastfeeding moms produce more milk. He also sent that recipe to my sister and brother who pointed out that while they were thankful for the information, they were not breastfeeding mothers!

Surya quickly learned that visits from her ThaTha (my Dad) and Avva (my Mom) also meant ThaTha okra was on its way and that he would ensure Avva made her crispy potatoes, dosas, lemon rice and magimum (curd rice) with homemade lemon pickles.

My Dad has stopped cooking as much in the last few years. Our pestering about reducing sodium and fried foods took some of the fun out of it for him. But my Mom stepped right in and picked up where he left off making his and our favorites. 

Food is powerful. It not only nourishes our body, but it brings families together, kindles memories of loved ones and allows us to carry on traditions and cultures. It showers love upon family and friends.

Earlier this week, I was missing my Dad. I made a simple tomato garlic rasam, a daily staple that that my Dad would make in a minute. He relished it for the rich tangy, spicy garlicky taste. He would prescribe a peppery version for a cold, a lemony version to soothe a sour tummy and a soar throat and so on.

Later that night, over a bowl of garlic rasam and crispy potatoes, Surya, Rajat and I remembered my Dad fondly and laughed together over my his love of those foods and the times we shared them together. Funny enough but we have done that a lot since my Dad passed away.

#FoodstoRemember

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In loving memory of my Dad, Gopalakrishnan Balasubramanian (September 11, 1940 – July 21, 2018).

Here are some of my favorite recipes that might warm you up on during the blizzard:

Coconut Cashew Potatoes

Red Lentil and Smashed Garlic Soup

Stone Soup

Spinach and Chickpeas Made Easy

Eggplant Parmesan

Puff Pastry Samosas

Rich coconut, nutty cashews, strong but subtly blended in spices and creamy potatoes. It’s the kind of dish that conjures images of mogul kings feasting while being fanned with a peacock feather. I’m not sure peacock fans is a thing but that’s what I think of when I eat these potatoes.

The recipe is adapted from Suvir Saran’s Indian Home Cooking‘s Coconut Cashew Chicken. If you don’t already own this cookbook, I highly recommend purchasing it. There’s a lot of the basics in and recipes that you can easily adapt to your own.

In short, this recipe basically involves dry roasting 8 ingredients, blending them, putting them back in the skillet to brown, stirring in water and then adding in potatoes and cooking until tender. How much easier can it get?

The yogurt I grew up eating was creamy. Milky tasting. Sweet and tart and thick. It was also homemade.

Making yogurt at home is one of three staples of a South Indian household. Melissa Clark’s How to Make Homemade Yogurt was a good reminder of how easy it is to create a delicious homemade version of a daily staple. I’m hopeful that over time it will become a way to stay in touch with our tradition. (In case you’re wondering, the other two are basmati rice and ghee).

You can find Melissa’s instructions for how to make homemade yogurt here. It’s fairly straightforward:

1. Bring milk to a simmer until there are bubbles forming around the side.

2. Remove from heat. Let the milk cool until it’s warm.

3. Whisk in starter yogurt. Cover the pot and put it in a warm, dark place for 8 to 12 hours. I place mine in the turned-off oven with the light switched on. Then put it in the fridge for 3-4 hours. 

Part of the fun of making yogurt is also test-tasting how each batch turns out. How creamy is it? How tangy? How thick? How tart? Even if it’s not perfect, it’s still delicious and super easy to make the next batch.

And if life does give you too loose yogurt, what to do? Make a smoothie. Or top it off with berries. Things could be worse. They could be chemical-y induced into the shape of a plastic carton.