Adventures with Food(Continued)

There is a famous proverb in Hindi which says "Why do we live, to eat "...and that very much defines why food and cooking is such a big deal in common Indian house hold.
Until a decade ago, the practice of eating in restaurants/hotels/cafes wasn't so common in India. With more females starting to work full time in offices and daily commute to work places eating upto 3-4 hours of a day..eating in restaurants has become a more of a necessity.

Not that I think low of females who don't cook three meals at home...I still am a traditional at heart who loves to cook for family and guests.

What fuels my passion for cooking and food is that my partner and I are big time foodies .We get bored of eating the same cuisine daily and crave for "something different" everyday.

So it turns out that I tend to feel guilty if I don't try a new recipe for a long time or cook an elaborate Indian meal each week.

Here are few new recipes I tried this week. I'm sure many of you must have tried these many times.

1. Guacamole en Molcajete

This is a new dish which I ate at one of the restaurants in Covent Garden in London. It was the restaurant's recommended dish and I'm must say it met the expectations.

It's essentially freshly prepared Guacamole served with nachos.

I followed the method they used  :

Ingredients:

1.Avocado - 1big
2.Chopped onion
3.Chopped tomatoes
4.Chopped coriander
5.Lemon juice
6. Jalapeno
7.Salt and black pepper

Recipe:

Mix salt and black pepper in the lemon juice. Deseed and scrape the avocado from its cover and mash it nicely. Mix all the ingredients above with mashed avocado and lemon juice mix.The dip is ready to be served with Nachos .
As I wasn't able to find Nacho chips nearby I served Doritos with the dip. A bit sad that I had to settle with Doritos as they contain MSG or E621 which is not a healthy ingredient.

2.Dal Baingan(Lentil-Aubergine with spices)

Another dish I ate at one of the most famous Indian restaurants near Brick lane in London.

It's amazing how even after eating and cooking Indian cuisine for 33 years I still find dishes in Indian cuisine which I haven't eaten .

I used the recipe from this source:

http://sanjeevkapoor.com/recipe/Baingan-Chana-Dal.html

The dish turned out it to be a bit different from the way it was served in the restaurant may be because I  over cooked the dal. The one served in the restaurant was cooked such that lentil retained the shape of the grain and whole aubergines were served on that.

3. Dosa chutneys(Red chutney and coconut chutney)

I'm usually reluctant to make chutneys or dips as I think it takes too much time to make them and  if the main dish itself is tasty...who needs them ;)

Today I decided to make these chutneys to make the meal complete and DH was so happy.

The complete Dosa meal

Recipe source:

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/coconut-chutney-recipe-coconut-chutney/

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/red-chutney-for-dosa/