The second picture was formed from a juxtaposition of the rose vase on top of the pic of Ms.79. Image manipulated with the help of Photoshop Elements.

awwwwwwww :)
i received a CD/MP3/radio/cassette player complete with a remote control in a plastic bag which reminded of you instantly : must keep the remote control in the plastic bag :)

Hey Zoe - nice pressie: music heaven for you! Yes - keep the remote control in it’s plastic cover and you will become honorary Indian :-)
Made me laugh!

I got a gas bill for Valentines Day. If I keep it in the envelope do I get to be an honoury Indian too? ;-)

LOL! I suppose so James! Actually: if you make sure you open the enevelope really carefully just-in-case you might want to re-use it - and you add it to your drawer-full of carefully-opened envelopes which you have stashed away over the last ten years - just in case you might want to have resued them - then you, too, can call yourself an honorary Indian!

that veg rice looks excellent. can we have the recipe?

:-)

Nice manipulation with Photoshop, first glance, I actually thought that it was an original. (By the way - did u finally go shopping).
The dishes look lip - smacking
Nice instance of being a honorory Indian.
The favicon thing - what if I cant store it at the place I host - since my blog is being hosted at blogspot?

Sat: Thanks re the dishes. Not sure about how to make favicons work with blogspot hosted accounts. I’ll ket you know just as soon as I spot a blogspotter with a favicon.

And we did go shopping - but nothing special - just the regular Saturday morning stuff: fruit&veg shop on high street, and then supermarket etc.

Rob: you mentioned a recipe for the rice. Well - I’m in the process of introducing a new section to my left-hand side-bar which will contain shortcut links to my recipes. And I’ll make sure to include one there for vegetable rice!

Good idea Jag starting the food section…the veg rice looks great, wot is the recipe? Btw, have u tried Keralite cuisine…these days I am experimenting with simple stuff from Das Sreedharan’s “the new tastes of India”…courtesy City Council library: zindabad!!

Hi Ritu - thx - will definitely put up veg rice recipe soon. Never tried Keralite - alas a lot of Indian cuisine is badly under-represented in UK restuarant scene. The most popular here are Punjabi, Gujurati and South-Indian/Sri Lankan. So - I’ll have to look up your book and try cooking these “new tastes” myself.

I still can’t get over your city library - amazing …

Hi Rob, Ritu: I have now added the method for doing vegetable rice. Click on “vegetable rice” on the left-hand side.

Great stuff, I am definitely going to try out the veg rice & will let u know the verdict. Das S. actually owns the Rasa line of restaurants & I found his website for his N16 flagship restaurant @ http:// www.rasarestaurants.com/index.php?option=rasan16 - it even provides the bus routes and 79 is not there, but 76 is The front cover of the book has a line from The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver calling it, “a really wicked book”.

Yeah, we are so lucky with our council library though, one has to be lucky to find good stuff sometimes, I come up with nothing exciting so, it depends on … dunno wot

Cheers Ritu - Stoke Newington is not too far away. Might try persuade some folks from office to try the place out sometime! Always fancied the idea of Kerala cuisine - esp. since Anita Bora has been sharing some of her stories from Kerala at http://www.anitabora.com/blog/ recently.

Jag: Thank you for this recipe…the verdict I got last night was “incredible”!! I made do with odds and ends from my fridge & Aus long grain rice which is now part of our staple diet, I wd use Basmati only for treats!

Since we have an electric stove, I think I slightly misjudged the heat factor so, I got a thin crisp layer at the bottom of the dish,in the centre, which I polished off later. I guess, I’ll get better with practise!

The water measure, you are right, is perfect. Actually, I had my doubts when I left it on low for 15 mins, but was surprised how it cooked so well.

Yes, I’ve read Anita’s blog. I know someone who got proposed to in a boat in the backwaters of Kerala…no wonder it’s called “God’s own country”.

My favourite Keralite dish is appam & stew - it’s mild and light on the tummy! Pls do blog on yr trip if you can make it to Rasa :) Sure will be interested to read yr comments!!

Ritu: Nice one - I know what you mean by electric stove - they are difficult to judge temperature and not fast to react to change. Yes - even though we have gas I still occasionally leave rice on for a little too long and get a “burned” layer at bottom. No worries though - I just leave that bit untouched in the pan - and scrape off the non-burned rice onto plate.

Yes - a lot of people put too much water and rice comes out too wet - or have lots of trouble gtting rid of excess water. Twice the amount is probably right - but since we have washed rice - it is already holding a little water - so I always err on the “put less water” side - and it comes out fine. The Chinese also use the “index finger” method.

Will definitely report back on Rasa when we get around to going there!

The receipe description and presentation are incrdible. I am very impressed. I am going to try this and serve my friends.

Thanks
Pravin

Good for you Pravin! Hope your friends are impressed. Many thanks for your nice comment.

Hello,

I tried your rice recipe. I am sorry to say that I was very disappointed in it. I thought it was very tasteless. It didn’t call for salt and I had to add it in. I followed your instructions to the letter and it was awful. Considering all the trash talk you did in the recipe, I tried it figuring you knew what you were talking about. Obviously I was wrong. Any real cook would know that! Thanks and try it again yourself. Or, better yet, try it from someone who really knows how to cook.
Have a good night.

Hi Mani - sorry it didn’t work out for you. Perhaps you are right: perhaps I need to try it again. I thought I knew what I was talking about - but I guess it was all just “trash” like you say it was. Hey ho - I have a lot to learn I suppose! Thanks for your feedback in any case.

If you do figure out where you went wrong (or where I went wrong) then be sure to let us all know. Kindest regards. A very good night to you too.

Cheers!

hey jag, thanks for the recipe. I will try it out. just a quick question - can’t we use an electric rice cooker instead of a pot to boil all the stuff.
I got this ID of yours from Chakra’s site.

saranyan.

Hi Saranyan - thank you for your question. I’m sure you can use a rice cooker to boil all the stuff - but I have to admit I haven’t tried it with one. I used to cook plain rice with a Japanese-made rice-cooker (Sanyo make I think) when I was a student at college - but I’ve never tried the vegetable rice in one. However - I’m not sure it will come out right because you need to fry the onions first. Still - why not try it and see how it turns out? Let me know if you do try it.

You are way too verbose in your rice recipe. Just give the ingredients and the instructions. Even the biggest idiot knows that when you put water on the stove, it boils. You don’t need to tell us that. I got lost in all of the wordiness of your recipe just looking for the instructions I needed.

Hi None - many thanks for your comment. I agree with you 100% regarding the verbosity. But I was quite surprised with your comment regarding the boiling water thing - so I checked all my recipes line by line and couldn’t find anything anywhere about me describing how to boil water. So perhaps I am taking your comment too literally: maybe what you meant was that I am explaining things that are too simple in a very verbose way. I cannot argue with that - because it is true! The way in which I set out the recipes are exactly the way I cook it - and are NOT just a list of ingredients plus a handful of terse instructions. There are hundreds of thousands of recipe sites on the Internet with that kind of recipe style. I deliberately try to make my pages a bit more involving and engaging - and NOT for the type of person who just wants to spend 30 seconds scanning a list of ingredients and instructions. Once again - thank you for your feedback - I hope my response makes it clearer - these pages are mostly aimed at a different type of audience/reader. All the best to you!