Caprese Flatbread

You could call it Pizza if you so fancy or even nanizza if you are feeling creative because essentially this yummy dish is nothing but classic caprese style toppings over a naan flat bread. A few moons ago I had shared a similar flat bread pizza with some classic makhani style paneer topping. Of course the choice of toppings is only limited by your imagination but for me a very good combination (when its not paneer of course) is a simple but a classic combo of tomatoes, cheese, basic and garlic. Not to mention it is much simpler to put together than a traditional pizza if you use store bought naans which work perfectly well in this preparation.
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Buffalo Tofu Bites

I do not care much for tofu. Well read on, there's more to it. Of course I did not grow up eating tofu. Not so very long ago, it all started as a misunderstanding between mister tofu and I. I had heard a lot of good things about it. I even found out that it was made from bean curd which put me right at home with it. To top it all it looked like paneer, my favorite ingredient of all. That was the mistake. I tried it with the expectation for it to taste like paneer. Not tofu's fault. It is a great and very versatile ingredient but one of a kind. I have since tried it many different ways and this recipe is the best way I like it. Done appetizer style, breaded, baked and with the spicy kick of a homemade buffalo style sauce. Tofu is back again. 

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Vegetable Pizza Pull Apart Bread

Doesn't this bread just look just worth drooling over. For me at least I have seen this made by several folks and have wanted to make it for a while now. Funny thing is - I actually have. This is probably the third time around that I am making this but it was only this time that I actually got around to be able to hold everyone off till I took the pictures! A perfect snack (or even lunch) for bread lovers and a great crowd pleaser, this bread not just looks great itself, it will make you look good too. Slicing the bread just right takes some patience. Too deep a cut with make the bread fall apart and too little will not allow for enough filling. Filling it with veggie mixture needs some patience as well but tell you what, in the end it is all very well worth it. So pull away!

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Baked Buffalo Broccoli Bites!

Now I realize the post before the last was Brussels Sprouts and here I am trying to sell you guys in to Broccoli - another vegetable that is famous in its notoriety for not being the most liked. But trust you me, after you eat this, you might just discover your new found love for this nutritious member of the cabbage family.
I speak from personal experience. Usually I try to make a vegetable many different ways - in a curry would be my first way, dry pan roasted, oven roasted, tandoori style, mixed with rice as a one pot meal and probably a couple others. Most vegetable are very agreeable to most these methods and come out pretty good. Your good old broccoli on the other hand, not so much. It usually only works for me only when roasted dry with some light seasoning. After tasting these bites, especially with the spicy homemade buffalo sauce, this will be the preferred way to eat broccoli in my household at least for some time to come.

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Grilled caprese cheese sandwich!

Wish all my readers and fans a very Happy New Year 2013.
If you have followed my endless rants about my love for paneer and nutella this recipe is about the one other thing I totally can eat in any which way - the humble bread. This sandwich is the favorite form in which I like it too. Two slices from my favorite Italian bread or French baguette smothered with extra virgin olive oil with a slice of fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwiched within, made slightly crisp on a pan  - just enough for the mozzarella to melt and start oozing. Yum is all I can say.
I have another similar recipe here which is done more in a panini style. This is done like more of a sandwich.

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Mushroom Spinach Lasagna Rollups

Lasagna is many things to many people. For some it would be a daily deal, for some, a dish that they only make when their kids ask for it, for some it is an exotic dinner they have only when they visit their local fine Italian restaurant. I simply think of it as comfort food. Super easy to put together yet super impressive in the way it sounds and looks. If you love Italian food this is definitely for you, something you will most definitely want to try. It is fancy - hey it's 'Lasagna' - loaded with fresh goodness of spinach, mushrooms, creamy ricotta - hearty and beyond good! The simple twist with this preparation is that instead of the lasagna sheets being layered, the sheets instead are rolled into a... well... rollup. This is a meal you are going to remember on how well it came out and your 'customers' can be a regular feature of your weekend brunch.

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Chipotle Grill style Cilantro Lime Rice

imple yet fragrant and flavorful is the theme this time around on USMasala. Speaking of simple and flavorful reminds me of this really elegant rice preparation we often have at one of our local Mexican fast food joints. I am sure many of you have heard of Chipotle Mexican Grill and most of you are regulars as well like we are. If you haven't, it is a Mexican fast food chain that serves your usual burritos and tacos. The menu is really short and simple. The difference with them is what matters when it comes to food - fresh ingredients and bold flavors. Even their basic cilantro lime rice hits a note with the palate.
Wondering what I was doing eating rice at a Mexican fast food joint? Well here's how the story goes. Like I said, we often go to the place, have done for a while, but for the longest time I always had their salad bowl-no rice (who eats rice with salad, right?), hubs would order the burrito with no rice and we would get the kids meal for our little one. The kids meal came with a quesadilla, some cilatro rice and black beans and chips and guacamole on the side. This one time, when kiddo was not up for eating the rice, I gave it a try and that is when the discovery was made. Here's a tip for you, never underestimate the power of bold flavor, however simple the dish may be.
Of course you need to pair this rice with a side. I made their black beans as well. That's to be shared soon. For now you can pick any of the other curries on USMasala and enjoy.

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Garlic pull apart bread

f you have known me at all over the last almost two years, you would know that among the few things that I totally love in any form, bread is definitely high up in the list. This bread was on my radar for a while just waiting for the right moment. So when I ran into the perfect recipe I just got to making it. Most of us love garlic bread. Yes I know you wait for those rolls to show up when dining out in an Italian restaurant. Those half-dozen that show up just after you've placed your order and just when you are munching on the last one, knowing well that your food is about to show up, you think twice whether you should ask for more, decide to hold back but ask for another set anyway. If that sounds familiar, you will love this bread. The added charm is that they are not just any garlic bread. Of course the intense garlic flavor with a hint of fine parmesan over a crusty yet soft bread is all there, but add to that the fact that they are a mosaic of randomly set rolls all neatly shaped up into a bundt. But wait there's more. When you see the bundt and as you admire the mosaic, just as you wonder on how to dig into it, you almost involuntarily grab a piece and pull on it and voila that's when you realize why this bread has 'pull-apart' in its name. Looks even better with a piece missing, doesn't it.

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Garlic Masala Baked Potato Wedges

here is something to be said about the versatility of potatoes. Fry 'em, bake 'em, roast 'em, saute 'em, cook 'em in a curry, mash and stuff 'em, well just mash 'em, heck if you fermented them right, you could even drink 'em :) There are a few people I have come across that don't like them but I can count them on my fingers. The biggest potato lover I have seen among them all is hubs, so much so that his friends tease him of being one. This will give you an idea - I make these baked garlicky potatoes very often especially on  Sunday afternoons intending them to be a side with lunch. He and kiddo will eat a whole piled plateful and he emphatically declares that to be their lunch. And yes, the 'baked' in the title must have given you a clue - yes these are not fried but baked instead. That way I don't mind their occasional gluttony as well. Very simple and elegant, completely full of garlicky flavor, crisp and addictive with an added twist of Indian masalas, I bet you cannot stop at one if you tried. My family loves what I cook for them. Then there is that occasional dish that stands out. After that there is that dish which I get special requests for remakes. This is one of those. So get to it, you will know what I mean.
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Tandoori vegetable paneer pizza ~ all homemade!

love Italian food. Love eating it and love cooking it. Love the different layers, flavors complex yet simple, exotic yet rustic - flavors that have stood the test of time - just like Indian food. You can sense the rich culture and the legacy from the food. When there is a mention of Italian food the first thing that comes to mind is of course the ever-popular Pizza. You guessed it, I love Pizza... a lot. Regardless of crust or toppings - pan, hand-tossed, deep dish, Brooklyn style, thin-crust even the bread and bagel pizza :). A soft chewy bread loaded with veggies and other toppings with a generous helping of cheese! Just can't stop raving. Coming to the US, I had my first ever pizza at Pizza Hut a few years ago... and boy.. I was completely hooked :-) India - at the time - was still coming of age as far as Italian food was concerned so I'd had pizza a couple of times, but this was different. Ahh the good old days.. we used to order delivery, be total couch potatoes and sit in front of the TV for hours watching the 24 hour marathons of Law and Order.

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Vegetable Hakka Noodles/Vegetable Chowmein

hinese food definitely has its place on the menu of practically every restaurant in India. The fact to be noted here though is that over the last several decades as India gradually adopted this neighboring cuisine, barring a few key ingredients, the cuisine has taken a life of its own. So much so as to build a global identity and even aptly being named 'Indo-Chinese cuisine'.
Not just on menus of restaurants, this cuisine is so much a part of the Indian lifestyle now that with every couple of roadside push-cart food vendors selling  your usual pani-puri, kulfi or dosa-idli, you will find a cart that boasts of the best chilli chicken or hakka noodles among other things.
Chinese food here in the US sure is different. Your veg. lo-mein from the local Chinese place that comes in that iconic chinese food carton, tastes great but after you are a few digs into it, you sure get reminded of the corner chinese-wala back home and the sound of the sizzling noodles in his wok on his stove-top and the makeshift push cart that showed up on that very corner religiously every day at five in the evening.
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Easy-Cheesy Garlic Bread

here are four things right about this recipe - toasted bread, garlic, butter and of course can't go wrong with melted cheese. Those are reasons enough for me to snack on this delight every so often. The very first time that I made it though, the reason was a little different. Every time hubby would cross the frozen foods aisle in our local grocery store he would point to one of the freezers and say 'hey why don't we get that garlic bread, they are really easy to make and are a great snack'. I would always cast him off as 'you always like to buy this junk from the stores, I will make you these at home some day'. Not sure what went through his mind but poor guy never said anything. A few moons ago, that one day finally arrived and when I made these I was totally hooked myself. He said it was way better than the ones in the store and I am not the one to complain when I get a compliment like that. Yes we have passed that freezer several times since and he has never brought it up again. 

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Paneer makani naanizza!

eftovers can be an issue at times. Mostly hubs will not want to eat it the following day (he says he does but I can tell he'd rather not). It is more of an issue when your leftovers are dishes that are close to your heart and you just spent your entire weekend cooking them up. It just so happened this past weekend that I had leftover Panner Makhani and Naan, two things that I just cannot explain how much I love. Now of course I couldn't eat it all by myself and it would break my heart if I had to throw away paneer in any shape or form.
You of course guessed where this is leading up to. Long-story-short, all my leftovers were gone in no time. Not until later, when I pointed out, is when hubs realized they were leftovers. This was not the first time I had made these insanely delicious fusion pizzas that kiddo and I like to lovingly call 'nanizza'. It never fails me as was the case this time around. Kiddo totally loved it too - the result that pleases me the most.
Naan based pizzas are becoming increasingly popular, so much so that the frozen version of it have started to appear on regular grocery stores. I have made it with different toppings like aloo gobhi, palak paneer and even baingan bharta and this time it was paneer makhani. 

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Chilli Paneer dry/Paneer cheese in a spicy chilli soy sauce

o tantrums and food have any relation for you? Well, in my case, growing up they had quite a lot to do with each other. This is what my dear mom used to cook especially for me when me - the brat - used to tell her "mom, you don't love me anymore", count to her all the occasions when I was refused an ice-cream, a barbie doll, Shahrukh's poster and the bestest most expensive dress in the mall! She knew how to get me back to behaving normally... lol.

I love Chinese food but I have a certain (very strong) bias towards Indian-Chinese (aka indo-chinese) cuisine. We Indians have had a long-lived love affair with Chinese food. Long before pizzas, burgers and junk food became popular, it was Chinese food that most of us wanted when we craved something exotic and different. One may argue that Indo-chinese is not really chinese food as it is not very close to authentic chinese food. It has been totally adapted and re-flavored to suit an Indian palette. But hey, that is what fusion food is all about, right? Who knew the marriage of a little soy sauce with Indian spices could be so delicious! A big bright star of the Indian Chinese cuisine, featured on almost every menu of an Indian restaurant, be it upscale or roadside.

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Saag Paneer Calzone/Spinach Paneer Curry Calzone (whole wheat)

love Italian food! Love eating it and love cooking it. Love the different layers, flavors complex yet simple, exotic yet rustic just like Indian food. You can sense the rich culture and the legacy from the food .
Our (indians) love for indo-chinese is well known but another cuisine that has come in from across the shores and become a part of the cuisine... is Italian. With its pastas and pizza and other goodies and use of herbs, five star restaurants as well as hole-in-the-wall stores near every street now have some kind of “pizza” on their menu! It keeps the essense of pizza that is a thick bread smothered in tomato ketchup topped with melty cheese, but almost always has a local (desi) touch to it whether it be use of paneer or chicken! Lots of fusion recipes have been born, you can easily find panner pizza even butter chicken pizza in any pizza hut franchise in india - I have few on my blog too. This time around I took my classic saag paneer recipe and tucked inside a calzone and the result was a beautiful marrige of two of my favorite cuisines - a fusion food heaven!
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Thai Massaman Curry (Vegetarian)

his one time, soon after we got married and I came to the US, hubby and I went to a wedding ceremony of one of his colleagues. Strangely enough they did not have much food. Only some light snacks and drinks. So after the ceremony on our way back we decided to get lunch. He said he knew a Thai-Japanese place that was pretty good. At the restaurant we saw they had vegetarian sushi on the menu. I got all excited about it and we ordered it. When it arrived, it looked really pretty, got me even more excited to try it out. Hated it. I almost spit it out in my napkin. I kid you not. To my surprise though, hubby seemed to like it. Well anyway that was end of Sushi for me for a very long time. Well that was until we went to another Thai restaurant and this time hubby knew better than to order Sushi. So he ordered, you guessed it, Massaman curry. That was the day I was completely hooked to Thai cuisine. Thai is now definitely my favorite after Italian (and of course Indian) cuisine. I like everything about Thai cuisine; the ingredients used, its flavor, the way it’s cooked, the fresh herbs and aromatic spices and above all the way it tastes. And another reason for my love affair with Thai food is the familiar spices flavors with my very own Indian cuisine. Among the different Thai dishes, the varieties of curries definitely top the charts. The unique burst of flavors and the gorgeous color is so appealing that I order it over and over again whenever I am at any Thai restaurant. Not quite so popular as its more popular cousins Red curry, Green n Yellow Thai Curry, but heartier and a lot more aromatic is the unique Massaman Curry. It’s a sort of fusion between Thai and Indian food :)The tamarind, coconut and spices give it a distinct Indian flavor.

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Cardamom Pancakes with Mango Saffron Compote/Chutney

ather's day this year was special as it has been for the last four years since we were blessed with our little princess. Now she is daddy's little girl so this Father's day I figured I'd make something that would be manly enough for papa and would be fun for his little princess to make and eat and they can sit together and enjoy. Little and I made these incredible pancakes for dearest papa this Sunday ~ warm, fruity, rich, decadent and gourmet breakfast/brunch with the best mango compote/chutney ever (dad is a BIG mango lover)... and yes if you look closer, these are pancakes with no eggs! The feedback from both of my critics was very positive :) Hubby later explained how amazed he was that the pancakes were as light and fluffy as the ones with eggs except only better as they did not have the eggy taste. Me personally am not much of a pancake fan so cannot say much about it but I surely have a thing or two to say about the compote. If this is any proof, every time I open the refrigerator I lick a fingerful of this chutney :) Tangy and sweet, very fruity taken to the level of exotic with the dash of saffron flavor. You will never go back to your syrup again.

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Curried/Masala Couscous salad

 do love cooking elaborate meals and I do know (most days) I am not lazy at all when it comes to that ~ But then there are days when I don't even feel like lifting my little finger (not happening with an hyper-active toddler). All I would love to do is to snuggle under my blanket and settle down with a good book or just randomly blog hop or just sit on the couch and watch TV. Fixing a meal on such days is such a pain. I am sure most all of you are going in your head 'yeah me too'. This filling and comforting salad is so apt for such a time. The other day, kiddo and I were all by ourselves, daddy was in a two day business conference. We made this super easy delicious couscous salad for lunch and kiddo totally loved it, the result that pleases me the most.

This one is packed with nutrition and is very filling. I love couscous and always have some in my pantry. One of the easiest and very versatile ingredients to work with. I have made it several different ways but this time around I added a some indian spices and the salad ended up being a fabulous fusion meal.

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Samosa Puffs

 
uys lets face it making samosa from scratch is a tedious job, one that mostly requires teamwork! Of course I have posted one here and I do make it now and then, but for those unexpected guests or for that terrible samosa craving on a cold rainy day I do follow the easy route with what I call the super market wonder ~ the PUFF PASTRY  (an always present ingredient in my freezer). One thing that we miss here in the US is the luxury of having good Indian food available at any street corner you turn which we used to take so for granted in India. I am sure a few of my readers will identify with that. We used to crave for good samosas and other street food every now and then. Given that it takes a little effort to make your own, I mostly find myself not having the enthu to make it often neither to drive 10 -15 miles every time to the nearest Indian restaurant in the area. Now you probably have had those vegetable puffs (a million times) in possibly each and every single potluck or dinner you have attended so far. This time I wanted to take the same concept and make it a little more presentable and interesting and closer to our beloved Samosa ~ only open faced!

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Pizza Buns

ast night I was officially declared food crazy by hubby. We had dinner, tucked our little one into bed, watched some TV and then as we were getting ready to call it a night, this crazy idea struck me. God help me, it was almost close to midnight but I had to make these buns that would be stuffed with pizza sauce and pizza toppings. I call them pizza buns not sure if such a thing even exist. With much excitement I explained the recipe to poor hubby who listened to me with his jaw dropped to the floor. I could see him calling me crazy in the back of his head - not that I cared at the time - I just had to make it. I am sure some of my readers will identify with me (please say yes, its very important for the self-affirmation of my sanity :)
Anyway, believe it or not, the project took a little over an hour and by some insanely ungodly hour we were standing in the middle of the kitchen enjoying the pizza buns. I was so tired I don't even remember what they tasted like but hubby tells me they were awesome as he ate a couple (and he never eats anything that late).
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