Tropical Surprise Bundt Cake #Bundt Bakers

“If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” ~Chinese Proverb In all my time of cake baking, I have never had an epic cake fail. Sure there have been cakes that didn’t turn out as delicious or I didn’t much care for the texture but I have not had cakes just fall flat on me. Until Now. For this month’s theme for Bundt Bakers I suggested that we bake cakes with hidden surprises. How hard could it be? Hiding a little filling or a little something inside a cake sounded fun enough when …

Chicken Xacuti

  Goa – the land of the Vindaloo and cashew Fenny and fish curries, abundant sea food and just the place for a perfect beach vacation. It was on one such idyllic vacation, more than a decade and a half ago that I discovered Goan Cuisine. As a young and inexperienced tourist (not traveller) my plan was to see all the places everyone thought I should see and check them off the list. I did see the places and take in the sights in a rather touristy manner, I however stumbled upon Goan cuisine on the Baga Beach and was …

Daab Chingri – Shrimp cooked in Tender Coconut

Let me amuse you with an easy to cook yet exotic dish. Daab chingri – Shrimp cooked in  tender coconut. It looks as exotic as it tastes. Mellow taste of fresh coconut water, creamy tender coconut and the  wood scented flavor of the coconut shell- It is a treasure house of exotic flavors.       A long while ago, I was travelling for a work assignment to Kolkata (West Bengal, India). My then boss, who is a quintessential Bengali and a great foodie told me and my team to try this dish at “kewpie’s” in Kolkatta. Now I was …

Shufta

So what’s for dessert? This is not something you will hear a true blood Kashmiri ask. And that’s not because we don’t like all things sweet, but because we just don’t have the tradition of serving sweets or desserts after a meal.  We eat the chocolates and the Mithai and we also do make a few sweet things like Kheer, Modur pulao ( rice cooked with nuts and sugar) and phirni. We serve the Modur pulao at the beginning of the meal ( beat that) and we make kheer on auspicious occasions as an offering to the deity. It did …