Aloo Curry / Aloo Masala

Some tastes just get stored in your taste buds, that you would never want to get away or alter a particular recipe in any way, to make even the slightest change. This aloo curry is one such recipe. No matter what, I would just blindly follow this recipe, that my mom always used to make. As kids, we used to love it and we still do and can just scrap off the bowl untill the last bit is consumed.

If you are wondering what is so special about this recipe then let me tell you that, this recipe has the minimal ingredients that could be used to make a potato curry, so amazing and finger licking good. It is just one of the perfect recipes I have ever known. While it cooks in the pressure cooker, you could parallely work on the poori /parathas/rotis that could pair well with it and make an awesome meal in just half an hour. So here is the recipe for that awesome aloo curry.

Avial / Aviyal

No big treat comes even closer to the Sadya spread on a banana leaf. I love having it. In fact, I remember asking my mom to take me to the karshaka market (farmer's market) for a Sadya, during one of the summer vacation. Those are the heights of my Sadya craving. And yes it has to be on the real banana leaf and not those plastic coated banana leaf look alike paper.

This Onam we had planned for a Sadya with friends but Jordan backed off. Not only did he fall sick of cough and cold, he took us down too. But all the Facebook and whatsapp updates and pics didn't let the Onam spirit go down. We didn't have all items on our Onam spread but we did have a decent amount of items that were more than our number of fingers, which includes salt and papadam too .. He he . For the last two years we had not prepared a sadya either because I was pregnant or because I had hardly anytime left after having taken care of a new born. So this time, we so badly wanted to celebrate, atleast for Jordan. Our planning made us buy the plastic banana leaves a week in advance thinking that if we stay adamant about the real banana leaf , we might just not get it at the last moment. Now that we had no friends coming over ( I would hate to serve cold along with sadya to our friends), we had so many leaves and so much leftover curries. Even though Onam was over we still used to have our lunch and dinner with those leftover curries spread over the leaf to compensate on the sadya missed out for the past 2 years. And Jordan just loved it and I guess , he mistook it to be a new practice at our home. Because he gave me a strange look when I served him the meal the next day in a plate rather than the banana leaf ..he he