One Hot Stove Turns 5!

After V recovered from his seasonal cough and cold, it was my turn to have a bout of sickness and that's why I disappeared from this space for a while, spending quality time hacking away on the couch.

But enough about that. This is an exciting day for me, because this wee blog celebrates her fifth birthday today! And to celebrate the day, I wrote a suitably long-winded post.

How time flies...they grow up so fast, etc. etc. Trite as it might sound, it does seem like only yesterday that I tentatively wrote a post, then went on to be part of a thriving and blossoming food blogging community, wrote a few hundred more posts, hosted events, participated in events, took off on some projects and enjoyed many more ups than downs.

None of this is possible without the constant engagement with my dear readers, and for that, I thank you profusely. Thank you for the love and encouragement, the comments and e-mails and for making me and One Hot Stove a part of your lives.

In the coming year, you can expect to see more of the same on this blog: recipes that celebrate home-style Indian food, my attempts at trying to understand incredible India through her regional cuisine, baking experiments tested on hapless friends, jealously trying to recreate restaurant recipes, tasting new ingredients and learning something new every day.

A few non-food aspects of my life are occasionally tacked on the end of posts, and they seem to be of interest to some of you so I'm going to keep sharing them: pictures of Dale, the ol' mutt who occupies a large part of this little home (and my heart), my craft projects and what's residing on my bookshelf at the moment.

But I do want to go back and edit old posts to update recipes, re-write them in a neat, uniform format wherever necessary, and polish up the blog a little to make it more streamlined and user-friendly. This blog is a zero-budget, one-woman show and I have no training in web design, nor do I have friends or relatives who could help me with web design, so every improvement that I make is a painstaking process of trial and error. Please hang in there with me as I learn.

Part of my effort will go towards reworking, tweaking and standardizing old recipes as opposed to trying new ones all the times. Like this one that follows: I mentioned (in this old post) about trying and loving the rajma recipe from Gopium. Since then, I've made it about 25 times, and this week, I adapted it to be cooked entirely in the pressure cooker. It is easy if you have an immersion blender on hand:

One-Pot Pressure Cooker Rajma

(an adaptation of the rajma recipe from Gopium, makes 6-8 servings)

1. Soak 1.5 cups rajma (kidney beans) overnight in plenty of warm water. Before cooking, dump the beans into a colander and rinse them thoroughly.

2. In the body of a pressure cooker, heat 1 tbsp. oil and 1 tbsp. ghee. Add 2 large onions, sliced, and fry them until golden.

3. Stir in
3 cups tomato puree
2 tsp. paprika (or to taste)
1 tsp. red chilli powder (or to taste)
salt to taste

4. Fry the mixture well, then add 3 cups water. Using an immersion blender, carefully blend the mixture.

5. Add the rinsed, soaked kidney beans. Pressure cook until the beans are tender. Once the pressure drops, mash some of the beans to thicken the curry if necessary. Taste and adjust salt and spice. Serve with steamed rice.

 Fresh off the hooks 

I used a lot of colorful cotton yarn left over from other projects and made myself a set of 7 dishcloths- one for every day of the week. The pattern is here: Wavy Dishcloth. I start with a fresh clean one every morning, using it to swab counters and wipe spills all day. At the end of the day, I use it for one final task- to wipe down the sink- and throw it in the laundry hamper. So much better than using paper towels! And cotton gets softer and more absorbent the more you wash it.

 Currently Reading 

I started my "Pulitzer Prize Project 2010" (reading all the Pulitzer prize fiction winners from 1979-2009 during this year) to get out of my comfort zone and give myself a chance to read books from a variety of authors and subjects that I may not pick up otherwise. Already I am being rewarded. This week, I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Pulitzer '07)- a novel that is so off-beat, bleak and beautiful at the same time, haunting and memorable that I don't quite know what to say about it. The New York Times reviewer has more to say. This is a book I would never ever ever have started if not for this project. I highly recommend this book. It is not a light read but it is a short book and I was compelled to read it late into the night, put it away reluctantly for the night and wake up early to finish it. Just give it a chance even if post-apocalyptic fiction is not your thing (it sure isn't mine) :) 

On the other hand, I fully expected to love March by Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer '06) but 20 pages into it, it was not engaging me at all. Life is too short (and books too numerous) to force myself to finish any one book, so I returned it to the library. Maybe I will give it another chance some other time. 

Now it is your turn: say something, anything :)
Ask a question, make a recipe request, share your suggestions about improving this blog, tell me about yourself, won't you?