Cooking revived :)

After more then a month of living in The Hague I am back to my cooking spree again, I've started to enjoy cooking as m finally settled and that for me means....finding the exact store/place to buy things I want to cook, having good pots & pans for cooking and a neat kitchen. The Albert Heijn XL at my neighborhood has almost everything I need and also the "Open Market"  @ Herman Costerstraat, sells things which even Albert Heijn doesn't sell........Hanggam, Green chillies, fresh fish & prawns, crabs to mentions few of the items from Open Market n also its almost half the price.. The Indian store "India Gate" near the Open market is where we get all the dal, masala's, sweets and roti's.

Coming back to cooking, the other day I decided to make Chole (Chickpea Curry) but ended up making something else....I was in no mood to make an elaborate dinner so made a quick and easy dish. I am still confused about what to call the dish but nonetheless it was yumm. The recipe is below:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup boiled chickpea.
• 1/2 cup boiled corn.
• 1 Onion.
• 4-5 Green Chilies
• 1 Tomato
• Olive Oil
• Salt to taste 
• Chile Powder (Optional)

Method:

• Chop the onion, green chillies and tomato.
• In a non stick frying pan, heat some olive oil and fry the chopped onion, green chilies and the tomato's.
• Add the boiled corn and Chickpea & fry for another 5 mins. Mix the ingredients together, add salt to taste. Add some chili powder on top. 
• Serve hot with garlic bread. 

Trip Madurodam

I had not heard about 'Madurodam' untill someone told us about it the last week, we were told that it's an  interesting place to be and we sure will enjoy the visit....as suggested we found the place quite amazing, the miniature version of famous monuments  and places in Netherlands were really cute, it was like seeing the whole of Netherlands in one area....only it were hundreds of times smaller. To reach there we took Tram no 9, from Holland Spoor Station, the stop is called 'Madurodam' . We really enjoyed our visit and also we happen to be there on the right day, as1st october was a bright, sunny n lovely day, infact it was the hottest 1st october ever recorded in many, many years.  I will recommend it to everybody visiting Den Haag to visit 'Maduradam' atleast once. 

Mini replicate of various places in Netherlands

St. John's Basilica

One of the cities in Netherlands

Leiden University

The Peace Palace- International Court of Justice

How can this post be complete without the famous windmills of Netherlands!!!!

Discovering Hague....

Before coming to Hague, I tried and read as much as possible about the city esp. about the supermarkets, restaurants, transport etc etc but after living here for almost a month I realize that read up about the city did help me to some extent, so all the wikitravel and google did help me to make this new city home till the time I am here. One of my most important agenda now is to travel around Netherlands and Europe....till now I've been to Delft (twice), Rotterdam, Kinderdijk, the beach at Scheveningen (10 mins by tram) and Haarlem. We are planning a trip to others cities and esp to Amsterdam but not before buying our Museum card, the card is really awesome for 45 Euro I can visit all the Museum anywhere in Netherlands for the whole year....I really think its an awesome deal, in Hague itself their are I don't know how many Museums....their is one right next to where I live and have seen couple of them on my way to the HS station. 

We discovered some really cool places here...like the "illys Cafe" at Oude Molstraat, they serve the best Cheese fingers in the city I think...at the Scheveningen Beach we had gone to one restaurant called "zinzabar" the food was very reasonably priced compared to few other restaurants we checked.  The open market is another place I really like...and I like it more because I get to my chillies from there I bought something which is similar to "O-morok" it tastes the same but a little less hot...the Open market is one huge market selling the freshest possible vegetables, meat and sea food and also their is one Indian Store there called "India Gate" which sells all the possible Indian food....dal, rice, masala, veggies etc etc

I will try and explore Hague as much as possible while I am here and I hope anybody wanting more info about the city will find it useful. 

The Dutch Experience....in pics

Kinderdijk- UNESCO world heritage site

View from the boat...

Wooden clogs

@ Rotterdam port

Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Hagued....

Three days of living in The Hague and I must say me and my fren "CD" and "SS" are trying our level best to make it as homely as possible...the first day CD and me had "Ready to eat' packed Rajma Chawal...which was not bad but good either and I felt really bad thinking what the hell am I eating...Day 2 we had Rice, dal and scrambled eggs which made me a lil happy and Day 3 we had fish and chips for lunch and for dinner we had  my fav. mixed vegetable and Rajma curry with rice. The best part about all our kitchens is its equipped with all the item we need for cooking esp. the electronic items, pots,pans, plates etc etc. 

Food and travel wise its sure going to be one of the best years of our lives....Rome tops the list in "Must Visit Places" but a trip to IKEA store@ Delft  is what I am really lookin fwd to nxt week. Happy staying in The Hague to me .... enjoy and keep the blog alive n make it as informative as possible. 

This months and the month before- a Foodventurous Month....

I haven't written anything since a long time...I was busy settling down n setting the house. The previous month and this month I have had some of the best food one can ever eat...here in Bangalore I had "Thai Red Curry Chicken"- twice...Andhra Thali at Nando's which was really yum...lunch platter at UB city...Crab curry  at Coconut Grove all in Bangalore...Tender roasted duck at Nanking, Delhi...celebration for submission of Phd theses of my dear fren "AN"  she loves to have duck curry and this one was sure the yummest she ever had. 

The best vada-pav in Pune...all thanks to my husband and Pune is his city  n thankfully he knows all the awesome food joints...my husband very recently realized  that just like me he's a total foodie and along with me he's discovering the love/art of cooking. During my last trip to Pune....we had invited few people for dinner and I discovered that I can sure make really good Manipuri chicken curry...I invented it all by chance..the trick was to cook it on low flame and the only masala I used was the "Kangla- Machal Apouba" (I'll upload the recipe in another post).

Even if m from home I still got to eat my fav. Manipuri seasonal vegetables....all thanks to my mom, she sent Ou-soi, O-morok, Maroi-Nakuppi & Napakpi, Yendem, Loklei and Se-bott....for foodies like me..I know I'll always manage to have my fav. food...anywhere in the world...with my stock I made Ou-soi ooti, Ou-soi-kangsu, Yendem eromba, Maroi nakuppi kanghou, Ou-morok metpa with chicken liver....which m sure most manipuri's can die for...

This month and the month before....its been an foodventurous month for me....chicken has been specialty and I'll make sure my foodventurous continues....