101th post: When Life gives you lemons, make Lemon Pickle

My old housekeeper used to spoil us with really good pickle. Better than those shop-bought sesame laden, soggy pickle you get in supermarket, she would make jars and jars of freshly preserved lemons so we could enjoy them with steaming hot rice and curry. I always thought that homemade pickle is a near-impossible task, until she came along to our house and surprised us with her ‘hidden talents’. I was told that each region in India, or in fact, every household in India would have their own homemade version of this 'achar', and anything goes from lemons, limes, beet roots or even ginger and onions!

Finally! Kerala Kitchen eBook for May 2012..and Le Creuset for winners!

It feels like ages since I popped by here.. my utmost apologies, especially for those who sent in their entries for Kerala Kitchen May event, as I was up to my nose and so inundated that it took me so long to get the round-up done.

I hope the delay is well worth it though, as instead of publishing each picture of the dish, as mentioned before, I managed to compile those 50 entries into our very own first ever Kerala Kitchen e-Book! If you ever fancy to try out the recipes of other participants, they are all included in the book with direct link to their respective blog/website so after you try out the recipe from the book, you could share some love and leave comments to the various wonderful blogs out there.

Without further ado, the Winners! Every month, Kerala Kitchen round up would not be complete without the Award for Best Dish, Best Picture and the highest number of entries. This time round, I thought I would share some Le Creuset love by a self-sponsored giveaway to the deserving winners! After all, what is a competition without a gift, eh? To avoid personal bias, The Husband was elected as the judge for the competition and here we are for Award time!

* Faseela of Good Food Ends with Good Talk wins the Highest number of entries Award with her 11 delicious entries!


* Shab of Shab's Cuisine wins the Best Picture Award with her finger licking goodness Meen Porichathu. Recipe and details are in the e-book!



* The BEST DISh award goes to Prathibha of Cook Ezee, with her traditional yet evergreen dish of Malabar Chicken Biryani / Thalassery Biryani.

As for the award, it is just a small token of appreciation from me as the host for May 2012, and I thought I should share my love of Le Creuset Volcanic Stoneware Soup Bowl for those 2 wonderful winners:-). I hope the 3 winners could email me with respective address.

My heartfelt thank-you goes to Rose and Ria , who makes this Kerala Kitchen event happen month after month. Thank you Rose for having me as a host and sorry for the delay in the round-up..! Hopefully the e-book below can make it up to all of you.

Enjoy the read;-)

AnnouncingThe Kerala Kitchen event with GIFT for the Best Dish!

This month marks the birthday of this blog, The Cooking Doctor. What a happy coincidence then that this month will be my first time hosting an event for the blogosphere. I am happy to announce to all of you dear readers, and invite you to participate in our monthly Kerala Kitchen cooking event!

I must thank the lovely Rose of Magpies recipes for giving me this wonderful opportunity to be the host for this popular monthly event. As lots of you might already knew, the Kerala Kitchen was the brainchild of Ria and Rose, who did a great job of promoting gorgeous dishes of God's own country, Kerala via this monthly event where anyone, and everyone can join! You can jazz up any dish as memoir of Kerala if you live far away from home, and show off you talent of home cooking if you live in Kerala so all of us can learn a thing or two from you.

Few housekeeping notes:

• Anyone can join in and any dish with Kerala influence can be sent as entries for the event
• In fact, if you are a non-Keralite who loves Kerala style south Indian dishes, this is the chance for you to sharpen up your home cooking skill anf try out our cuisine! Your entries are all welcome
• Please post your entries in your blog between 1st May to 31st May 2012 and link it to this announcement page and also The Kerala Kitchen page.
• No archived entries allowed, but you can re-post older blog posts as entries to this event.
• I would appreciate if you could also drop me a line at thecookingdoctor at gmail dot com, so I could keep track of all entries
• Please also send in your best dish picture together with the recipe, preferably in a portrait format as  all the entries will be compiled into an e-book! And even a physical book, I shall try:-). If you agree for your recipe to be included in the book, please specify that in the email (when you send in your entries to me), as I can only include recipe and pictures with your permission. I will give you the due credit by linking the original blog post to the recipe with your name and blog name.
  
  Please email me the following:
  
  Your name
  Blog name
  Dish name
  Post url
  Photograph of dish as attachment or else I will take it from their post.
  Permission to include your recipe & picture (with full credit given to you) in the e-book: Yes/ No
  
  
  
• I would appreciate if you could add the Kerala Kitchen logo to your blog post entry

BEST OF ALL..

Let me take the liberty of being the host and  make it a wee bit special with a surprise gift for the Best Dish winner. The surprise gift would be delivered worldwide, so let's make this event happening and start cooking!

We shall also select winners for Best Picture Award and Top Contributor.

I look forward to receiving all your entries, ladies:-)