A complete Indian festival season is in the air these days. Nine days of Navratri is over followed by Dussehra. Now North Indian festival for married women Karva Chauth is on the way. Then preparations for five days grand Deepawali festival will start.
In between all these festivals sometimes we want a break from rich festive sweets and crave for some healthy food or snacks. For the last few days I wanted to have good homemade savoury snack. During Dussehra holidays we had gone to Goa for a week’s vacation and I was tired of eating restaurant food, though the whole trip was awesome as weather was fine and it was less crowded. Neat – and – clean beautiful beaches, historical forts surrounded with sea and wonderful flora and fauna. I am not at all good with photography, but still couldn’t resist clicking a few.
We went on a tour of spices plantation and I gained a lot of knowledge. I never knew that javitri and jaiphal ( mace and nutmeg) are from the same plant. Javitri is dry flower and jaiphal is the fruit. But the best part of this spice plantation tour was the discovery of Garam Masala plant. I was amazed to see that there is actually a plant named as “Garam Masala”. Till now I knew that garam masala is a mix of various ground spices. But this Garam Masala plant was a new discovery. This plant originally belongs to Jamaica and is known as allspice plant. We tasted its leaves and they tasted exactly like garam masala mix powder.
Isn’t this amazing!!!
Well, no matter how much you enjoy your vacation, we crave for homemade food. Hubby and daughter both were fine, but I started becoming home sick after 4-5 days. Thankfully it was a short trip and after reaching home I baked my favourite Garlic Bread and this time I used wheat flour.
But now I wanted to prepare it exactly like we get in Pizza Hut. So I prepared a little bit more garlic butter (method is given in the recipe of Garlic Bread) . After slicing the bread, applied garlic butter, Pizza sauce, grated cheese, sprinkled pizza spices, added sliced bell peppers ,onions and tomatoes and sprinkled a little more pizza spices. Baked these bread coins in a preheated oven at 175 degrees, till the cheese melted and edges of the bread became crisp.
There was a wonderful aroma of garlic butter, pizza sauce and spices while baking!!! Couldn’t take more pictures, as no one allowed me…
