24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs is a global blogging event showcased by Foodbuzz.

This Incredible event brings together the bloggers around the world by celebrating real food in way they would like to showcase their culture, their food and most importantly having fun at the same time.

I wanted to show how life away from home India is like, how we celebrate and enjoy our time in UK. As we are far away, its hard to get used to celebrate without your family near you, Friends are all we got in UK. Help, Support, Fun, everything its with friends in UK.

So any event in our community is celebrated with friends or colleagues at work. That makes my world here in UK.

When foodbuzz gave me this opportunity to have a party, I wanted to show how we have parties here in UK. We friends try to pool in togetether for cooking any event, helping throughout to make any party more fun loving then  just spending most of your time in the kitchen trying to make all the dishes alone.

When I asked my friends, they readily showed great enthusiasm and here we are having time of our life in UK.

As Autumn has already made its way to the UK and showing its true colours in our neck of woods, I was delighted then Food buzz gave me this opportunity to organise a food event of my choice. It was amazing to see my Indian Community Friends in UK come together to enjoy @ home with fun & food.

I chose Flavours of South India as our theme and oh boy!what a blast it turned out to be..

Great fun and amazing food to spice up our otherwise dull weekend.

My unique touch to this event was to involve friends from all over UK, coming from different states back in India come together to celebrate n spice up our saturday evening.

24 dishes to be cooked tradtionally from four different states of South India - Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

To select an apt menu for this event took me a long time but it was an amazing collection.

The menu looked like this on the day:

When you have 24 dishes plus mango lassi and Kulfi( Indian Ice cream to gorge on..) My large dinner table didn’t have place to accomodate all of them….

Our Saturday Feast :

Andhra dishes are so spicy and so flavourful that you will be just bowled over with the dishes we choose .

Tamil Nadu Dishes: We had Rice cakes with lentil soup, Amazing combo, can be eaten as breakfast as well.

I choose different flavours of spices, some being very spicy and some quite mild.

Karnataka Dishes:

Here again, we choose some authentic dishes like bisibeli bath, lemon rice to really spice up any dull day

Kerala Dishes: Oh yes.. My favourite of all

Busy Digging in

After that feast, it was time to dance…. Oh boy what fun we had….

One of the best times ever

Last look at the feast again:

Thank you Foodbuzz and dear friends for makin this event a huge success..

Without your help I wouldn’t have organised such an elaborate feast with fun ….

Things at home and work are going at such a rapid pace, that I am not even getting time to have a nice cuppa and be five minutes on my own. I love blogging and would love to read about  dear fellow bloggers’ wonderful creations.

Never was I so tied up that I haven’t had any decent time to enjoy reading and blogging.

My new novels were left unturned, my cooking magazines are still at my bedside and my drafts are piling up.

I am relying on my one pot dishes more often then I imagined with my time being spent elsewhere.  Yesterday I made Palak Parathas which were just a melt in the mouth with a tinkling taste of spice, Today I dished up this Prawns biryani, which also went so well that I turn to this comfort dish every now and then.

Prawns: fresh ones
Ginger garlic paste: 2 tbsp
Onion : 2
Chillies: 4
Garam masala: 1 tbsp
Coriander powder: 1 tbsp
Bay leaves: 2
Cinnamon stick: 1
Cardemom : 2
Cloves: 2
Cashewnuts: 10 to 12
Basmati Rice: 3 cups
Chilli powder
Turmeric

Take oil in a heavy bottomed vessel, and fry bayleaves, cinnamon, cloves and cardamoms for couple of mins, then add I onion and chillies and fry until the onions are golden in color, then add the masalas, prawns, chilli powder, turmeric and salt and cook for 10 min. No need to add water at this time.

Now add rice and mix it well and add 3 and ½ to 4 glasses of water and close it with a lid.
Try to cook in medium heat so that the rice at the bottom of the vessel doesn’t get burnt.

Garnish with fried cashewnuts, coriander leaves and onions.  Serve on its own or with any raitha.