About Bhimas Cook
Bhimas Cook is a family recipe blog. Every recipe published here comes from the kitchen of my mother, who lives in Andhra Pradesh and has been cooking traditional vegetarian food for our family for over four decades. I am the one who runs the website, but the cooking expertise — the measurements, the timing, the small adjustments that turn a simple dal into something memorable — all of it is hers.
She doesn’t write recipes down. So I sit in her kitchen with a notebook, watch her cook, weigh her “handful of this” and “small spoon of that”, time each step, and translate her cooking into recipes other people can follow. That is the entire editorial process behind every post on this site.
Who I Am
I am Shiva Venkateswara. I am not a trained chef. I am a son documenting his mother’s cooking before it disappears with the next generation. I cook the same recipes in my own kitchen to verify the steps work for someone who didn’t grow up watching my mother cook. If a step is unclear or a measurement is off, I go back, ask her, and update the recipe.
About the Cook — My Mother
My mother is from Andhra Pradesh. Her cooking is rooted in Andhra and broader South Indian traditional vegetarian cuisine — the kind of food made for daily family meals, festivals, and prasadam, not restaurant menus. She learned cooking from her mother and her aunts, the way most Indian women of her generation did, and she has cooked three meals a day for our family for as long as I can remember. The tikka masalas and air-fryer trends you see here are the exception; the heart of this site is her traditional Andhra and South Indian vegetarian repertoire.
What You’ll Find Here
- Authentic Andhra recipes — pulihora, gongura pachadi, ulava charu, dosakaya pappu, regional festival foods
- South Indian staples — sambar, rasam, kootu, kurma, poriyal, the way they’re cooked at home, not at hotels
- Festival prasadam — Ugadi pachadi, Sankranti dishes, Krishnashtami offerings, Vinayaka Chavithi recipes from the annual cycle of our household
- Traditional sweets and snacks — bobbatlu, ariselu, sunni undalu, ribbon pakoda, made the way they’re made for Andhra weddings and festivals
- Modern adaptations — paneer, millet, air-fryer recipes that I cook myself and document for readers who asked, but they are clearly the modern wing of the site, not the core
Editorial Standards
Every recipe goes through this process before it is published:
- My mother cooks the dish (or directs me through it on a video call).
- I record exact measurements — replacing her “this much” with grams and cups.
- I time every step.
- I cook the same dish at least once in my own kitchen to verify the recipe works without watching her do it.
- If something doesn’t work in my version, I go back, fix the recipe, and republish.
Recipes that don’t pass step 4 don’t get published.
What This Site Is Not
- It is not a content farm. We are not chasing trending search terms with thin AI-generated recipes.
- It is not a fusion food blog. The point of this site is to preserve traditional Andhra and South Indian vegetarian home cooking.
- It is not anonymous. The recipes are from a real person, in a real house, in Andhra Pradesh.
How to Reach Us
Recipe questions, corrections, or things you’d like my mother to cook? See our Contact page. I read everything and reply to genuine recipe questions — sometimes after asking my mother for clarification.
If you cook one of these recipes and it works for your family, that is the highest compliment we can receive.