Paruppu Podi

Another one of my favourites is Paruppu Podi. I enjoy paruppu podi with hot rice and ghee, and my mom, mother in law and my chitti ensured that I always had a bottle of their hand made paruppu podi with me, so that I could use it for any quick fix meal, or sometimes even instead of the cooked tur dal in the rasam!

With lockdown firmly in place, and even if removed, the "No travel" restrictions that we have put upon ourselves has emptied all those stocked up bottles, and so there, just like everything else under the sun, I decided to try my hand at making this by myself too!!!

This time I followed a recipe by the channel - Agrahara Recipes. And I ended up with some super tasty paruppu podi, easy to make as well.

So here goes - a record for quick access -

Ingredients - 

1/3 cup urad dal

1/3 cup moong dal

1/3 cup tur dal

5 red chillies (Or as per your spice requirements)

1 tsp asafoetida

A few curry leaves

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp gingelly oil

Salt to taste

Method of preparation -

Dry roast the urad dal, till it turns golden brown, keep aside. Do the same with tur dal, and then with moong dal. Make sure the colour changes and an aroma wafts for all the three dals.

Dry roast the red chillies. 

Once the dals cool down, grind them to a coarse powder. (or if you like fine powder, do a few more rounds of the mixer, and then sieve the ground powder)

Take a kadhai, heat up 2 tsps of gingelly oil, and add mustard seeds. Once they crackle, add torn curry leaves and finally add asafoetida and turn of the flame. 

Pour this tempering onto the powder, mix well. Add salt as per your taste. Mix well. Cool. Store in an air tight container.

Add this powder to steaming hot rice and have it with a dollop of ghee!!

Kadalaparuppu Payasam

It's August, and the start of festival season. One of our first function is the annual "Avani Avittam" where the men change their sacred thread. I was tickled to hear my chitti call it the "Annual renewal of license".

The day after the men change their poonal, they need to chant the Gayatri Mantra.

Each of these days is dotted with traditional specialities offered for neivedyam. The specialities differ in different households. In our family, on the first day we prepare urad dal vadai and nei appam. The day of the Gayatri mantra chanting is characterised by a payasam.

I decided to make Kadalaparuppu payasam this time. I have tried out Semiya payasam and pal payasam many times before. However, I have never ventured into making the dal and jaggery payasam ever before. For festivals and religious functions, the dal - jaggery payasam is the one that is supposed to be offered to the Lord.

Whenever my mother made kadalaparuppu payasam, I absolutely loved it. So I quickly buzzed her for the recipe, and here it is. (Wanted to share it right when it's fresh in my mind! Just made it this morning!)


Ingredients -
Chana dal - 1/2 cup
Jaggery (broken into pieces) - 3/4 cup
Cardamom powder - A pinch
Coconut milk - 1 cup (or even more based on your taste)
A few cashews roasted in ghee.

How to make -

Roast the chana dal in a dry pan, till it gives an aroma. Don't wait till it changes colour. Once done, wash the chana dal. Pressure cook it with 2 cups of water for 3 whistles. It needs to cook very well. Once pressure releases, you need to mash it well.

In a separate pan, take the powdered jaggery, add one cup of water and let it melt. Bring it to a boil. Add the mashed chana dal into this jaggery water. Let the mixture boil till it starts to thicken to payasam consistency.

Grind coconut with water to extract one cup of coconut milk. (To extract the coconut milk - You can transfer the ground coconut onto a muslin cloth and squeeze out the coconut milk from the cloth)

Add this coconut milk to the jaggery and chana dal mixture and immediately turn of flame.

Add cardamom powder, and the cashews roasted in ghee - and your payasam is ready to be served!

It tastes divine! :)

Temple Style Sambar

During this "2020 Lockdown", everyone at home has ended up becoming a chef, and started to explore various cuisines, various styles of cooking and so on.

One request came from the husband to make "Temple Style Sambar". The request came along with a youtube video link as well to make things simpler for me :)

We tried this sambar recipe from "Namma Adige" - A Kannada Cooking Channel, and it was simply delicious, exactly like the Sambars served in Temples of Karnataka.

I wanted to make a note of the recipe just in case I miss it next time I want to make it, so here goes -

Ingredients -

1 tbsp Dhania seeds
1/2 tbsp jeera
5 regular red chillis (guntur) and 3 byadige chillis
Few curry leaves
One tsp fried gram dal
2 tbsp Grated coconut
Boiled tur dal - 3 tbsp
One lemon ball sized tamarind soaked in hot water and juice extracted
1 tsp Oil for roasting
Salt to taste
Vegetables of your choice (I have used Tomatoes, yellow pumpkin, potatoes in this recipe)
Mustard seeds and hing for seasoning
A small ball of jaggery.

How to make -

Boil the tur dal with a bit of turmeric and keep aside.

Roast the Dhania seeds and cumin seeds in one tsp of oil. Once you notice the colour change, add the red chillis and curry leaves. Transfer to a mixer. Once the mixture cools, add the fried gram dal, and coconut and make a nice paste with a little bit of water.

In a pan, add a bit of oil and toss in the tomatoes. Roast well, and then add the other vegetables. Once the vegetables are cooked, add in the imli water. Let it boil for a while for the smell of the imli to reduce. Then add the cooked tur dal and the ground paste. Add water to make the consistence a little watery. Temple style sambar is generally much more watery than the regular sambar.

Add a small round ball of jaggery, and also add salt to taste.

Once it boils well, turn off, and enjoy with idlis or even hot rice with a dollop of ghee.

Note: These byadige chillis are added to enhance the color of the sambar. Their property is to give colour to the dish mainly, and spice levels of this type of chilli is very less.

Coming up next - Vangi bath powder (Which is also used as Yennegai powder) :) :) 

Soup time folks...

I saw this interesting soup preparation on the "Food Food" channel a few days back, and was really eager to try it out.

This recipe is a part of 'A Slice of Summer', the theme of the month all May in The Alternative, an online publication on sustainable living

Yellow Pumpkin and Sweet Corn soup. Hmm. An interesting combination. Got a chance to try it out yesterday. Here's the recipe -

My measurements here served five. The veggies - a small packet of shelled sweet corn, a 200 gm piece of yellow pumpkin and one medium sized onion. Dice up the onions and the yellow pumpkin. Heat a pan, add a teaspoon of butter into it, and saute onions till they turn golden brown. Add the diced pumpkins and sweet corn, some salt to taste, and fry for 2 minutes. Transfer this mixture into a pressure cooker, add three cups of water and cook the vegetables well. Drain the water and keep the water aside as vegetable stock. Puree the cooked vegetables well in a mixer. Add the vegetable stock and boil the soup for 5 minutes. Serve hot with some freshly ground pepper to suit individual taste. You could also add cream to the soup before serving.

I prefer the fibre of the veggies and corn in my soup. If you like your soup smooth, strain the pureed vegetables and then add the stock and bring to a boil. The soup had a nice sweetish flavor to it from the yellow pumpkin, and also a streak of peppery hotness to it. Freshly ground pepper gives a distinct flavor, the emphasis here on "freshly" ground :)... helps to keep that in mind. Didn't take pictures this time to give you a visual idea, but the outcome was simply awesome.

My summer at Pune

Though summer doesn't exactly mean vacation for me, when I look back, for the last few years, I realise that I land at my parents place consistently during summers (May). This year (like the last), me and my son came down to visit my parents. This time my son was big enough to have started pre-school, and he had his holidays during May. So off we came. And fun we had! Just like all the visits, this also turned out to be a foodie one for me! Mom has a convection oven, and so I usually try my hand at baking and experimenting with the oven.

So there were two attempts at sponge cake, with little variations (added a bit of chocolate syrup and butterscotch essence the second time). The output both the times was pretty decent.

There were two attempts at granola bars too! The first one was super successful. We enjoyed some really yummy snack of granola bars for a few days. (You can find the recipe for the same here- http://savithrispot.blogspot.com/2010/01/homemade-granola-bars.html). Egged on by this success, I tried my hand at it another time. My second attempt at it was a disaster though :D. I mixed the ingredients and spread it on a rack for baking. And .. went off to attend a call (ofcourse after letting my mom know that she needs to turn it off in another 20 mins). But my timing proved wrong, and what we got was a half-blackened and hardened oat cracker :D

Well.. it still tasted good.. why wouldn't it, with a tin of milkmaid in it :P ;) .. But this was how it looked -

It was not just oven, this time. Another attempt was Ragada Patties, which I made on our usual gas range. Found the recipe here - http://www.marriedtoadesi.com/2007/05/radish-potato-and-paneer-tikkas.html Made it minus the radish. And .. drool! :) Has to be had fresh, as paneer is one of its ingredients.

The next attempt was veggie pasta with white sauce and a tangy veggie salad. I made the pasta with bellpeppers (how I love the colors!), corn and zucchini (this is the first time am using this vegetable in my cooking). The white sauce was the simple one with all purpose flour, butter and milk. Added a dash of the mixed italian herbs. Wheat farfalle was the pasta used. Pro - Yummy pasta - Con - The quantity was huge and it was the night's dinner, next morning's breakfast and lunch!!! :D ;) Am sure mom dad are going to stay away from pasta for a long long time ;)

Thanks to sis-in-law for the recipe for the veggie salad. She prepared this awesome dish once for dinner, and we enjoyed it to the core. I wanted to try it out myself. I used diced and slightly boiled beetroots and carrots, diced tofu and onions. I marinated the vegetables with some salt, chilli powder, turmeric, sugar, vinegar and cream for two hours. And voila :) Simple, healthy and refreshing.

And last but not the least, mom made this super capsicum rice the other day. Everything was perfect about it. After all, it was maa ke haath ka bana! And none of my dishes above came anywhere close to it. :) We had the rice with cluster beans made the maharashtrian way - using groundnut and white til powdered. Hmmm... heavenly.

So the foodie and fun Pune trip is almost coming to an end. But we did have a great time, and also managed some outings in between to discover Pali (Mango Huts) and Lavasa. Like the saying goes, all good things must come to an end...

Quick new trial.

Before leaving the hotel room for my next visit, I wanted to try out some new recipe. And the recipe had to be simple. I was too lazy to carry out a major process of buying stuff, grinding, marinating, mixing, waiting and what not. As I browsed for recipes, I found one that fit my requirements exactly in a blog that I follow - http://savithrispot.blogspot.com/2007/07/ravenous-for-rosti.html

I like potatoes in any form. And potatoes combined with cheese had to be good! :). So I tried this recipe, with a slight variation of adding pepper instead of red chilli powder (just because I had lots of pepper powder to be used up!). And wasn't it yummy! Here's a pic of how it looked while cooking!!!

Grilled paneer with veggies

Here's another recipe that we tried out (from the LG cook book again!) and I think is worth a mention. This was more like a starter, but we ate it as an accompaniment to piping hot chapatis, and what a hit it turned out to be!

The grilled paneer with vegetables needed some 200 grams of cubed paneer, green (and if you want to add to the colors - red and yellow capsicum), onions, tomatoes. Cut all of the veggies into big pieces.

For marinating the vegetables and paneer, grind some mint leaves, coriander leaves, green chillies and garlic together into a paste. To this paste, squeeze in some lemon and one tablespoon of hung curd. Take a microwave safe glass bowl, put in the vegetables and paneer into it, and add the mint mixture into the vegetables. Sprinkle some turmeric, red chilli powder and garam masala powder and a teaspoon of butter. Make sure all of the vegetables are mixed well together with the mint paste.

Refrigerate this for about 30 minutes and grill it in a microwave till slightly golden brown on all sides. This might take around 20 minutes. Try it to believe the taste!! The mint and lemon flavour gives a wonderful flavour and you will absolutely love it!

Jeera fried rice with Tangy Potato fingers

So here goes... am back in Pune for sometime, and raring to go on the microwave cooking front. I have my niece with me for a few days, who is sure to appreciate my culinary attempts (irrespective of the final output!!).

So the countdown begins. We started the first day with an interesting recipe we found in the cook book which came along with our microwave. This turned out to be a decent accompaniment for Jeera rice.

As the name indicates, we peeled and cut the potatoes into french fry like fingers and microwaved them for 6 minutes. While the potatoes were kept aside to cool, we prepared the ingredients for the gravy. It required one chopped spring onion, chopped green chillies (as per your taste), 7 flakes of garlic (chopped again). Heat some butter in a microwave safe bowl for one minute, then add the above chopped stuff into it and heat it for 2 minutes. Toss the potatoes into this mixture, add a ladle of tomato sauce, one (or even two if you like it to be more soya saucy) ladle of soya sauce and one ladle of vinegar. Take a small cup, and put two heaped teaspoons of cornflour into it. Pour half a cup of water and mix the cornflour well. Pour this mixture into the potatoes. Add some pepper and salt to taste and toss them well together. Microwave the above mixture for 4 minutes and allow to stand in that heat until your jeera rice is ready!

The jeera rice was a simple one. We fried mustard, jeera and cashewnuts (till golden brown), added onions and sauted till transparent. In went some washed frozen peas and then the basmati rice (which was kept soaked in water for half an hour). Add some water (we used a proportion of 1:1 for rice and water), and allow to pressure cook until one whistle. Simmer for 5 minutes and then allow to stand.

Oh yes.. I forgot the salt! Before pressure cooking the rice, add salt to taste.

There you go - you now have a tangy flavoured potato fingers, to go along with the simple jeera rice.

Foodie weekend!!

Well! This is turning out to be a real foodie blog, but I just can't seem to help it! :) Here's something that I tried over the last long weekend. Since it was August 15th, and we didn't want to venture out, so the only interesting thing left for me to do was try out some new recipes. Also, there was this huge basket of aloos which I (health)consciously avoided for the past two weeks. I needed to use them up before they sprouted in front of my eyes :P. Since now it was decided it was going to be Aloo, there would be no compromise on the amount of oil either!!! Aloo roast it was going to be. Yumm! Here's a simple recipe which I first heard from my sister in law. But remember, you need to be patient while the aloos get the right amount of roast.

Boil potatoes. Heat oil in a kadhai (put in 2 teaspoons to start with), let some mustard splutter. Add some chana dal and turmeric powder. After chana dal gets a slightly brownish tinge, add the boiled and cubed potatoes into the Kadhai and spread them in the kadhai. Mix one teaspoon each of besan, red chilli powder and rice flour (and also salt as per your taste), separately in a cup. Spread this mixture evenly over the aloos in the kadhai. Pour oil over the aloos, so that they absorb the above mixture. Cover the kadhai and let the aloos roast. After sometime, flip over the aloos and let the other side cook. Here's how they look finally!

FOOD!

MMMMMMM!!!! :) It's that time of the year when I am only thinking of food, cooking new dishes and something to keep munching on! (If you are wondering why, I myself am at a loss for reason. Probably the rains?) When it happens though, I am on an all time high. So there ... let's enjoy it while it lasts.

Mad Tea Party absolutely makes you mad with the mouth watering recipes and even more delicious pictures of them. Don't believe me? Go take a look then!
Khandvi and Cabbage pakoras are what I tried out from there. I took a few pictures of my own dishes from my own kitchen, when they were ready to be gulped down, and here's how they looked.

A few more trials and I think I should be able to perfect on these. The curd I used for the khandvi had turned a little sour. I would have liked it better if it hadn't. The pakoras were good. Again, Iwas a little impatient here and made huge ones, instead of the dainty ones shown on Mad Tea Party :). Size didn't matter to me :D, hunger did!! :D.

Marriage, Mexican fried rice, et al

Well now - hello all - I am back and yes - with a bang! :) Having been given the tag Mrs. to my name, experimenting with various aspects of my life, cooking being one of the most important of them!!!! Amidst all the confusion and excitement of setting up our new house, my sister in law and me busied ourselves in trying out various new dishes, with hubby dearest being the unsuspecting victim.
One of these culinary attempts of ours dished out something we termed as Mexican Fried Rice! And I must say - it turned out pretty well!
We started by tossing in 3 chopped tomatoes, a few green chillies and some cilantro into the mixer. In a pan, add some oil and let a teaspoon of mustard sputter. Add finely chopped onions and saute till they turn golden brown. Pour the smoothly blended paste of tomatoes into the pan.
Now for the best part - the veggies that go in. American sweet corn, chopped red and yellow bellpeppers, some green peas if you please - all these go into the tomato paste. Add salt to this mixture and While it cooks, pressure cook rice with lesser water than usual, so that you get non-sticky consistency. Once the mixture and rice are done in their own separate ways, mix both of them - and voila! there is your lip smacking mexican fried rice. :) :)