Golpapdi - Wheat flour sweetened with jaggery

A quick look at my recipe index or the labels, will tell you my love for sweets. I have a special affinity to jaggery based sweets. I feel jaggery based sweets are generally healthy compared to the sugar ones. Jaggery is rich source of iron and sweets with this, doesn't call for loads of fat. Golpapdi is one sweet that caught my attention for the simple ingredients and the easier method of preparation. I have tried it few times and not once the jaggery melted from the heat of the flour mix. And every time, I will put the pan back to stove and melt it and then proceed further. The result was still good though it may not come close to the actual golpapdi.

Cut back to January and news paper carried articles on Makarashankaranthi festival and various delicious treats specially made for the festive season. In one of such articles, I read about a variety of jaggery which is soft and suits for til/ellu ladoo. It then dawned on me that such kind of jaggery is required to make golpapdi too.  I found that the jaggery block which I had purchased then was the soft kind. I had casually picked it from the grocery shop and did not find any difference. Then I tried again and finally met success. I followed Tarla Dalal's recipe. 

You need


Whole wheat flour/Atta - 1 cup
Grated Jaggery - 3/4 cup
Ghee - 4 tbspn
Poppy seeds - 1 tspn
Cardamom powder - 1/4 tspn

Method

Heat the ghee in  a pan/kadai. Add the wheat flour to the melted ghee. Keep stirring till the wheat flour turns into a brown color and the aroma of roasted wheat flour in ghee will fill your entire kitchen. Make sure, you don't burn the flour. Remove the pan from fire. The rest of the steps doesn't require any more cooking. Quickly add the grated jaggery and cardamom powder to the roasted wheat flour mix. Keep stirring.The jaggery will melt and it will comes to semi solid mass. Transfer the mix to a greased plate, sprinkled with poppy seeds.  Press and spread the mix evenly with a flat based cup/katori. Mark squares while warm. When cool, store in air tight container.

Please check what my blogging marathon buddies have cooked for the day.

Godhumai halwa/ Thirunelveli Halwa

For the month of July, the Indian Cooking Challenge is visiting the halwa town of South India - Thirunelveli.  The Thirunelveli halwa is very soft, loaded with ghee, which will slide down your tongue, so effortlessly, that will leave you asking for more.  The halwa is truly irresistible that you will forget all the calories loaded in each spoon fulls that you consume.

Srivalli gave various recipes from fellow bloggers to try from. I chose to do from Latakka. For me, Thirunelveli halwa is always the scoop able type and not in the form of pieces.  It took  a solid one hour to get the glossy, soft halwa. The effort was worth it.

You need


Whole wheat grains - 1 cup
Sugar - 3 cups ( I used 2 1/2 cups)
Water - 3 cup +1 cup
Ghee - 1 cup
Cardamom powder - 1 tspn
Cashew- 10 nos
Food Color - a pinch

Method


Preparing the wheat milk

Wash and soak the wheat grains in enough water for around 20 hours or a day. Grind the wheat in a mixer grinder or wet grinder. Strain the ground wheat to extract the milk.  If you are grinding in the mixer, add some water and grind again to extract the milk. You can repeat this once more if you feel there is some milk left. I ground in the wet grinder. So it was ground to almost fine paste. So got all the milk at once. 

Leave the milk to stand for a minimum of 5 hours. Drain the water which floats on top of the milk so that you are left with the thick milk which gets collected at the bottom. I got 1 cup of  milk.

Making the halwa

Add 3 cups of water to the 1 cup of milk. Take a heavy bottom vessel or kadai. Take 3 cups of sugar with 1 cup of water. Bring the syrup to one string consistency. Add a pinch of color to the syrup. Then add the diluted milk to the sugar syrup. Mix well. From this stage, its non stop stirring for 45 minutes. Another pair of 

helping hands will be good too.  When the mixture thickens, you can start adding the ghee at intervals.

When the ghee is added, it will float initially. Later, it will be absorbed. 

As it gets cooked, it will turn glossy and thick. It will not stick to the bottom of the pan. When you tilt the vessel, the halwa would come together and slide easily.  Add the cardamom powder and roasted cashews to it.

 Scoop and enjoy hot halwa. On cooling the halwa will turn thick but will be soft. 

I added 2 1/2 cups of sugar. It was sweet enough for us. If you want it it be really sweet, I will suggest adding 3 cups. I am sure if my Dad tasted it, he would have told its not sweet enough.  If you want to make into pieces, transfer the halwa to a greased plate. Smooth the top and leave it to cool and slice it. I added very little color to make it look close to the Thirunelveli halwa, which has a brown color. 

Spicy Wheat Sesame Sticks

The evenings are very cold in my place. And a bowl of hot soup is very much welcome. I love bread sticks to go with the soup, which reminds me the train journeys where food is served. When I saw the sesame sticks recipe at Redchillies, it looked a quick recipe that could complement a bowl of soup. So those who have the yeast phobia, can surely give this a try.  This low fat,healthy sesame sticks are great to go with a bowl of soup or a cup of tea/coffee.

You need

Quick cooking oats - 1/2 cup

Wheat flour - 1 cup

Butter - 2 tblspn

Sesame seeds - 1/4 cup

Green chillies - 3 nos, ground to paste

Sugar - 1 tspn

Salt - 1/2 tspn

Baking powder - 1/2 tspn

Water - less than 1/2 cup

Method
Melt the butter. Coarsely powder oats. Reserve a tablespoon of sesame seeds.

Take powdered oats, wheat flour, melted butter, sesame seeds, chilli paste, salt ,sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Mix well until the mix resembles bread crumbs.

Sprinkle water little by little to get a stiff dough. Don't add all the water at once.

Leave the dough for 30 minutes. Divide into 4 balls. Roll out each dough ball between two greased plastic sheets or cling film. Roll thin to get crispy crackers.

Slice into rectangle strips. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 20 minutes until it is slightly brown. Flip the tray halfway through for even baking. I baked it in two batches. Got around 40 nos of 2 inch long strips.

The sticks were very tasty and can make a great snack to munch with out any guilt. I felt it tasted less spicy the next day.  To get more flakier and crispy sticks, you can increase the butter by another 2 tblspn.

Wishing all my readers, friends, fellow bloggers and their family a  very

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Chapathi Ladoo ~ Leftover magic

With the onset of monsoon, most of the days, we have roti for dinner. Earlier, roti wasn't a favorite with my husband for dinner. He doesn't have problem eating it for breakfast, but when it comes to dinner, I will have to make parathas with various stuffing. Of late, he has started liking roti for dinner. I always count and make. But when guests are there, I tend to make more, just in case it falls short. Some days, I do have one or two as leftovers, which will be used up during lunch. Once I had four rotis from previous day's dinner and I made ladoos. I have been wanting to try this for a long time, after seeing the same in many blogs. It was enough to satisfy the sweet cravings during the day.

There isn't much of a recipe here. The rotis are to be made crisp so that it can be powdered. The roti powder is mixed in melted jaggery and cooked till it gets together. Its then shaped into balls while warm. The measurements are approximate and take it as cue. You can add some roasted cashews or raisins or some roasted coconut too.  Next time, I wanted to try it with dates in place of jaggery.

You need

• Roti - 4 nos, preferably a day old
• Jaggery powdered  - 2 tablespoons
• Ghee -1 teaspoon

Method

Heat a tawa. Roat the roti one by one till it is crisp. Alternatively, you can MW it for a minute and give another minute of standing time. It will turn crisp, like papad. Break the crisp rotis into pieces and pulse in the mixer grinder to powder. The consistency of the powder is up to you. If you want you can powder it fine or coarsely, as I did.

Heat a kadai.Add a teaspoon of ghee. When ghee is hot, add the powdered jaggery. When the jaggery melts and starts bubbling, tip the roti powder. Mix so that it comes together. Remove from fire. When it is warm, shape into lemon sized balls. If it doesn't hold, add few drops of milk.

You can serve this as after school snack for kids.

This goes to PJ's  scrumptious delights from left overs

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s close to two months since I baked something. Last two months we had lot of festivals. And finally after Navarathri, I wanted to bake something, before the preparations for Diwali begin. There were many bananas to be used up. So baked Dates Banana muffin during the last weekend. I didn’t use any all purpose flour or maida. The reason being it not available in my pantry. So used whole wheat flour/atta and 1/2 cup of arrowroot powder. It came out very well - moist and light. I expected a denser muffin. I think the arrowroot

powder contributed to the texture. This was my first bake where in APF is not used at all.  And I was really happy with the result. So I decided to try my luck with whole wheat cookies. On browsing for a suitable recipe, I found one at AllRecipes.  I tweaked it to suit my pantry and made it eggless too. Now I have a whole wheat cookie recipe. I think with this as base, you can work on it for different flavor and combinations of nuts etc.

Yields: 20 Nos.
Temp: 190 C
Time - 18 minutes


Ingredients


Butter - 1/2 Cup

White sugar - 1 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Flax seeds powder - 2 tspn

Water - 1/4 cup

Whole wheat flour/Atta - 1 1/2 cups

Baking powder - 1/2 tspn

Salt- 1/2 tspn

Chocolate chips - 1/4 cup



Method

Cream butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add vanilla essence and flax seeds powder  mixed in water.

Sift together wheat flour, baking powder and salt. Gently combine the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Mix until it’s just combined. Fold in the chocolate chip cookies. Don't knead. Just gather the dough together. Pinch off a lemon sized dough and shape it. I didn’t shape it much. Just flattened it little with a fork to get a rustic look.

Bake in a preheated oven at 190 c for 18 minutes or till you can find brown specs on top. Leave it on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Don't try to remove them immediately. It will be very soft and will harden on cooling. The cookies were crunchy. It is a treat to have with tea or a cup of milk.

I am taking these healthy cookies to the High Tea  hosted by Aparna as part of Meeta's Monthly Mingle

Porulvalangai Urundai - Healthy,fat free sweet balls

I have earlier blogged about the Sathumavu urundai. The steps are the same. That was inspired by the traditional Porulvalangai. Each family has a recipe for this sweet. The difference is what goes into the flour. Basically, healthy ingredients are added to prepare the flour. Once the flour is made, rest of the process is same as blogged earlier. Hop over to read Sunshinemom's post on the same. She shares some interesting facts about the sweet- the origin and what's in the name. And here is my recipe of the traditional sweet.

You need

Whole wheat - 3 cups

Boiled rice/Puzhungalarisi -1 cup

Whole moong - 1/2 cup

Powdered Ginger /Chukku - 1 tspn

Coconut sliced and chopped into bit sized pieces

Method
Wash and drain whole wheat and boiled rice separately. Dry roast wheat,rice and moon till brown. Both wheat and rice will start spluttering when roasted for some time. You can stop when you find more grains start spluttering. Cool and powder the three ingredients together. I usually get it powdered from a flour mill. Mix in ginger powder.

This powder will keep good for more than a month. You can make balls as and when required.
Take 1 cup of jaggery and make a syrup of soft ball consistency. Stir in the coconut pieces. Remove the syrup from fire. With 1 cup of jaggery you can use two cups of flour. Take one cup of the flour in a bowl. Add a ladle of the syrup. Mix with a spoon. Be careful not to touch the hot syrup with your fingers, it will stick to the skin and skin might get burnt also. When the syrup is fully mixed with the flour, slowly roll into balls . Roll the finished the balls in the flour to get a coat over it. These balls harden on cooling. Enjoy these delicious, healthy sweet balls.

Godhumai Pradhaman (broken wheat cooked in jaggery and coconut milk)

Pradhaman, where coconut milk is used is very famous in Kerala. Kerala,being the land of coconuts, have variety of pradhamans. I have blogged about pazha pradhaman earlier. Here is the recipe for another popular pradhaman with broken wheat as the base. I have used wheat rava in place of broken wheat.

Ingredients
Broken wheat - 1/3 cup
Jaggery =3/4 cup
Coconut milk - 200 ml (Ii used store bought)
Ghee - 1 tblpspn
Cardamom powder - 1tspn
water to melt jaggery and cook wheat

Method

Roast broken wheat /rava in a tablespoon of ghee till you can smell the aroma of roasted wheat.
Don't roast it to brown. Pressure cook the roasted with enough water. This is the first time I used store bought coconut milk. I reserved around 100 ml for thick milk. I diluted the remaining with water into two parts - thin and slightly thick versions.

Melt jaggery in a pan with 1/4 cup of water. Strain and add cooked wheat with a cup of thin coconut milk.Cook on low flame till the mixture thickens and by then the wheat would have soaked up the jaggery syrup well. Add second extract of coconut milk (slightly thick). Let it simmer for 5 minutes. Add the thick milk and remove from fire. Stir in cardamom powder.

Note: I drained some liquid to show the wheat rava.

This is off to JFI:Wheat hosted by Roma, an event started by Indira

Wheat in Bisibelebath and a salad

Bisibelebath with broken wheat

I use broken wheat for making pradhaman. Other than that it doesn't feature in our regular menu. So when bought for making payasam, usually there will be left over, since only a small quantity is required for the preparation. When I had some broken wheat to be used up, I was thinking of recipe where I can replace rice with wheat. I had posted pongal with wheat before. The next trial was making bisibelebath out of broken wheat. Broken wheat is not the same as wheat rava. This is coarser. Believe, broken wheat made good substitution for rice. Unless told, you cannot make out the difference. From then, I have been regularly including broken wheat in my shopping list.

Only when I searched my archived to link this to bisibelebath post, did I realise, that I haven't posted the recipe yet. So here is my recipe.

Broken wheat - 1 cup ( Usually rice is used)

Toor dal - 1/2 cup

peas(fresh/dried) -1/2 cup

chopped veggies - 1 1/2 cups (carrot/beans/potato/capsicum)

shallots/pearl onion - 15 nos

tamarind -small lemon size

sambhar powder - 1tspn (optional)

turmeric powder

salt

Seasoning

Oil

mustard seeds

red chilli - 2 nos

curry leaves

For masala

red chilli - 6 nos

coriander seeds - 1 tspn

cloves - 4

cinnamon - 1" piece

hing - 1/2 tspn

grated coconut -1/4 cup(kopra is preferred.)
If fresh coconut is used, saute them till lightly brown. Grind all the ingredients for the masala to a smooth paste.

Soak tamarind in warm water for 10 minutes and extract pulp.

Wash, broken wheat,dal and peas.If dried peas is used, soak them for 5 hours.Pressure cook them together. Keep it aside

Heat oil in a pan, add the seasoning ingredients. Saute the onions till golden. Add the chopped veggies, turmeric and salt. When it is half cooked, add the tamarind pulp. When the mixture starts boiling, stir in the ground paste and mix well. Cook for 10 minutes. Mix the cooked wheat-dal mixture to the cooking masala and mix well. Cover and cook for 5 minutes till the flavors seep in the wheat-dal combo.Heat one tablespoon of ghee in a seasoning pan. Add a teaspoon of sambhar powder and pour on top the cooking mixture. This step is optional. But it does enhances the flavor of bisibelebath. Remove from fire. Garnish with coriander and serve hot with papad.

Sprouted Wheat berry salad

I buy whole wheat to make dosa. My co-sister always sproutsome of the soaked berries. Ever since she told gave me the idea, whenever I soak berries for dosa, I keep aside a handful of the soaked berries for sprouting and use that in salad. Steam cook the berries before using for salads. These will be chewy, but very tasty. Toss in any veggies(I have used grated cucumber and carrot, onion and tomato) you have and sprinkle some salt, pepper and lime juice and teaspoon of olive oil for dressing. You can have the bowl of healthy salad as a meal by itself or use it in wraps.

Wheat berry salad is my entry to EC's : WYF- salad/soup/starter

Diet friendly bisibelebath and salad is making to Divya's Diet Food Event

Broken wheat kichadi

I had two packets of broken wheat to be used. I remembered reading a pongal recipe using the same. I tried making pongal with some veggies added. It was very bland. So next time decided to make it in the lines of Pongal's counterpart ie. Kichadi. This is a spicier version of Ven-pongal - (rice+ moong dal+cumin+pepper)

broken wheat - 2 cup

moong daal - 1/2 cup

water - 5 cups

turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

chili powder - 1 tspn

cumin powder - 1 tspn
black peppercorn - 5nos

cumin seeds - 1 tspn

cinnamon - 1 "

crushed cloves - 3 nos

green chili chopped - 2 nos
Finely chopped veggies - 1 cup

I used onion,carrot and bell pepper. You can use any available veggie.

salt to taste
ghee -1 tblspn

Wash broken wheat and dal together. Take a pressure cooker. Heat a tablespoon of ghee. Add cumin seeds, peppercorn,cinnamon, crushed cloves and green chilli. When cumin seeds splutters, add the chopped veggies. Saute for 3 minutes till onion turns translucent. Add rest of the ingredients - broken wheat, moong dal, turmeric powder, chilli powder, cumin powder. Stir in water. Add salt to taste. Mix well.

Pressure cook for 3 whistles and cook for 5 minutes lowering the flame. Open the cooker, when the pressure is released. Mash with a spatula.
While serving add a dollop of ghee and serve with papad or raita.

Note: Next time, I will increase the turmeric quantity to get a better visual appeal. But for that, it was very tasty and filling.

This complete meal is heading to One Dish Meal Event hosted by Archana