Puliyodarai/Tamarind Rice

Puliyodarai is fondly associated with travel. Lemon rice also shares the travel food tag. When packed and taken for a train journey, it stays good for a day. Also it is a common prasadam in many of the temples. Once the puliyodarai paste is made, preparing the tamarind rice is a breeze. It makes a good lunch box food too. The tamarind paste stays good for a week on refrigeration and for a month on freezing. The preserved pulyodaria paste and some cooked rice will come handy, if you have to prepare a quick lunch. There are umpteen ways to prepare the paste. This is my MIL's recipe and its a favorite with our family. Once you taste ice with the fresh, home made paste, you will never go for the instant puliyodarai powders available in the market.

Ingredients

To dry roast and powder
Red chilli - 3 nos
Chana dal/Kadala paruppu - 1 tspn
Urad dal/Uzhunnu paruppu - 1 tspn
Sesame seeds/Ellu - 1/2 tspn
Methi seeds/vendhayam/Uluva - 1/2 tspn

For the paste
Tamarind - lemon sized
Turmeric - 1/4 tspn
salt

Seasoning

Gingely oil/Nalennai - 4 tblspn
Mustard seeds - 1 tspn
Chana dal - 1 tspn
Roasted peanuts - 2 tblspn
Curry leaves

3 cups of cooked rice.

Method
Soak the tamarind in a cup of warm water. Extract the thick pulp and keep it aside.

Dry roast all the ingredients till the dals turn golden. Cool and powder it fine.

Heat a kadai with gingely oil. Add the mustard seeds. When it splutters, add chana dal, peanuts and curry leaves. Let the dal turn golden brown. Stir in the thick tamarind extract and add turmeric. Let it simmer till it thickens. Add salt and the ground powder. Simmer till it blends well.

Spread the cooked rice on a plate to cool. Drizzle some gingely oil so that the rice doesn't stick together. Add the paste to the cooked rice and mix gently. Serve with fried applams and enjoy your meal. I served with home made tapioca vadam and salad.

Thanks to Nags for hosting MM# Ravishing Rice, an event started by Meeta, since the recipe in my drafts, finally made it to the blog. This post is also for my blog reader A, who wanted the recipe. And thanks to my friend R, who introduced A to my blog.

Mango Thokku

Come Summer, every household will be busy making pickles and variety of sun dried goodies to last the rest of the year. Raw mangoes are pickled in various ways. This is an instant pickle which can be consumed immediately and do not require any standing time before consuming.

Ingredients

Raw mangoes, chopped - 2 cups

Gingely oil - 4 tblpsn

Chilli powder - 3 tspn

Salt - 2 tspn

Roasted and powdered methi/fenugreek seeds - 1 tspn

Mustard powder - 1 tspn

Method
The mangoes should be raw and sour. Wash and wipe the mangoes dry. Chop the mangoes into pieces with skin. If the skin is very thick, you can scrap and chop. The pieces are not chopped uniformly.

Take a MW safe bowl. Add 2 tablespoon of gingely oil and the chopped mangoes pieces. MW high for 3 minutes. This is to make the mango soft. If you want it mushy, keep for another 2 minutes. Add chilli powder, salt, methi powder, mustard powder and the remaining 2 tblspn of oil. Mix well, so that the spices coat the pieces well. MW for 3 minutes. Cool and store in dry, airtight bottles. It will stay good for a week outside and 2 weeks on refrigeration. The chilli powder i used is very hot which is specifically for pickles. You can adjust the amount of chilli according to your taste.
Usually, these kind of pickles are made not to last too long.

This is my entry to MEC:Extras, hosted by Rachel, an event originated at Srivalli's

Dates Kheer

A healthy and delicious kheer with dates. To make a sugar free dessert, you can actually do with out adding sugar too, not to forget the natural sugar in the dates. I have added sugar since I made it when I had guests at home. This is a very easy recipe. Its almost like a dates milkshake transformed into a kheer. And it sure makes a rich dessert. No soaking required if using soft dates.

Ingredients
Dates deseeded - 100 gms/20 nos
Milk - 1 litre
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Cardamom powder -1 tspn
Ghee 1 tblspn
few cashew nuts to garnish

Method
Soak the dates in a cup of hot milk (from the 1 lite) for an hour. Grind to fine paste. If you would like to bite into tiny pieces of dates, you can make a coarse paste. Boil the remaining milk. When it comes to boil, simmer for few minutes in low flame. Stir in the ground dates and simmer till it
blends well. Add sugar and continue cooking till the sugar is well dissolved and kheer thickens. Add cardamom powder and remove from fire. Roast the cashew nuts in ghee and sprinkle on the kheer. You can also roast some finely chopped dates in ghee and add as garnish in addition to nuts. Serve warm or chilled.

I am sending the bowl of kheer to Srivalli's Mithai Mela.

Vella Payar ~ Cowpeas cooked with jaggery

Vella payar brings back nostalgic memories. The first thing that comes to my mind is Navarathri days. This will be invariably prepared as prasadom on one of the nine days. On other festive occasions too, Amma used to prepare this. One day while I was reliving those memories with my husband, I could not resist the temptation to make it immediately. These cow peas are the kind which does not need much of pre-soaking. I soaked them for half an hour in hot water for easier cooking. There are two varieties of black eyed peas - white and brown. Usually brown variety is used for this. I too have used the same.

Ingredients

Black eyed peas/cowpeas/vellapayar/karamani - 1 1/2 Cup cooked

Jaggery - 1/2 cup

Water - 3 Tblspn (just enough to melt the jaggery)

Grated coconut - 3 tblspn

Ghee - 1 tspn (optional)

I pressure cooked the cow peas. Cow peas can be well cooked. Even if turns mushy, its alright. Since on adding to jaggery, they tend to turn hard. Heat a pan. Add jaggery and water. When jaggery is fully melted, switch off the stove. Strain the syrup to remove any impurities. Heat the strained syrup to soft ball consistency. Stir in cooked cow peas. Keep stirring till there is no moisture . Amma says you can find a coat of grey to the cooked mix and that's the indication to stop. Garnish with grated coconut and teaspoon of ghee. Ghee surely adds a flavor to it. And for neivadyams, it is customary to add a drop of ghee to the dish.

With small quantity, it doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes to get cooked in jaggery. But when making in large quantities, it surely is a test to your muscle strength since it needs a longer period of stirring, to avoid getting burnt at the bottom.

I am sending this bowl of sweet to Srivalli's Mithai Mela.

Maladoo made healthy with jaggery

Kesari and maladoo were regulars in my kitchen. In my attempt to cut down on the calories, I have shifted to making sweets which uses jaggery for sweetener instead of white sugar. Jaggery based sweets will need very little or no ghee. And you get a healthy and tasty sweet. I chanced upon Anisheetu's recipe similar to maladoo and jaggery in the ingredient list caught my attention. I made a mental note of the ingredients and the method. Here is the recipe which I followed.

Ingredients
Pottukadali/pori kadala/roasted gram dal - 1 cup
Grated jaggery - 3/4 cup
Grated coconut - 2 tblsn
Ghee - 2 tblspn
Powdered cardamom - 1/2 tspn
Cashew/Raisins - few (optional)




Method
Lightly roast the pottukadalai. Powder it finely. Roast coconut till light brown. Alternatively you can MW the grated coconut for 1 minute or so.

Heat ghee in a pan, Roast cashews and raisins. Add powdered jaggery and melt it. No need to add water. Since the jaggery is grated, it melts easily in the ghee. When it starts bubbling, stir in powdered gram dal, roasted coconut and cardamom powder. Remove from fire. Mix well and make balls when warm. It tasted good and fits the bill for a low calorie, tasty sweet.



Time taken - 15 minutes
Yields - 14 medium sized ladoos.







I am sending this to Srivalli's Mithai Mela and Mahima's Under 15 minutes Cooking

Papaya Marmalade

Home-made jams give a nice flavor and is free of preservatives and artificial colors and sweeteners. Home made jams have the intense flavor of the fruit used. Making jams is not that difficult. Now a days I have almost stopped buying jams. Pectin is the one which imparts the glossy look and texture to jam. Take care to add a fruit juice which has high pectin content along with the main fruit. Once you get the hang of it, you will never go for the shop bought ones.

You need

Papaya pulp - 3/4 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Juice of 1 orange

Orange zest - 1 tspn

Crushed cloves - 3 nos (optional)

Wash and peel the papaya. Chop into cubes and give a run in the mixer till it is pulpy. You can add sugar also along with the cubes.

Mix all the ingredients in a MW safe bowl. MW for 25 minutes. Keep stirring at every 5 minutes. Mine took 28 minutes. Since Ii have added some orange zest, its called marmalade. Glossy,yummy, papaya marmalade is ready. I refrigerate since no preservative is used. It stays good for three weeks. It has not lasted longer than that at my home.

Vengaya Pakoda - Onion in Besan Fritters

Vengaya pakoda is a very popular snack in Tamil Nadu. Its hard to find any bakery or tea stall with out selling these. These crispy pakodas is the most sought after accompaniment with a cup of hot tea/coffee. In Kerala, you will find the bajji version more popular. Pakodas are crunchy where as bajjis are crisp and soft. Though both are besan based, the batter consistency makes the difference. At my home, Amma used to make this on most of the Sundays. Post marriage, my husband's family love to have these pakodas/bajji as side for dinner. With the onset of monsoon, these will be made often in my home. This is a favorite with my hubby. There isn't any recipe for this. I usually follow eye ball measurement. without any exact measurement followed, each time it is made, it has a unique taste.

1 medium sized onion, chopped

handful of besan flour - 2 measures

handful of rice flour - 1 measure

salt to taste

a big pinch of chilli powder

few shakes of hing

chopped coriander & curry leaves (optional)

Water to prepare the batter

Oil to deep fry

Method

Mix all the ingredients well. Add water little by little to get a thick batter. The batter should not be very stiff also. Adjust the salt and chilli powder to your taste.

Heat oil in a kadai. When hot, take some batter in your hand, crumble it into small pieces, directly into the oil. Be careful as you do this over the oil. Take care that your fingers do not go near oil. The idea is to get small pieces so that it will fry crisp else it will turn soft. This is a very forgiving recipe. Little more or less of any of the ingredients will not affect the taste but the crunchiness will vary. Too much of water or besan will give soft pakoras.

Drain on absorbent papers and when cool, you can store in airtight containers.

I am sending this to RFRU:Starters hosted by Sunshinemom, an event started by Ramki.

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.

Thenkuzhal and Manoharam ~ 2-in-1 Crunchies

Thenkuzhal is a savory crunchy where as Manoharam are sweet crunchies. Both the dishes use the same basic ingredients and are deep fried in oil. Rice flour is the major ingredient. Traditionally, raw rice is soaked in water for half an hour. Its then drained, shadow dried and powdered. Shop bought rice flour can also be used, though you have to compromise a bit on the texture. I usually prepare the rice flour from scratch. But this time I followed a different method, told by my friend,S. She gets the raw rice and roasted urad dal, powdered together at the flour mill. The bonus is that the flour mix will stay good for many days. So with the mix ready at hand, you can enjoy thenkuzhal whenever you want. For the flour mix Raw rice (Pacharisi) - 8 cups Urad dal - 1 cup Clean the rice of any dust. Don't wash with water. Dry roast urad dal till it turns pink. Powder the rice and roasted dal together. To make thenkuzhal Butter Crushed pepper and cumin seeds Salt Hing Water to prepare the dough Oil to fry If you are using the hing bar, take a piece of the bar and soak in warm water for 10 minutes. Use the water to prepare the dough. Instead, hing powder can also be used. Prepare dough in batches instead of mixing the full quantity of the flour. Else it will drink too much of oil when fried. Take 4 cups of the flour. Add 2 tablespoon of butter, salt, 1 tspn of coarsely crushed cumin and pepper, hing water. Make sure the coarse pepper is not big enough to block the openings in the mould. Mix well. Finally add water to make a soft dough. For preparing thenkuzhal, you need the press which has three or more holes in it. Heat oil in a kadai. When hot, take a ball sized dough and press it directly in the oil. Start making the formation from outside to inside. After a minute, slowly turn it over and fry till it is light brown. The size can depend on the size of your kadai. Allow it to cool and store it in airtight containers. Manoharam The initial preparation is similar to thenkuzhal, except that the spices and hing is not added. Salt is also added very minimally. Take the flour mix, add butter and very little salt. Make a soft dough using water. Prepare the thenkuzal out of the dough. Break them into one inch long pieces. These pieces are to be coated in jaggery syrup. For one measure of thenkuzhal pieces, use 1/2 cup of jaggery. If you want to be very sweet, you can use 3/4 cup of jaggery too. For jaggery syrup Jaggery - 1/2 cup Water- 1/4 cup Bite sized coconut pieces (optional) Cardamom powder. Melt jaggery in water. Strain to remove any impurities. Heat the syrup in a wide mouthed kadai. Add coconut pieces. Make a thick syrup. To test, add a drop of syrup in a glass of water. If it can be rolled and is firm, the syrup has reached the consistency. Switch off the stove. Add cardamom powder. Stir in the broken thenkuzhal to the syrup. Mix with a ladle so that all the pieces are well coated with jaggery, taking care not break the pieces further on mixing. At the same time, you need to be quick with the mixing, since jaggery will solidify on cooling. Before that it has to coat all the pieces. If the syrup does not reach the right consistency, thenkuzhal will turn soggy. It should remain crisp even after adding to the syrup. Enjoy the salt and sweet, melt in the mouth, crunchies. I am sending these crunchies to Cooking for Kids:Rice event , guest hosted by Trupti, started by Sharmi.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies for T & T

When Curry Leaf announced Tasty Palettes for Zlamushka's T &T, I knew what to make, since her vegan lemon poppy seed cookies is in my bookmarked recipes for a long time. As soon as I saw the event announcement, I immediately noted the recipe and baked it.

Here is the recipe

All purpose flour - 1 cup

Poppy seeds - 1 1/2 tblspn

Arrow root powder - 1 1/2 tblspn

Nutmeg powder - A big pinch

Salt - a big pinch

Butter - 5 tblspn

Sugar - 1/3 cup

Lemon 1 tblspn

Lemon Zest - 1 tspn

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Water - 3 tblspn

I have used white poppy seeds and arrow root powder in place of cornflour. Suganya had made it vegan by using margarine and I used butter.

Method

Mix flour, poppy seeds, arrow root powder, nutmeg and salt.Cream together, butter, sugar, lemon juice, zest and vanilla essence. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Add water little by little to form the dough. Don't add 3 tblspn of water at one go.Pinch off a tablespoon of dough and shape in to a ball and slightly flatten it.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 25 minutes or till the sides starts browning. The original
recipe said 18-20 minutes, mine took extra 5 minutes. The timings may vary according to your
oven settings. Suganya's has got a nice brown color. Mine remained mostly yellow except the sides which were slightly brown. Don't know if it has anything to do with the use of butter in place of margarine. It was definitely tasty.

The cookies were melt in the mouth kind with a tangy flavor. It gives a nice feeling to bite into the poppy seeds. Thanks Suganya, for a keeper recipe.

Whole Wheat Quick Bread

I was searching for some quick bread recipe and the quick brown bread at Alanna's Kitchen Parade caught my attention. There wasn't much of preparation work. Just mixing the ingredients and it was egg less too. She has already given a healthy version. So there wasn't any substitution needed from my part, which I often try to do.

Whole wheat flour - 2 cups

All purpose flour - 1 cup

Baking soda - 2 tspn

Salt - 1 tspn

Brown Sugar -1/3 cup

Honey- 1/4 cup

Buttermilk - 2 cup

Tutty fruity- 1/2 cup

Mix dry ingredients - whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking soda,brown sugar and salt.
Stir in rest of the ingredients. Mix until just combined. The batter is of not pouring consistency. Its more like a loos chapati dough. Transfer the batter to a greased loaf pan. Smooth the top with the back of a spoon.Bake in a preheated oven at 190 C for 45 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

This slightly denser, mildly sweet, honey flavored, quick bread is good for breakfast with butter or jam.

This goes to

1) BBD#18-Quick Breads, guest hosted by Manasi, an event started by Zorra.

2) JFI-Wheat, hosted by Roma

Cornflakes Mixture and Roasted Chickpeas - Snacks in MW

Cornflakes Mixture

Cornflakes mixture is my attempt to make a low fat version of the popular South Indian snack, Mixture. Mixure predominantly contains the omapodi and boondi, apart from poha, fried gram dal, peanuts. There isn't much of a recipe here. Just throw in what ever you have and as the name suggests you get a mixture.

Ingredients

Cornflakes - 2 cups

Beaten rice(avil/poha) - 1 cup

Puffed rice(murmura/mottapori) - 2 cups

Split roasted gram dal (dalia/porikadala)- 1/2 cup

Roasted peanut - 1/2 cup

Raisins - hand ful

Curry leaves

Fennel seeds/saunf- 1 teaspoon

Hing - few shakes

Salt

Red chilli powder - 1/2 tspn

Kitchen king masala powder -1/2 tspn

Turmeric - a pinch

Oil- 2 table spoon

Method
Heat oil in a MW safe bowl for 30 secs. Add saunf,curry leaves and raisins. MW for 30 seconds or untill the raisins puff up. Add hing, salt, red chilli powder,masala powder and mw for another 30 seconds. Add cornflakes and beaten rice and mw for 2 minutes. Since these takes more time to get roasted compared with the other ingredients. So we add that first. Both would have roasted well by now. Care to be taken that it doesn't get burnt. Adjust the timings according to your oven. Add rest of the ingredients and toss well that the masala gets coated uniformly. MW for 3 minutes. Toss them once in between. Leave one minute standing time. It will turn crisp. Store in airtight container and enjoy with your tea/coffee.

Roasted Chickpeas
This is inspired by Madhuram's post on oven roasted chickpeas. I like her 'My Notes' section. Took a note of what is mentioned there. But instead of oven, I tried it in MW. I felt with microwave oven, time taken could be less. Though I wasn't sure of the results, decided to go ahead. I got crunchy, fat free snack and took only 12 minutes.

Ingredients

Cooked chickpeas - 1 cup

Olive oil - 1 tspn

Red chilly powder

Fennel seeds

Salt

Few shakes of dried oregano and hing
Toss all the ingredients together in a microwave safe bowl. MW for 12 minutes. Keep tossing for every 3 minutes or so. Allow 2 minutes of standing time. If you keep for longer time, it tends to go hard. Adjust accordingly. It stays crunchy on storage too.

I am sending these two snacks to MEC-Savoury Snacks hosted by Priya, an event started by Srivalli.

and the roasted chickpeas to MBP-Snacks hosted by Ashwini, which originated at SpiceCafe