Manathakkali Vathal

Manathakkali/Balck Nightshade are tiny berries to the size bigger than mustard seeds. They are green in color and on ripening turns deep purple. Ripe berries always reminds me of my childhood days. Those days, the ripe ones was a favorite among the kids. We were four kids at home, me, my sister and two cousins. It was a joint family. Being kids, we used to eat ourselves, if we get something like a chocolate from school or anything like that. But my sister was different. She had the habit of sharing with each one of us before she ate. Her sharing quality is to the extent that she will count the tiny ripened berries and divide it among four of us. But if it was me or my cousins, we would have easily gulped it down within seconds  of picking them.  Even today at family get-togethers, my sister's manathakkali sharing is talked about.

The green berries are used to make vathals. This is common in Tamilnadu. In Kerala, I think only the Palakkad Iyers patronize this vathal. This plant comes on its own like the curry leaves tree. That is to say we don't usually sow the seeds. It has been appearing in our backyard at one place or the other as far as my memory takes me back. It grows to a height of 1 metre with many branches. It needs sunlight to grow. Picking these tiny berries is a very tedious task. The berries are then washed and soaked in buttermilk, added with salt and turmeric. The following day, the liquid is squeezed and the berries are dried in the sun. After sun drying, its again soaked in the remaining buttermilk. This is continued till no liquid is left. After that, with a day of sun drying, it will turn dry and crisp. Store it in airtigt bottles and will stay good for nearly a year, if it lasts so. The dried berries will be 1/4 in quantity to the fresh ones used.

 

The vathals can be used while preparing Vethakuzhambu or its simply fried in ghee/nallennai (gingely oil( and mixed with hot rice and had. You can also add some finely chopped onion / garlci to the oil and saute till brown. Then add the dried berries and fry them. While frying the berries puff well and turn brown in color. some berries pop when fried.

 

 

 

 

The leaves/ manathakkali keerai is used to cure mouth ulcers. Its found to be effective. Leaves can be cooked  as keerai chundal or slightly sauteed and mixed in curd with a dash of salt to make a raita. The slight bitterness will be offset by the addition of curd. Fresh berries can be added in Uppadam. Other than using in uppadam, I have not cooked fresh berries on its own.

 

 

 

 

Eggless Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Pineapple upside down cake was on my list for a long time. I have been buying pineapples with the idea of cake in mind. But it eventually ended up in juice or jam. Recently, Sowmya of Creative Sage posted one. That brought the idea to the front again. during the weekend veggie shopping, I got one ripe pineapple. Decided to bake it on Sunday. But we had other plans. I thought this time too I should give the cake a miss. But somehow managed to bake it on Monday evening. I had bookmarked a recipe from JoyofBaking. I made it eggless with the use of flaxseeds powder and with slight changes in the ingredients. I got a moist cake

and was very happy with the result. The cake recipe can be made with variations to make different flavors. It had a perfect texture and not very dense in spite of using some whole wheat flour. It remained moist the next day too and has soaked in the flavors better.

Topping

Butter - 2 tblspn

Powdered Jaggery - 1/2 cup

Fresh pineapple slices - 7 nos


For the cake

All purpose flour - 1 cup

Whole wheat flour (Atta) -1/2 cup

Baking powder - 2 tspn

Salt - 1/4 tspn

Butter - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Milk - 1/2 cup

Powdered flaxseeds - 2 tspn in 1 cup of water.



Topping

The original recipe asked for brown sugar which I didn't have. I was thinking of caramelizing white sugar instead of brown sugar. Then I remembered Sunita's recent dessert, where in she has used jaggery. I didn’t want jaggery to be overpowering so reduced to 1/2 cup in place of 3/4 cup of brown sugar as said in the recipe. Also used 2 tblspn less butter.

Add the grated jaggery and 2 tblspn of butter in a pan. Soon both will start melting and when it starts bubbling, remove. Transfer the melted jaggery and butter to the greased cake tin. I placed the slice pineapples on the syrup when warm.

Preparing the cake

Sift the dry ingredients together. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Mix the 2 tablespoons of flaxseeds in a cup of water. Add milk, flaxseed meal mixed with water and vanilla essence to the butter sugar mix. Slowly fold in the dry ingredients and mix it without any lumps, after each addition.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for 50 minutes or till the top starts browning and the cake pulls from the sides. After removing from the oven, cool it for 10 minutes and invert it on a plate. With a scoop of ice-cream, the cake will make an exotic dessert.

Note: In place of fresh pineapple, canned slices can be used too.

The baking bug has caught on my sister too. After the recent Diwali purchase of a MW convection oven, she too is on a baking spree on weekends. I am delighted to see her first cake attempt turning successful, with my instructions over phone, inspite of the recipe on my blog.

My sister's first cake - Eggless Dates Cake

P.S. This is my 200th post. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers and readers for the inspiration and encouragement.

Parikkai (Bittergourd) Pitla

Past one week, we have had fare amount of sweets and savories in the name of Diwali and proportionately the calories have increased. The routine cooking had taken a backseat in the name of Diwali preparations. Sambhar is one of the staple of palakkad iyers cooking. And slight changes in the spices roasted and vegetables used will result in another dish. One such is Parikkai Pitla. Piltai is not much favored because of the bitter gourd in it, especially kids. I know many homes that make it only for the annual ritual for the departed soul is performed (Shraddam/Devasom). The preparation is almost similar to Sambhar.My MIL adds kabuli chana in place of tuvar dal in the recipe. I have seen when chana is added, kids takes an instant liking to the dish though will not touch the bitter gourd pieces in it. I usually cook with a light green variety of the BG which we get in my place. This is less bitter than the dark green variety. Infact, you can't taste the bitterness in the dish at all. When made as a stir fry with the addition of onions and tomato, you can easily pass it on as any other vegetable with the absence of the distinct bitter taste.

Bitter gourd - 1 medium sized

Tamarind - lemon sized

Kabuli Chana / Tuvar dal - 1/2 cup

Turmeric

Salt


To roast and grind


Urad dal - 1 tspn
Chana dal- 1tspn
Red chilli- 3 nos
Pepper corn - 4 nos
Hing - few shakes

Grated coconut - 1/2 cup


Seasoning

Oil - 1 tblspn

Mustard seeds - 1 tspn

Curry leaves - few

Grated coconut - 1 tblspn

Pressure cook kabuli chana /tuvar dal till it is soft. If using kabuli chana, it has to be soaked for 5 hours. I soak them overnight.



Wash the bitter gourd. Slit it open and discard the seeds. Chop into bite sized pieces. Extract the tamarind juice. Take tamarind extract, salt and turmeric. in a cooking bowl. Add 1/2 cup of water. When the tamarind extract starts to boil, add the chopped bitter gourd pieces. When the vegetable is cooked tender, add the mashed dal/chana. Reserve the cooked dal water.

Roast the spices except coconut in a little oil, till they are light brown. Grind the spices along with grated coconut to a smooth paste. Add water while grinding. Dilute the ground paste with the reserved water and stir into the cooking pot. Adjust the salt and consistency of the gravy by adding water. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for few minutes.

Season with mustard seeds, curry leaves and a tablespoon of coconut. The coconut should be roasted till brown.

When preparing for Shradham, moong dal is used and red chilly is fully replaced with pepper corns.

SnapIt - A plugin product review

SnapIt is a customized version of the standard print screen function. It’s a small plug in that can be downloaded in less than a minute even on a slow connection.  SnapIt makes the screen capture job lot easier and organized too. Once the program is started, a camera icon sits pretty on the status bar. To capture screen shots, you can continue using the print scr key. Once pressed, the mouse pointer changes to a plus sign and you can mark the area on the screen to be copied. Click on the icon to save the marked image to the desired location.

The image capturing be configured to different key options, other than the Prnt Scr key,  given by the program. Also the saving can be automated by defining the storage location, image formats (jpeg,png,gif,tiff & bmp) and starting name for the files and if it is to be incremental or random. Once these parameters are set, then capturing screen shots is super easy. All you do is just press the assigned key and go about with your work. The screen shots will be automatically saved in the designated folder.  This saves the time of opening software to paste the selected image, save and later crop to get the desired results. This plugin will be particularly useful for those creating tutorials or presentations.

(The above two images are captured with SnapIt)

A fully functional, trial version is available for 14 days. Thanks Katherine Poll for giving me the opportunity.

Vanilla Maida Cake, Ukkarai & Kaja ~ Diwali Sweets

Vanilla Maida Cake

This is Lalitha Maam's masterpiece recipe. Aunt makes it with different flavors and changes the color accordingly. I have always made with vanilla essence and used green color. This time my husband suggested to change the color. When I checked for yellow color, very little was left. I add a pinch of green to that yellow color and got a greenish yellow color. This is very easy to make provided you get the sugar syrup consistency correct, which is important for all Indian sweets.

Time : 20 minutes
Yields - 50 pieces

Maida/All purpose flour - 2 cups

Sugar - 4 cups

Ghee - 1 1/2 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Food color - a pinch

Water - 1 cup

Heat ghee in a kadai. When it is hot, stir in the maida and switch off the stove. The maida gets cooked in the warm ghee. In another kadai, prepare the sugar syrup with 4 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water. When the syrup starts bubbling, add a tablespoon of milk. Let it continue to simmer. The scum will float on top and gently remove with a spoon. The sugar syrup should be of two string consistency, which is very important for this recipe. To check the consistency, wet your fingers and then take a drop of the syrup on your index finger. If stretched between your index and thumb fingers, you should be able to see two threads. If the syrup cooks beyond two thread is al so fine but not less, since much cooking is not done post that stage. Add vanilla essence and food color to the syrup. Stir in the maida+ghee mixture. And cook for two minutes till it comes together as one whole lump. Once maida is added to the syrup, you should act quickly. Once the sugar syrup has reached consistency, swtich off the stove. Mix in the mixture and give vigourus stir so that it blends in. Then heat the stove again.

Grease a plate with sufficient ghee and also a flat based cup (I use dhabhara) to level the mix once it is transferred to the plate. Since the cake has a soft texture, it doesn't set quickly. So you have time to level it perfectly. But you need to transfer the mix to the plate immediately from the kadai else the last portion left in the kadai tend to set faster leaving some granule texture to that part of the cake.

Ukkarai

This is a tradional sweet, made for Diwali in most of the Kerala Iyer homes, though i don't make it for every Diwali. This time around, I wanted to make it for memory sake.

1/2 cup tuvar dal

1/2 C chana dal or use 1 cup of chana dal alone

1 cup jaggery

3 tblspn ghee

Elaichi powder

Roasted cashew - few

Grated coconut - 3 tblspn

Roast both the dals till light brown. Pressure cook till it is soft and not mushy. Drain the excess water. Pulse the cooked dal along with coconut to a smooth paste.

Heat jaggery in 1/4 cup of water. Make syrup till it reaches the soft ball consistency. A drop of the syrup dropped in a tablespoon of water,should be able to roll into a soft ball. Stir in the ground dal + coconut paste. Keep stirring till the jaggery syrup is full absorbed by the dal and it turns dry. Add ghee at intervals. Mix in roasted cashew and cardamom powder. The texture is soft but not sticky.

Kaja ~ Andhra Special

I had the recipe noted in my diary, long back, taken from a Tamil magazine. In the magazine, the recipe was named as Curly Biscuits. The recipe was new to me and seeing the name I thought it as an innovative recipe. I had tried it then.  Later, blogging introduced me various regional specialities and I found the sweet is Kaja, a speciality of Andhra. I understand there are varieties of Kaja, marked by regional variations. I found a similar recipe at Srivalli's. Valli has neatly explained with step-by-step pics.

Preparing dough - 15 minutes

Resting time - 1 hour

Making kajas, deep frying, and clicking photos - 1 hour

Ingredients

Maida/All purpose flour - 2 cups

Salt - a pinch

Baking soda - 1 big pinch

Ghee - 2 tspn + 2 tblspn

Rice flour - 3 tblspn

Water - 3/4 cup


Oil to deep fry



Syrup

Sugar -1 cup heaped

Water - 3/4 cup



Mix maida, salt, baking soda and ghee. Add water to make a pliable dough. Leave the dough for an hour.  Resting time for the dough is essential to get good results. In a bowl mix together rice flour and ghee.It should be of spreadable consistency.

Pinch of a ping pong sized dough. Roll into a chappathi. Spread the rice flour + ghee paste on it.

Place another chapathi on it. Fold it from one end.

Lightly press the edges so that it sticks and doesn't open up. Cut intp 1 inch long pieces.

Slightly press them down to flatten the pieces.

Deep fry the pieces in moderate heat. Don't heat the oil to smoking point and fry in high flame. The inside layers will not get cooked.

Mean while prepare sugar syrup for one string consistency. Dip the fried kajas in the sugar pieces. Leave it for 2 minutes. Then remove them and spread it on a plate to cool.

Ribbon Pakoda & Mathri ~ Savories for Diwali

Diwali is one festival when we can have our choice of  savories and sweets to be made. Unlike most of the festivals which has a predefined menu  like Murukku, Seedai for Krishnajayanthi, Kali for Thiruvathirai, Appam,Pori for Karthigai etc. When it comes to Diwali recipes, DIET comes last for me. The amount of oil, sugar and ghee doesn't affect the choice of sweets or savories. Celebration is the key word and Diwali comes only once in a year. So lets get onto the savories I made for this Diwali. Come what may, Ribbon Pakoda is always there. I made no exception to that rule this year too. There is no fixed recipe for pakoda. I feel each family has a recipe of their own, passed down from generations. Here is mine.

Ingredients

Rice flour - 3 cups

Gram flour/Besan - 1 cup

Butter - 3 tblspn

Salt - 1/2 tspn

Chilli powder - 1 tspn heaped

Hing

Water to make the dough

Oil to deep fry


Method

Measure rice flour and besan in a vessel. Add butter and chilli powder. Mix well so that the flour is well coated with butter. Mix in the salt and hing dissolved in water. Add enough water to make a pliable dough. Heat oil in a kadai. Using the pakoda achu/plate, press it into hot oil. Gently flip with a perforated ladle and remove when it is golden brown. Drain and leave it to come to room temperature. Store in air tight container.

My MIL adds a 1/4 cup of roasted and powder tuvar dal. It sure adds to the flavor. But I was lazy to do that. So I skipped it. Nevertheless, mine turned out to be very crispy and melt-in-the-mouth kind.

Note: If store bought rice flour is used, you can measure rice flour :besan in the ratio 2:1 to get crispier pakodas.

Mathri/Mathi

The other savory is from the Land of Rajasthan - Mathri/Mathi. The is the first time I am trying at home though I have tasted it. On goggling, I went through several recipes and found that more than the measurement of ingredients, it’s the way of making them that is important to get flaky, crisp biscuits. And I followed the instructions at Tongue Ticklers. Harini has given all the little points to be taken care of. Though she has baked it, I deep fried them. My ingredient list slightly varies from hers, but I followed her method to prepare the dough. It came out excellent. Do drop into her space to have a look at the perfectly baked mathris. I am sure going to bake them soon.

Ingredients

Wheat flour/Atta - 2 cups

All purpose flour/Maida - 1 cup

Salt - 1 tspn

Chilli powder -1/2 tspn

Pepper powder - 1/2 tspn

Kasuri methi - 2 tblspn

Ajwain/Omam- 1tspn

Turmeric - a pinch

Hot oil - 3/4 cup

Warm water - 1 cup



Oil to deep fry


Method

Take wheat flour, maida, salt, chilli powder ,pepper powder, ajwain and turmeric in a bowl. Mix the ingredients well. Make a well in the centre. Pour the hot oil. rub the oil into the ingredients using a spatula. The more the oil and less water used in making the dough, gives better biscuits. I felt the amount of oil used was right enough. So used water to prepare the dough. Add kasuri methi to the dough. Don't knead the dough. Just bring together as you do for cookies.

Take marble sized dough and press it down between your palms. Else you can roll it using the rolling pin. I rolled into a big thick chappathi. Cut into small circles with a bottle cap. Make marks on top with a fork or knife so that it doesn't puff up while fried. Deep fry 4 or 5 mathris in a batch till it is golden brown. When cool it is very crisp and flaky. Since I have added chilli and pepper powders, it was spicy too.

My diwali sweets will follow in the next post.

Wishing you all a very happy and safe Diwali/Deepavali.

No bake chocolate pinwheel

Everyone must be busy planning for the festival weekend. And most of you must have already started with the preparations of sweets and savories. Here is a quick, no cook, recipe to delight your kids. I made this when my niece was here for her summer holidays. As always, I clicked few pictures and forgot about it. When Srivalli announced the Kid's Delight event, I wanted to send this. I got the recipe from a TV show, where in they were showing some quick recipes which can be made by kids themselves.

You need

Marie biscuit - 1 pkt

Cocoa Powder - 2tblspn

Powdered sugar - 5 tblspn

Butter - 2 tblspn

Milk - 4 tblspn


Method

Powder the marie biscuits in the mixer grinder. Seive it to get fine powder. Else it will make rolling the dough difficult.  Mix in cocoa powder and 2 tblspn of sugar. Prepare a tight dough using milk. 

You can mix some coffe powder in the milk if you love the flavor of coffee in your cookies. Coffee and chocolate complement each other well.

For the filling

Beat butter and sugar until creamy. You can optinaly add some dessicated coconut or coarsely chopped nuts also.

Roll dough into a thick chappathi. Spread the filling evenly. Leave some space at the edges. Then roll from the longer end to form a log shape. Roll it tightly and seal the crack if any, as you roll. Cover the log in a butter paper or aluminium foil and refrigerate for 2 hours. Cut along the width to get beautiful pinwheel cookies.

It will be a great hit among the kid's if it is part of the birthday parties.

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

Kai Murukku ~Amma's Special

For so many years, murukku meant only the kaimurukku for me. We called murukku only  that. Later on, I realised its a more general way of referring murukku, muthuswarams or thenkuzhal...Okay, you got the drift. When I posted this month's ICC, I had mentioned about kai murukku. While on twitter, Aparna asked me about the recipe for the murukku and I promised her I shall post it soon. These pics have been lying in drafts for more than 4 months. Thanks to Aparna, that it finally came to the light of blogosphere. Before you all jump to the conclusion that I an expert on this, let me confess, I am merely documenting my Amma's recipe. It was she who did this when she was here. To be frank, I haven't made any serious attempts on this regard.

And my Amma is an expert and unfortunately me and my sister doesn't seem to inherit that genes.

Things to keep ready

Fresh rice flour is used for making murukku. I am not sure how best result you might get with store bought flour. Since I have seen only made with fresh flour. As with all Indian  avories, this recipe also requires you to soak the raw rice for 1 hour. Drain and shade dry. Then pound in the mixer grinder or near by flour mill. Seive the flour.

Split urad dal is to be roasted on low fire till it is pink. Cool and powder. Sieve to get fine powder. Ura dal flour can be prepared a day ahead or so.

Solid hing gives a better flavor than the powdered ones. If using solid hing,soak it in warm water for half an hour. If hing powder is used, then also dissolve it in the water.

The proportion of rice flour :urad dal powder is 7: 1. Measure using the same cup. Its not necessary that you use the standard measuring cup. Any size cup can be used provided you measure both the ingredients with the same cup. Quantity of the rest of the ingredients are indicative. So adjust according to the size of the measuring cup you use.

Now on to the recipe,

Ingredients

7 cups of fine raw rice flour

1 cup of roastedd and powdered urad dal

Butter - 3 tblspn

Jeera/Cumin -1 tblspn

Hing -

Salt

Water to make the dough

Oil to deep fry

Method

Measure rice flour and urad dal powder into a wide vessel. Add butter, jeera . Dissolve the salt in the hing water. Add the hing,salt water. Mix the ingredients well. Add water to make  pliable dough. When making in large quantities, its ideal to prepare the dough in batches.

Spread a cotton cloth. Take a lemon sized dough in your hand and start making murukku. I should have taken a video but I missed. I shall surely do that next time. You can apply some coconut oil on your hands. This will help to make the swirls with out breaking.

Leave it for 15 minutes to dry on the cloth, before you deep fry. Meanwhile heat oil in a  kadai. Slowly lift the murukku from the cloth using a flat spatula (Dosa thiruppi) and transfer to a plate. Slowly slide them into oil. When one side is fried, flip with a slotted spoon. When both sides are cooked, it will have a golder color. And also the sizzling of the oil around the murukku ceases.

Drain and when cool, store in airtight containers.

These are crunchy but not the melt in your mouth kind. If you add more butter, it will drink more oil also, thought it might not be very hard.

Golu pics from Mumbai

Our Aunt, Lalitha  at Mumbai, has sent in her golu pics along with snaps of  few prasadoms for my blog. She is a great cook  herself. She to enjoys cooking variety of recipes. Aunty is involved in a Bhajan group and is the active co-ordinator. If only she had some more time for herself, I am sure she would have started a food blog. She is very much interested in my blog and keeps telling that she will click and send few recipes for mine. Her busy schedule doesn't make it happen. And even Uncle and their son have promised me some recipes for my blog.  So enjoy the pictures for now.