Ribbon Pakoda

Ingredients:

 

2 cups  Rice flour       

1 cup Chickpea flour (Besan/Kadalai Maavu)

A pinch of Asafoetida

3 tbsp melted Butter

Red chilli powder  (to taste)

Salt  (to taste)

3 cups oil

Directions:

 

In a mixing bowl, mix the above mentioned ingredients using water. Add just enough water to be able to roll  the dough into one big mass.

Take a Murukku maker, assemble it with the ribbon pakoda press (disc with 4 rectangular holes with no jagged edges), now put the dough in the assembled murukku maker and screw the lid on.

Heat oil in a pan, once oil is hot enough (check by dropping a small piece of dough in oil, the dough should spring back up immediately), use the murkku maker to drop the dough in ribbon shape into the hot oil. Remove from hot oil when the ribbon pakoda turns golden brown.

Thin Crust Pizza

This Sunday, I realized that there was some Pizza sauce which was about to expire so I decided to make pizza. I started with the Pizza prep wanting to just finish the sauce but the pizza came out really well and tasted so good.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup Wheat flour (I used Multi-grain flour)
2. 1/2 cup All purpose flour
3. 1 tsp Active dry yeast
4. 2 tbsp Olive oil
5. Pizza Sauce
6. 1/4 lb Mozzarella cheese for topping the pizza
7. Vegetables for topping
8. Salt
9. Parmesan cheese
10. Red pepper flakes

Directions:

Pizza Dough prep:

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water and wait till it gets foamy
2. Dissolve salt in a little water and keep the salt water ready
3. Once the yeast it foamy, mix the wheat flour, all purpose flour, salt water and the yeast water and form a dough. Add the olive oil as well. The dough must be pliable.
4. Store the dough in an airtight container leaving room for the dough to expand. If it's a cold day, I usually heat the oven slightly until it feels warm and then place the dough inside the oven.
5. I waited for about an hour before I took the dough out.

 Pizza prep:

1. When dough is expanding, get the cheese shredded and the vegetables sliced the way you normally like. I used onions, tomatoes, basil and mushrooms.
2. Once we take the pizza dough out, oil a round cookie sheet or a pizza pan and roll the pizza dough out on it. Make sure the dough is spread out really thin. Ensure that the are no tears in the dough layer.
3. Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce
4. Now spread the shredded mozzarella cheese
5. Add all the vegetable toppings.
6. Preheat the oven to 400F
7. Place the assembled pizza in the oven for baking. Bake it for about 15 minutes (might take lesser or more time based on your oven).
8. Once the pizza is ready, switch the Oven's mode from baking to broiling to get a nice browning on the cheese. I typically keep it in broil mode for just a couple of minutes before I take the pizza out.
9. Garnish the pizza with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes.

Pulao

This weekend I decided to try out Pulao, I looked up several recipes in the end decided to follow the instructions that I got from my Mother-in-law as it seemed a lot easier. Here's the recipe

Ingredients:

1. one small bag of mixed vegetables (containing carrot, peas, green beans and lima beans).
2. 2 cups of basmati rice
3. 1 tsp oil
4. 2 tsp ghee
5. 1 tsp cumin
6. 3-4 cloves
7. 2 bay leaves or 2 tsp whole garam masala.
8. 2 tsp salt
9. 1 tsp sugar

Directions:


1. First wash basmati rice and soak it in water for over 10 mins and then drain.
2. First heat oil and ghee together. when the oil is hot enough add cloves, cumin and bay leaves and saute them and add all the vegetables once you see the cumins cracking.
3. Saute the vegetables nicely and turn the heat to low.
4. Now add the drained basmati rice and fold it with the vegetables. At this point add required amount of salt and sugar.
5. Add 2.25 cups of water and let the basmati rice pressure cook. 1-2 whistles in the pressure cooker should get the job done. Rice cooker can also be used.

Cucumber or Onion raita goes well with Pulao, I served this with cucumber raita and my husband really liked the pulao and raita :).

Mango Thokku

This is one of my favorite dishes. It's essentially a side dish for curd rice but I love to just mix this with rice and eat just like any thogayal :). It's very simple and easy to make yet tastes very delicious. Growing up I used to make excuses and eat small portions of other courses so that I can eat more thokku ;). After seeing the indian store filled with mangoes I was so excited that I decided to get a mango and try this out :). It really did come out very well and here's the recipe

Ingredients:

1. 1 medium sized green mango
2. 2 tsp fenugreek powder
3. 1 tsp of mustard
4. 2-3 tsp red chilli powder
5. 2 tsp salt (use more depending on the sourness of the mango)
6. a pinch of asafoetida
7. 2-3 tbsp oil
8. a pinch of turmeric powder

Directions:

1. First peel the skin off the mango and grate it.
2. Now in a pan, add oil and mustard and start heating, once the mustards start cracking add asafoetida and the fenugreek powder
3. Now add the grated mango and continue to cook on very low heat. Keep stirring every now and then and add extra oil if you notice the mangoes are dry and stick to the bottom of the vessel.
4. Once the mangoes are starting to cook add the chilli powder, turmeric powder and salt. Stir well to mix the stuff and continue cooking on low heat.
5. When you notice the oil spreading out of the mango the thokku is ready.

Note:

1. You should never add water to cook the thokku. The mango as such has enough moisture/juice that'll aid the cooking process.

Rava Kesari

First of all,
Iniya puthandu nal vazhthukkal.

Yesterday happened to be tamil new year's day and I had to make some sweet to usher in the new year. Since my hubby wasn't around and I couldn't get off from work early I decided to just make rava kesari. It only took me 5-10 mins to make it and being a sweet tooth myself, I thouroughly enjoyed eating it :). Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup rava (get coarse sooji from Indian store)
1.25 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
2-3 tbsp ghee
12 - cashews
2-3 cardamom or 1tsp cardamom powder

pinch of food/cake color powder (red) (optional)

Directions:

1. In a pan, add a tsp of ghee and roast the sooji and keep it aside
2. First add water to the pan and allow it to boil, once the water starts boiling add the sooji with constant stirring so as to avoid any lumps.
3. keep stirring once the sooji is almost cooked, add the sugar and stir nicely. When the sugar melts powder the cardamom and add it to this mixture. Also add the food color and stir.
4. Add 2 tbsps of ghee to the sooji mixture and stir nicely. At this point the mixture should be in the correct consistency and could be switched off else allow it to cook for some more time.
5. Roast the cashews in the remaining ghee separately and add it to the kesari and mix them nicely.

Note:

1. Some people like to add milk to this kesari, I personally don't like it as adding milk offsets the sweetness.
2. If you love pacha karpooram, that could be added along with caradamom powder but I personally refuse to eat any sweet that contains pacha karpooram and I always steer away from it.

Kootu powder

In my opinion, Kootu is one of easiest dishes to cook and the cooking process is made easier when you have kootu powder ready. In addition Kootu is very healthy compared to a lot of other dishes. The best thing with Kootu powder is that it can be used when cooking Keerai as well.
Here's the kootu powder recipe that's been passed on to me by my mother-in-law from her mother-in-law, I had to alter the recipe to exclude coconut. The reason I had to exclude coconut was because a lot of the frozen coconuts that are available in US could not be sauteed nicely before grinding them, the dried ones smell strongly of almost spoilt coconut oil if the stock happens to be old and in addition after my dreadful trip to Kerala I have developed a total aversion for coconut and I'm yet to get out of that. Besides it's always a better idea to add fresh coconut right when u r cooking the kootu.

Ingredients:

1. 1.5 units channa dal
2. 1 unit urad dal
3. 1/4 units pepper
4. 1/4 units cumin
5. dry red chillies according to taste

Directions:

1. Fry all the ingredients separately until they turn golden brown, this would ensure that there's no moisture and also make the powder last long.
2. Just grind them coarsely.

Note:

If you by mistake ground them into fine powder, mix the powder nicely in a small amount of water before adding to kootu, this would avoid the clumps that could appear if you were to directly add the powder to the hot kootu.

In addition finally when you garnish your kootu, fry the mustard, asafoetida, urid dal and jeera in ghee instead of oil.

Cabbage baaji

Yaay! First cabbage recipe of this blog :). This happens to be one of my favorite dishes. It's more or less Kootu except that I use toor dal instead of moong dal. I love kootu a lot. Right from childhood I've always been very particular about the color of the dish I eat. I always loved the lighter, milder colored food compared to the darker ones. The only exceptions being vathal kozhambu and puliyodarai. Anyways, this is dish is delicious and can be consumed with rice just like any kootu.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup toor dal
1/2 - 3/4 cabbage
2-3 green chillies
1-2 tsp kootu powder
1-2 tsp Ghee
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard
a pinch of asafoetida
1/2 tsp broken urid dal
1 tsp salt
a bunch of curry leaves (optional)

Directions:

1. Pressure cook toor dal and set aside. I normally pressure cook for 4-6 whistles.
2. Now chop the cabbage nicely. Don't cut it to very small pieces.
3. Now put the cabbage in a sauce pan and add water, salt and green chillies (don't try and drown the cabbage in water, add water only to cover half the cabbage) and start boiling the cabbage in medium heat. Cook it covered.
4. Once the cabbage is cooked well, if there's excess water drain it (you can add salt to the excess cabbage water and drink it) then mash the toor dal nicely and add it to the cabbage and continue to cook at low heat.
5. At this point add kootu powder and cook it till it boils and then switch off the stove.
6. Now in a mini frying pan, add ghee and once its hot, add mustard and asafoetida and when the mustard starts to crack add urid dal and curry leaves. Once urid dal turns to golden color add this mixture to the cabbage mixture.

We had this kootu/baaji with rice and had vengaya vadam for the sides :).