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Showing posts with label tiffin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tiffin. Show all posts


Veggie adai
Saturday, 7 April 2007


Adai is a traditional Tamil dinner dish that is quite healthy too. Having a really dodgy digestive system, I was always restricted to just one adai for most of my life, till I hit my 20's. It was never my favourite dish though.

A few years back, the dietician at my brother's gym gave him a new recipe for it that made it positively lip smacking! This is a dieter's delight and as it fills you up, you can just have two of these and die happy.

Things you need are:
1/2 cup channa dal
1/4 cup toor dal
1/4 urad dal
1 cup idli rice
4-5 crushed red chillies
1 cup grated veg - carrots, cabbage
1 tbsp dessicated coconut (optional)
1 red onion, sliced finely
a sprig of curry leaves
a pinch of asafoetida
salt to taste

To start with, soak the rice and dal for about four hours. After that, grind them coarsely, along with the dried red chillies and the dessicated coconut.
Season with salt, asafoetida and torn curry leaves.
Now, your batter is ready.
Take some of it in a clean bowl, sprinkle the onions and the grated veg and mix well. Mixing the veg and onions with the whole of your batter would make the veg go soggy and the batter would not last for long.
Heat a tawa till it is very hot.
Take a ladleful of the doctored batter (!), pour it in the tawa in a circle and spread it thin, just like you would make a dosa.
Flip it over after it has cooked on one side. Cook till well done.



You can eat it with that delectable medley of vegetables, aviyal.

Posted by DesiGirl 08:24 2 comments  

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Bread Uppuma
Tuesday, 3 April 2007

One of the easiest items to make for brekkie is good ole upma. Whenever my gran asks me what tiffin I want, my ever-ready answer is upma. Rava, aval, samba rava, rice - whatever it is, I love upma in any shape or form. Of all the various forms of the item, bread upma is, in my opinion, is one you can dish up in a real jiffy.






So, what do you need to make this delicacy?

Fairly obviously, bread - 5 -6 slices
Onion - 1, sliced
Tomato - 2, chopped
Peas - 2 tbsp
Potato - 1, diced
Carrots / cauliflower / capsicum - 2 tbsp, diced
Green chillies - 2, deseeded and diced
Oil - 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Channa dal - 1 tsp
Urad dal - 1 tsp
Turmeric - 1 tsp
Curry leaves - handful
Coriander leaves - 2 tbsp chopped finely
Salt - to taste
Now, get ready to start cooking by getting out the ever present kadai. Heat the oil for a minute and add the mustard seeds and let it splutter. Once that is done, add the dals, roast, add curry leaves, then drop in the sliced onions. Once that turns a pink shade, add the green chillies to the pan. Saute for a few minutes.
Add the tomatoes and cook for a while. Add turmeric powder to the cooked tomatoes.
Now, add the chopped veg - you can add as many or as little as you want. If you have stuff like left-over potatoes or cauliflower sabzi in the fridge, chuck that in as well. Mix well, add some salt and let it all cook well.

Meanwhile, toast the bread slices in a toaster, in a browning setting. After that, cut them into cubes.

Now, add the cubed bread to the veg in the kadai, adjust salt and mix well. Garnish with coriander and serve hot with ketchup.

Posted by DesiGirl 00:01 2 comments  

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