Happy Ugadi!
Tuesday, 20 March 2007

To all of you celebrating Ugadi today on March 20, 2007, my heartiest wishes. This year, for the very first time, we are celebrating the festival too. S is Telugu and though I try my best to do a fair 50-50 of our customs for P, it is rather difficult to follow S's family customs and traditions when we live miles and miles away from them for me to learn anything. The only Telugu festival I've ever been there for has been Varalakshmi pooja and I don't do that by myself here as it involves a complicated procedure to 'split' the proceedings from the MIL and I don't think I would be able to take a day off from work to do the needful. Plus, doing that all by myself, with no mates around to partake kind of takes the fun off the pooja. So I just say a special 'hello' to umachi that day.

This year though, thanks to folks like Indira of Mahanandi, I am learning more about Andhra culture than I ever learnt from the in-laws. After the initial query of Would you be able to do the neem pachadi and my resultant Eh? Wat? , the MIL sort of washed her hands off me! But thanks to the power of blogosphere and Indira's lovely recipes and explanations, I am going to try and do my bit towards Ugadi this year.

Luckily, I bought couple of raw mangoes the last time I went to East Ham and can do justice to the mango dal and mango rice. The recipes are Indira's so visit her website to pay homage to her. The pictures (when I eventualluy put them up!) are from my baby attempts. I shall post a codicil in the evening if S collapses after eating my attempts!

As I just made a monstrous vessel full of akkara adisal last week for Karadaiyan Nombu, I am going to give the dessert a miss and just go with these two dishes.

First, Indira's recipe for Mango dal, with some tweaking and adjustments from my end.

Stuff you need are as follows:

1 green mango
1 medium sized red onion - sliced into big chunks
1 cup toor dal
4 green chillies, deseeded and sliced
a pinch of turmeric
salt to taste

Tadka
1 tsp oil
1 tsp of each - mustard seeds, cumin, urad dal, chana dal
2 dried red chilli pieces and curry leaves
a pinch of asafoetida

Once you've got these afore-mentioned items, pat yourself on the back and proceed as follows:

1. Wash green mango, dry it and cut into small chunks. Leave the skin on the mango as that generally leaves a punchy taste.
2. Take the toor dal, mango, onion, green chillies and turmeric in a pressure cooker. Add two cups of water and cook till the dal is cooked thoroughly.
3. Open the cooker once you can, add salt and mash the dal completely till it bears no resemblance to its original form.
4. In a mini kadai, heat some oil and add the tadka ingredients and let them splutter. I normally just bung the lot in it and hope for the best. But Indira actually suggested that one drops them in the fat in the order of dried red chilli pieces, chana dal, then urad dal, followed by curry leaves and as a grand finale, the jeera and mustard seeds. Makes sense, I suppose! In addition to her ingredients, I added a pinch of asafoetida.
5. Next step, add the tadka to the mashed gloop, mix well, adjust salt and serve hot with rice and vadaam.

I learnt from my mum that this is made in tambram households as well. She said in our house, green chillies are used instead of chilli powder and I diligently followed suit to excellent results.



Now for the mango flavoured rice she calls Mamadikaya Pulihara. (Jeez! At this rate, I might even pick up a few telugu words and impress the I-Ls!)

Gather around these:

1 cup Ponni raw rice
1 cup grated green mango
3-4 green chillies, deseeded and slit
¼ cup of cashews and peanuts combined (optional - gives a crunch)
1 tablespoon of chana dal
1 teaspoon of each - cumin and mustard seeds
Few curry leaves
2 small pieces of dried red chilli
a pinch of turmeric and of asafoetida
Salt to taste

Now,

Peel the skin and grate the raw mango.
Cook the rice to a udiri consistency, so that it doesn't get too sticky. General rule of thumb for mixed rice dishes is 1:2 cups water plus 1/2 cup kosuru (கொசுறு). Once the rice is cooked, spread it out on a clean thin cotton towel or a big plate so that it becomes a bit more loose and dry.
In a saute pan, heat oil and saute the ingredients one by one till they turn golden. This is to ensure they each get cooked properly. Lastly, mix them up, along with some turmeric and asafoetida.
Now, add the grated mango to the pan. Stir to mix with other toasted contents in the pan. Cook for a few minutes, making sure the pan doesn't get too hot or smokey and take off the heat.
Add the dry rice to the pan and mix all the ingredients well, checking the salt levels.
Serve hot.

Posted by DesiGirl 07:23 0 comments    

Labels: dishes, festival, mango, new year, recipe, telugu, ugadi

Karadaiyan Nombu
Saturday, 17 March 2007

March 14 2007, was kaaradaiyan nombu for the Nombu celebrating folks of Tamil Nadu. On this day, the women of the house fast till the appointed hour, when they pray to the Goddess Gowri for the good health and long life of their husbands and make yummy adais. After prayers, they tie a golden thread around their necks and sit down to break their fast by eating the salt and sweet adais, topped with a dollop of oothukuli butter. Hmmmm, heaven!

The young girls of the family also do this pooja - tho 'doing the pooja' is a loose term, considering all I did was wait till the whistle is blown and I can stuff my face with the adais. I love this festival as this is the one day when women get to eat before the men! Wahey! The next day at school, boys generally used to have a field day ragging us as us girls would be walking around with a yellow thread around our necks.

Every year on this day, the requisite 'athiri bacha', used to be told by various members of my family. This year, I cannot wait to tell it to my five year old!

Now for the adai recipes.

Salty adai


Things you need:
Rice flour - 2 cups
Water - 2 cups
Cooked black eyed beans - 3 tbsp
Dried red chillies - 2
Coconut, diced - 2 tbsp
Oil - 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Curry leaves - a handful, chopped
Asafoetida - a pinch
Salt - to taste

How to make them
Roast the rice flour in a kadai so it loses its raw smell but not so it turns colour. Transfer it onto a plate to cool. Now, heat some oil in the kadai, add some mustard seeds, asafoetida, dried red chillies and curry leaves and saute for a minute, till the seeds stop spluttering. Add the water to it next and let it come to a boil. Add coconut pieces, cooked black eyed beans, the roast rice flour and salt to taste and stir well so that lumps don't form.
The resultant dough must be of a dry consistency; the more paste-y they become, the more time it takes to cook. I prefer the taste of the adai when the dough is slightly dry.
Make balls out of it, flatten the balls and cook in an idli steamer for about 10 minutes.

Serve with a generous dollop of butter.

Sweet adai


Things you need:
Rice Flour - 2 cups
Jaggery (powdered) - 1.5 cups
Water - ¾ cup
Black eyed beans - 1/2 cup
Coconut (cut into small cubes) - 2 tbsp
Ghee - 2 tbsp
Elaichi - 2-3

What next?
Soak the beans for around 3 hours, pressure cook and set aside.
Take a kadai, boil water till it begins to bubble and add the jaggery. Boil the mixture till the raw smell of jaggery disappears. Take it off the flame, let it cool a bit, filter the mixture and transfer it back to the kadai.
Add the rice flour, beans and mix the ingredients well.
Seperately, heat ghee in a kadai and fry the coconut pieces well. Add to the mixture, along with some powdered elaichi and mix well.
Allow it to cool.
Once it is cool enough to touch, make balls of the mixture and flatten it to round shapes.
Steam them in an idli cooker for 7 - 10 minutes. Serve with a generous dollop of butter.

Posted by DesiGirl 16:14 3 comments    

Labels: adai, festival, karadaiyan, nombu, sweet, tamil