Bread Uppuma
Tuesday, 3 April 2007

Posted by DesiGirl 00:01 2 comments    

Labels: bread, breakfast, tiffin, upma, uppuma

Cauliflower Curry in Tomato Gravy
Sunday, 1 April 2007

This is a favourite of my family's - and mine. My friend Rashmi once made it many moons back and I loved it. And I hate cauliflower! This is the only way I can have that vegetable and I make it at least once a month. This was also the first dish I made at my in-laws place soon after I got married. S's nainamma loved it and had two helpings!



I am also submitting this for this month's Jihva for Tomatoes food event. I did not know there was a word called Jihva till I read about it in Indira's blog. I am really hoping that I could be a part of this month's Jihva and even possibly, 'host' one at a later date.

Enough waffle - now for the recipe:

Gather around these things:

Cauliflower - 1, cut into florets
Tomato - 1, canned or 500 gms, blanched and pureed
Onions - 1, sliced
Green chillies - 3-4, slitted
Green peas - a tablespoonful
Coriander - for garnishing
Oil - 5 tbsp
Cumin seeds, masala ingredients - as per your preference
ginger/garlic paste - 1 tsp
Turmeric - 1 tsp
Dhania powder - 1 tsp
Jeera powder - 1 tsp
Garam masala - 1 tsp
Salt - as per your taste

Firstly, we have to cook the cauliflower. For this, boil a saucepan full of water, add some salt to it and drop in the florets once the water starts bubbling. Let it cook so for about 3-4 mins. Drain the florets in a colander and pat dry so you take all the excess water off. This is important as otherwise, it will start spluttering once you move on to the next step.
Heat oil in a kadai. In small batches, shallow fry / saute the florets till they become lightly crisp. Drain on kitchen towels so it isn't too oily.
Once you are done cooking the cauliflower, reduce the oil so only 2 tbsp or so remains in the kadai. Add cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves and saute for a minute or so. Now, add the sliced onions and saute till the onions turn pink.
Next, add the ginger-garlic paste and saute for another minute.
Now you are ready to add the tomatoes. I generally prefer them in cans, chopped and swimming in their own juice, as that gives the curry a lovely colour. You can get fresh tomatoes, blanch and puree them as well. Add this to the kadai ingredients. Let it cook well till the fat seperates. Add a pinch of turmeric to the gravy.
Now add the cooked florets to the it along with some peas and let it all simmer for five - ten minutes. Add salt, dhaniya- jeera powder and garam masala and let it steep for a minute.
Take off the flame and garnish with chopped coriander.

Serve hot with chapati or pulao / fried rice.

Posted by DesiGirl 18:56 3 comments    

Labels: cauliflower, curry, gravy, jihva, sidedish, tomato

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

Akkara Adisal: The Ambrosia Of The Gods
Monday, 12 March 2007

Akkara Adisal is the quintessentially Iyengar dish that has an unsurpassable taste. Be it any festival or a birthday in the family, finishing a sumptuous meal with this for dessert will be the perfect high note. Add a pinch of pachai karpooram to it just before serving and you'd realise that this is the ambrosia of the gods.

Raw rice - 1 cup, washed
Jaggery - 2 cups
Water - 6 cups
Milk - 2 cups
Ghee - 4 tbsp
Cashew - 10, broken into pieces
Raisins - 10
Cardomon - 2-3 pods
*Pachai karpooram - a pinch

Take a cup of rice (I use ponni raw rice), wash it a couple of times and strain the water off it. Heat two tablespoons of ghee in a heavy-bottomed kadai and add the rice to the ghee. Saute it for a few minutes, making sure the rice doesn't burn.

Transfer the rice to a small vessel, add a cup of milk and pressure cook it. I usually wait for two whistles before I switch it off. Meanwhile, take two cups of jaggery, mix three cups of water to it and boil the mixture in the kadai.

After about 5 - 10 minutes, take the mixture off the flame, cool it off a little and strain it. This gets rid of the stones, pieces of sugarcane husk and other assorted impurities that find their way into jaggery. Once done, pour the mixture back in the kadai and boil again, till the mixture thickens a bit. Now add the cooked rice and let it all boil together till the rice gets cooked completely. Add three cups of well boiled milk (sunda kaachina milk) to the mixture and let it all simmer together for a few minutes.

Roast the broken cashew pieces and raisins in the ghee and add those to the payasam along with powdered cardomom and pachai karpooram.

Your akkara adisal is now ready.



Warning: addictive!

*Addition of this to the akkara adisal (or any other payasam) is optional. But this ingredient has a heavenly smell that always reminds me of my gran and her kitchen. Guaranteed to take your dessert up by a few notches and earn the label of 'heavenly'.

+Note: One can make it to be of a slightly thicker consistency - the result would be akin to chakkarai pongal then.

Posted by DesiGirl 11:35 2 comments    

Labels: akkara adisal, ambrosia, dessert, food, iyengar, kheer, payasam

Grub's up!
Saturday, 10 March 2007

The first time I entered the kitchen was when I was in VII standard (someone call Child Services!), when I used to cook the odd pot of rice when my mum was a bit late in coming home from work. This earned her the name of tyrant and child labourer. Though I made a fuss then, just to keep up appearances, I was slowly getting entranced by the world of cooking. My mum is a fab cook and the 'wah! wah!!'s she earned everytime we gave dinner parties made me want to learn to be an equally good, if not better cook. Thus, I started collecting recipes.

My maternal gran is the de-facto cook in her house and at 70, she still churns out amazing amount of grub for all and sundry. Come festival time and you can see her seated next to this huge kadai, making murukku, seedai and other assorted yummies. My mum being an Iyengar, I soon learnt to cook the iyengar cuisine well and that forms the basis of my cooking, to this day.

When I got married to a Telugu bloke, I decided to widen my repertoire by adding some Andhra recipes to it. Though these are a handful, I still make them now and again just to prove that I can make a mean baghara baingan. Nowadays though, I depend on great blogs like Mahanandi to show me the way.

When my palate widened to accommodate Italian, Mexican, Chinese and Mediterranean cuisines, I decided to learn to collect recipes from all over the world and cook them myself. Being a staunch vegetarian, I figured if I didn't want to ingest any stray animal product and still wanted my fix of fajitas and enchilada, I better learn to make them myself.

There are some fantastic food bloggers out there and I hope, with me foraying into this 'genre', I can now become a member of that sisterhood too! Feel free to contact me with your comments, suggestions and/or corrections.

Posted by DesiGirl 15:54 0 comments    

Labels: blog, chinese, cuisine, desi, food, indian, italian, mediterranean, mexican