Potatoes in Peanut & Onion gravy (Urulai Thiratal)

Let me start by saying this is was a runaway hit with my family. We are blog hopping for Avant Garde Cookies and I was delighted that my first hop in this category was to my blogger bestie, Priya Sreeram's  blog, Bon Appetite - First thing that struck me as i keep flipping web pages is - How did I miss this? My sweet friend is so -- because she is a dessert junkie! She has cakes, and brownies, and all kinds of delicious bakes and scattered in between are her savory/spicy dishes... I loved browsing and rereading some of her wonderfully written posts.

I had made a peanut and onion chutney not too long ago which was a super hit too and I thought, hmm, the potato monsters I have in my son, hubby and daughters would love this.  But for adding a few of my favorite tastes, I stayed pretty true to my soul sister's recipe and we enjoyed this to the last lick with chappatis- Thanks PS for enriching my repertoire with this fab dish. And to really confess, I am not big on potatoes at ll - clearly prefer sweet potatoes to the regular kinds and even I loved it

Off to the recipe now

Ingredients

• 8-10 medium sized red potatoes
• 1/2 can of diced tomatoes (or 1 big beef tomato)
• 1 huge red onion (or 2 medium sized ones)
• 1/2 cup of roasted peanuts (without husk)
• 4-5 of your spicy-est red chilies
• A pinch of turmeric
• A pinch of asafetida
• 2 tsp of olive or other oil
• Curry leaves, mustard seeds for tempering

Method

1. Boil Potatoes in pressure cooker or steamer
2. Peel, cube and keep.
3. In a kadai or deep pan,(nonstick to save on oil) add oil and heat
4. Throw in the asafetida, red chilies and sauté
5. Roughly chop the onions, and peanuts since they are to ground anyway
6. Let it tenderize
7. Add the tomatoes
8. Cook until the water is evaporated
9. Cool, grind and set aside

1. In the pan now add 1 tsp of oil and temper the mustards and the curry leaves. 
2. Add the cubed potatoes and some turmeric (optional)
3. Add some salt and cook for a few minutes until the potatoes absorb the salt - I also used 1tsp of rasam powder (you can use curry powder)  and cook for a minute longer
4. Now add the onion and peanut paste and let it simmer along with the potatoes

Transfer into a serving dish and go hung-ho at it with chapatis/naan/pooris or even rice

Enjoy this recipe until the next time I am coming back with some Jams and Tangerine Marmalade - so stay tuned!

Broccoli & Coconut Usili Curry

This is the simplest and tastiest and healthiest broccoli preparation if one is looking to Indianize this green and great veggie. It is light and delicious and can be paired with chappatis or rice or couscous or can even be had as is. Takes 10 minutes flat to make and is highly satisfying.

Ingredients

• 2 medium broccoli bunches
• 1/2 grated coconut
• 2red chilies
• 1/2 tsp urad dal
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp oil

Method

1. Grate the broccoli with the bigger scraping side
2. Steam broccoli until tender (not soggy) this keeps the lush green color intact
3. In a pan, heat oil, add urad and brown
4. Add chilies and broccoli and turn in the pan
5. Add the salt and the grated coconut and let all the flavors blend
6. Serve as desired

Steamed Couscous Sandwiches -AKA Idlis

Idlis are often referred to as steamed rice cakes - However these have assumed several variations over the  years and people (self-included) have tried my hand at making these staple south Indian delicacy with grains other than rice. Couscous is one of them.
Couscous has replaced many a rice meal in our home and I have blogged the recipe for couscous idlis before - see here - but the kids were wanting a pizza for lunch 2 sundays ago - I did not want to make or buy pizzas - FYI each slice of pizza store/restaurant bought averages 450 for minimum to a max of 750 and beyond even depending on what the toppings are. We have been on a caloric ride all summer and the start of school signifies the change of diet as well - back to healthy, yummy, low calorie meals. This was a really yummy sandwich idli - I added the toppings of a veggie pizza - onions, tomatoes, bell peppers & green chili all sauteed into a dry curry.
For this version, I dispensed with all the thadka and made it simply with 2 cups of couscous and 2.5 cups of butternilk (actually 1 cup of yogurt and 1.5 cups of buttermilk) These babies can soak up as much buttermilk as you want to put in them - so all you need to is make the batter and cook asap.

Here are some pictures: Enjoy these idlis, for lunch, brunch, tiffin, breakfast or dinner.

these are beautiful dippy plates that we use to steam the Idlis

These babies can also be served with a freshly ground Coconut chutney, another staple side from South India - recipe to follow soon
Here is a sneak peak at it :)

Cucumber Rasam

Cucumber Rasam

A long unprecedented hiatus from my blog – My mind has been overused by too many other things happening in my –as in – my children’s lives, I have not had a moment to stay focused enough to let any creative juices flow, a writer’s block so to speak. But I did have a fabulous vacation with my family when we got to relax without having to plan the next meal, the next drop off or pick up, pick up groceries and the other million things we normally have to do in our busy “American” mommy lives! But the next ailment is my extreme allergies to pollen in the springtime that shuts me down completely, especially since I have to be on many medications to keep myself afloat!  Thanks to all those who sympathized with me on FB when I posted those God Awful pictures of myself with my blood-shot eyes and Rudolph like nose! 

I have SO many recipes in my drafts it’s not funny and like any scaredy cat, I was afraid to even look to see what to blog, because the task seemed too daunting. But here I am with a couple of recipes I’d like to share _ The rainbow cake which I will get to second; the first is my Cucumber Rasam.

This was a lazy person’s idea to finish the cucumbers we’d bought earlier last week – Raita would mean some exotic or some other main dish – with my nose dripping and eyes watering, standing in front of the stove is the last of my desires, trust me.

I washed peeled, cut and ground the cucumbers with a cup of water

I added 2 tbsp of lemon juice (from a bottle) and some salt

So far, so good!

Then I took a 1-1/2 tsp of rasam powder, added half a cup of water and let it boil for a good long time so there would be no rawness to it

I added this to the cucumber juice and stir it in

As is the way, I tempered with some sesame oil/butter some cumin seeds, mustard seeds and curry leaves.

I also garnished with some cilantro.

It tasted AWESOME

NOTES:

Never heat up the cucumber juice

If serving with rice, ensure the rice is piping hot to compensate for the lukewarm rasam

Refrigerate if you want to have it as a soup -which I did

Hope you will try to make this rasam and enjoy it as much as we did. I will be back by the end of the week with the cake – Promise J

An appeal to all my blogger friends - I would like to hopefully restart commenting on all your recipes - but please help by getting rid of word processing that blogger has made even more difficult now - It takes time and acts as a disincentive - You can always control the contents by saving the comment to publish after you have seen them - thanks y'all and love ya!

Paruppurundai Vetha Kozhambu - Lentil Dumplings in spicy gravy

Ok ... So this is  very traditional, very South Indian dish, that I would compare to the North Indian Kofta perhaps -  I have found that koftas can be made in a variety of different ways, whereas, as the name suggests the balls or dumplings in the southern counterpart is made up of lentils - I guess we can change up the lentils we use or change the name of the dish :) There are various gravies one can use for this recipe, I decided to go with another traditional one Vetha Kozhambu. Please note in the vetha Kozhambu recipe, normally tamarind paste is used in place of kokum and this is how I made the preparation below - all else remains the same in the recipe.

Here are the ingredients for the dumplings
1 cup toor dal/ thoram paruppu
3-5 ref chillies
1tbsp moong dal
1/4 tsp asafetida
1/2 cup grated coconuts
1 stem of curry leaves
1tbsp of sesame oil + 2 tsp
1/3 cup water +

Method
Heat the oil in a pan and add all the ingredients and roast until the lentils and coconut are golden brown. Cool it down and dry grind into a coarse powder.
Then in a pan, add the 2 tsp of oil and splutter some mustard seeds. Add the powder and turn once. Now add 1/3 cup of water and mix ingredients well until it gets to a dumpling-able stage - Be cautious in adding more water - if you need to.

Once this is somewhat cool, make balls out of them and keep. Get your steamer out, spray them with non-stick oil.
Arrange the balls spaced apart and steam for 15 minutes.
In the meantime, make your vetha kozhambu -
Once the balls are cooked, allow them to cool while you are still boiling the kozhambu.  Once fully cooked, transfer the kozhambu into the serving dish -
Gently add the dumplings into the gravy when it is still hot.
Allow it to soak in nicely before serving

NOTE: If the gravy cools down - no sweat - make sure the rice you serve it with is piping hot :)
Or the chappatis!

Enjoy this healthy and utterly delicious dish to your heart's content!

Lacha Parathas or South Indian Parottas

So… in my last recipe of kuruma, I mentioned parottas (parathas) that I had at Kanchi hotel, some of the best I recall. My hugely popular blogging buddy Jay of Tasty Appetite had blogged these incredible looking parottas (south Indian style) and I was craving them the moment I saw them. Kuruma leftovers today – the kids have the day off from school, which is good, because we have all been down with some viral infection with stomachs hurting, throats that were sore, headaches and general fatigue – as I was saying leftover kuruma warranted some nice parottas and that’s what I made – it turned out well even if I did not use as much oil as the recipe suggested, but otherwise I stuck to Jay’s recipe fully.

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

3tbsp oil

1sp of sugar

1 pinch of salt

1pinch of baking soda

1cup of warm water and some as “kneaded” ;)

Preparation

Add all the ingredients in a mixer and let it mix in a gentle pace at first and when all the dough has come together increase the mixer speed to medium and let it knead for about 5- 10 minutes, stopping every now and then for a spoon of water here and there if you need to bind all the flour.  At about 8 minutes, I took the speed to max and had the ball of dough going nuts :)

Remove from mixer, make a tight ball, put in a vessel and keep closed for about 30 minutes to an hour

When time is up, put back in the mixer and knead for another 3 minutes. Remove and make lemon-sized balls – I got about 11 of those evenly distributed.

Now take a plate and add 1 -2 tsp of oil and roll these balls in the oil and set aside

Once they are all greased roll them the size of a chappati, peel off the surface and make folds with them much like a sari as Jay suggests. Once pleated, hold the ends to stretch them out to the max, because they have a tendency to shrink back. Keeping the length, place one end at the center and roll the dough around to make a pinwheel.  Once they are all done we start to roll them out again.

Here is a trick

To keep the circles and layers intact, oil the bottoms of the pinwheels to give it some elasticity as you roll while dusting the top with dry flour to allow you to keep the stretch going. Again, once they are the size of a chappati, put them on a pan/tawa, basting them with a lightest brush of oil. Let both sides brown before you remove from the pan and place them in your serving platter.

Serve with spicy kuruma or side dish of your choice – Thanks Jay!

This is off to Sweet Karam Kapi's Flavors of Tamilnadu Event

Paneer-yarams with Creamy Fennel dip

Just when I thought I'd exhausted all my ideas for leftover idli atta, of course, kuzhi paniyarams struck me. When I posted on Facebook for ideas with Fennel greens, I had a wonderful list of things I could do with it from a bunch of friends, each one of them gems which i plan to make-
But the easy and delicious one which was immediately executable was Priya's suggestion of a dip - Then I decided I would also chop the greens and the bulb and use for the kuzhi paniyarams - had a block of paneer sitting around and decided to grate that into the kuzhi paniyarams making for delicious paneeryarams :)) Nothing like a little twist to tradition, what say?

I used
1/2 a bulb of fennel,
2 stalks of fennel greens,
1/4 red onion, 1 green chili,
1/2 tsp of turmeric
3/4 cup of grated paneer,
1/4 cup of grated cheddar.
I lightly sauteed the fennel, greens, onions. turmeric and chili in 1 tsp of olive oil.

Batch 1

First batch I made, I tried to do a sandwich with the cheeses. It tasted great but made for messy pouring - so I simply incorporated the paneer & cheddar into the batter and poured the second batch like that - result = awesomeness!

Batch 2

Fennel Dip
3 short stems of fennel greens chopped fine
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1tbsp low fat yogurt
1tsp of Tzatziki herb mix
1tsp salad spice mix (this is like paprika)
mix in and serve with hot Paneeryarams.

Showcasing dip and my peeling nail polish :)

Idli Manchurian

This part 2 of the leftover idli saga :) So those of you who read my post on Idli Bajjis, I saved some of those Idli Bajjis and made an Indian- Chinese dish out of it - Please do try - I assure you that you will LOVE it.

I added 1 tbsp each of  Spricy Szechwan stir-fry sauce and Asian hot sauce;
2tbsp each of garlic chives and spring onions
3 spicy red chilies
1 tsp of sesame oil

Prepare
Saute the above ingredients (except the sauces) in hot oil and add the idli bajjis and stir.
Add the sauces last and mix it in well -
Hear the sizzle of the sauces evaporating  - its time to switch off the stove. Serve piping hot :)

There you have it - the new and exotic avatars of a rather seeda sada and chammathu idlis :)

Idli Bajjis A.K.A Seetha aur Geetha Idlis :)

Car update - Dealing with the insurance was LOT less scary than I anticipated. But sometimes expecting the worst could actually be beneficial (this comes from the most optimistic person I know - me :) because when then anything lesser seems to be a huge relief - Saw my sweet van being towed away an hour ago and then started to of lunch - there were my idlis from yesterday and I was feeling bad as in I wanted to be bad, as in taking a perfectly healthy thing and turning into something wicked-good?  so I cut the idlis up into cubes and mixed up a handful of besan/ chickpea flour (kadalamavu) threw in some sambar powder, added water and made the batter  (I want to say 2 tsp), fired up the oil and before I knew it was on my way to eating one of THE most delicious dishes  - Idli bajjis :) I KID YOU NOT!
A simple twist to make a delicious Geetha evil-twin of the healthy idlis :) Seetha Bangayi Geetha- (For those who not have watched Seetha aur Geetha, Seetha is an utterly boring twin sister of the rather spunky Geetha in a Hinid movie from the 70s, which got remade in Tamil as Vani-Rani with Vanishree in the lead) The western connotation would be Dr. Jekyl & Mr Hyde :)

I have not fried anything in my home for over a month now so I quell the guilt - besides when I was out this morning after the insurance was dealt with, met up with my sweet prego friend and enjoyed a wonderful session of girl-chat.
Here is a 4 step pictorial of the process :) Please do try it and let me know how you liked it!

Not wanting to stop at the evil twin, I created another avatar with them which I will blog about next - You can hold your breath - I am not planning to take long to post this next one lol!

Red Rice & Quinoa Ah-pums & Idlis

Attended a wonderful Remembrance day for 9/11 where my daughter sang as part of a choir - a wonderful show of patriotism and unity was presented and what's more parking was free :)

Of Up-pums and Ah-pums

After the first one, my daughter declares, “Ma, ah-pums are dosais with an idli in the middle J” I would not have put it that bluntly, but this is true – those who have the ah-pum pans will know that this is indeed true – I have made this for 2 reasons – one because I am hosting the Cooking for seeds and was experimenting with Quinoa and second, this was my humble tribute to Onam (: - I make the distinction by spelling it thus so that we do not confuse it with up-pums, the sweet delicacy that is also popular in the south. – I have made those as well and have yet to blog them :(

But I am putting few pictures of the up-pums as well

Here is my recipe

Ingredients

2 cups of Red Rice flour

½ Cup of Quinoa flakes

½ cup of Urad Dal

Preparation

Soak and grind urad dal

Soak the red rice powder in water

Mix both add salt and let it ferment

The beauty about this is you could make your ah-pums as soon as you grind the urad and mix the batters

However, an overnight ferment also yields the softest idlis

Before you are ready to make the crepes or dosais, add the half-cup of Quinoa and mix it in well.

The Up-pum – These I made another day with left over Idlima –or batter of regular idlis – I just added jiggery and cardamom powder to the old idli batter and made them in my awesome up-pum pan

Hope you enjoy the pictures :D

Linking this to the event I am guest hosting - cooking with seeds - Quinoa
Also linking this to Magpie Recipes' Kerala Kitchen

Pesarattu Dosais/ Green Grams crepes

This week in Blog Hop Wednesday, I was teamed up with Vidya of Curry Leaves. What struck me the most about Vidya’s blog is the fantastic photography of her food -  While I enjoyed browsing her healthy and vegetarian foods, I was almost instantly drawn towards this dosai because I have made them in the past and it has not gone over well with my son – You know how the one person who does NOT like something sometimes determines what is made in the house and what’s not? Well it has always been the case in my home until recently when I decided not to pander to the taste of the one person who does not like it but the taste of the 4 other who do J

Tough luck Sonny!  - but his tastes have been changing (for the better) because he now loves upma which he used to love for the first 5 yrs of his life then started detesting – I am happy to say we are the love upma stage again- yay – And I am hoping that he will love this dosai he once denounced.

I used a few additional ingredients that I thought would make this even more delicious like coconut

Ingredients

Whole and halves green gram (green mung) 2 cups

Green and red chilies per taste

1 inch thick piece of ginger

Curry leaves

¼ cup of coconut

Preparation

Soak over night and grind

Saute batter with mustard seeds & asafetida, using 1 tsp of sesame oil

In a nonstick pan spread thin 1 ladle of batter

Roast on the one side and flip over after a minute or two remove from flame and serve with chutney of your choice

We had it with coconut Chutney

Recipe below

Ingredients

1 cup of grated coconut

3-4 green chilies

¼ inch piece of ginger

½ cup of roasted grams

Preparation

Grind all the above ingredients

Salt

Sauté with mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves and  a pinch asafetida in 1 tsp of ghee

Yen-jai

Blog Hop Wednesday is a brain child of Radhika of Tickling Palates 
Sending this to Shilpa's Life is Green Event