Jaadhikai kulambu

So remember my earlier post on the Koutralam visit ? We came back came all worn out after some 10 hrs of train travel. To be honest the travel and the tiredness did very little to the dullness but the feel of getting away from mother nature’s lap and coming back to a all noisy, scorching hot, dusty etc city that made us feel down. But thats life Sight !

Amma and her kitchen has medicines and treats to every single time we feel down. This time she made a kulambu to drive away the body pain and tiredness and bring me back to form as my vacation is going to end and I have to be back to work! A wonder woman she is, she used unusual herbs to make this kulambu atleast as far as I know. She used Jaadhikaai (jaiphal) and Kandanthippili (Indian pepper/Long pepper or Jaborandi pepper) to make this kuzhambu.

It turned to be exotic and after a quick nap in the morning we were all back to form in the evening. Try this when you have cold or body pain. Such a treaty dish but a medicine too

The pic of Kandanthippili and Jaadhikai

Ingredients:

To be dry roasted and ground to a paste with very little water :

Jaadhikai (of the size shown in pic or 1 inch wide) – 1/4 of it

Kandanthippili (broken into 1 inch pieces) – 2 sticks

Black pepper – 1/2 tea spoon

Jeera – 1 tea spoon

Corainder seeds – 1 tea spoon

Chana dal – 1 tea spoon

Other ingredients:

Tamarind – 1 small lime sized ball

Water – 3 Cups

Salt – as per taste

Gingelly oil – 3 T spoon

Small shallots (peeled and sliced in to two) – 15

Vadagam – 1 T spoon

(or) mustard seeds seeds – 1/4 tea spoon

How to make it ?

In a vessel take 3 cups of water and soak the tamarind for 10 mins. Squeeze it well and extract the pulp. Filter it in a colander and reserve it.

In a thick bottomed vessel dry roast all the ingredients specified list until you get a nice aroma. Let it cool and grind it to a fine paste with 1 or 2 tea spoons.

In the same skillet heat the gingelly oil and once hot add the mustard seeds or vadagam. When the seeds splutter or vadagam gives out a nice aroma add the sliced shallots. Saute till the onions turn pinkish. Add the tamarind extract and mix well. Let it come to boil and let it boil for 5 mins. Now add the paste and mix well. The entire mass will become like a thick paste. Mix well and add salt. Keep stirring (Kai vidamal kilaranum) until the oil separates. I think this will keep well in fridge but we licked the bowl clean the same day.

Serve with piping hot rice to drive away the evils in you

In the lap of Mother nature

Last week I was blessed with a week long vacation by my boss and out we flew to Koutralam. Koutralam is a famous place for water falls which originates from hill ranges that were rich in medicinal herbs. Bathing and drinking this water if very good for health but we all wanted to place to escape from Chennai’s scorching heat.

The wonderful season for this place is between June to early September when the monsoon just starts. Th falls will become wild or lean in other parts of the year. This year the season started almost by end of June but we are lucky to visit the place when there were not much crowd. Yeah, you won’t believe that people around that part of Koutralam religiously visit this place and in peak times you need to stand in long queues to lend your head to the roaring falls for few minutes. When we visited there is less water but we bathed peacefully for hours together.

This season created a weather where there are very small droplet like showers the whole day. You will never get wet but every minute enjoy the chill droplets on you. The entire place and surrounding village enjoys this kind of climate during this season.

And to relish our taste buds mother nature showers with season’s best fruits Sendhatti Palaapazham ( A red tinted jackfruit with no threads inside but just the seed spurted with the juice when split into for eating. Pure indulgence ), Rambuttan, Mangoes, plums, jumbu fruit, Mangusthan etc were to delight to munch upon with wet dresses and growling stomachs soon after an hours bathing and again getting charged for the next dip.

Fruits in the near by shop

Another view showing pears and plums

Nungu artistically shelled out of the panangai and stacked in a Palm leaf…

Papanasam dam

Papanasam falls

another view…

We also visited Manimutharu dam and falls but the camera charge went down and hence could not take pics.

I literally lived on these fruits and ate very little cooked food as the bath in the falls and its serenity should not be spoiled (somehow I ot this feelin) ! And I never wanted to come back! The shots might look very dark but the cloudy weather just allowed me those kind of clicks

Indian Cooking Challenge – Rava Ladoo

I am late by a day. This was one of my dream events and I am so happy that Srivalli took this up! The first item scheduled was a relatively simpler dish the humble Rava Ladoo. Read more here about the events and participants.

After a short weeklong vacation (visited Koutralam and near by places. Will update in another post sooner) I missed Srivalli’s mails and hurriedly made the ladoos yesterday and managed to post it today. I took up the ground rava method as at home kids like soft and smooth ladoos. Her recipe is perfect and all the ladoos disappeared within an hour. Thats the proof indeed
Here is the recipe I followed:
Rava – 1 cup

Sugar -1 cup

Ghee – 4 tspn

Milk – 2 tblspn

Powdered cardamom – a big pinch

Cashew nuts and raisins – few

Grated coconut – 2 tblspn

Take a kadai. Heat 2 tspn of ghee. Roast cashews and raisins. Remove and add the grated coconut. Roast till it is light brown. Remove the coconut and add the remaining ghee. Roast rava till you can smell the aroma of roasted rava. Switch off the flame. Let it cool and grind it to a fine powder. To the kadai, add sugar, powdered cardamom, roasted cashews,raisins and coconut. mix everything well. Slowly add warm milk to the mixture. Mix and switch on the flame and cook for two minutes. Remove from fire and stir for two minutes and transfer to a bowl. While warm make small balls and keep for 10 minutes for it to set well. If needed, you can sprinkle some milk for binding, while making the ladoos.

This made up a great treat for myself as a belated 2nd B’day for Amma’s Special! Thanks Valli. These ladoos made the celebration even more special.

CLICK – June Stacks

This month CLICK is really challenging as I was clicking different stacks throughout this month yet not satisfied. I first tried a stack of beetle leaves. No…then tried to make a coffee jello stack…Nah…then tried stacking up half a dozen of icecream cups…hmmm….no.

Finally settled down with this colorful honey-mango-cream frozen delight. It was a unique combo (atleast for my knowledge ) and when refrigerated the honey for the bottom layer turned to a jelly with a wonderful golden color. And I pureed some sweet mangoes and layered on the honey. Topped with fresh cream I totally loved this stack. Can’t wait to taste this soon after my clicks. I mixed them all with a spoon and each spoonful was a heavn on earth kind in this scroching heat of Chennai.

Thanks to Jai and Bee for hosting this wonderful event!

Thamarai poo vidhai masala – Makhana masala

Last week during the monthly grocery purchase Amma and myself visited a near by department store. As the usual place we go found to be maintained with less cleanliness we thought we could find an alternative. After all the purchase I found a packet of white ball like stuff and when I asked the store staff she said is the pack of lotus seeds. She randomly said that we can use it in a gravy I did not have any clue then but took it home.

After much search in the Internet I could find a gravy or a kheer with those seeds. I manipulated and adapted Valli’s the famous Paneer butter masala and settled down with a spicier version as these seeds looked very bland.

All the gravy recipes I referred to asked for deep frying the seeds in ghee but I did a shallow fry. Even after several minutes I did not find them crisp. And I could not crush it well as the original recipes called for. But added to the gravy as it is.

It tasted yummy and the seeds were chewy after soaking in the gravy. Overall I liked it very much and to my surprise Amma made a soup out of it with carrots added and they said it was a hit among the kids. Will share the recipe once we make it tomorrow (I am yet to see or taste it as its all over by the time I reached home).

And here is the recipe for the Lotus seeds gravy. Its called Makhana in hindi and I am waiting to make the kheer sometime this week!

Lotus seeds gravy

Ingredients:

To be ground to a paste :
(1) 1 big onion + 2 pods of garlic + 1 inch of ginger
(2) 3 tomatoes

Other ingredients:
Onion chopped finely – 1
Sprig of curry leaves
Salt to taste
Chilly powder – 1 tea spoon
Coriander powder – 1 T
Garam masala powder – 1/2 tea spoon (I used 1 T of Eastern masala Pav Baji masala)
Coriander leaves chopped – 1 T
Butter melted – 2 T
Lotus seeds – 20
Ghee – 2 T

How to make it ?

In a small skillet heat the ghee and shallow fry the lotus seeds until crispy in low flame. This will take around 7-10 minutes. Add seeds in batches of 6-7 at a time. Take them out and place them in a paper towel. In the same vessel without removing the remaining ghee fry the chopped onions till they  turn golden and keep it aside. In a wide skillet heat the butter and add ground onion+ginger+garlic paste and saute till the onions are cooked well and the raw smell disappear. Add the chilly+coriander powders and salt and mix well. Now add the pureed tomatoes and cook till the oil separates. Now add the garam masala powder and mix well. Now add the fried onion and the fried lotus seeds and simmer for 5 more minutes.  Garnish with curry and coriander leaves.

Serve hot with crispy dosas or rotis. The lotus seeds turned chewy in the outer and crispy in the inner side which was a delight to bite in.

And these are the Lime meltaways I made for last month’s CLICK.

How to cook snakeguard (pudalankai) ?

Snake guard or pudalankai is one of the most common summer vegetable widely cooked. It is usually cooked as a poriyal or a kootu with chana dal.
The outer skin has a thin white coat which should be removed before cooking. Siddha medicine says that pudalankai can create Vaatham. But it also recommends a purifying method to remove the dosha.

How to cook pudalankai ?

Scrape the outer skin very lightly so that the thin white skin is removed. Cut the long vegetable into 6-10 inch long pieces and wash them thoroughly. Now split each piece into two vertically and remove the white soft pith inside with a spoon.
Now chop the long vertical slice finely. Repeat till you are done with all pieces. Now for 4 cups of chopped pudalankai add 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric and mix well.

Keep this in a vessel slightly tilted. After 20-30 minutes you can see liquid collected in the vessel. Drain it thoroughly and now the pudalankai is ready for cooking. You can make a stir fry or steam cook and make a kootu too.
Will update this post with pictured step by step soon.

CLICK Cookies

I made some 2-3 varieties of cookies. I tried lemon meltaways, macaroons and some choc cookies. All were edible but not photogenic. I then came to an opinion about myself. Even though I dream to act like a pastry chef I am nowhere near and will take a long time to reach there.

So CLICK cookies can’t wait till that and hence decided to buy some good looking cookies and try out. I clicked the Lotte’s Chocopies. Even though they looked lovely I am talented enough to make them ugly in the photo After the first session when viewed the results in my computer I thought those clicks can be trashed right away.

Then I bought some Sunfeast Orange cream biscuits. I ried to include an orange in my shot but couldn’t buy one and its already 10 PM yesterday. Today and tomorrow I will be reaching home late from office and hence I need to wind up yesterday night. So I setup the props and finaly got a few clicks. After the makeover they all looked like Bollywood stars coming out of the green room and the below pic is my entry to CLICK – cookies May 09.

Here are the other trials I have done

Ah…I am done Thanks Jai and Bee for this wonderful monthly excercise!

Seeraalangari – a long forgotten delicacy

I have heard many times Amma talking about “Seeralangari” but never she had made it at home. I too was not fascinated by the name and just skipped the conversation many times. This morning she asked me if I would like to take a shot as she had made that dish.

I immediately set up a place (now everybody at home got used to it, even the kids) not much fancy but near the balcony and clicked a few shots. But I could not get to have a taste of it till lunch time. It tasted wonderful. Not very spicy and fancy its a simple protien rich delicacy which was made all these years in the northern part of Tamilnadu. I am not sure why it got its name but my Grandma seems to be an expert of making it. With no vegetables around this is an easy dish to go.

Ingredients:

Yellow moong dal – 150 gm

Onions chopped (divided) – 1/2 cup

Green chillies chopped – 2 T spoon

Ginger chopped – 1 tea spoon

Garlic – 6-8 pods chopped

Sprig of curry leaf

Peanut oil – 2 – 3 T

Mustard, Urad dal – each 1 teaspoon

asafoetida – 1 pinch

How to make it ?

Dry roast the dal for 5-7 mins in low flame until a nice aroma comes. Soak the dal for atleast 2 hours (preferaby overnight). In the mixie grind the soaked dal (after draining it) along with half of the onions, green chillies, ginger and curry leaf to a course paste with very little water. Add salt to this as per taste.

In an idli steamer spread this batter in an indli plate and steam cook for 15 minutes or till the batter is cooked well. Let it cool completely and crumble them so that there are pieces of 1/2 inch size (make it more chunkier).

In a thick bottomed vessel heat the oil and add the mustard seeds. When they start crackling add the asafoetida and urad dal and curry leaves. Add the garlic pods. Saute till the urad dal turns golden. Add the remaining onions, green chillies and ginger and saute till onions turn translucent. Now add the crumbled cooked moongal mix and saute till the mix turns slightly golden. Do the entire sauteing in low flame to get good crispiness. Serve with rice and a spicy kulambu.

Kool Kool Kulfi

Last week I had kesar kulfi when we went out for lunch with friends. The kulfi was very flaky, not that creamy but the kesar aroma was too strong. But it tasted ok. As Chennai is seeing “Agni Natchathiram” there is lotsa demand for icecreams at home. To manage my elder one who can live on icecreams for breakfast, lunch and dinner I very much wanted to make kulfi at home.

Immediately after getting back I searched for a kulfi recipe. Many demanded fresh cream in a large quantity which is difficult to get here. After reading few recipes I settled to try my own. Even the milk skin gives the wonderful taste to kulfis my elder one doesn’t like it. If something like that hinders in his tongue he would stop eating it immediately. So when grinding the soaked cashews and almonds I filtered the boiled milk and added the skin to the nuts and ground it to a creamy texture. This made a distinct effect in the kulfis. I was collecting the tiny clay pots in which these wonderful delicacy is served since past few months, I made good use of them now

And after spending little time to set up the tiny studio (in the total 20 mins I had to come out to attend my kids 4-5 times ) I managed a few shots which I really liked. And here’s my recipe! Shoo away the heat with these heavenly creamy pots!

Cashew Almond Kulfi

Ingredients:
Full cream milk – 1 Ltr
Sugar – 4 T spoon
Cardamom (seeds only) – 4 pods
Saffron – a pinch
Cashew – 1 handful
Almonds – 5-6
Pistachio slivers – 2 T spoon

How to make it ?
Boil the milk in low flame till it reduces to 1/3 rd of its original quantity. It takes almost 20-30 minutes. Stir in between to make sure its not scorching in the bottom. Use a thick bottomed vessel. In the mean time soak the cashews and almonds in a cup of hot water. By the time the milk is ready the nuts would have soaked to soft. Let the milk come to lukewarm temperature and filter it using a cheese cloth / tea filter. Grind the soaked nuts along with the milk skin and grind to a smooth creamy mass. If needed add a spoon or two of the boiled milk while grinding. Take the milk back to the stove on a medium flame and heat for 1 minute. Add the cardamom seeds, nut paste and sugar and mix well with a long spoon till the milk becomes thick and creamy. Keep stirring for another minute or two and then add the pistachio slivers and mix well. Let it come to room temperature and fill this in small clay pots for a traditional touch or fill them in kulfi molds. You can in turn use the ordinary cups too. Freeze them overnight. Enjoy kulfi to your heart’s content. The above measurements made 8 such pots as shown in the picture.

Poornam kozhukattai

Kozhukattai sounds to be odd at this time of the season but what can stop a sudden craving for the soft dumplings with sweet fillings ? Last Sunday evening called for a craving for these little sweet pillows when I discovered the kozhukatai mold I bought long back during a cleaning process.

Myself and amma immediately jumped into action. Amma made the poornam and I made the dough. All the moldings done by me in lightning speed (the craving drove me ) and within an our we had steaming hot poornam kozhukattai ready to savor. Now you know from where I got the gene of a foodie yes its from my dearest Amma.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

Rice flour – 1 cup

Water – 1/2 cup

salt – a pinch
For the filling:

Chana dal / Kadalai paruppu – 1/2 cup

Jaggery grated – 1/4 cup

Cardamom – 1 crushed with the skin

Salt – a pinch

How to make it?

The poornam should be made first. Cook the chana dal with water till it falls apart in a vessel with adequate water and a pinch of salt. Drain and cool. Add the grated jaggery, cardamom and mash it with a wooden spoon. Don’t mash it thoroughly but some of the dal should remain whole.

In a thick bottomed vessel boil 1/2 cup of water. When it comes to a rolling boil add the salt and dump the flour all at once. Using a wooden spoon mix it keeping thoroughly until you get a solid mass. Mix on the stove top for a minute and then take the vessel off the stove. Let it cool until it is luke warm.

Take a small lime sized ball of the dough. Oil your palms and press the dough softly to make a disc in your palm. Place half a spoon full of the filling and carefully close the disc to make a ball. Let the filling not seep out. Instead you can make use of ready made molds sold in shops (the one below is made usin the coconut shaped mold). Steam them for 10 minutes. Enjoy when they were still warm.

And do you want to have a look at my failed almond macaroons ? Here it is.

They ended up looking like tuiles and my elder one commented “Enna Amma un macaroon dosai maadhiri iruku?” (Mom u’re macaroons are looking like dosas?). But these kind of comments are not going to stop me from further trials. And did I say that all of them I made disappeared in a day? Thanks to Helen for all her guidance. Will soon try again.