SriJayanthi Gulab Jamoons

I never could make gulab jamoons like this from even a ready mix. Mom gave me the following tips, am still not confident though :p

1. Use milk instead of water to mix with the dough
2. Be super careful with milk and dough proportions
3. Pour the sugar syrup when it's still a bit hot over the fried gulab jamoon balls

Gokulashtami Appam, Chithundai and Akkaravadisil

Appam for Krishna Jayanthi (recipe as before from the yum blog):


Chithundai and sweet butter (mom's recipe):


Ingredients: Jaggery (1 cup), coconut shreds (3/4 cup), ghee (1 tsp)

Melt jaggery, mix coconut over low heat with a teaspoon of ghee until it reaches a sticky consistency.

Akkaravadisal (mom's recipe):


Ingredients: Rice (1/2 cup), milk (2 glasses), jaggery (1 cup), raisins, cashew, ghee, cardamom powder as needed.

Cook rice in milk and smash to a paste. Melt jaggery, add rice paste to it. Season with raisins and cashew fried in ghee and add cardamom powder in the end.

Varalakshmi puja & Avani Avittam

Tried appam with my mom for the first time yesterday for Avani Avittam, not bad at all for a first attempt. Here is the recipe I followed. Thanks to the yum blog.

Badam milk

I couldn't find badam milk powder at our desi store and started googling for recipes to make badam milk at home. Came across this recipe and tried it out with pretty nice results. Only I soaked about a handful more almonds and didn't bother to remove the skin (Which means we have a lot more biting to do towards the end but am lazy that way :p)

Original dinner!

For once, both the sambhar-style-kootu and curry-style-stirfry I made are original recipes, straight from RS's kitchen!

For the sambhar-kootu:

Ingredients: a cup of broccoli florets, a cup of yellow moong dal, a cup of crushed tomatoes or tomato juice, 2 tspn sambhar powder, tadka ingredients (2 teaspoons ghee, pinch of hing (asafoetida), few curry leaves, mustard), salt.

This is a quick recipe, ideal for a weekday meal and worth trying especially if your husband, like mine won't eat broccoli unless it's invisible! Pressure cook the moong dal and broccoli in 2 cups of water. In a kadai, mix the moong dal with the tomatoes, sambhar powder, bring to a boil, add salt. In a small pan, add hing, curry leaves, splutter mustard seeds and add to sambhar. Done and no tell-tale signs of broccoli to deal with!

For the stirfry:

Ingredients: Left over veggies - 1/2 cup carrots (sliced), 1 bell pepper (chopped to cubes), 1/2 an onion (chopped to cubes), 1 ridge gourd, peeled and cut to cubes, few table spoons coconut shreds, 2 red chillies, 1 tspn coriander seeds, 1 tspn cumin seeds, hing, 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 tspn turmeric, 1/2 tspn red chili powder, salt.

There is no method to this madness :p I started by lightly roasting the red chilies, coriander seeds and cumin seeds, added onions, coconut shreds and toasted till light brown. I added the mixture to my mortar and pestle and crushed them as best as I could. Just thought it would be interesting to crush the onions too.



In a kadai, add 2 tablespoons of butter, pinch of hing, fry the veggies for 5-7 mins, add the crushed ingredients, turmeric and red chili powder and continue to fry on medium heat. Add a bit of water as needed to avoid browning the veggies, cook closed for about 5 mins stirring in between. Add salt. Simple and tasty side dish even if I do say so myself :p

roasted sweet potatoes

Sweet potato wedges roasted with a bunch of spices - yummmm!

We were even eating the little scraps left behind on the plate!

More kuzhambu

Bookmarking this link for future reference, made an amazing more kuzhambu following this recipe yesterday!

Sambhar

Followed recipe patiently from Padma's kitchen to make a pretty amazing Udipi Sambhar that k absolutely loved. Another successful day with the mortar and pestle! Yay!

Cauliflower kurma

Got this new mortar and pestle from ikea and really wanted to try it out today, so I made up this kurma recipe which k claims is the second best dish I make!

Ingredients:
1 tspn coriander seeds, 1 tspn fennel seeds, 2 cloves, 1 clove garlic, 2 green chillies, 1 tspn jeera ground together!
1 cauliflower chopped
1/2 onion chopped
1/4 cup grape tomatoes
1/4 cup grated carrot
few tbspns cream (if desired)
mustard seeds, oil for tadka
cilantro chopped

Really simple recipe. Splutter the muster seeds in hot oil, add the ground spices and fry for a minute or so. Fry the onion until translucent. Add the cauliflower, carrot and tomatoes, cook for five minutes. Add cream, cover and cook for 10 minutes on low-medium. Decorate with chopped cilantro.

Black-eyed peas curry

Yay! Managed to make my first tasty curry with black-eyed peas! I generally don't like the peas and beans variety (green beans and peas are ok :) but managed to follow instructions religiously from onehotstove this time and make a decent curry!

Javvarasi (Sabudhana) kichadi

Tried this recipe yesterday and it came out tasting great! I think I oversoaked the sabudhana a bit (more than a day) but didn't do too much damage!

Khadi!

The khadi recipe that works for me. Bookmarking it here for the future :)

Date (Kajur) chutney

Another chutney I learnt from k's mom:

Ingredients:
A box of dates, 2 teaspoons jaggery, a teaspoon black salt (adjust as needed), a teaspoon amchur (dry mango powder)

Recipe:
Boil the dates in water in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes (until they become soft enough to crush completely). Let cool and mash it in a food processor with enough water to give it a chutney consistency. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate.

Thiruvadirai Kali & Kootu

Thiruvadirai falls in the month of Marghazhi and is auspicious for Lord Shiva. Thiruvadirai kali and kootu (thaalagam) are traditional dishes prepared on this day. My mom's recipe below.

Ingredients:
Vegetables - potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, mochakottai, pumpkin, seppankizhangu, parangikkai (yellow squash)
Tamarind, red chilli powder, asafoetida powder, curry leaves.
To fry: Channa dal, coriander seeds, dried red chillies.

Add salt and turmeric and steam the vegetables in a pressure cooker. Fry the frying ingredients and powder. After spluttering the mustard seeds in oil, add a small quantity of tamarind water, red chilli powder to taste. Add the steamed vegetables to this and stir for sometime. Finally, add powder from previous step and asafoetida powder. Sprinkle curry leaves and mix.


Ingredients:
Broken raw rice, jaggery, ghee, elaichi powder

Heat the broken raw rice, add milk and water and cook the rice. Add jaggery (1.5 to 1 ratio with rice) to boiling water and stir until it melts and thickens. Remove rice from cooker and add it to the jaggery and stir. Add elaichi powder and ghee if needed. Serve with ghee.

Shrikand.

k's mom taught me this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup full fat yoghurt (I have also tried this dish with low fat yoghurt, that works too)
1/2 cup sugar
cardamom powder - 1 spoon
kesari (kumkuma poo), pista and almonds crushed

Recipe:

Add the yoghurt to a thin muslin cloth, tie a sturdy thread around it and hang it such that the water from the yoghurt can drip down into a vessel. I usually tie it on a knob from my kitchen shelf. This process takes about 1/2-1 hour.

Take the yummy fatty yoghurt on the top of the cloth, add sugar to it and mix it until it looks smooth and creamy (without lumps).

Add cardamom powder, mix well and top off with the other spices. Refrigerate before serving.

Vendakkai/Okra/Ladies-finger

Made from scratch, desi ishtyle!

Not so bitter anymore :)

Yet another tasty subji with karela (bitter-gourd) from Safron Trail. k took one whole serving - woohoo!

Groovy Gourd 'n Gravy!

Bookmarking the best recipe I have attempted successfully for dudhi (bottle-gourd) or podalangai (snake gourd)!

Nutrition and related information...

I recently started reading about nutrition and such and discovered quite a few shocking facts, some of which I summarized here.

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The information below is basically to help (or try to help) you decide if you really need to buy organic food:

1. Organic milk - a 1 gallon milk carton costs approximately double that of regular milk.

Is it worth the switch? Yes.

Why? You can look at the Horizon Organic website for starters...

Feel good factor - At least these cows get to see the light of the day and feed on grass as they are supposed to.

2. Organic vegetables - costs vary, organic peppers for example cost almost three times more than conventionally grown pepper.

Is it worth the switch? For some vegetables and most fruits, yes.

EWG has a list of vegetables/fruits that they have found to contain the highest pesticide content, the lower you go in the list, the safer it is to buy conventional vegetables/fruits.

3. If you are an ovo-vegetarian, what about organic eggs? Well, I don't really know the cost difference because I don't buy eggs.

Is it worth the switch? Absolutely, yes.

And this is why.

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And being a South-Indian, rice forms a major part of my diet, so recently convinced myself to switch to brown rice (so also for bread), I add turmeric and mix it with rice and water before cooking - the yellow color of the rice makes it look much more appetizing than the brown :)

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Some info about genetically modified food.

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Stainless-steel rocks! Think twice before you buy non-stick (Teflon) cookware and think even more before using it, if it has cracks etc.

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That's my nutrition update for today :)

Edited: Interestingly, Horizon organic itself seems to be in trouble for not maintaining standards. Time to search for another organic dairy provider, I guess...Organic Valley maybe?

Organized!

This is how organized I would like to be every weekend, but it happens only once in a while!