Krishna Jayanthi 2009 -- Semiya payasam

Ingredients: Semiya:Milk:Sugar 1:3:1 ratio
Elaichi powder 2 teaspoons, broken cashews and raisins - a handful
Ghee 2 tablespoons

Heat ghee in a kadai and add the cashews to it, wait until they turn golden, add raisins and remove when they soak up the ghee. Keep aside. Add semiya and roast until golden brown. Set aside. Add 2 cups and let it boil, add semiya and stir. Reduce flame to medium-low and make sure semiya doesn't stick to bottom of kadai. Once semiya is almost soft, add sugar and mix well. The whole process should take about 25-30 minutes. Add elaichi powder and mix. Garnish with cashews and raisins. Add Allow to cool. If semiya payasam becomes too thick, add milk as desired and mix.

Maanga pachadi

Mom's recipe that I tried for Tamil New Year's Day this year and it came out pretty tasty!

2 raw mangoes - cut into rectangular slivers, 1/3rd (of mango) the quantity of vellam (jaggery), curry leaves, 3 green chillies chopped, mustard seeds, grated ginger, gingelly oil, salt.

Add water to just cover the mango slivers and pressure cook for 5 whistles. In a pan add the cooked mango and water, melt the jaggery in it and keep stirring on high-heat for 5-10 minutes until the mixture thickens to a suitable consistency.

In a separate smaller pan,splutter mustard seeds in a few teaspoons of gingelly oil, add it to the mango-jaggery mix, add curry leaves, grated ginger and salt on top.



Some interesting tit-bits I picked up about manga-pachadi -- it's usually made on Tamil New Year's Day and it is supposed to have 5 tastes in it - sweet, pulipu (tangy), karam(spicy), kasapu(bitter -- from neem, in my case from karuvepila) and ginger taste (what is it called? Or perhaps from the salt) so your entire year is filled with these flavors. Cool stuff.

Karadayan Nombu Rava Kesari.

Another quick recipe that I got from here. I had this tin of organic sweetened condensed milk that I wanted to use up before I drank it all on my own and hence this sweet :)

I should have done a better job ketting the kesari mixed in and then it would have turned a delightful yellow like in the original recipe. Anyhow, k liked it :-)

Quick-fix quinoa and veggies - postpartum meal!

Thanks to a~, I ventured into the realm of the unknown -- quinoa (pronounced keen-wah)!
It is one of the current super foods, I say current because you know how it is with super foods -- broccoli today, gone tomorrow!

This post is all about super quick means because when you are a new mom and are juggling things until help arrives, every second is precious!

Anyway, the procedure to cook quinoa is super simple (thanks again to a~):

Measure one cup quinoa and one cup water (a bit more if you like), pressure cook for 3 whistles. Chop an onion, two green chillies, grate an inch-sized ginger. In a tablespoon of oil, splutter mustard seeds, fry onions, then add ginger and finally add the quinoa and toss a few times and you are done! Garnish with lemon.

The next item on the menu today is the quickest way to cook vegetables when your baby naps :p
The vegetable can be potatoes, brinjal, zucchini, squash and onion, etc. The method is always the same. Chop the vegetable into any sized pieces (Yup, you read that right), coat an oven-safe container with olive oil, add vegetables, sprinkle a generous amount of black pepper, Italian seasoning, add salt in the end and drizzle some more ahem...EVOO :) Don't ask me why I picked Italian seasoning and not say oregano/rosemary in particular. There was this huge bottle of Italian seasoning staring me in the face and so off it went into the dish! Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 30 mins, mix once and bake for 10 more minutes. That's all. Baby's up, time to play!

Oh! And here is a neat picture of the poha that k always makes (used to make...although I think a~ made this one). He is all into proper presentation as you can tell :)

Kuruma

Ingredients:
2 potatoes, 2 carrots, 1 beetroot, 1 noolkol, green peas (1 cup), khus khus (poppy seeds 2 teaspoons), 1 onion, 2 tomatoes, 4 green chillies, garlic, turmeric powder, garam masala powder, cilantro leaves (1 cup), salt.

Recipe:
Soak khus khus in a little water for 30 minutes. Prepare vegetables (peel and cut to 1/2 finger size pieces), pressure cook the vegetables (1 whistle). Beat onion, tomatoes, soaked khus khus, cilantro and green chilies in a mixie until fine. Splutter muster seeds in oil, add garlic pieces and vegetables, finally add the paste to this mixture, garam masala and salt. Stir until raw smell is gone.

Kozhakattai

Vinayaka Chaturthi kozhakattai - followed recipe from here :)

Now you know what to do with the leftover rice flour dough!

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.