Vella Dosai

Tags

ghee, jaggery, pancake, rice flour, wheat flour

Ingredients
Wheat flour
Rice flour
Jaggery
Cardamom powder
Water
Ghee

Get Cooking!
1. Crush the jaggery . Pour some boiling water to dissolve the jaggery completely. Filter and keep the jaggery water aside.
2. Take a mixture of wheat flour & rice flour (approximately in the ratio 4:1).
3. Mix the flour with the jaggery water taking care not to form lumps. The resulting batter must be a little more watery than dosa batter but not too watery
4. Add in the cardamom powder & mix well.
5. Heat the griddle. Pour a ladleful of the batter onto it like you would do when making a pancake. Do not spread the batter like you would for a normal dosa.
6. Cook till it is golden brown flipping it on both sides (like you would for a pancake), adding ghee if required.

Tips
You may add some grated coconut to the batter. If you find it difficult to take the dosa off the griddle, mix in a little more rice flour. I have added even soybean flour to the batter a few times, just find that it makes the dosa a wee bit bitter ( health vs taste? ) The amount of jaggery you use is again based on taste, sweeter you want the dosa, the more you add.

Oats- Rava tabilabilla

Tags

dal, lentils, oats, rava, semolina, starter

Variation to the tabilabilla.

Ingredients

Rava ½ cup
Oats ½ cup
Tuvar dal 1 tbsp
Chenna dal 1 tbsp
Urad dal ½ tbsp
Jeera about 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Red chillies
Green chillies
Ginger
Mustard seeds
Asafoetida
Oil

Get Cooking!

1. Soak the tuvar dal, chenna dal and urad dal for a while. Grind to a coarse paste with the jeera and keep aside.
2. Dry roast the rava. Mix it in with the oats
3. Saute some mustard seeds, the chillies in some oil. Add the ginger.
4. Pour in 2 cups of water. Let it boil.
5. When it boils, add the dals paste while stirring. Add salt.
6. Then add the oats-rava slowly taking care that no lumps are formed.
7. Keep stirring, till the oats-rava is cooked.
8. Let this cool down a bit.
9. Make small patties with the oats-rava-dal mix that has been cooked.
10. Heat a tawa, place the tabalabilla on the tawa, cook them on both sides, pouring a little oil around them, flipping them now and then
12. Once both sides are golden brown, take them off the tawa. Repeat this with the rest of the mix.
11. Serve with chutney, sambhar.

Mysore Bonda

Tags

chenna, dal, oil, urad

Ingredients
Urad Dal ½ cup
Chenna Dal 1-2 tsp
Salt to taste
Green Chillies
Black pepper seeds
Coconut cut into thin small slices
Ginger
Curry leaves
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the two dals separately. Drain the excess water.
2. Grind the salt, green chillies, ginger, urad dal to a smooth batter using no water as much as possible. If need be, sprinkle water.
3. Mix in the curry leaves, soaked & drained chenna dal & the black pepper seeds.
4.Heat oil in a wok on medium heat.
5.Wet your palms, roll the batter into a ball (say the size of a small golf ball) and drop into the oil.
6. Flip the bondas so they are uniformly cooked. Take them out when they are golden brown.
7. Place on tissue to drain the excess oil.
8. Serve with ketchup , chutney and /or sambhar.

Tips
To get the right consistency of the batter, put a drop of it in a bowl containing water; if it floats, then it is the right consistency else it has to be ground a little more.

Cutlet

Tags

bread crumbs, carrots, cheese, cutlet, oats, onions, potato, rava, tomato, vegetables, wheat flour

Ingredients

Potatoes  boiled, peeled & mashed
Chick peas/Chenna   soaked,boiled, drained & mashed (or use the canned ones: drain, rinse & mash well)
Tomatoes  finely chopped
Beans finely chopped
Onions finely chopped
Peas
Carrots grated
Cahew nuts
Peanuts
Salt
Chilli powder
Garam masala /Chat masala
Cilanto chopped
Wheat flour
Oats flour (grind oats in a mixer)
Bread crumbs
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Nuke the onions, beans, tomatoes, peas in the microwave separately.
2. Mix in all the ingredients except oil & bread crumbs to make a thick mix. Add as little or no water as possible.
3. Make into patties.
4. Roll the patties to cover them completely with bread crumbs.
4. Shallow fry/ grill (some even deep fry) the patties.

Tips
I had no bread nor bread crumbs. So, I rolled the patties in dry roasted rava and used a kuzhipaniyaram kadai to get the cutlets done. They came out nice and crisp on the outside and soft in the inside You could add grated cheese to make the patty too. The ingredients one adds to make the patty is left to imagination and availability. Potatoes, chenna add bulk. The flours help bind everything. I remember having cutlets that had raisins in them too.

Thukda

Tags

maida, rava, sooji

Ingredients
Rava ½ cup
Salt to taste
Chilli powder ½ tsp
Asafoetida
Water
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Mix in the rava, chilli powder, salt and asafoetida. Sprinkle some water to just wet the sooji mixutre.
2. Set aside for a while (say 15 minutes)
3. If the mix is too dry, sprinkle more water while kneading to make a dough like that for puris.
4. Put this into a mixer and using the whip button; grind the dough to make it a little smooth.
5. Take a ball of the dough and roll out into a thin chapati. Roll a pizza cutter(or a serrated rolling cutter) and make small diamond/square pieces
6. Heat some oil in a kadai on a low heat.
7. When the oil is hot enough (a small ball of the dough should rise up when thrown into the oil), put in the cut pieces of the roti.
8. Deep fry the thukda till the bubbles subside; tossing them around to cook them till they are cooked and crispy.
9. Take them out and place on tissue to absorb the excess oil. Then store in an airtight container.

Tips
You could do this with maida where in, it is not necessary to run the batter in the mixer. Just replace rava with maida and make the dough like you would for puris.

Vadai Pachadi

Tags

curd, yogurt

Ingredients
Vadai Batter
Yogurt
Mustard seeds
Urad dal
Oil
Curry leaves
Asafoetida
Salt to taste

Get Cooking!
1. Heat some oil in a kadai on low flame.
2. Drop small globules (say a teaspoonful) of vadai batter into the oil carefully.
3. Beat some yogurt with a wee bit of salt; add the globular vadais into the yogurt.
4. Season it with mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves and asafoetida.

Tips
You could grind some grated coconut with green chillies,ginger. Add this to the yogurt and mix it up.

Vadai

Ingredients
Urad dal
Salt
Green chillies
Curry leaves
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the urad dal well (say about 45 mins to an hour). Drain the excess water by placing it in a colander.
2. Grind this dal with salt, green chillies. Try not adding water at all; if you have to, sprinkle ice cold water. The batter must become smooth and not watery.
3. Add the curry leaves. Mix well.
4. Heat some oil in a kadai on a low heat.
5. Wet your palms, place some batter on them; flatten it out, make a hole with your finger. Put it into the oil carefully.
6. Add enough vadais depending on the quantity of oil taken.
7. When the vadais are half done, take them out and set aside. Do the next set.
8. Now, take the set that has been kept aside; deep fry till they turn golden brown. This is to make them nice & crispy.
9. Do this to the entire ground batter.

Tips
You could add some ginger/ red chillies while grinding the batter. You could also add chopped onions. Make some rasam and place the vadais in the rasam to make rasa vadais or in sambhar to make sambhar vadais

Not so two minutes noodles :)

Tags

noodles, vegetables

Ingredients
Maggi Noodles 1 pack
Tomatoes chopped
Onions chopped
Peas
Carrots diced
Beans sliced thin
Oil
Salt

Get Cooking!
1. Cook the noodles in water (do not add the taste maker it comes with). Set aside to drain the excess water.
2. In a pan, add some oil. Sauté the onions.
3. Add the tomatoes, toss around till they are cooked.
4. Add carrots, beans, peas. Toss them around till they are cooked.
5. Now add the taste maker to this along with a wee bit of salt.
6. Then add the noodles that has been set aside; mix it carefully.

Tips
Instead of using the taste maker; you could use some soy sauce (add less salt if that is the case). Be creative with the spices you want to add…whatever tickles your tastes buds – chilli powder, turmeric powder & garam masala even

Dhokla

Tags

besan, steamed

Ingredients

Besan 1 cup
Sour curd 1 cup
Ginger paste 1 tsp
Green chilli paste 1 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
Turmeric powder 1 tsp
Sugar 1 tsp
Oil
Water 1 cup
Fruit salt (Eno) 1 tsp
Mustard seeds 1 tsp
Curry leaves 4-5
Green chillies-slit 2-3

Get Cooking!

1. Mix besan, ginger paste, chilli paste, salt, turmeric, sugar and oil (abt a tbsp) and beat in the curd. Beat till smooth.
2. Add water and mix well again.
3. Add fruit salt, stir gently.
4. Pour immediately into the greased tin and place in the steamer.
5. Place a thin cloth between the lid and the steamer and close tight. Steam for 20 minutes.
6. Remove tin from the steamer and keep aside.
7. Heat about a tbsp of oil, add mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chillies for seasoning.
8. Sauté till slightly colored, and add a large cup water.
9. Cut the dhokla into desired sized pieces and pour the seasoning over.
10. Garnish with coriander and coconut and serve.

Tips
You could add peanuts too.I prefer peanbut powder or crushed peanuts. To cook this in the microwave oven, after adding the fruit salt; pour this immediately into a greased microwaveable dish and cook at HI for 6-8 minutes taking care to rotate the dish at least once.

Stuffed Puris

Tags

atta, moong dal

Ingredients
Atta
Moong Dal
Green Chillies
Salt
Water
Oil

Get Cooking!
1. Soak the moong dal for an hour or so. Drain the water.
2. Grind this into a coarse paste with green chillies and salt. Set aside.
3. Knead the atta with some salt, oil into a dough using minimal water.
4. Roll out very thin puris (of say diameter 3-4″).
5. Place a tsp of the coarse paste in the middle. Fold the puri into half and seal the edges with some water.
6. Fry these stuffed puris in oil on a medium-low heat.
7. Turn these puris around with a ladle to cook them evenly till they are golden brown. (the puris tend to flop to one side which would be heavy because of the stuffing…hence this point )
8. Serve with ketchup or chutney.

Tips

You could make the dough and roll out the puris and save them inside an old magazine while the dal is being soaked.
You could cut out the edges using a somasi cutter or the serrated roller cutter thingie?!
For the paste, I added a bit of chat masala. So, use imagination for the stuffing.
I also did all the stuffed puris before starting to fry them up

One huge tip! Since I had leftover puris and no stuffing, I still fried these up like usual puris which turned out to be crispy like papads. Break these up to a powder and add powdered sugar. You could eat them as is as a powder or be more adventurous with calories, add ghee and roll these into a ball to make puri urundai