Even after a decade of cooking , I still preserve the cooking books as precious little companions in my kitchen. Here is the first book my hubby gifted me , with a little poem on the first page.

செய்திடல் வேண்டும் – நல்ல சமையல் ,
அதில் கொள்ள வேண்டும் நல்ல மையல் ,
நளபாக நல்லாளாய் வாழ்ந்திட வேண்டும் என் தையல் !

So, before I walk through the memory lanes and get lost in the maze, , let me share a recipe from her book with few modifications.

Ingredients:
Urad dall – 1cup
Toor dall – 1/4 cup
Coconut flakes or chopped coconut- 1 tbsp
Chopped coriander leaves
Grated carrot – 1 tbsp
Cumin seeds – 1 1/2 tsp
Green chillies – 5 numbers
Grated ginger – 1 tsp
Salt – to taste

(Picture courtesy : My Dear Daughter)

Method:

Soak the dalls together for 2 hours. Strain the dalls and grind them in wet grinder , sprinkling just enough water to a ‘vadamavu’ consistency- It should be super smooth fluffy but not a runny sort. Add salt, just one minute before you take the dough out. Add the grated ginger, chopped deveined chillies, coriander, coconut flakes, grated carrot and cumin seeds.

Heat oil in a vessel and let the oil be deep enough to deep fry the bondas. The right amount of oil and right temperature is the key to perfect round grease-less bondas. The oil should be hot enough such that , if you drop a small ball of dough in it , it should rise to the top.

Once the oil is hot enough, wet your fingers and scoop the dough , drop to the sides of the vessel. Do not over crowd the batches. Turn the bondas carefully till they are well cooked. Drain the excess oil on a paper towel and serve hot with coconut chutney/ mint chutney/ ketchup .

Have a healthy evening snack !

With the new year parties and movies , one can easily slip from the ambitious list of to dos

Well, better late than never, so I decided to give my list a shot and here I am with just two left in my list remaining , which I hope to finish after this post.

The top of the list was the sambhar powder.

I had enjoyed my mom’s sambhar powder so long and for the first time , I had to use the chili powder from Devon market. I was nervous basically to use it as such and it consumed so much time to assemble the individual ingredients to get the taste of mom’s sambhar. So, I decided to make a sambhar powder, which will be a great companion for cooking and as well save time.

I researched, got opinions and decided to go with the following proportions.

Reshampatti chili powder- 4 cups
Coriander seeds- roasted and ground – 4 cups
Toor dall- 1cup
Gram dall- 1 cup
Fenugreek seeds- 1/3 cup
Mustard seeds – 1/3 cup
Cumin seeds- 1/4 cup
Pepper corns – 1/4 cup
Rice – 1/4 cup
Urad dall – 1/4 cup

The optional ingredients , I left on purpose were curry leaves , turmeric and asfoetida (hing).

Method:
Dry roast the coriander seeds, cool, grind them separately and measure out 4 cups . You can add more coriander if you feel your chili is hotter than usual.

Dry roast the ingredients individually and let them cool.

Powder them in a blender, mix all in a big bowl , sieve once and regrind if needed.

You are sure to feel nostalgic about going to the mills back home. Kids are sure to ask ‘What theee smell..’

But, the effort is worthy and will keep you happy for months to come .

Happy new year everyone!

Diwali- The only time in the year I am motivated to cook  sweets.  It just happened that in my family all are spice lovers and none got  a  sweet tooth except for those chocolates.

I remembered that the year before I was in a  crunch of time to do a sweet for Diwali. I did say to myself , anything is impossible if we think of it ahead of time. So, I did do my analysis, gathered recipes, shortlisted them and picked up my fave- Badushah/Balusahi

This is  a recipe from our family friend -who is an excellent cook herself and an expertise in using locale items in traditional cooking.  Yes you guessed it right- This is like my Kala Jamoon which also uses pancake mix.

Ingredients:

All purpose flour/ Maida – 3 cups

Bisquik pancake mix- 1 cup

Butter – 4 tbsp  (1/2 stick)

Milk – to knead

For the syrup:

Sugar – 4.5 cups

Water – 2 cups

Food color- optional – 1 pinch

Lime juice- 1 tsp

Mix the flours and butter till the butter is well incorporated. Sprinkle milk (Can use yogurt as well- I have had used both) and knead  it  like a roti dough.  Let it rest for three hours.

Make the syrup till  1 string consistency. Add food color at the end and squeeze lime juice to avoid crystallization. Let the  syrup cool down.

Make small similar sized balls out of the dough , place them between the palms, twist and make it a disc.  Press a thumb in the middle .

 Fry these discs at medium heat just like we fry gulab jamuns.

Drain , place in the syrup for three minutes and remove and line them up on a plate/cookie sheet.  While they are hot , garnish the top with flakes of coconut/pistachios/saffron to your liking.

Enjoy eating and sharing the badushas

Pongal is a rich and healthy food . It is a famous breakfast served in marriages.  With no further ado..lets see the ingredients list.

Ingredients:

1. Rice- 1 cup

2. Moong dall- 1/2 cup

3.Grated ginger- 1 1/2 tsp

4.Peppercorn- 10-15 numbers

5. Cumin seeds- 1 1/2 tsp

6. Ghee – 1 tbsp

7. Asafoetida – few pinches

8.curry leaves

9.Cashews – 10 nos

10. Water- 4 1/2 cups

By the time , you gather these …I like to show case my handmade gift for one of our friends. It is  a  crystal tree.

Back to the cook show ……..

Method:

Measure out the dall and rice. Wash the rice. In a pressure cooker, dry roast a little bit the dall. When you feel the raw smell is gone, add water,  rice and needed salt and cook till a whistle.

Alternatively, you can cook in any vessel covered till all water is well absorbed and the rice is well cooked.

To do the tadka, heat the ghee (for diet conscious ..use mixture of oil and ghee), sputter the peppercorns, cumin and ginger and curry leaves. Dash the asfoetida  after the turning off the stove. Add cashews if you want to make it extra rich.  Mix this to the rice and serve warm with sambhar or chutney.

The key is to slightly roast the dall and cook the rice really well. Enjoy (y)our first meal of the week!

After my world turned out to be confined within a cubicle, there was not much fun in life. I like my work but still miss my adventurous indulgences. Mostly deep fried snacks were store bought and had no attachment to our heart.  The ‘homemade’ pride  was missing apparently.

As diwali fell on a weekend this year and all the more as we did not have the time to make a trip to Devon markets,….I was browsing  for some daring (??) cooking idea on Friday night . My favourite sweet is Jangiri and had never seen a good one in the market so long.

Back home, whenever there is a marriage in our family,in our native village, we used hire cooks who used to bring in bada bada vessels and cook food for the crowd in the backyard.  Mostly the sweets used to be jangiri, badusha or Mysore pak.  The Jangiri when prepared so, at our backyard..my mom used to  feed me  the warm..’just out of stove’   jangiris…..Wow  they would be out of the world tasty.  I used to even complaint about my mom and grandma for making me  a sophisticated picky taster. The result  being  anything less than the perfect can never satisfy me.:)

All being said and thought upon, I wanted to dare  making jangiri with no further ado. I knew it would not be perfect and was not willing to buy out  the crunchy jilebi like jangiri in the market.  Googled for a few versions , and soaked the urad.  Here goes my next steps…..

1. 7.00 pm- Soaked  1 cup of Urad  (whole )

2. Googled further for detail videos and blogs.

3.9.15 pm- started grinding the dall after filtering out the water in it- Ran good for about 35- 40 min. sprinkled water in between when needed. The consistency was asked to be like medhu vada dough.

4. Measured out 1.5 cups of sugar to a thick pan and made a syrup by adding 3/4 cup of water. Switched off the stove when it reached about 1/2 string consistency.

5.10.00 pm -  Heated 1 inch of oil in a flat non stick pan .Mixed  the batter  with 1 tsp of rice flour and food color. Scooped this into a ziploc  and made a hole in it after sealing.

6. Practiced the pressing in a bowl of water a couple of times. The batter whne in right consistency does float in water as ‘vada maavu’ and that can be added back to your stock.

7. Kept the flame medium  and pressed out the jangiris. The heat is a key factor . If the heat is high, you get crunchy jilebis, if too low , you end up wiht undercooked soggy jangiris.

8.  Soaked the jangiris in the sugar syrup and enjoy them as they are warm.

9. 11.00pm – Take a photo shoot  to show case my mom and bros  what I did finally for the diwali:))

If it had been in India, we would have bought Ananda Bahavan Jangiris in no time and sat all day in television without a single thought of the effort that went into making  the sweet. But  today I realized the true joy of  being meditative in cooking and smile  when others enjoyed it.  A joy which my grandma  taught me throughout her living . Cook food , Serve love.

One beautiful day , David  gave me the starter and the cookbook to learn bread making.(Classic Sourdoughs by Ed Wood). I could not wait to finish reading the book. I made a thorough reading, felt confident and started experimenting   The first one I tried was not edible :-< and was immediately dumped  in trash. The second one was too sour. Isabella kept saying me “patience is the key for a good bread”. One 100 % true.

So….

This is the first success I had in sourdough bread making!

The flavor  was more satisfying than normal yeasted bread and taste of a warm bread was so heavenly.If you love to bake , you must give sourdough a try. I wasted almost 5 cups of flour but now I bake almost twice, thrice a  week and get fresh , perfect results all the times.

Thank you Isabella and David for opening the doors of wonderful world of bread making!

Ingredients

2 cups  cold liquid  culture

4 cups all purpose flour

½ cup water

½ cup milk

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp butter, melted

1 egg, beaten

Mix the liquid culture with 1 cup of the flour and 1/4 cuo of the water in a large mixing bowl. This is the working culture. Proof for 12 hours at room temperature (68 to 72 deg F ) .

Add 1 cup of the flour and the remaining 1/4 cup of water. Mix and knead until smooth. Proof 8 hours at room temperature. After  proofing this is the fully active culture.

Punch down. Mix together  the milk , salt , sugar, 2 tablespoons of the butter and the egg. Add to the dough and mix well. Reserve 1 cup of the flour for flouring the board.Mix and spoon knead the remaining 1 cup into the dough. Transfer to the floured board and knead in the remaining flour.

Divide the dough into 16 to 20 balls. Place them side by side in an 8 inch baking pan.Proof for two hours or until they risee above the sides of the pan.

Bake  in a preheated oven at  375 deg for 20 to 25  minutes, or until browned. Remove the rolls from the pan and cool on wire racks or serve hot.

You can get the starter by capturing the wild yeast from the air. Visit here for a  good intro! Remember, practice makes everything perfect! Good Luck!

When we moved to Chennai, to a highly compact apartment, she made many new friends. When the young ladies return from their work , they got to  pass by our apartment. So they will stand by to say ‘Hai’ and ‘Bye’. My Grandma knowing how tired they will be and will make/ share her tea with them. Such was her thoughtfullness. She never had a selfish motive or desire. All her life was spent  in the  kitchen making delicious food  and her happiness was in making people happy  through her ‘kaipaagam’. She  is more than Grandma to me and my three brothers for she brought us up  since our primary school.

It is now 10 full years  since she left the world (April, 8, 1998) but  memories of her love has not faded even a bit. To any women who know her , she  was a great inspiration and an ideal women.

 I started this blog to honor her and her unique recipes. At this point of time of remembrance, here is another classical chutney recipe of my grandma.

URAD DALL CHUTNEY

 INGREDIENTS

Urad Dall/ ulutham paruppu- 1/2 cup

Medium onion- 1 no

Medium tomato- 1 no

Red chilli- 3 /4  no

Coconut- 4 long slices

Tamarind- amla size

Salt to taste

Heat a skillet , add a tablespoon of oil, roast the dall, keep it aside.

Simlarly roast the chillies. Slice the onion and tomato and fry them till they are cooked well.

Grind all with tamarind , coconut and salt to a grainy/smooth texture.

For those who like crunchy bits, (My mother does  this)  fry another 1/8 cup of urad dall till golden and add to the mix at last . Do the tallipu and add it too. Pulse the mixer for once or twice.

Yummy chutney is ready to be served with Idly or rice as thogaiyal.

Neverfading chutney like my Grandma’s love

Ingredients

Toor dall- 1/3 cup

Medium yellow onion-1

Medium tomato- 1

Tamarind- amla size

Dry red chillies- 4/5 nos

         Cut the onion and tomato into wedges and cook the dall , onion, tomato and chilies in a pressure cooker till the lentils are cooked soft. My mom usually adds a few drops of oil when cooking for some good reason.  Add tamarind/ tamarind extract and salt  to the dall and grind it to smooth paste. Back home, my mom always uses a  chatti and maththu  to mash the dall. If you are lucky to have those ,  you may prefer to use them for better taste.  Dilute it to the consistency of rasam. 

           Do the thalippu with vadagam , add and heat . When the kuzhambhu is about to start boiling , turn off the heat. 

           The trick is to balance the heat , salt and sour . If you can hit the correct balance, this will be a great hit in your home. To me, this is my ULTIMATE COMFORT FOOD. 

Thank you all for your caring inquiries and  power boosting comments!

The blog had been dormant for  a long time. I should admit that my interests take different directions and I was thrilled by this new hobby. Even the tiny bit of free time gets eaten away by this(?!). My broken camera is another reason to hold me back from blogging.

 Yet, I don’t want to let my blog  fade away.. So, here am I, with a resolution of atleast  updating very special recipes. See you all  after the holidays.Happy New Year!