Bread Upma

This is always a quick and handy recipe which we resort to at least if not twice a month. My husband sometimes teases me that it looks like turkey stuffing - he used to not be a vegetarian, but that changed after marrying moi!
You want to eat light, and yet you want to pep up the simple bread so here's how you can do it...and in 15 minutes flat!

Ingredients

4 slices of multi-grain or whole wheat bread
2 table spoons of luscious buttermilk or yogurt
1 med-sized red onion
2 tablespoons of grated carrots
2 green chillies
A pinch of
turmeric
urad dal
asafoetida
cilantro, cashews and a tsp of molaga podi for garnish
1 teaspoon of olive oil

Preparation
Cut the bread
In a pan, heat the oil, add the condiments and allow the urad dal to brown
Add the chillies and onions
When the onions are brown, quickly dip the cut bread in the yogurt and directly toss into the pan
Cook with the rest of the ingredients until it turns crispy brown
Remove from flame and garnish with cilantro and or molaga podi and the cashews
Enjoy this savory treat
And Love it:))

Masalvadai

Two big memories crowd my mind when I blog this dish -- The famous cry in the Pondicherry beach (was it) for "Samsa, Masalada, Samsa" and my dance classes... I used to get off the bus on Big Brahmin Street and head on to Mme. Sinhas's dance class and tuition with Ms. Dasappa...the bus would drop us off on (I think it is anna salai) and at the very corner of the street was the Andhi Kadai - He always set up shop at 5 and made fresh hot vadais. Amma gave me a rupee which got me about 5 vadais - fresh off the stove, steaming hot. The other Andhi kadai delicacy was the fried kadala-paruppu which was 10 paise per sachet ... Just good  chick pea stuff :)) Good fuel for all the energy i was to expend dancing and doing math!!!!

Now I make my masal-vadais as a homage to Andhi Kadai Narayanan who in my memory still makes the best Vadais! Funny how we carry all our childhood memories and tastes with us!
Ok- Long enough walk down memory lane - now to business

In Words
Ingredients
1 cup channa dal or kadala paruppu or bengal gram
4-6 green chillies
Oil to fry
1 BIG red onion
curry leaves
asafoetida a pinch

Preparation
Soak for exactly 1 hour, the dal, curry leaves, chillies
Drain all the water our of the dal - NO water needs to be used for grinding-
Grind coarse in the blender - (Use spatula to move the batter around)
Cut the onions small
In a pan place 1 tsp of oil and lightly fry the onions for about a minute or 2
Add it to the ground atta/batter and mix in
Add some safoetida and salt as well and mix in

Heat oil to fry
Flatten a small ball of batter on to your palm and drop it into the oil.. repeat until your pan has a sufficient number
Brown and remove and eat HOT HOT HOT
The unspoken ingredient would be Love without which no measurements work!

In Pictures

Poondu Rasam/ Garlic Rasam/ Indian soup

It is the season for coughs and colds! The goodness of garlic is almost as famous as its flavor which I have grown to love after marriage - Amma hardly ever cooked with garlic with probably the yearly exception of making poondu rasam - I literally ran from this dish and amma would always have to make plain rasam for the few of us who could not stand the smell of it. Another growing moment happened 17 years ago when my husband cooked me pasta with a goodly amount of garlic! And now I wonder I have ever lived without it - I must quickly add that even now, i do not like the indiscriminate use of it in my preparations, but a subtle hint in the appropriate dishes only enhances the taste of it.
Poondu rasam has been a huge favorite among my kids and hubs and I make it at least once or twice a month.

Start to finish, this take me 30 minutes including pressure cooking the lentils

Ingredients

1/2 cup toor dal/thoram paruppu split peas pressure cooked with a dash of turmeric and oil
1 can of Hunts diced tomatoes
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon each of
coriander seeds
cumin seeds
black pepper
1/4 cup of grated coconut
4-6 cloves of garlic
1 table spoon of rasam powder


Preparation
Pressure cook the dal and keep
In a pot, heat a small amount of oilive oil (or oil of choice)
Lightly fry the cumin, pepper, coriander, coconut and the garlic
In a blender add the diced tomatoes and some water along with the fried ingredients and blend nicely

Back to the pot, pour the mix from the blender and allow it to cook, adding 1 more cup of water
When it starts boiling, get the dal ready by beating it with a hand blender and then pour into the boiling pot.
Add the salt

Sautee
In a saucepan, add some ghee/butter. Thadka some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves.
Add to the rasam once the seeds have popped.
Sprinkle some crushed cilantro at the very end

Enjoy HOT.

As always, the key ingredient would be that pinch of love :))

Fingerling Potatoes & Cheese Casserole

 Fingerling Potatoes - I have seen these every once in a while when I go grocery shopping, but was never really tempted to buy....However, there is always a first time and there they were, golden, pink and purple all bunched together in a 3 pound meshed sack! And we took it home!
For a person who cooks potatoes in several forms with great ease, I was quite bewildered by what I should do with these fingerlings- It never occurred to me that I could cut them - That was not an option in my head because how does that make these special potatoes any different from the regular ones?  So they had to be in their fingerlingy shape and form....

I scoured the net for recipes - But most of them had cream cheese and mayonnaise as their base - These are good mind you, but I wanted something less heavy and fatty...So here's what I came up with. I used laughing cow swiss cheese cubes (35 calories each)

In Words
Ingredients
About 25 fingerling potatoes

Laughing cow cheese - 8 cubes (35 calories each) basil, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella flavor
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon of oregano
1/2 teaspoon of herb De Provence
1 tsp of sambar powder (optional)
2 tsp of Dosai Molagapodi (optional or can be substituted with 1 tsp of paprika or cayenne pepper crushed)
1 tsp of ground pepper

Preparation:

Boil the potatoes. Peel and set aside
In a pan, bring to boil the milk
Add the 8 cheese cubes and melt
Add the oregano and the sambar powder and the herbs and the ground pepper
Set aside the sauce
Place the potatoes in a baking pan
Set the oven at 425 degrees
sprinkle the molaga podi over the potatoes and turn them(optional)
Add the sauce
Top it with the grated cheddar cheese
Bake for 15 minutes
Serve immediately with garlic bread of carb of choice
And of course with Love :)

In Pictures

Fingerling Potatoes

                                         The cheese wedges

                     Cheese melting in the milk

  Boiled potatoes with Dosai Molaga podi sprinkled over before baking

                                   Smothered in sauce

                                And topped with grated cheddar cheese

                                Out of the oven and ready to feast on :))

Sending this to Veggie of the month hosted by Divya or Dil Se

Paal Poli (Sweet pooris in sweet saffron milk)

Today is Kanu Pongal and technically, I must make the kakai and kannu pidis for my brothers. However the loss in our family took precedence so i did not get to do this. But I still wanted to do something special and I dedicate this to my brothers.

My mom's paal polis were a rare treat and I remember eating them with so much relish with the milk dripping down to my elbows... Strange how we keep trying to recreate those sweet moments so that we may pass on these memories to our children. I am privileged to have my kids at home for the next 2 days and as a mom who has been away from them for 2 weeks, I feel the need to do something special for them. If you like Rasmalai this is not too far a cry from it.

Here is my Paal Poli recipe. Please try it out and I would really love to know how it turns out for you :)) If you are efficient with your preparation time, this dish takes 45 minutes from start to finish.

In Words
Ingredients
1 cup of whole wheat atta flour
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 cup of warm water
1/2 cup of sugar - ground
1 can of carnation condensed milk
5 cups of milk
2 teaspoons of crushed saffron
1/2 teaspoon of crushed cardamom

Preparation
Mix attas and powdered sugar and knead the dough with warm water
make small poori sized balls and roll them out
On the stove, empty the contents of a condensed milk can into a pot/pan and add 5 cups of milk and let it boil
Add the crushed saffron to it and see the milk turn into this beautiful yellow.

In a frying pan, pour enough oil to fry the pooris. Keep a colander handy to drain any excess oil
Also pour the milk into a wide and deep pan - keep on stove at very small flame so that the milk with remain warm and help absorption into the puris

Drain the puris and add to the milk. Let them soak. I turn them over so that both sides get a good soaking.
Serve with Love.

In Pictures

Phulkas or Whole Wheat chappatis (Indian bread/tortillas)

I just love the word phulka - makes me think hot and yummy, esp when someone else is dishing them out. But if you like it as much as I do now, and you know there is no one else who can make it for you, then by golly, you learn to do it yourself! After all this is my biggest lesson living in the US for the past 17 years - In Tamil - thun kaiye thanaku udhavi!
Anyway this is an art I studiously avoided since i always thought it to be laborious and difficult! Pooris were always an easier deal! But with maturity comes the realization that this ain't a big deal and this too shall be conquered...:))

In words
Ingredients for about 20 phulkas

2 cups of whole wheat atta/ flour
1 tsp of salt
1 cup of warm water

Knead well hands and keep the consistency just right -like pizza dough

Preparation
Make lemon sized balls and flatten
Roll them out using dry flour to dab so it will not stick
Put on a heated pan
Allow it to cook slightly on both sides
Remove from the pan and transfer on to direct fire
If it is rolled out well, it will puff up nicely
Serve HOT HOT HOT with a dab of ghee (optional) and a dab of love (not an option)

In Pictures

Baingan Ka Burta - North Indian Eggplant preparation

I was all set to make ChakaraPongal and kootu, but we heard news of my husband's aunt's passing - so all festivities came to a grinding halt - So I decided to keep it simple - do I overuse that word or what! The awesome thing I learned during my visit to India was to make good phulkas - Just by watching mind you! So I made some phulkas (which I will blog next) and a side dish of Baingan ka burta.

I find the toasting of the Italian eggplant over open fire messy and here in the US you have to clean the mess yourself - So my I changed my approach just a tad, but did not compromise on the taste - that is a strict NO NO!

Here is how I went about it
In Words
Ingredients

1 Italian Eggplant (big) peeled
1 big red onion cut in slivers
2 Tomatoes (big round ones)
3small green chillies slivered

Spices
1 tsp Turmeric
1/2 tsp of cumin seeds
A pinch of asafoetida
2 tablespoons of olive oil
3 tsp of sambar powder (more or less is optional)

Preparation

Peel and cut the eggplant into small cubes and cook in microwave for about 5 minutes on high heat
Cut the tomatoes in cubes and the onions into long slivers
Get the pan ready on the stove with a little bit of oil to splutter the cumin seeds.
Add the turmeric powder and 1 tsp of sambar powder and the green chillies
Add the tomatoes first and let them cook until its waters has evaporated
Add the onions and dribble some oil on it and allow this to cook and brown
Remove the cooked eggplant from the microwave and mash it with a masher
Add to the onions and tomaotes and add the last bit of oil and sambar powder and let them all cook for a few more minutes until it turns a happy golden brown
Garnish with crushed cilantro and serve with phulkas (chappatis)

In Pictures

 Saute the tomatoes

 Add the onions

 mash the cooked eggplant

 mix together and cook

On your plate with soft phulkas :))

Serve Hot and with abundance of Love!