Ribbon Pakoda

This is a tasty and crunchy snack and easy to prepare. The main ingredients for this are rice flour and gram flour. Actually there are many variations for this recipe and mostly made with more of gram flour and little of rice flour. But by mistake I made it with more of rice flour and less of gram flour and it came out well. The rice flour actually helped the pakodas stay white and crispy.


Ingredients:

Rice Flour - 2 cups
Gram flour - 1/2 cup
Red chilly powder - 1 tsp
Salt
Butter - 1 tsp
Oil - to deep fry
Water

Method:

• Mix rice flour, gram flour, salt and chilly powder in a mixing bowl

• Melt the butter and add it to the above mix

• Add water little by little and knead well to make a soft dough

• Heat oil in a pan for frying.

• Put the mix in the press with the plate having thin lengthy slots (This will get the dough in thin flat strips)

• Press the ribbon pakodas directly on hot oil round throughtout the pan as you would do for omapodi. Cook on both sides till the spluttering of oil stops

• Drain excess oil on a tissue paper. Cool it and store in an air tight container

Mysore Pak - 1.1

This is a revised version of my earlier mysorepak. For the first one I used excessive sugar and in this one I've reduced the sugar and ghee and it still tasted good. This recipe makes around 40 mysorepaks.

Ingredients:

Besan flour – 2 cups
Sugar – 2 cups
Ghee – 3 cups
Water – 1/2 cup

Procedure

• Sieve the besan flour to make it fine
• Melt the ghee and take it from flame
• Add the besan flour to the melted ghee and mix well without any lumps
• In a heavy bottomed pan add water and sugar
• Stir to make the sugar dissolve in water
• After the syrup starts thickening pour the besan- ghee mix and keep stirring
• Once the mix starts thickening and comes rolling to the center remove from heat (this takes around 5-10 mins)
• Pour it on a ghee coated vessel and allow to cool
• While still warm cut to desired shape(before it turns hard)
• Allow to cool down completely and remove the pieces.
• This can be stored outside for 10 days and for 2 months if refrigerated.

Yam(Suran) Vadai

I got some frozen yams and my husband didn't liked the usual "Karunai kuzhambu". So I had to search for new recipes and found this good one. As any vadai this tastes good and it stays crispy for 4-5 hours. I used the frozen yam and this can be substituted for fresh ones too.

This recipe makes around 8 medium sized vadais.


Ingredients:

Frozen Yam - 1 cup
Chopped Onions - 1/2 cup
Corn flour - 3 tbsp
Rice flour - 1 tbsp
Green Chilli - 2
Ginger - 1/2 inch
curry leaves - 2 tbsp
salt
Oil- to fry

Procedure:

1. Thaw the yams in cold water and steam them for 10 mins. If you are using fresh yams, then clean the skin and pressure cook for 2 whistles.

2. Grind the Green chili and ginger to a coarse paste

3. Mash the yam and add cornflour, rice flour, grinded paste, salt, onions and curry leaves. Mix them well and make small balls of them

4. Heat oil in a pan. When it is ready, press the balls to vada shape and drop them in oil carefully. Cook on medium high until golden brown on both sides.

5. Serve hot as a snack with any green or coconut chutney.

Pumpkin Roll

It was Halloween time when there were lots of pumpkins throughout the store. So, I got one but didn't know wat to do exactly with it. First I tried the most crazy "pumpkin pie" but that didn't turned out good. And I had some more pumpkins left out. I searched for and got this great looking dessert.

This is basically a pumpkin cake rolled with sugared cream cheese and sliced. I am posting it with little alterations on the sugar quantity as the filling turned out to be very sweet in my case. Please click here for a video demo of this recipe (not mine!!!)



Ingredients

Cake Roll:
Pumpkin puree - 1 1/2 cups (or use canned pumpkin - 1 can)
All-purpose flour - 3/4 cup
Granulated sugar - 3/4 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
salt - a pinch
eggs - 2
chopped walnuts - 1/2 cup optional

Cream Cheese Filling:
cream cheese, softened - 1 (8 oz) package
powdered sugar - 3/4 cup
butter or margarine, softened - 4tbsp


Procedure:

Pumpkin puree:
You can always use canned pumpkin. But if you want to start from the scratch, cut the whole pumpkin into slices, remove the seeds and pressure cook for 5 whistles. Remove the skin part and blend in a mixer to get the puree.


Pumpkin cake:
PREHEAT oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 15 x 10-inch baking pan; line with wax paper (to make it easy to remove from baking pan). Grease and flour paper.

COMBINE flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts on top.

BAKE for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Slightly wet a clean kitchen towel. Loosen the cake and turn it onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool down for 2 hours.

Filling:
BEAT cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Make sure you don't beat too much as it may not stay stiff.

Pumpkin Roll:

Carefully unroll cake; Spread cream cheese mixture over cake.


Reroll cake. While rerolling remove the towel. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 5 hours.

This can also be kept in the freezer if you need it for another day.

After 5 hours remove from the fridge and slice into 1 inch rolls. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

Kadala Curry

This curry made of Black chana is famous in Kerala. It is simple to make if u have the ingredients ready as major part of the cooking is done in pressure cooker.

It is actually served with puttu, appam or idiyappam but it goes well with Idly/Dosa also.



Ingredients:

Black chana - 1 cup (soak overnight)
coarsely Onion - 1
finely chopped onion - 1/2
Tomato - 1/2
curry powder - 1.5 tsp (or use red chilly powder - 1 tsp & coriander powder - 1 tsp)
garlic - 2 pods
coconut powder - 1/2 cup or coconut milk - 1/2 cup
coriander leaves - 1/4 cup
mustard seeds - 1 tsp
oil - 1 tbsp
salt


How to make the curry:

I'll split the procedure in 3 parts. Pressure cooking, grinding and cooking

Pressure cooking:
1. Add little oil in a pan and saute the onions (coarsely chopped), tomatoes, crushed garlic for 1 min.

2. To this add the soaked and washed black chana and the curry powder

3. Add salt to this and pressure cook. cook for 5 whistles so that the black chana gets cooked well


Grinding:
1. In another pan dry fry the coconut powder till dry and it turns light brown (desiccated coconut)

2. Grind the desiccated coconut, a tbsp of cooked black chana and coriander leaves to a smooth paste. (u can also use coconut milk instead of desiccated coconut and grind
it the same way)

Making of the final Curry:
1. Heat oil in a pan and add mustard seeds to splutter. After that add the finely chopped onions and saute till it turns transparent. This dish needs onions to be blended. so saute well.

2. Add the cooked chana mix. check salt

3. Once it boils add the grinded coconut mix and let it boil for 2 mins. Garnish with some coriander leaves.


Serve with Puttu, Appam, Idiyappam or Dosa.

Prawn(Shrimp) thokku

This is one of my favorites as my family loves prawns and a simple one to prepare (I din't accounted the cleaning part). We had stopped buying prawns for a long time after I failed for the first time when We got the cooked prawns and overcooked them which made them rubbery. But now we buy only fresh prawns either with or without skin. Now I've learned to peel the skin and devein them too. If you need help on the cleaning part please click here.

This dish goes very well with Rice, Idly, Dosa and Chapatti.


Ingredients:

Prawn - 1 lb (around 1/2 kg)
Big Onions - 2 chopped
Big Tomato - 1 chopped
Oil - 3 tbsp
Curry powder - 4 tsp (mix of chilly and coriander powder in ratio 1:2)
salt


Method:

1. Heat oil in a pan

2. Saute onions and tomatoes one by one and fry well

3. Add salt and curry powder. Add some water and cook covered on medium flame.

4. After 5 mins add the cleaned prawns. If needed add some more water and cook covered. Keep stirring frequently as it may stick to the bottom

5. Cook for 10 mins. check if the prawns are cooked well and keep on high flame till the gravy thickens

6. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot.

Rava Dhokla

Ingredients:

•1 cup Rava
•1 cup yogurt
•1/4 cup water as needed
•1/4 teaspoon salt
•2 teaspoon lemon juice
•Pinch of turmeric (haldi)
•1 green chili finely chopped
•2 tablespoon fine chopped cilantro (hara dhania)
•1 teaspoon Eno’s fruit salt (Sodium Bicarbonate and Citric Acid)

For seasoning:

•2 tablespoons of oil
•1/2 teaspoon black mustard seed
•2 green peppers chopped into about 1/4 inch pieces


Method:

1.Mix the rava, yogurt, salt, lemon juice, green chili, and cilantro together in a bowl and make a smooth batter; add more water if needed.
2.Mix well so that no lumps are formed and the batter is of pouring consistency.
3.Allow batter to rest for an hour.
4.Grease the pan for steaming and set aside.
5.Add fruit salt (Eno) to the batter, and mix well. The batter will foam up.
6.Quickly pour batter into a greased pan for steam.
7.Steam for about 10 minutes on medium heat.
8.Check Dhokla with a knife. If the knife comes out clean, dhokla is ready.
9.Turn of the heat and let it cool to room temperature, then cut into triangle or square shapes.

Prepare the seasoning:

1.Heat the oil in a small pan on medium heat.
2.Add mustard seeds after seeds cracke add green chili stir for few seconds.
3.Pour seasoning over the Dhokla. Serve with green chutney.