Thandai | Cool drink

Sivarathiri and Holi re 2 festivals which are celebrated very grandly in North India. I have selected a recipe which is commonly made during these festivals in North India.  Thandai is a milk based drink with lot of dry fruits in it. Thandai is new to me. I am introduced to this drink through blogging world. Even when I recided in Maharashtra I didn't hear of this drink!!

I tasted thandai only after I made it. So I am not sure if that is the actual taste. It might not be since I replaced rose petals with kesar. However it tasted wonderful. I made with 1 litre milk and H took almost 75% of it. He loved it. It was a soothing drink for this summer and also made our stomachs full. So here comes the recipe of thandai the way I made it.

Ingredients:

Milk - 1 litre

Khus khus (Kasakasaa)  - 2 tsp

Almonds (Badam) – 15

Black Pepper – 12

Jeera (Cumin seeds) – 1/2 tsp

Elachi (cardamom) - 5

Sugar – 200 grams

Method:

• Soak all the ingredients (except milk and sugar) in water for 2 hours. Boil milk with sugar, cool down and keep refrigerated.
• After 2 hours, peel the almond skin and grind everything together with little water.
• Squeeze it through a strainer. Repeat one or two times with little more water to extract all the juice from it.
• Add this extract to cold milk and mix well. Refrigerate and consume after 2 hours.
• Garnish with rose petals or kesar.

Thandai is ready!!

Notes:

• You can also add cashew nuts for extra richness.
• I am not sure if this drink can be refrigerated for a long time. We finished it within 3-4 hours.

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Maaladu | Sweet

Ugadi is the New Year's day for the telugu and kannada people of India. This holiday is mostly prevalent in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. Gudi Padwa, which is the Marathi new year, is also celebrated on the same day.

On Ugadi Day, people wake up before the break of dawn and take a head bath after which they decorate the entrance of their houses with fresh mango leaves. Special dishes are prepared for the occasion. There are lot of sweets prepared for this festival like obbattu or puran poli, many types of laddus, payasam etc... I am posting a very easy laddu recipe made with fried gram.

This ladoo is often prepared at home since it is very easy to make and less time consuming also. This ladoo is a favourite among kids also.

Ingredients:

Pottukadalai / fried gram - 250 grams
Sugar - 250 grams
Ghee - 150 grams
Cardamom powder - 1 tsp
Cashew nuts - 2 tbsp

Method:

• Grind the pottukdalai | fried gram into a fine powder in a mixer.
• Powder the sugar finely.
• Sieve this powdered dal and sugar to ensure even mixing.
• Break the cashew nuts into tiny bits. Fry them in little ghee and add it to the sugar pottukadalai powder mixture.
• Melt the ghee and add it. Mix evenly.
• When it is warm , make it into round balls.
• The ladoos will be soft when warm and become little hard when cooled down - so will not break or loose shape.

Notes:

• These laddoos can be stored in airtight container for about a week.
• These can also be refrigerated.

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Badhusha | Sweet

This week I have chosen festival recipes. There are many festivals in the months of March and April. We have all the respective state's new year festival like ugadhi, gudi padwa, vishu etc.. The recipe I am presenting today can be prepared for any occassion. Its actually quite easy, just that I haven't tried it until now. So this year I celebrated Holi with this sweet.

I am starting this week's BM with Badhusha as it is called in South India or Balushahi as called in North India. My mom has never prepared this sweet at home, but I have tasted this in many of my friends place. I searched many blogs and saw many videos before attempting this. But I was successfully able to shape the badhushas. Not bad for a first attempt I say.

Ingredients

Maida - 1 & 1/2 cup

Butter - 1/4 cup

Oil - 1/8 cup

Sugar - 1/2 tsp

Curd - 1 & 1/2 tsp

Cooking soda/sodium bi carbonate - 2 pinches

Water - 1/4 cup (approx.)

Oil - for deep frying

For the sugar syrup

Sugar - 3/4 cup

Water - Just to immerse the sugar

Elachi powder - 2 pinches

Saffron - Optional,A pinch

Lemon Juice - 1 tsp

Method:

• Melt butter and add oil, sugar, curd and sodium-bi-carbonate to it and use a whisk to mix well,to make it almost frothy. Add the flour to it.
• Mix well to make it crumbly. Add water little by little to make it dough,
• Make it to a smooth dough without any cracks.
• Then make small lemon size balls out of it.
• Now take a ball and pinch the edges and fold it inwards to make rims decoratively as shown in the picture.  Repeat to finish everything and keep covered.
• Meanwhile add sugar to a pan and just add water to immerse it and boil till one string consistency ,i.e; if you pour in little water,it should not dissolve and it should lay a fine thread 
• One more important point is not to keep stirring the syrup as stirring will make the syrup crystallize. Add saffron, elachi if desired and squeeze the lemon juice lastly. Again lemon juice is added to stop the syrup from crystallizing.
• Heat oil just enough, check it by adding a pinch of batter, if it rises immediately,then its just right. Don't let the oil fume at any point.
• Add some five badushas, we prepared, carefully in to the oil. Remove the vessel/kadai from fire and let it get cooked in the pre heated oil. Approximately it wud take 5 mins.
• At one stage the badushas float, then again keep the kadai on fire and cook in medium-low flame, adjust heat at the end to make it golden brown, for me it took around 5-8 mins.
• Drain in a paper towel, wait for the badhushas to cool down a little bit and then add to the hot sugar syrup. I did this in batches 2-3 at a time.  Leave for a minute and then drain the badushas to a greased surface.

Notes:

• If your badushas dissolve in oil as you are frying then any one of these is excess : butter/oil / cooking soda. So add more flour to the dough and knead again to troubleshoot the problem.
• Also take note that the oil should be hot when you drop the badushas and later taken off fire. Do not add badushas to not so hot oil.
• If you reduce the quantity of butter or oil,then there will be drastic change in the texture of the badushas too, it will turn hard or crispy. You wont get the layers inside too.
• Consume within a week. Do not refrigerate.
• Do not add ghee in place of butter, it could get crispy, not soft.

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Kerala non-veg thali with kothavarakka mezhukkupuratti | Lunch Menu

This week for the blogging marathon I ended up presenting all 3 thalis from kerala. Yes the third one is also from kerala. Nadan oon kind of meaning native lunch is generally served with a fish curry and fish fry or some other non-veg fry item and ofcourse with a couple of vegetarian dishes. You can get the below shown meal for 50-70 rupees in small kerala restaurants served in banana leaves.

Items in the above menu

Chor (rice) - typical red rice is served

Mambazha Pulissery

Idi chakka thoran

Moru kaachiyadhu -  or plain buttermilk

Naranga Achar

Meen curry or meen molagittadhu

Beef ulathiyadhu

Kothavarakka mezhukkupuratti - recipe below

Kothavarakka Mezhukkupuratti - Kothavarakka is known as cluster beans in English. This is a very tasty vegetable. I have only tried stir fries, thoran and paruppu usili with this. Never used in gravy. Mezhukkupuratti is a term used when lot of onions are used in a stir fry. And the vegetable along with onions are stir fried in lot of oil. Coconut oil is the best for this.

Ingredients:

Kothavarakka  (Cluster beans) - 250 grams

Onions - 200 grams

Green chillies - 3 nos

Curry leaves - few

Oil - 5 tsp

Mustard - 1 tsp

Salt - to taste

Turmeric powder - 1 tsp

Method:

• Chop finely onions and cluster beans. Slit the green chillies.
• In a kadai (preferable a cast iron), add oil. Once the oil turns hot add mustard and curry leaves.Once the mustard splutters, add green chillies.
• Add the chopped onions and fry for 2 minutes till the onions turn translucent.
• Now add the chopped cluster beans, add the salt and turmeric powder. Add little water.
• Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
• Once the cluster beans are cooked, keep stirring for another 2-3 minutes, until the onions turn nice mushy.
• Kothavarakka mezhukkupuratti is ready!!

 Enjoy with rice and a curry of your choice.

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Malabar Biriyani thali with chammandhi | Lunch Menu

This week for my second thali, I am presenting my favourite - a biriyani thali that is served in the malabar way. I guess normally biriyanis are served just with raita. But in malabar area the biriyanis are served with challas (raita), pappadam (fried) and biriyani chammandhi or pickle.

Biriyani chammandhi is a special one. This chammandhi is very spicy and very tangy. It doesn't go bad since it made raw - no water is added. Also, this chammandhi is said to be very good for digestion. So all the way a very good accompaniment for biriyanis.

I have posted many biriyani recipes in my blog. You can make any one of them for this thali. The speciality of malabar biriyanis are that they are made with jeeraga samba rice and a whole lot of spices grown in kerala like cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, mace etc..

Egg biriyani

Beef-biriyani. 

Malabar chicken biriyani

The raita is termed as challas or sarlas in kerala. Red onions certainly impart a lovely color to this salad making it vibrant and interesting. For this onion salad recipe, you’ll need to slice them as thin as possible. Soaking them in salt makes them soft and extra delicious. Don’t forget to rinse the onions to remove extra salt. Otherwise the final dish will become very salty. If you like extra spice kick, adding a couple of chopped green chilies will be a great idea. Add curd or add little vinegar and serve. 

Biriyani Chammandhi

Ingredients:

Coconut (grated) - 1 cup

Lemon juice - 2 teaspoons

Green chillies - 5

Shallots - 3

Ginger - 10 grams

Salt - to taste

Coriander leaves - few

Mint leaves - few

Method:

• Peel the ginger and shallots.
• Put all the ingredients along with salt in a mixer and grind coarsely.
• In between open the mixer and mix all the ingredients with a spatula and pulse the mixer 2-3 times so that the chutney is ground evenly. Do not add water

Enjoy your weekends with this sumptuous home-made biriyani thali.

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Simple kerala-iyer thali | Lunch Menu

I am back!!! After a long sabbatical break.

I am again starting with the blogging marathon. In 2 days time I decided to join this month's marathon. This week I will be posting some interesting thalis. Pardon the photos - I am picking up these thalis from my backlog.

The first one I am starting with a simple home made kerala iyer menu. In olden days kerala-iyers used to have a detailed lunch by around 10:00 - 11:00 in the morning. This was the practise until some 3-4 decades back. But now with increased office goers and a life-style change, kerala-iyers have also changed their food style. Earlier the lunch used to be a very elaborate one with 2-3 curries and 2-3 side dishes but now with lifestyle change and a variety of diseases looming around, the number of dishes in a lunch menu have also come down.

Today I am presenting a typical lunch menu which is served in kerala-iyer households.

Menu:

Rice
Moru koottan - similar to mambazha pulissery
Mathan Erissery
Vazhakkai fry
Vazhaipoo vadai
Karuvadaam
Kadugu Manga oorgai
Buttermilk / curd

Typically a kerala-iyer menu would have a 3-course meal. First one with a koottan, second one with rasam and the third one with curd / buttermilk as gravy. But I have seen that generally with moru -koottan as the gravy, rasam is not served. I forgot to add buttermilk/curd in the above menu.

Method:

• Grate coconut and cut the vegetables - mathan (pumpkin), vazhakkai (plantain) and chembu (taro root) for the moru koottan. Also finely chop the vazhaipoo.
• Soak the dal (kadala paruppu) for making the vada.
• Cook rice in pressure cooker.
• Boil the chembu with little water, salt and turmeric powder. Cook until the chembu is cooked and soft.
• Boil the mathan pieces with very little water, salt and turmeric powder.
• Grind coconut with red chilly and cumin seeds without adding water. add this to the cooked mathan pieces. and mix well. Cook for another 2 minutes.
• Grind coconut with green chillies and curd.  Add this to the cooked chembu. Add sufficient water according to thickness and boil the gravy.
• In a kadai, add little oil. Add mustard seeds and curry leaves. Once the mustard splutters pour this to the mathan erissery.
• Add 1 teaspoon of oil, add mustard seeds, curry leaves and one red chilly. Once the mustard splutters pour this to the moru-koottan.
• Add 3 teaspoons of oil to the kadai, add mustard seeds. Once the mustard splutters add the vazhakkai pieces. Let them cook until soft. Then add salt, turmeric powder, very little sambar powder and red chilly powder. Mix well and fry the vazhakkai pieces.
• Grind the dal for vada (without adding water). Add the cut vazhaipoo, curry leaves, chopped green chillies, salt. Mix well.
• In a kadai, add enough oil for frying. First fry the karuvadams. Then fry the vada patties.

Serve the menu with pickle and curd/buttermilk.

Notes:

You can serve papads instead of karuvadams.

This menu took me around 2 hours to prepare.

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