Idli Sambhar/Tiffin Sambhar

Hi, How are you?Howz life treating you.Hope everything is going on smooth sailing.Okay,What does Authentic Recipe mean to you?Does it mean anything that is cooked by following the age old method to the dot or the taste that you grew up with?Anyhoo,for me authenticity of a recipe is just being able to relate to the taste i grew up with.

When i was in school,mummy used to make Sambhar especially for idlis(with Moong Dal) and the fussy eater me will suddenly start to behave in a sweet manner and finish up what was given on my plate.Those were the days my mom gave me so many incentives if i finished my food.The incentives were simple like extra play time or having a new ball to play with or playing with my baby blue teddy, simple as that.I was too naive then, to be fooled by simple things.Now itz only that i am being fooled by simpler things.My brother who is self trained to bug me, says all sorts of nonsense and i still believe his stories.

So what was i telling,authentic food.Yes.This particular sambhar recipe is according to me the AUTHENTIC  Idli Sambhar recipe.It really complements plain coconut chutney.Also,u can pair this with Pongal,even Uzhunnu vadas or with paniyarams.I slightly adapted by not adding Fenugreek while grinding the masala but used it for tadka.The choice of vegetables depends on the availability.Carrots,Radish,Potatoes and Drumsticks will be a lovely combo.

Method

Source:My Mummy     Serves :4      Cooking time :45 min

Ingredients

1. Moong Dal - 3/4 th of a cup
2. Veggies -5 pieces of drumstick,Potato one diced,Carrots 2 sliced.(This is what i used,it totally depends on your choice and availability)
3. Tamarind pulp got from soaking a gooseberry size (Nellikaya size) ball of tamarind in water(1/2 cup).
4. Shallots(Kunjulli) - 12
5. Tomato -1 big
6. Green chilly - 2 
7. Salt -As required
8. Curry Leaves - generous bunch
9. Asafoteida - A pinch
10. Garlic - 4 or 5 cloves

To Grind

1. Coriander Seeds-1.5 Tbsp
2. Channa Dal/Kadala Paripu -1.5 Tbsp
3. Red Chilly -2
4. Optional Fenugreek-1/4 Tsp(I used it for Tadka and not while grinding.)

For Tadka

1. Oil - 1 Tbsp
2. Mustard Seeds - 1 Tsp
3. Jeera -1/2 Tsp
4. Urad Dal -1/2 Tsp
5. Fenugreek - A generous pinch

Method

1. Dry roast moon dal till you get a nice aroma.To a slighly golden brown color.
2. Cook the dry roasted  Moong Dal in a pressure cooker along with asafoteida,green chillies,Garlic and turmeric powder. Mash it with the back of a laddle.Reserve
3. Dry roast the ingredients in low flame till a nice aroma emanates.Grind this to a fine powder.The ground mixture.
4. In a kadai add half tbsp oil and add the kunjulli vegetables , Tomato, along with the vegetables that you are going to add to make sambhar.
5. Saute nicely and cook with enough water.
6.  When the vegetables are cooked add them to the dal and give a good mix.
7. Add the tamarind pulp,Ground masala to the dal in the mashed dal and if you feel that the sambhar need to be a bit watery add the required quantity of water after keeping it on the stove.
8. Check for salt and doneness .
9. Do the tadka with the items mentioned and pour in the sambhar.
10.  Donot allow the sambhar to be on the stove for too long or in high flame for a long time as it may result in adikku pidikkal.
11. Pair with Idlis,Dosas,Paniyarams and the like.
12. It goes well with pesarattu even.

 Notes:

1. The cooking time of the dal greatly depends on the quality of the dal.
2. I added the cooked vegetables and the tadka to the pressure cooker that i used to cook the dal.
3. Add water and heat the sambhar if you are using it for the next meal/day coz the sambhar may get thick.
4. refrigerate the leftovers if any coz moong dal has the tendency to get spoiled fast.

Sambhar using the above recipe with uzhunnu vada.

Am sending this to Crazy For Potatoes hosted by Nivedhanams Sowmya and Pari of Cooking good food.

Am also sending this to  Made with Love Mondays and tosowmya  and Priya's event.
Am also sending this to Dish it out
Happy Cooking

Sunundalu-Urad Dal Ladoo

When i saw the blog event that invited bloggers to cook up a dish inspired by Andhra Pradesh,I was in a fix whether to make a Hyderabadi Biryani or the Kodi kura(Chicken Curry) that my mom usually makes.I guess that she got the recipe , May be from my  best friend R's mom(A telugu speaking family)?.And if you happen ask me if i speak Telugu,my response will be what Mammooka sez in the movie "Rajamanikyam" when somebody speaks to him in English(Try in "Pranchiyettan" slang BTW).I get nostalgic and flooded with the variety of emotions whenever mummy makes these ladoos,coz even though we are not in contact with R's family there are a lotta things that reminds us .The power of simple people.
The long boring conversations,Late night movie reviews(After watching a stupid movie and then ranting about it),The exams,The doc who had a small Teddy bear in her stethoscope and drooling over home cooked food while staying in the hostel and cursing the brats who got really good marks and so on.I was often cursed...Poor me....After all we were good friends in-spite of all the differences.

Sunundalu or Urad Dal Ladoo is one of the delicacy that i grew up eating.A really simple dish that could be whipped up in no time.Stocking this up is near impossible because it usually gets over on the day it is made.Hope u'l like making this simple dish as much as we loved eating this.

Ingredients

1. Urad Dal -1 Cups
2. Fine Powdered Sugar - ¾ th Cup (adjust)
3. Melted Ghee - 1/4 cup 
4. Cardamom Powder --- As required. I powdered along with the sugar.

Method

1. In a heavy bottomed pan on medium heat dry roast the Urad Dal till light golden brown in color.This step may take a little longer.Donot have the stove in high flame as it may result only in browning of the dal.
2. Allow the dal to be cooled completely and grind it to a very fine powder in a food processor.Seive the powder inorder to get a very fine powder which is highly recommended to make perfect sunundalus.
3. In a bowl add the powdered Dal,Finely powdered sugar and add the melted ghee little by little.
4. Mix inbetween inorder that you add the correct amount of ghee to make the mixture into ladoos.Too much ghee will ruin the taste according to R's mom.
5. Shape them into balls and refrigerate for sometime inorder to maintain the round(unda) shape.

Am sending this to the Walk Through Memory Lane event hosted by Sowmya and Gayathri  and also to 

Flavors of India: Andhra Pradesh event hosted by Sheelu Agarwal and Pallavi

Notes:

The favour of ghee really enhances the sweetness of these round beauties.So please add sugar according to your preference.But if you have a really BIG sweet tooth like me, 3/4 th of a cup is fine.
I use standard measuring cups for all my measurements.

Nutmeg Buttermilk Pound Cake

Sometimes it happens to me that my oven is calling out to me to bake something(No am not exaggerating .may be you can call it obsession or call me nuts or wateva ). Even though i don't very much get along with the creature sitting on my counter,(coz it takes too long a time to bake a simple cake), i miss the company of my dear oven when am in Chidambram. I dream about baking and creaming when i walk my way to the hostel from my lecture halls.And when am feeling bored during the duty sessions i used to count the days in the reverse order thinking that i need to hit to bake something as soon as i get home.Mind you its a long tedious journey to my place.

Last time as soon as i landed home i wanted to bake a cake (I seriously dont need a reason to bake)as we had to visit some lovely people from Canada,S aunty and S uncle.They had come to visit some places regarding aunt's Ph.D work and dad was given the assignment by his professor to accompany them.How can i go empty handed after  hearing all the lovely things that mom had to say about them. I have never in my life come across a person who is so enthusiastic like aunty and warm hearted like uncle.Trust me they are sweet.Period.

To cut the long story short i made this cake for them within 10 AM in the morning.(I reached home at 5:30 AM) after travelling for nearly ten hours by the BUS(India shining! Roads) I Didnt  frost the cake as it requires No Frills.Even though piping designs or frosting is my core competency area i prefer not to add to the bulge.The cake as such, is delicious as it is and on the particular day i made this, i was running outta stock of cream...wanted to make some Mascarpone(My Weakness) cheese frosting.(That's what usually happens whenever i make this cake).Hope you get to try this and this one is surely a keeper.I would have made this cake a zillion times and have never felt bored as such...usually i get bored to see repetitions...This one is an exception.

Ingredients

Adapted From here and here

Butter -1/2 cup
Powdered Sugar -1 Cup
Plain Flour-1 1/2 cup
Vanila Extract-1 tsp
Eggs-2 Medium sized
Baking Powder-1/2 tsp
Baking Soda-1/4 tsp
Buttermilk-100 ml
Salt-1/2 tsp
Nutmeg powder-1/2 tsp

Buttermilk Substitute

Add 1 tsp of white vinegar to 100 ml of milk  and let it stand for ten minutes.Buttermilk is ready.

Method

Preheat oven in 180 degrees for ten min

Grease and line the sides and the bottom of the baking pan.

Sift the flour baking powder, salt and baking soda thrice and keep it separately.

Using a blender cream the butter and the sugar.

Add an egg and vanila and beat it follwed by another egg and the nutmeg/cinnamon powder.

Keep the blender in low speed and add in some of the sifted flour followed by the buttermilk.

Repeat till buttermilk and flour are used up.

Pour the prepared batter in the baking pan or 9" cake tin and bake till the cake passes the skewer test.Mine took nearly an hour to bake.

Cool completely and serve.

The picture that i have posted does not in anyway do justice to the yummy cake.I not only donot have the fancy equipment for taking pic nor am good at food photography for that matter.

Nutmeg Buttermilk Pound Cake

Sometimes it happens to me that my oven is calling out to me to bake something(No am not exaggerating .may be you can call it obsession or call me nuts or wateva ). Even though i don't very much get along with the creature sitting on my counter,(coz it takes too long a time to bake a simple cake), i miss the company of my dear oven when am in Chidambram. I dream about baking and creaming when i walk my way to the hostel from my lecture halls.And when am feeling bored during the duty sessions i used to count the days in the reverse order thinking that i need to hit to bake something as soon as i get home.Mind you its a long tedious journey to my place.

Last time as soon as i landed home i wanted to bake a cake (I seriously dont need a reason to bake)as we had to visit some lovely people from Canada,S aunty and S uncle.They had come to visit some places regarding aunt's Ph.D work and dad was given the assignment by his professor to accompany them.How can i go empty handed after  hearing all the lovely things that mom had to say about them. I have never in my life come across a person who is so enthusiastic like aunty and warm hearted like uncle.Trust me they are sweet.Period.

To cut the long story short i made this cake for them within 10 AM in the morning.(I reached home at 5:30 AM) after travelling for nearly ten hours by the BUS(India shining! Roads) I Didnt  frost the cake as it requires No Frills.Even though piping designs or frosting is my core competency area i prefer not to add to the bulge.The cake as such, is delicious as it is and on the particular day i made this, i was running outta stock of cream...wanted to make some Mascarpone(My Weakness) cheese frosting.(That's what usually happens whenever i make this cake).Hope you get to try this and this one is surely a keeper.I would have made this cake a zillion times and have never felt bored as such...usually i get bored to see repetitions...This one is an exception.

Ingredients

Adapted From here and here

Butter -1/2 cup
Powdered Sugar -1 Cup
Plain Flour-1 1/2 cup
Vanila Extract-1 tsp
Eggs-2 Medium sized
Baking Powder-1/2 tsp
Baking Soda-1/4 tsp
Buttermilk-100 ml
Salt-1/2 tsp
Nutmeg powder-1/2 tsp

Buttermilk Substitute

Add 1 tsp of white vinegar to 100 ml of milk  and let it stand for ten minutes.Buttermilk is ready.

Method

Preheat oven in 180 degrees for ten min

Grease and line the sides and the bottom of the baking pan.

Sift the flour baking powder, salt and baking soda thrice and keep it separately.

Using a blender cream the butter and the sugar.

Add an egg and vanila and beat it follwed by another egg and the nutmeg/cinnamon powder.

Keep the blender in low speed and add in some of the sifted flour followed by the buttermilk.

Repeat till buttermilk and flour are used up.

Pour the prepared batter in the baking pan or 9" cake tin and bake till the cake passes the skewer test.Mine took nearly an hour to bake.

Cool completely and serve.

The picture that i have posted does not in anyway do justice to the yummy cake.I not only donot have the fancy equipment for taking pic nor am good at food photography for that matter.

Fish Curry-My all time favourite

After getting to hold fresh Aavoli(Pomfret) I could not make up my mind whether i need to stick on to making meen vevichathu or the varutharacha meen curry.When I was deeply engrossed in this useless thinking( I know which curry i would make) i heard my phone ringing. It was  FT, the conversation started like this.

FT :Entha molu paripaadi..

Me:Hey onnum illa...just prepping for lunch

FT: Innu ethu meen aano kittiye??(Small fishes means a normal day)

Me: Oh aavoli kitti...ennalum enthu cheyyanam ennu ariyilla...ethu curry undaakiyal kollam ennu thinking deeply..

Even before i finished completing the sentence pat came the reply...enthoot chodhyama idhu..??D nee nalla naadan thrissur styleil naalikerathinte paal pzhinju curry vacho (cook a fish curry in thrissur style --meaning cooking  the fish in coconut milk).My confusions cleared.

So that's how i happened to make this curry.Even though this is a drool worth delish curry i abstain from making this version of fish curry for the simple fact that it requires oodles of coconut milk...not that am a coconut milk hater but the health conscious me pops out suddenly and vanishes in no time of course. Mummy prefers this curry for the reason that this curry goes well with Idiyappam and Putu and she has been making this curry since i was a toddler..Enough of my stories.Hope you get to try this and let me know.

Ingredients

1.Fish- 1 Kg

2.Ginger- One inch Piece chopped

Garlic - 6-8 Pods

Green chilly - 2 slit lengthwise

Chilly powder-3 1/2 tsp(I use kashmiri chilly powder)

Turmeric powder-3/4 tsp

Water- One cup

Salt-As  required

Coconut milk extracted from one coconut (dilute it by adding 2 cups of water)

Kudam Puli- 3 pices 

3.Curry leaves -One handfull

Mustard seeds -1/2 tsp

Coconut oil -1 tbsp

Curry leaves -One handfull

Shallots- 10 

Method

1.Wash the kudam puli in water and soak it in 1/2 cup of water for ten minutes and keep it aside.I Prefer soaking in warm water as it speeds up the process

2.In a kadai(Chatti) add the items given under 2.add the water that was used for soaking the kudam puli too.

3.Now add the fish pieces.

4.Have the kadai in low flame and keep stirring occasionally to avoid the coconut milk from curdling.stirring should be done carefully so that the fish pieces don't break.

5.cover and cook till the gravy becomes semi thick.it should be neither watery nor thick.

6.Check for salt and puli.if you feel like the taste of kudam puli is tad too much remove one piece from the gravy.

7.In another pan add coconut oil and splutter mustard seeds curry leaves and shallots and saute this til the shallots becomes translucent.

8.Pour the seasoning in the curry and rotate the chatti so that the curry acquires the flavors from the seasoning too.

9.Serve with rice.

Notes

I use manchatti or earthenware  to make fish curry.I believe this enhances the flavour of the dish even though i don't know how and why.

If you find that the kashmiri chilly powder is not available u can substitute it with the normal chilly powder too but make sure that it does not make the curry too spicy.

I prefer using coconut oil as it really adds an extra bit to the dish.

Nice combo for idiyappams too.