Anitha Jayaraman

Aadi peruku was last saturday being Aadi 18th. My MIL wanted me to prepare variety rice(Kalandha saadham) for the goddess Amman. I recollect that lunch purposefully prepared with variety rice is something that we do for Poomudichal ceremonies. It looks like we got to do the same for Amman as she is pregnant -:) On Aadi pooram (Aadi 20th), Amman wears the glass bangles as its her Seemandham/Valakaapu that day.

Enough of intro, I made Mint rice(Pudhina), Lemon rice, Seasoned curd rice(a big deal huh!) and Capsicum usili.

Pudhina chutney:

I made the chutney to dual serve my purpose. Either mix with rice or eat with idly/dosa.

• Pluck the mint leaves from the bunches(2) and keep them washed ready.
• In a pan, pour some oil and fry lentils – Urad and Chenna dhal. This is going to give the little crunchy taste.
• Add 4 green chillies and 2 red chillies while frying.
• Add the leaves and heat them with the fried items. The leaves will contract soon.
• Cool down the mixture before adding to the Mixie.
• To that add defrosted coconut pieces(4-5) , a tamrind piece(previously soakad) and salt.
• Grind it to soft by adding water little by little. Consistency is left to you.
• You can season the chtuney with oil on low flame.
• You can either mix with rice or use this a side-dish for Idly dosa.

Lemon rice:

I know this does not need instructions.

• Season mustard seeds, Urad, Chenna dhal, groundnuts, curry leaves & cut green chillies. Fry them.
• To this add turmeric powder, salt and lemon syrup. Switch off the flame in a bit.

Seasoned curd rice:

Everyone eats curd rice except me! So I still make it. I seasoned mustard seeds, Urad, Chenna dhal, green chillies and  added to the curd mixed rice.

Capsicum Usili:

You can make usili with any vegeatble(mostly). I used bell peppers as I dont like to eat it in any other form

• Soak chenna dhaal – 1 cup for few hours.
• Now grind that in a mixe with red chillies, salt and asafoetedia powder.
• Take care while grinding – do not add water. It should be dry and crunchy and not soft.
• Take a Idly vessel and steam the mixture keeping small quantities in each area of the Idly plate.
• On a pan, pour some oil and slightly fry the steamed pieces to go more hard.
• Let it cool down. Now break the big pieces to small quantities.
• Cut the capsicum into small pieces.
• Season oil with mustard seeds and add the cut vegetables and fry them for a while.
• Add the Chenna dhal pieces to it. Fry it to dry.

I have done this before but this time it turned out hard. You really have to watch out the water quantity. My project went little longer and I have to give Kudos to Anush who did most of the stirring part -:)

• Fry 1 cup of Besan flour and keep it ready. Keep 1 cup of ghee ready.
• Take 2 cups of sugar and add very little water(spoons) and make a strong sugar syrup.
• Add the flour to the syrup slowly – little by little. While adding, you got to stir so that it does not get hardened here and there.
• While adding the flour, also add the ghee little by little and continue stirring.
• Stirring goes on until you get the mixture to a semi-solid consistency(like halwa)
• Keep a plate ready applied with ghee throughout the surface and sides.
• Drop the mixture to the plate, flatten it and make squares immediately.
• Once it cools down, you will get the squares.

My mom makes spicy rasam that really requires a dumb rasam for digestion -:)  It all depends of the home made rasam powder ingredients. Anyway the recipe I am posting here is one of the rasams that I make-

• Season mustard seeds, curry leaves, red chillies in oil.
• Add cut tomatoes to it & fry them very well. I skip tomatoes if I want to make it spicy.
• Add tamarind water to it. 4-5 cups not really concentrated.
• Add salt to it and let it boil.
• Grind 5-6 garlic, little ginger, coriander leaves, curry leaves in a mixie and add it to the boiling mixture.
• Add rasam powder 2 spoons to it when it boils with bubbles.

Aviyal has a traditional taste – none can deny it! I had a neighbour who was a Palaghat Brahmin & was very close to our family. They have relocated to another part of Chennai now. I got used to Aviyal at their home. My mom refuses to cook it often because of the different vegetables that is required in small quantities at the same time. After coming here, I feel Aviyal is jujupee matter We have our cut frozen vegetables, cut drumsticks frozen and what not.

• This time I used cut vegetables – beans, carrot, peas, corn and also added one plantain cut into vertical pieces and 2 potatoes cut into cubes.
• All of these vegetables need to be boiled in water with salt, turmeric powder and water.
• Take 5-6 green chillies and coconut pieces(half of a coconut) and grind them in a mixie. I also added cumin seeds to it. Grind it to a paste or precipitate.
• Heat coconut oil and add curry leaves to it.
• Add the grinded items to it and cook to get rid of the raw taste of coconut.
• To this mixture, add the boiled vegetables and cook for a while.
• Now add one full cup of curd & mix well.
• You got to stop cooking by the time you see the mixture boiling too much.

The second picture is when I made the same with mixed veggie, drumsticks and Winter Melon(White pumpkin)

I learnt this from my friend Bhuvana. Here goes her instructions-

• Using 2 spoons of oil, season the mustard seeds and asafoetedia powder.
• Highly concentrated tamarind water is required. Take 3-4 glasses and pour it to the seasoned items.
• Add full garlic (30-35 counts) to the mixture.
• Add turmeric powder to it.
• Add salt (as required)
• Let it boil.

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In another pan,

• Pour 2 spoons oil and add the following to it
• Toor dhal (4 tsp)
• Urad dhal (5 tsp)
• Whole pepper (3 tsp)
• Red chilli (5- 10 counts)
• Fry everything to golden brown.
• Add a bunch (medium quantity) of curry leaves and grind everything in a mixie.

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Add this mixed gravy to the other vessel in which the tamarind water is boiling. The complete mixture has to boil again for a while until you get the thick – semi solid consistency.

You can have it with Idly, dosa and also as a side dish to curd rice. I mix it with rice and eat it.

There is nothing really difficult to learn here. I had invited a newly wed couple for dinner. Getting home after work and preparing special food is not that easy. So I decided to try the below-

• Gulab Jamun – MTR  – Follow instructions from the pack.

• Rava Idli – Gits – Follow instructions from the pack again but used curd for mixing which MTR would instruct but not Gits. Use coriander cut leaves for  flavor.

• Medhu Vada – I used a ready made flour; think its either of the above brands; this requires extra work of soaking & adding finely cut onions, green chillies, curry leaves & pepper. I missed the consistency and hence the irregular shapes.

• Ven Pongal – I usually use a lot of ghee while cooking this and end up hating when it comes to eat. This time I did it little different which could be the ideal way. I fried the Moong Dhal(lentil) using little ghee and then cooked with rice in a pressure pan/cooker. Fried the pepper, cumin seeds, cashew, ginger pieces, green chillies, curry leaves using little ghee and then added to the cooked food. Rice & Moong Dhal ratio is 2 : 1.

• Sambar – Tasty sambar requires patience while cooking. I learnt this over the time. I made sambar using brinjal(eggplant) and drumsticks(frozen). Toor dhal got to be cooked with water in ratio 1:2  using a small pressure cooker. Prepare some tamrind water in a separate bowl. The concentration will compensate with the amount of tomatoes you are going to use. The quantity will determine your volume of sambar. I use mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, curry leaves, green chillies for seasoning. Fry finely cut onions in a vessel using the same oil. Add tomatoes and then the cut vegetables to it. Deep fry them and then add the tamrind water to it. Add Sambar powder, salt & asafoetedia powder to it. Let it boil well, then add the dhal and boil again. Use coriander cut leaves for  flavor

I use a Pressure Pan cooker to get it tasty, you can also use an Electric Rice cooker if you want.

• Cut onions into small pieces.
• Grind ginger, garlic & green chillies(optional) to a paste in a mixer.
• Heat some oil in your pressure pan. Add very small quantities of masala items to it – bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black pepper & fennel seeds.
• Once they are fried, add the onions & then the mixed paste. Fry these until they get rid off the raw smell.
• Add the mixed vegetables of your choice. I use the readily available – cut vegetables – green beans, carrots, peas, corn & sometimes Lima beans.
• You can also cut potatoes and add to it. I skip to get rid of the sweet taste.
• To this add kuzhambu podi(or chilli powder) and salt. Add some water to get boiled. Count this water to be 1 cup.
• To this you can also add garam masala powder / chat masala powder for flavor.
• Once its boiled well, add the right quantity of water minus 1 cup. For e.g. 2 cups of rice requires 4 cups of water but we require only 3 cups.
• Add Basmati rice to the mixture. In my e.g. its 2 cups.
• Optional – add mint leaves or dried methi leaves for flavor.
• Close the pressure pan and cook it to 2 whistles at least.
• Once done, wait for sometime & manually release the pressure from the cooker.

Note – Basmati rice requires lesser water for cooking. To get the rice without sticking to each other, you got to follow the minus 1 cup measure of water. I used cucumber raitha as side dish. You can use onion raitha or whatever.

Though very simple, It took a while for me to cook this tasty.

• Cut Onions & Tomatoes into tiny little pieces. Large pieces doesn’t get fried good.
• Using oil, fry some chenna dhal & urad dhal. Add red chillies to them.
• To that, add onions, tomatoes & fry them to death.
• Add some salt to the mixture so that it gets fried faster.
• Grind them in a mixie. Add more salt to get the right taste.
• You can season them using oil, mustard seeds in order to preserve it for more than a day.

I learnt this recently from Pavithra’s mother-in-law. It came out very delicious and can be used as a substitute to our regular adai.

• One measure of boiled rice(or Idly rice), One measure of raw rice, 1/2 measure of Chenna dhal, 1/2 measure of Toor dhal, 1/4 measure of Urad dhal, 1/4 measure of Moong dhal(Paasi parupu), 1/4 measure of Green grams(Pachai parupu) – the mixture needs to be washed and soaked in water atleast for 2 hours. Add 10 red chillies to it while soaking. It will float anyways
• Use a grinder to grind it to soft and little watery like our dosa/idly batter.
• While grinding, add turmeric, salt, ginger pieces, curry leaves & asafotedia powder(perungayam).

Once the batter is ready for use, add finely cut onions, coriander leaves and make think adais.

• Vaazha poo – peeled, the nerve(the white stick) removed & cut into tiny pieces
• Chenna Dhal soaked for at least 2 hrs and grind using mixer. Do not deep grind it – it needs to be little granular. Do not use water while grinding. The water soaked within the lentils will anyhow help you.
• Onions – cut into very small pieces.
• Green chillies, Curry leaves, Ginger, Garlic, Coriander leaves  – grind together using mixer
• Mix all of the above and add salt to it.
• Its ready now for shooting(vada sudradhu

Note – if the mixture is too dry, add very little water while shooting. if the mixture is too moist, forget your shapes & get the best round and oval balls out of it.

The same done without vaazhapoo is Masalvadai -:)

Isn’t cooking an interesting art? I realized it only after my wedding. Necessity is the mother of invention – that’s how I really invented my realization -:) Anyways I don’t have great recipes to post, some usual stuff & sometimes interesting stuff. Most of my cooking comes from moms(both side) and of course other friends and relatives. Deepa’s blog that you will find on my links was an inspiration to me.

Some of them will be express published for my friends. You will see them poorly written down with no formatting or pictures. Please bear with me for a while. Moreover I am poor at quantifying – I will slowly start using quantities.