Zucchini Carrot Thoran/ Zucchini Carrot Stir Fry Wth Coconut

Zucchini is one of the vegetables which do not have any taste by its own, you can say it is bland like eggplant; but if you add some spices to it will become delicious. Nowadays you can get 1lb zucchini for about 99cents, so I buy them more often. I also made a zucchini and carrot cupcake which was awesome. 

If you have zucchini in your refrigerator, then every dish you make will contain the zucchini, that is natural isn’t? May be it is pasta, paratha and even cupcakes. I am also doing like that. One thing I don’t like is zucchini in sambar or any other liquid curries. But I love it in dry curries or stir fries. I have plans for experimenting it as fritters, pancakes, bread etc. I will let you guys how it turned out. 

Even though it belongs to the squash family, it cannot be consumed raw like cucumber and requires some cooking to bring out flavor. I decided to make stir-fry/thoran with zucchini and carrot. Earlier I had made a zucchini and carrot cupcake which was awesome. So I decided to make stir-fry/thoran with this combination. It had a nice taste. If you ask any person from the Kerala, they will say, we make thoran with everything except some oozy liquidly vegetables like cucumber, other than that almost everything under the sun whether it is a legumes, root tubers, egg, meat, fish you name it we make throan/stir fry with all of them. 

With a touch of nutty coconut, cumin and a little bit of coconut oil, zucchini and carrot combo become an awesome side dish for our meal. I grated the carrot if you wish you can add them in small pieces. Here goes the easy recipe.

Print recipe from here

What you need

 Zucchini: 4 cup (Chopped into small pieces)
Carrot: ½ cup (Grated)
Onion: ¼ cup (Chopped finely)
Green chili: 1 no (I used Serrano pepper)
Red chilies: 2 no (halved into two pieces)
Cumin powder; 1 teaspoon
Grated coconut: ½ cup
Red chili powder: ¼ teaspoon
Urad dal: 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds; ½ teaspoon
Turmeric powder: ¼ teaspoon
Curry leaves: 2 sprig
Salt: ¾ teaspoon or to taste
Coconut oil: 1 tablespoon


How I made

Peel the skin of carrot and grate using box grater and set aside. Chop zucchini and onion into small pieces and set aside. 

In a skillet heat oil and add mustard seeds, red chilies and curry leaves. Once mustard starts popping add onion, green chilies  and fry for 3 minutes.

To this add grated carrot, chopped zucchini, turmeric and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and close the skillet with lid and let it cook for about 12 minutes in slow flame. Stir in between to prevent from sticking to the bottom.

Add coconut, cumin and red chili powder and remaining salt mix everything well. Cook for another 3 minutes to get the flavors infused into the zucchini and carrot. Add curry leaves  and mix once again.

Switch off the flame and enjoy with hot rice and curry.

Preparation time: 25 minutes
Yield: 6 serving
Verdict: Yummy
Will you make it again: yes I will

Easy Toast Bread

Everybody has some craze for shopping, either for clothes, shoes, perfumes etc; mine is shopping for baking stuff, whether it a bake ware, spice, or even small goodies like PAM with flour and oil. Every time I shop at Wal-Mart or any other store I will try to pass through the aisle where they keep baking stuff. My hubby says it is as if I am not visiting that aisle at Wal-Mart or any other store, the store will feel bad. Even if I end up buying no baking goods that day, still I love to do window shopping in baking section. 

One day as I was leafing through the King Arthur flour blog site, I saw this recipe for Toast bread and immediately liked it. I was planning to make toasty bread for a long time. If you like toast this is the bread that you are looking for. Before marriage, when I was staying alone my dinner was toasted bread with butter and jam. I was a lazy cook at that time, would only make lunch, my breakfast and dinner will be oatmeal and bread. Seriously I won’t get bored with bread and jam. 

For the Toast bread I did not want to use all purpose flour in the bread so used bread flour and whole wheat using 70% of former and 30% of later. This bread is easy to make, and it additionally requires only sour cream, sugar, yeast. I replaced sugar in the recipe with honey; fat content for the bread is from sour cream as it contains no oil or butter. If you don’t have sour cream in your hand, try with yogurt. Because of sour cream, this bread has a slight tangy taste which goes well with butter and jam. I had this bread with favorite pineapple jam. Try with peanut butter and jam too. Here goes the recipe. 

Print recipe from here

What you need

Unbleached Bread flour: 2 ¼ cup/323g
100% Whole wheat flour: 1 cup/ 148g
Instant yeast: 1 ½ teaspoon / 6g
Salt: 11/4 teaspoon/5g
Cold water: ¾ cup
Hot water: ¼ cup
Honey: 1 teaspoon
Sour cream: 1/3 cup (I used full fat)





How I made

In a bowl of kitchen aid stand mixer add salt, honey, hot and cold water and mix well using slow speed for about 1 minute (If you measure with instant thermometer temperature should be around 96 F). To this add sour cream and mix again for another 1 minute so that everything get combined well  and this will bring down the temperature to 76 F.

Add yeast and flour to the above mixture and combined well so it form shiny less sticky dough. 

Set aside the dough in ungreased bowl for 1 hour for doubling. 

Transfer the dough the well floured surface and gently degas and shape the dough into loaf. Place them in well oiled loaf pan and cover with oiled plastic wrap and set aside for second rising. It took about 45 minutes.

By the end of the second proofing preheat the oven to 375 F. Keep an empty broiler pan in the lower rack of oven. Add boiling hot water into the broiler pan when you are ready to bake the bread. (This will create steam, necessary to make the thick crust).

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the center become golden brown, and make a hollow sound when thumped in the bottom. If using instant thermometer, when it is done bread should register 185-190 F. Rotate the loaf pan at 180 degrees in between around 20 minutes of baking.
 

When the loaf is finished baking, remove them immediately from the pans and brush the top with butter cool on rack for at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours, before slicing and serving.

Enjoy as much as you wish. 

Preparation time: 3 hours
Yield: 1 loaf
Verdict: Yummy bread
Will you make it again: Yes I will .

This delicious bread is going to this week's yeast spotting


also to 12 days of Bloggie-mas:On eleventh day hosted by a moderate life 

Kuzhalappam/ Rice flour cannoli / Fried rice flour tubes: Version 2

Fried snacks are an important part of daily life everywhere in the world. It is hard to say no to them, they are deadly delicious, but not so healthy to our heart. Still we love to munch on them. In India for every festival, there will be a load of fried snack in the form of sweet or savory. Nowadays I am trying to avoid fried goodies as much as possible, still in the name of festival I make them (It is one way of satisfy my guilty mind that I am doing it because of it is part of festival). 

In Kerala (my home state) for Christmas fried goodies like achappam (Kerala style rosette cookies) which is sweet, and kuzhalapam (a savory) are made as evening tea munchies. However, I used to munch them all time of the day. Last Christmas also I made these two snacks; however this time I skipped coconut milk in kuzhalappam and made it in a slightly different way than the earlier version, and also added garlic to increase the flavor. My hubby suggested one more change that I need to make them spicier by adding black pepper or chili powder. I told him I will try it later. That is definitely deviating for the traditional way of making them.

This time I used a new achapam mold gifted by my younger sister-in-law when I had visited India. I did not add All Purpose Flour to recipe (like I did last year) and used only rice flour. I didn’t find any difference in taste by not using All Purpose Flour recipe, it turned out be crispy and delicious. For achappam recipe take a look at here. Updated post with step by step pictures. 

If you like garlicky oniony salty fried snack give a try to Kuzhalappam. Buy a cannoli mold, and then you can make both cannoli and Kuzhalappam. Here goes the recipe for Kuzhalappam.

One year ago: Ginger Bread  House

Check here for  Kuzhalappam version : 1

Print recipe from here

What you need

 Rice flour: 1 cup (I used store bought flour, slightly roasted)
Pearl onions: 3 no
Garlic clove: 1 no
Cumin seeds: ½ teaspoon
Black sesame seeds: 1 teaspoon
Salt: ¼ teaspoon or to taste
Water: ¼ cup+ 1 tablespoon
Oil for frying: 4 cup (I used canola oil)










How I made

Grind cumin seeds, garlic clove and pearl onions with a tablespoon of water into a coarse paste and set aside. 

In sauce pan heat ¼ cup water with salt bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling switch off the flame and set aside. 

In a medium bowl mix roasted rice flour, black sesame seeds, ground onion- garlic –cumin- seed mixture. To this gradually add salted water and form slightly thick dough. Knead well so that it becomes smooth not sticky dough ball. Cover the bowl with lid and set aside. 

Heat 4 cup oil in a thick bottomed pan, when it reaches 370 F. Divide the dough into small balls and try to roll out into thin circular disc as cookie dough. Since it is difficult to rolling out the dough with a rolling pin, I used a Ziploc cover and placed small amount of dough in between the fold and applied pressure to make thin sheet in between sheets.

Take a cannoli form and gradually the wrap the thin round of dough around the form; press the ends so that it has shape of tube. 

Slowly drop the cannoli form with dough into the hot oil fry them until they become golden brown color. It took about 5 minutes. Fry 2-3 tubes depending upon pan size. Make sure as dough tubes are fully drenched into the oil. Keep flipping sides until it’s become crispy and cooked well. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain excess oil in a paper towel. When they are cool enough to touch remove the cannoli forms from fried kuzhalappam.  Fry rest of them until you finish the entire dough. When completely cooled, store it an air tight container.

Enjoy....

Preparation time: 45 minutes
Yield: 12
Verdict: Tasty, yummy crispy snack
Will you make it again: Yes I will

I am sending this crispy treat to

  Hearth and soul Hop -vol; 28 and  12 days of bloggie mass: 7th day hosted by a moderate life.



Celebrating regional cuisine hosted by  Sujana

Koova Vilayichathu/ Koova Halwa/ Arrow Root Sweet Fudge

Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Hope Santa brings you all the gifts you dreamed for. Enjoy the holidays with fun and full of Joy. 

We celebrated Thiruvathria festival on December 22nd of this year. Usually it falls in the Malayalam month of Dhanu (December- January) of every year. Story behind the Thiruvathira festival is that on this day Kamadeva, the mythological God of love got killed by Lord Shiva’s Thirkannu. According to another version Thiruvathira is the birthday of Lord Siva read more from here. Women will fast during that day and skip rice and eat only wheat and root tubers. Mainly use plantains, tubers etc. 

Amma used to make Thiruvathria kali (rice flour and jaggery sweet) and Thiruvathira Puzhukku / Ettangadi which contains eight different vegetables with more tubers such as koorka (Chinese potatoes), Taro (chembu), Kaachil (Asiatic yam), Sweet potato, elephant yam (Telinga potatoes/Suran), Kappa(Tapioca), Red beans, Potatoes and raw banana , and garnished with coconut oil, cumin powder and curry leaves . However, this time I didn’t prepared Kali or Puzhukku. But I made Koova vilachiyathu or arrowroot halwa, as it was wish of my husband. It is also prepared during this day. 

Out of blue moon, he remembered about this Koova Vilayichathu prepared by his mother, even gave me the recipe of what he had tasted during his child hood. When I called my mother-in-law and asked her about the recipe, she told me exactly what my husband had described to me except the quantities required for the dish. This is dish is very easy to make and very tasty. 

Arrow root powder consists of following health benefits like as non-irritating, nutritious diet for people with certain chronic diseases, during recovery from an illness, or for certain internal irritations including bladder irritation. Due to its demulcent properties, arrowroot has been used as a treatment for various bowel complaints. If you wish read more from here.

Due to lot of sweet dishes in the festive season, I used barely enough jaggery to prepare this dish. Usual ratio will be for 1 cup of arrow root powder you need 1 cup of Jaggery. If you have sweet tooth try 1:1 ratio of arrowroot and jaggery. Koova vilayichathu contains arrowroot powder, jaggery with coconut scrapings, teaspoon of ghee, cashews and cardamom powder. While have a bite you can enjoy the crunchiness of coconut and cashew in a pillowy sweet arrowroot. Try this, as it only takes 10 minutes to make. If you want this dish to set like a halwa in shape you would have to wait for an hour for the dish to cool down, otherwise you can eat it warm we as soon as it is prepared. Here goes the recipe. 

One year ago : Plum cake /Rich Christmas fruit cake

Print recipe from here

What you need

 Koova/ Arrow root Flour: 1cup
Jaggery: ½ cup (Increase the amount if you need more sweetness)
Grated coconut: ¼ cup
Cardamom: 2no
Cashew nuts: 10 no
Ghee/Clarified butter: 2 1/2 teaspoon
Water: 1 3/4 cup






How I made

In a small skillet heat 1 teaspoon of ghee and add cashew nuts and fry them until they become golden brown. It takes about 1 minutes and set aside. 

Grease a 5 inch cake pan or thick plate with ½ teaspoon of ghee and set aside.

In a small pan and ¼ cup of water and Jaggery bring it to a boil. Remove from the fire and strain for impurities and set aside. 

In medium sauce pan add arrowroot powder and rest of water and mix everything, so that there is no lumps remain and only uniform runny batter. Heat the watery arrow root batter for 5 minutes with continuous stirring in between once it starts forms jelly like consistency add jaggery water and cook again until it thickens it took about 10 minutes.

When the mixture starts getting thicker and leaves the sides of pan, take and pour it into greased cake pan or thali. Arrange the top of halwa with ghee fried cashew nuts and set aside. 

Leave it for 1 hour, and when it cooled, cut it into desired shapes using a buttered knife so that it won’t stick to the knife.

Enjoy....

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Yield: 10 pieces
Verdict: Yummy
Will you make it again: Yes

Christmas Fruitcake: Version Two

When I was young, my version of Christmas was huge colorful stars, carols and Christmas fruit cake. We got cakes from our neighbors, however amma never baked one. If she was here today, she would have been amazed by my baking experiments. Bakeries are filled with colored fondant cakes which are deadly delicious and sweet one, and after having eaten neighbor’s cakes, we will seek some more, and appa will finally buy from the bakeries.

In case of Fruitcakes either you love it or you hate it there is nothing in between. We are in the first type of cake lovers. Just the other day when I was talking to my friend Andrea, and told her that we had gone to Specs and bought some rum and brandy for making the cake, she was enthusiastic to know the name of rum and brandy. She also asked me which cake was I planning to make, I told her I am making a fruit cake, and can I give you one. Her answer was sudden “No”, surprise me with anything else but not fruit cake. I have decided to make a chocolate rum raisin cake for her, but as she has gone to see her family and is out of town, I will make it for her at a later date.

Last year I made a traditional fruit cake, but this time I don’t want to make caramel as my little one will be around in kitchen all the time pulling and pushing everything she can get her hands on. So I made a cake without Caramel, however I didn’t see any taste difference in both version. I used dry fruits like, cranberries, apricot, figs, dates, raisins and some tutti fruiti (nothing but colored papaya pieces). I had bought Figs thinking of making biscotti, but ended up using it in fruitcake; you don’t normally encounter Figs in a fruit cake. 

I love to collect spices, but get to use only a small part of my collection. Hence for the fruit cake I used almost all my spice collection. I didn’t have any candid peels in hand, so skipped that part. I soaked the dry fruits in brandy for 72 hours, if you soak for more time, you will get more flavors. Normally I will drain the dry fruits while adding to dough, this time, my hubby told me, why you are not using the fruit soaked brandy, use it in cake. If you don’t want to use alcohol, use orange juice, surely the flavor will differ slightly, still it will taste good. This time I skipped adding cashew nuts and used a combination of hazelnut and blanched almond. I smeared the nuts in almond extract to make them more flavorful. 

While looking at Dundee Christmas cake in the internet, I was inspired by that idea of topping the cake with almonds. I topped the fruitcake with both hazelnut and blanched toasted almond in concentric alternating circle. Though making this cake is a 2 hours procedure, starting from assembling all ingredients, separating egg whites and yolk and baking them in the oven, it is worth all the effort. If you are fan of fruitcake, try this one sure you will be amazed by its flavor and taste. Here goes the recipe.

Print recipe from here

For first version of Fruit cake take a look at here

What you need

Soaking
Raisins: 1/2 cup
Dried Cranberries: 1/2 cup
Dates: 1/2 cup (11no chopped finely)
Dry apricot: 1/2 cup (9 no chopped finely)
Dried Figs: ½ cup (6 no remove the top and chopped finely)
Tutti Fruti: 1/2 cup/112g ( Dried and colored  papaya  pieces )
Brandy /Rum: 1 ½ cup ( I used Brandy, Christian brothers and Conqueror Gold Spanish Brandy )

Nuts smeared with almond extract
Hazelnut (Chopped finely): ¼ cup
Almond (Chopped finely): ¼ cup
Almond extract: 1/8 tsp

Batter
Cake flour : 2 cup/313g
Butter : 14 Tablespoon (1 1/2 sticks)
Granulated sugar: 1 1/3 cup
Salt : 1/2 teaspoon
Egg yolk: 4 at room temperature
Egg whites: 4 at room temperature
Baking powder: 11/4 teaspoon
Orange juice: 1 cup
Vanilla extract: 1teaspoon

Spices
Caraway Seeds: 1 teaspoon (powdered)
Ground nutmeg: 1 teaspoon
Ground Cinnamon: 1 teaspoon
Ground cloves: 1/2 teaspoon
Ground cardamom: ½ teaspoon
Ground ginger: 1/2 teaspoon


For Topping
Hazelnut: 1/3 cup/44g
Blanched Almonds: 1/2 cup/ 53g

How I made:

Chop all the dry fruits including nuts into small pieces and soak them in brandy for at least one day advance. I soaked for them form 72 hours. Smear the nuts with almond essence and keep it aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottom of a 9 inch cake pan and 5-inch loaf dish. Line the bottom with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pan.

Sift together cake flour, salt, baking powder and spice powder in a bowl and keep aside.

Separate egg whites and yolk. In a bowl beat egg whites using a hand mixer until you get white peaks and keep aside.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed, until everything mix well and incorporated. Add egg yolk one at a time to sugar butter mixture and mix well. Then add vanilla extract and orange juice mix everything and combined well. Add flour-salt-baking-spice powder mix and soaked fruits in small quantities and incorporate everything. Scrape down the sides of bowl once at twice. And fold in fruits and nuts into the batter. Stop the mixer and fold egg whites gently until no white streaks visible.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smoothen the tops with a spatula.  Top  the batter with blanched almonds and hazelnuts in concentric  pattern alternatively. Bake for 1 hour or until skewer comes out clean.Keep a pan full of water in the oven when baking the cake (replace water if needed to keep it topped up).

Cool the cake in pan for 15 minutes and later invert them and cool completely for 45 minutes. Keep cake one or two days before serving.

Enjoy,

Preparation time: Soaking 72 hours + 2 hour
Yield: 15 serving
Verdict; Yummy
Will you make it again: yes I will

I am sending this delicious cake to

Twelve days of Bloggie-mass; 4th day hosted by a moderate life
Bakeomania by Suma

Its the time to Jingle again at Asan khana.

Baked Sweet Plantains/ Al horno Maduros

Baked Sweet plantains/ Al horno maduros was a result of my hubby’s quest and involvement as a food critic in the blog. As I mentioned earlier, he is my food critic. Nowadays whenever he goes out to lunch with friends from his office, or sees something in the recipe columns of various newspapers, his interest get perked and tries to find out the name of dish he likes or wants to try. Thus a few evenings ago, after coming home, he asked me do you know how to bake sweet plantains or have you heard about Tres leches (Three milk) cake? Any idea, or search in Google and see how you can make. I am enthusiastic and would search the internet and tell him how it is made and its calorie content etc. 

I told him, I have heard about Tres leches (Three milk) cake, but afraid of the calories, as it contains heavy cream, egg, condensed milk, half and half and finally whipped cream. He would eat just a couple of pieces and for that I need to make entire small pan and eat it all by myself. But I did tell him that I can make plátanos maduros 

Plátanos maduros means sweet fried plantains in Spanish. It is one of the staple foods of Latin American cuisine. I love anything with plantains, whether it is made with raw, ripe or riper and always look out for new recipes to use them. Our shopping bag always contain plantains, usually buy in raw (green) form and allow them to ripe on the kitchen counter. Amma used to make after school snack with ripe plantains by adding to sweetened rice flakes. 

Traditionally plátanos maduros is made by diagonally cut plantains pieces fried in oil and served as sides to rice and meat or as an appetizer. I love fried food, but nowadays experiment with baking instead of frying. Some food turns up good even when baked, but still it can’t beat the original fried taste. I thought if I bake them it uses less oil and baking of sweet plantains will caramelize the sugar content and enhance the taste. In order to increase the flavor I added some cinnamon sugar and baked the plantains. They turned out to very tasty; and I got another recipe to use my favorite plantains. Try it some time, if want you can serve them with ice cream, cream cheese. I like them without any toppings. Here goes the recipe.

One year ago: Kuzhalappam/ Fried rice flour tubes

Print recipe from here

What you need

Plantains: 2 no (more ripe is good)
Cinnamon: 1 teaspoon
Sugar: 1 teaspoon
Canola oil for spraying










How I made

Peel and remove the skin of plantains and cut the plantains into diagonal pieces and set aside. From one plantain I was able to get 10 pieces.

Pre heat oven to 375 F.

In a baking sheet lined with nonstick aluminum foil spray canola oil and place the plantains with cut side up. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the top. 

Bake the plantains for about 25 minutes or until the sides turned slight browned. Flip them after 15 minutes in between to get uniform caramelization. 

Enjoy with ice cream or cream cheese or as such.

Preparation time; 30 minutes
Yield; 3 serving
Verdict: Tasty
Will you make it again; yes I will

Vada Kootu Curry/ Black Gram Lentil Balls in Spicy Coconut Milk Stew: Thiruvananthapuram special

This curry is from my hometown Thiruvanthapuram. It is considered to be a non-vegetarian tasting veggie dish for marriage Sadya/feast. Normally kootu curry is made with Chena/ Elephant yam, kaya/ raw banana and some type of lentils, usually chana dal. In this curry no souring agent is used only coconut and green chili and cumin seeds are used. As I mentioned earlier, every curries has regional differences, even vary from home to home.

Vada kootu curry can only be seen in Thiruvanthapuram area, and is made with urad dal/ black gram lentil and coconut milk. First time I tasted it was when one of neighbors made it for us. Following which Amma asked our neighbor to make vada kootu curry in our house, so that she can learn, she obliged my mom’s request and made it again. According to me best description for this dish is that it is black gram/ urad dal balls soaked in perfection with spicy coconut milk, potato stew. I was planning to make it for an unusually long time. The process for making this dish requires soaking of urad dal for 3-4 hours before grinding. Every morning, I would think I have to soak urud dal in water, but as usual I would forget, only to remember in the afternoon. Yesterday I was able to soak them and make this delicious curry. 

While frying the urad dal balls I heard some sneaking and breaking noises from the pan, then I realized that it is from cracking of some urad dal balls, so make sure to flip them more often while frying. 

Vada kootu curry is the only curry that uses garam masala in sadhya menu. In order to make it as authentic as possible, I freshly ground Kerala style garam masala. If you read Raghavan Iyer’s 660 curries, you can see that there are lot of differences in garam masala from every state. It is not like what you get from a packet of gram masala from store shelf. Not only gram masala, but every masala used in Indian cooking is stamp printed to different states individuality. The spiciest being Rajasthan’s garam masala and least one from West Bengal’s. More details will be in other post. In Kerala, garam masala is usually used in non-vegetarian curries, biriyani and few vegetarian curries. Since it is the spice land of India, it has almost all the spices except chili and black pepper corns. If you wish you can add them while making the garam masala.

I cooked potato pieces in a tablespoon of coconut milk and then mixed them into fried onion- ginger garlic- chili- mixture with garam masala, coriander powder and chili powder. Then into this spicy gravy, I added fried urad dal balls and continued cooking for few minutes, so that urad balls are dunked in the spicy mixture and resulting in a thick curry. This curry is good with rice, chapathi and bread. It has spiciness from green chili and red chili powder and sweetness of coconut milk also creaminess of potato. If you have some time, try this, sure it will win your taste buds. 

After having this curry my hubby asked me why all of a sudden you made this curry. Why don’t you make it earlier, it tastes great. I told him, I know, but only right time came today just like a philosopher. Here goes the recipe.

One year ago:  Rava moong dal upma/Semolina Green gram upma

Print recipe from here 

What you need

For Urad dal balls
Uzhunnu parippu / Urad dal/Black gram/Black matpe beans: ½ cup
Black pepper: 1/8 teaspoon
Salt: ½ teaspoon
Water: 3cup+ ¼ cup
Canola oil: 4 cups (for frying)

For sauce
Onion: 1 1/3 cup (Chopped finely)
Potato: 1 ½ cup (Chopped into small cubes)
Ginger: 1 inch piece
Garlic: 3 cloves
Green chili: 1 no (I used Serrano pepper)
Coriander powder: ¼ teaspoon
Turmeric powder: ¼ teaspoon
Garam masala: ¾ teaspoon (recipe given below)
Chili powder: ½ teaspoon
Salt: 3/4 teaspoon (or to taste)
Coconut milk: ½ cup + 1 tablespoon
Curry leaves: 1 sprig
Olive oil: 1 tablespoon (use coconut oil for authentic taste)
Water: 3 cup

For seasoning
Urad dal/ Black gram: 1 teaspoon
Mustard seeds: ½ teaspoon
Red chilies: 2 no (halved into two)
Coconut oil: 1 tablespoon


For garam masala (It yields: 2 tablespoon)

Cinnamon sticks; 2no (2 inches)
Cardamom: 8 no
Cloves; 8 no
Nutmeg: 1/8th of one
Bay leaves; 1 no
Fennel seeds: 1 teaspoon
Caraway seeds: 1 teaspoon
Star anise: 1 no
Mace: 1 teaspoon


How I made

Soak urad dal/black gram in 3 cup water for 3-4 hours. After 3 hours wash and drain them using a colander and grind with whole black pepper, salt and 1/4cup water form a fine paste. Set aside. 

Heat oil in a thick bottom pan when it reaches 365 F. Gradually drop a small golf sized dough into the oil. Cook them until they become light brown it takes about 6 minutes for each batch. Make sure to flip the urad dal balls frequently to prevent cracking. You will be able to cook 5 -6 balls in a batch depending upon your pan. Once they light brown remove them from oil and drain in kitchen tissue to remove excess oil. Continue the process until you finish the entire dough. Set aside. 

In mean time in a sauce pot cook the potato with 2 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of oil until they become soft not mushy. It took about 20 minutes, switch off the flame and set aside. 

Dry roast the ingredients for garam masala for 1 minute or until they release wonderful aroma. Once it cooled grind them into fine powder, it yield about 2 tablespoons. Set aside. 

Heat oil in medium skillet or sauce pot and add onion and green chili and fry them until onion become translucent or it changes color it takes about 6 minutes. To this add ginger garlic paste and fry for another 2 minutes. Then add turmeric, coriander, chili powder, salt and garam masala powder fry for another 2 minutes. To this add cooked potato along with coconut milk water. Bring it to boil and coconut milk and rest of water to form gravy again boil the gravy for 2 minutes. To this add fried urad dal balls and let cook for another minute and add curry leaves and switch off the flame. 

In a small pan heat coconut oil and add mustard seeds, urad dal and halved red chilies once mustard seeds starts spluttering remove from the fire and add to cooked urad dal potato coconut milk gravy.

Enjoy with hot rice, chapathi, bread.

Preparation time: Soaking Dal 3 hours, grinding and frying 35 minutes + 38 minutes
Yield: 4 serving
Verdict: Tasty
Will you make it again: Yes I will

This delicious curry is going to Vegetarian foodie Fridays#31 hosted by Melodie.

My legume love affair: MLLA: 30 hosted by  Priya  originally started by Susan.
 

Dates Mascarpone Olive Oil Anise Cookies

We bought a big box of dates a month ago. My original plan was to make some mamoul, however it did not happen and dates were sitting in the pantry. My hubby when ever goes into the pantry will say you see the box of dates is here, try it and I will be happy if it is eaten and not thrown into the garbage after some time. As usual I would nod my head and say I am going to make something with them. Last week I went out to shop at Whole Foods, a specialty store; I love to shop there, and the aim was to find whole white wheat flour. 

Yes I did finally buy them. Now I can experiment with white whole wheat flour. While leaving the store my little one started crying, so in order to change her attention I took a pamphlet of Whole Foods and gave it to her. Poor girl (perhaps irritated by our shopping) after getting into car stopped crying and put aside the pamphlet and started sleeping. When I glanced through the pamphlet I saw a recipe which I liked and decided to give it a try. It was written as savory crackers. My hubby also immediately agreed on it as it is savory one. However one thing I didn’t like way was about using 3 eggs. I was not in a mood to use eggs and I had some homemade mascarpone that needed to be used. 

I had read that anise and dates goes well, so they both got a place in cookie ingredients, and then came olive oil, orange zest and black pepper. It made very tasty cookies with a sweet taste (without any added sugar), a tinge of black pepper, goodness of mascarpone along with aroma of anise. Yes it is keeper recipe, and as it is Christmas time; I decided to make star shaped cookies. This cookie is sweet on its own, and if you still need sugary cookies, you can add some extra sugar. Here goes the recipe. 

One year ago: chegodilu/ Deep fried rice flour rings

Print recipe from here

What you need

All purpose flour: 1 cup (I used unbleached flour)
Chopped dates: ½ cup
Black pepper: ¼ teaspoon
Baking powder: 1/8 teaspoon
Anise seed: ¼ teaspoon
Orange zest: 1 teaspoon (Zest of one orange)
Mascarpone cheese: 1/5 cup (I used homemade)
Olive oil: 1/5 cup
Water: ¼ cup
Milk: 2 tablespoon






How I made

Preheat oven to 350F. Line  two baking   tray or cookie sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.

Pulse ½ cup flour with dates in food processor or mixer grinder until dates gets finely chopped, transfer to a large bowl. 

Stir in remaining flour, orange zest, salt, pepper and baking powder. Mix in mascarpone cheese and oil into the center and stir until everything get incorporated. It resembles bread crumbs, to this gradually add water and knead to form soft dough. 

Wrap the dough with cling wrap and set aside in refrigerator for about 30 minutes. 

After 30 minutes, knead dough once again and transfer to work bench and flatten them using a roller. Found this part was sticky so used a Ziploc bag and pressed a small ball of dough in between them using a roller to form a thin sheet of ¼ inch thickness. 

Cut them using star shaped cookie cutter and arranged on prepared baking sheet. Brush the top of cookies with milk and bake for about 10-15 minutes or until they become golden brown. 

Remove from the baking sheets and set aside to cool in cooling rack. Once it cooled, store it in airtight container.  Since cookies were  finished within  two days  I don't know the shelf life of them.

Preparation time: 45 minutes
Yield: 25 cookies
Verdict: Addictive
Will you make it again: yes I will

This delicious cookies going to

December cook off recipes by  Kitchen Corners

It is time to Jingle again hosted by  Assankhana

Celebrate sweets;Sugarless event hosted by  Sara's corner  originally started by Nivedita.