Homemade Butter

Milk and milk products have high nutritious value when consumed in right quantities. While many of us would like to have fat free milk and curds, we should not forget that our children need to get some amount of fat in their diet. We can choose a half toned milk that will fulfill the needs of the entire family. Half toned milk has around 4% fat and we can easily prepare butter at home by removing the cream from this milk. I have been preparing butter at home for the past 27 years. It is not very difficult or time consuming.

Some like to collect cream from curds. I have found that cream collected from milk gives butter that is sweet. Fresh cream collected from milk can also be used in cooking.

Method

• Boil 1/2 litre milk in the MW for 3 minutes. Allow to cool well.

• Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours. A thick layer of cream will be formed at the top.

Cream floating on the top of refrigerated milk

• Remove the cream carefully with a slotted ladle and collect it in a wondelier bowl and store in the chill tray in the fridge.. Use the cream free milk for your beverages or for setting curds.

Cream collected in the wondelier bowl

• Collect cream in the same bowl for a week. Add a teaspoon of curd a leave for a few hours.
• Add 1/2 cup plain water, seal the bowl well and shake well for 3 minutes.
• You will see the butter floating in the bowl. Add some more water and remove the butter with wet hands. You can wash the butter with some more water if required.

Home made butter ready to use as you please

We can use this butter for preparing cakes and savouries. For festivals like Srijayanthi home made butter is best. It gives the bhakshanams gives them a distinct flavour. We can boil the butter and prepare ghee. The smell and flavour of home made ghee is heavenly.

Sweet gesture by fellow bloggers! :)

All my blogger friends must be wondering where this mother daughter duo has disappeared! Lakshmi is very busy with her work. She just about manages to cook something .

Around a year back I started learning computers so that I could assist my hubby in his accounts outsourcing. As I was exploring the internet, I felt I too should have my own space in the internet. Since cooking has always been a passion for us, lakshmi said that we should start a cookery blog. That’s how Yumblog was born!

Now my hubby has taken up so many assginments and almost 75% of the outsourcing work is mine. I just cannot sit in front of the computer after working for 5 to 6 hours. At the back of my mind there is always this feeling that I am missing something. Now we are planning to post just one or 2 recipes a week, on wednesday and sunday. I hope I will be able to keep up this promise.

There are a few awards we received some time back. I am really sorry for taking such a long time to publish this sweet gesture by my blogger friends.

My very dear friend Asha of Foodies Hope has given me Forever Friends Award!! Thankyou Asha dear!

I would like to pass on the Forever Friends Award to Asha, Siri, Srivalli, Bharathy, Raaga and Dhivya who kept in touch with me through Email or chatting, though I was not blogging regularly!

And there is this loving girl who likes to give away all the awards to me. I am talking about Siri ofcourse! She thinks my blog is excellent! Thanks a ton Siri dear.

With so many well wishers around the blogosphere, awards are never ending! My daughter lakshmi said this sweet person joined the bloggers meet at chennai for a few minutes with a hope of meeting me in person! I too am looking forward to meeting you Bharathy dear! A nice award from a nice girl! :))

My next post will be a simple method to prepare butter at home using a tupperware container.

Potato baked with peas filling

I prepared this dish for Dhivya’s potato event but could not post on time. It is good snack for children.

Ingredients

• Large size potato - 3 nos
• Green peas - 1 cup
• Onion - 1
• Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 teaspoon (optional)
• Garam masala powder - 1 teaspoon
• Green chillies - 2 nos
• Coriander leaves - 3 twigs
• Tomato puree - 2 tablespoons
• Oil- 1 tablespoon
• Hing - 1/4 teaspoon
• Salt - to taste
• Grated cheese - 3 table spoons (or cheese singles - 3 pieces)

Method

1. Wash the potatoes well and pressure cook. Peel and cut into two length wise.
2. Scoop out the center. Now the potato halves will look like shallow cups.
3. MW the peas with 1 tablespoon water and hing for 4 minutes.
4. Finely chop the onions, green chillies and coriander.
5. Heat oil in a kadai, add the onions and fry for 2 minutes. Add the tomato puree and keep stirring till the oil separates.
6. Add the ginger garlic paste, green chillies, coriander leaves, garam masala and salt and mix well.
7. Add the boiled peas and cook for 2 more minutes, stirring continously.
8. Fill the potato cups with the pea curry, top with grated cheese or cheese singles.
9. Place the potato cups in an oven proof dish. Bake in a hot oven till the cheese melts.

We are back with a yummy Thogayal

Thanks to all my blogger friends for their sweet comments and for eagerly waiting for more recipes from the yum blog!

My mother became seriously ill in mid february and was hospitalised for more than three weeks. I was in Gurgoan, taking care of my mother in the hospital during day time. In the past few days, I have learnt a lot about balanced diet, physiotherapy, some info on medical science and a few yummy andhra recipes from my sister in law Padma.

You give anything to an andhra lady, she will prepare a pachadi ( thogayal or chutney) out of it! Here’s the recipe for venthaya keerai thogayal( Fenugreek leaves chutney), Padma prepared for me.

Fenugreek leaves chutney.( Venthaya Keerai Thogayal)

Ingredients

• Fenugreek leaves - 1 cup
• Urad dal - 1/2 cup
• Red chillies - 4 nos
• Mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon
• Hing - a small piece
• Tamarind - 2 inch piece
• Salt - to taste
• Oil - 1 tablespoon

Method

1. Wash and drain the fenugreek leaves.
2. Heat oil in a kadai and fry urad dal, mustard seeds, hing and redchillies till golden.
3. Add the fenugreek leaves and fry for 3 minutes on a medium flame stirring continously.
4. Allow to cool. Add salt and tamarind and grind to a coarse chutney.

This chutney tastes good with rice, rotis and any southindian tiffins.

Hot’n Crispy Samosas

Today as soon as I opened my inbox, the first thing that drew my attention was Dhivya’s sweet letter! I immediately decided to post the long overdue samosas, which have indeed become cold lying in the photo section of our blog for too long! It would be a lie to say that I could’nt type the recipe which takes only 15 minutes . The computer was not available to me for 2 weeks in December and I just lost the habit of blogging. Dear Srivalli I am finally posting the samosas which you saw in my flickr account! Thanks dhivya for inspiring me to start blogging regularly again and obviously this is my entry for the Potato Fe(a)st hosted by you!

Roll into triangles and place the filling in the center.

Bring the corners together and seal the edges well.

Ingredients

For the filling

• Potato - 1/2 kg
• Green peas - 1/2 cup
• Onion - 1 large
• Ginger - 1/4 inch finely chopped
• Green chillies- 2 nos
• Curry leaves - 1 twig
• Coriander leaves - 2 twigs
• Turmeric powder - 1/4 teaspoon
• Hing - 1/4 teaspoon
• Cashews - 4 nos
• Oil - 2 teaspoons
• Salt - to taste
• Garam masala powder - 1 teaspoon (optional)

For the covering

• Maida - 1 cup
• Salt - 2 pinches
• Ghee - 1 table spoon
• Oil for deep frying - 2 cups

Method

1. Wash and pressure cook the potatoes. Steam the peas in a MW for 3 minutes.
2. Skin the potatoes and allow to cool. Finely chop the cashews, onion, ginger, green chillies, coriander leaves and curry leaves.
3. On a medium flame, heat 2 teaspoon oil in a kadai, add cashews. Once it is light golden, add onions and other chopped ingredients and keep stirring.
4. Add the green peas, turmeric, garam masala, hing and salt. Mix well.
5. Mash the potatoes and add to the kadai and mix well. cook for a minute, stirring continously and put off the flame.
6. In a bowl mix maida, salt and ghee. Add very little water to form a stiff dough.
7. Make 1 inch balls out of the dough and roll into thin triangles as shown in the picture.
8. Place some filling in the center and close the triangle to form a pyramid as shown in the picture. Press the edges well to seal. You can prepare these samosas and keep in the fridge for 1 hour before frying.
9. Fry the samosas in oil on medium flame. Serve with Tomato ketchup.

Tips

The potatoes should be mashed only after they cool. This keeps he filling dry and the samosa stays crisp. You can pressure cook the potatoes atleast an hour earlier.

The outer covering dough must be stiff. If it is soft the samosas will become soggy very soon.

Keeping the samosas in fridge in a flat container before frying also helps to get crisp samosas.

Update

Just got to know from my BBF Asha that Sia of monsoon spices is also hosting a potato event An Ode to Potato. I would like to include a few of our older posts for the events.

Potato cheese balls

Potato pachadi

Potato finger chips

Perception in your fingertips

“Esref Armagan, of Ankara, Turkey, is a 53-year-old blind painter. Blind since birth, Armagan is a gifted visual artist who can draw and paint in three dimensions; drawing comparisons to Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the first artist to master three point perspective.”

Read the rest of this at Thoughtware.tv. Vist Esref at armagan.com

My Patti is the chief inspiration behind all my cooking and my passion - for aromas; for achieving the right consistency; for serving with lot of love and for savouring good food. To quote from one of Amma’s (Latha - to save the confusion) first posts:

My amma is a typical Brahmin lady with her “as shiny as marble” skin, big red pottu, “vaira thoodu” (diamond studs), “vaira mookutthi” (diamond nose ring) and nine yard podavai (saree). Her expertise in the kitchen is legendary. She’s never had good eyesight, with one blind eye and a high power that no technology can counter in the other. Her culinary skills are so highly developed that she cooks with the aid of an impeccable sense of smell. So you can imagine how difficult it is to beat her standards.

This is the 200th post on our blog - and this post is dedicated to my Patti (grandmother in Tamil), an exceptional woman, a brilliant cook and an amazing artist in her own right.

In celebration of food, these few months of blogging and life.