Thattai

Thattai is another must be item for Srijayanthi! Do use freshly ground flours (Rice and Urad dal) whose recipes have been posted earlier.

Ingredients

• Rice flour – 2 cups
• Urad dal flour – 1/4 cup
• Grated coconut – 1 tablespoon
• Channa dal 2 teaspoons
• Moong dal – 2 teaspoons
• Curry leaves – 2 twigs
• Ghee – 1 table spoon
• Pepper powder – 1teaspoon
• Salt to taste
• Oil for deep frying
• Broken Cashew (Optional)

Method

1. Soak the channa dal and moong dal for 10 minutes.
2. Mix the flours , coconut, salt , pepper powder, chopped curry leaves, soaked dals and ghee in a large container.
3. Add water and knead to a smooth dough. The dough should be soft so that it does not break or crack while flattenning.
4. Knead well for a while. Take lemon sized balls and flatten the dough to a round of about 4 inch diameter on to a white cloth. If the thattai cracks or breaks, just add some more water to the dough.
5. To make the thattais you can also grease your fingers with little oil.
6. Finish making the rounds with all the dough.
7. Heat oil in a deep pan and Check the oil temperature by dropping a small piece in to the oil.
8. If it rises up immediately then the oil is ready for frying. Start frying around 6 thattais at a time, Frying the dried ones first.
9. Always keep the flame between low and medium. Turn the thattais to cook the other side.
10. Once the sound subsides, drain well and remove on a kitchen napkin.
11. Your thattais are ready for the neivedyam.

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More recipes for Aavani avittam

Recipes for following have been posted below:

• Parangikai Paal Kootu (Sweet Pumpkin in Milk, Jaggery and Cream)
• Poori Payasam (A Unique Pudding)
• Aama Vadai (Channa Dal based Vadai)
  

Parangikai Paal kootu (Sweet Pumpkin in Milk, Jaggery and Cream)

This is a sweet kootu which my hubby loves. I have not prepared for a long time as the tender parangikai is not easily available here. Tender paringi kotai is best for this recipe. Posting this on request for my fan Latha Balu.

Ingredients

• Parangikai(sweet pumpkin) diced – 1 cup
• Milk – 1 cup
• Jaggery – 1 table spoon
• Turmeric – 1 pinch
• Salt – 1 pinch
• Cream – 1 table spoon(optional)

Method

1. Add 1/2 cup water to the diced parangikai mixed with turmeric powder and salt and cook on a medium flame.
2. When the vegetable is soft and well cooked add the jaggery and milk and just bring to boil. Do not allow to boil for long.
3. Add the cream. If you like it thicker you can add 1 teaspoon rice flour to this and cook for a minute.

Tips

Tender vegetable is the best.

Use minimum water to get a thick kootu.

You can increase or decrease the amount of jaggery to suit your taste.

Aama vadai

Aama Vadai, Beans Parrupusali, More Kozhambu
This vadai is made using channa dal or kadalai paruppu. I use cabbage and carrot to add nutritional value.

Ingredients

• Channa dal – 1 cup
• Urad dal 1 teaspoon
• Curry leaves – 1 twig( finely chopped
• Red chilli – 1 no
• Hing – 1/4 teaspoon
• salt to taste
• Grated carrot – 1/2 cup
• Finely chopped cabbage – 1/2 cup
• Oil – 1 cup for deep frying

Method

1. Wash and soak the dals for 1/2 hour .
2. Drain well ,add red chilli, salt , hing and grind coarsely to a thick consistency. You must be able to make a ball.
3. Add curry leaves , cabbage and carrots and mix well.
4. Heat oil in a kadai and test the temperature by dropping a small piece of the batter. If it rises quickly you can start frying the vadas.
5. Make small flat rounds on your palm or a plastic sheet with the batter and drop carefully into the oil.
6. Fry both sides on a medium flame and drain on a kitchen paper.

Poori payasam

Ingredients

For the pooris

• Rava – 1 cup
• Ghee – 1 tablespoons
• Oil – 1 cup for deep frying

For the paayasam

• Milk – 1/2 litre
• Sugar 3/4 cup
• Ghee 1 table spoon
• Cardamom- 3 nos
• Cashew nuts 6 nos
• Saffronleaves – 6 leaves
• Milk – 1 tablespoon for soaking saffron.

Method

1. Mix the rava and ghee with little water and knead like a poori dough.Leave to soak for 20 minutes.
2. Heat oil in a kadai. Knead the dough once again. Make small balls with the dough and roll into thin pooris.
3. Test the heat of oil by dropping a small piece of dough into the oil. If it rises quickly oil is ready for frying.
4. Keep the flame in medium and fry the pooris on both sides and drain the oil and take out on a kitchen paper.
5. Heat milk in a deep pan on a low flame. Break the pooris into big pieces and add to the milk.
6. When the pooris are cooked add sugar, cardamom powder and saffron leaves soaked in milk.
7. Take off the flame and garnish with cashews fried in 1 table spoon ghee.

Tips

Do not allow the paayasam to boil after adding sugar.

Pooris must be fried in medium to low fire so the they stay white.

The pooris should be rolled super thin.

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Delayed Puris

My favourite food moment is to see lovely light brown rounds puffing to bob on the surface of oil – in my language its a perfect QTOL moment. Just one of those things in life that make it so deliciously happy :).

And so when this rather random party of absolute puri mania seemed to take over the blogosphere, I just couldn’t resist. Better late than never? But then this post isn’t really a delayed entry but its more of a celebration of the beauty called puris that Anita wants us all to enjoy.

Under normal circumstances I would have woven an elaborate tale around such first time experimentation – but since the protagonist in this case happens to be “Pani Puri” I shall leave the pictures to do the talking. I took my amma’s recipe (and updated her post with pics 🙂 ) to make these for the first time on Saturday for dinner (yes dinner, for once fried and dinner had to go together).

You’ll have to make do with mobile phone camera pics – these crunchy beauties looked far more tastier in person :D.

The Awesome Puris

How I ate them

How Satish devoured them – curd is somehow indispendable for him, so every dish is served with “dahi”

Click here for pani puri recipe

In celebration of all food and the madness around it.

PS: Blogosphere isn’t a word in the WordPress Spellcheck Dictionary? :O. Should I add this to my “Spell Check Software horrors list” of Wikipedia is always underlined in red in Microsoft Word.

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