Nethi-Karam Dosa - Ghee dosa with Onion chutney and fried lentil-spice powder

Dosa with erra kaaram and pappula podi combo drizzled with Ghee is one of my favourite breakfast items...In our hometown there's a hotel called Venkatramana Vilas which is well known for its Nethi dosa...yummy yummy..hot n spicy melts in your mouth...there are many versions of kaaram dosa..this's one among them...

1. Make dosa batter (Soak 3:1 ratio of rice and urad dal over night, grind to a thick batter consistency adding little water in a blender, add required salt and a pinch of baking soda, keep it aside for 3hrs)

2. Errakaram - Blend one onion, 2 garlic flakes, 4 dried red chillies with salt and water (very little) to a smooth paste

3. Pappula Podi - Grind a cup of fried gram (putnala pappu/ dalia)with 3 garlic flakes, 5 red chillies, 1/2 tea spoon cumin seeds and salt to a smooth powder in a mill.

Final Procedure

Heat a pan and rub with a half-cut onion.

Take a spoon full of dosa batter (1) and pour in the centre using a ladle. Rotate the back end of the ladle and spread the batter to a circular shape of 10-15cm diameter.

Add few drops of ghee around the ends of the dosa. After 20 sec turn to the other side. Let it cook for 5 sec and turn back again.

Now take a 1/2 tea spoon full of erra karam (2) and spread on the Dosa

Spread a 1/2 tea spoon full of pappula podi (3) over the dosa

Add few drops of Ghee onto the top, fold the dosa and take it off from the pan.

Delicious when served hot.

Coco-Jag-wheat pancakes - Theepi atlu

I made wheat dosa with Jaggery and coconut last weekend. I dunno how to name it....It tasted good and was a very quick n easy recipe.

Ingredients:

Wheat flour - 1 cup

Jaggery - 1-2 table spoons (grated) - adjust according to your taste

Coconut - 1 table spoon (grated)

Cardamon Pods - 2 (make fine powder frm the seeds)

Water

Oil - 1 tea spoon

Method:

Apart from the oil, mix all the above ingredients to a batter consistency. Heat Pan and pour one ladle full of batter on the pan. Spread it to 10-15cm diameter on the pan with the back of ladle. Add few drops of oil to the ends of the pancake/dosa. Once it gets heated turn over and heat the other side too. Serve warm.

Tripple Dhamaka with Sweetcorn

It's my turn now...I chose sweetcorn for today's cooking...I made a paste with sweetcorn, ginger, garlic and green chillies and made 3 different kinds of recipes...

Ingredients for the paste:

Sweetcorn - 750gm

Ginger - 3/4th inch piece

Garlic - 4 pods

Salt - 1 tea spoon

Green chillies - 3-4

Method:

Take all the above ingredients in a blender and grind it to a smooth paste. Do not add water. The paste looks like this.

Recipe 1 : Sweetcorn cutlets - Mokkajonna chitti garelu

Take a plastic sheet, wet your hands with little oil and make small lemon sized balls with the above paste and shape them into small cutlets. Heat Oil in a wok and when the oil is hot enough, turn to low flame and fry these cutlets until golden brown. Place on a tissue paper so that the excess oil gets absorbed. Serve hot with tomato sauce.

Recipe 2: Sweetcorn-onion fritters - Mokkajonna Ulli Pakodi

Slice one onion length-wise and mix the onion pieces in the above sweetcorn paste. Once the onion pieces are well coated with the paste fry them on medium flame in the oil. Serve hot with tea as a snack.

Recipe 3: Sweetcorn Roti - Mokkajonna chapathi

Mix the above paste with one tablespoon wheat flour and make the dough. Make lemon sized balls out of this dough and using a rolling pin, make the rotis. Heat the pan. Coat these rotis with few drops of oil and cook them on the pan until brown spots appear. These rotis have a subtle sweet taste because of the sweetcorn. They can be served on their own or accompained by any curry.

Here ends my sweetcorn saga...My next dhamaka ingredient would be green peas..hehehehe...I'll come up with those recipes in a few weeks time...

Pappu Chekkalu...grandma's recipe

My grandmother is from a place called diviseema in Krishna Dt. As far as I know people of the coastal Andhra are great food lovers and we are no exception to this. Granny used to make loads and loads of sweets and savoury snacks for us when we visited her during our summer holidays. Not only during the holidays, whenever a person from her village comes to our hometown Nellore, she sends two jute bags fully filled with these food items. Now even at the age of 80years, she tries to cook many of these items and send to her children n grandchildren. God knows where all the energy comes from...

I can never ever compete with her cooking skills, but I often try this recipe of pappu chekkalu at home. Surprisingly, they usually come out very well. This is the only recipe out of her list that I can make well. I do not make them in large scale. Just 10 or 20 is the max count.

Ingredients:

Rice Flour - 2 cups

Besan (split peas flour) - 1 table spoon

Chana dal - 1 table spoon (Soak in hot water for 10min and drain)

Onion - 1 small (cut into tiny pieces)

Green chillies - 5 (chopped)

Cumin seeds - 2 tea spoons

Ghee - 2 table spoons

Salt

Oil (for deep frying)

Method:

Except the oil (for deep frying) mix all the above ingredients and make a dough. Cover the dough with a wet kitchen towel and set aside for 30min. Take a plastic sheet rub oil into the hands. Make lemon sized balls out of the dough and flatten with the fingers as shown in the picture. Heat Oil in a deep frying pan. When the oil is piping hot fry these flattened pieces in batches until crisp/gold brown. After frying them place on a tissue paper to absorb the oil. These can be stored in an air tight container for 3-4 days.

Ghee, oil, deep fry..these words are alarming, but less alarming when compared to the junike fries and fast food ;).

Bottle gourd in Butter milk (sorakaya majjiga pulusu)

Majjiga pulsu (onions/green chillies sauted in oil with tadka/spices soaked in buttermilk) is one of my favourite items. My dad and suman are fans as well. When I was staying in US, one of my batchmates who was from Karnataka used to prepare an item called Majjige Holli (I don't excatly remember the name) with butter milk and bottle gourd. It's similar to our traditional Majjiga pulsu. I altered her (friend in US) recipe according to my convinience. Here goes the recipe..

Ingredients:

Bottle gourd pieces - 1 Cup

Butter milk - 2 cups

Onions - 1 (slice into small pieces)

Green chillis - 4 (chopped)

Garlic - 1 clove

Curry leaves - 8

Turmeric - 1/2 tspn

Salt - 2 tspn

Oil - 3 tspns

Popu/Tadka - Cumin/mustard/chana dal/urad dal - 1 tspn each ; Red chillis - 1 (tear into pieces)

Method:

Heat oil in a kadai and add the tadka/popu ingredients. Add garlic clove(cut into pieces) and curry leaves. Add green chillis, onions and saute them for a while. Add turmeric, mix well. After a few min add the bottle gourd pieces and salt. Cover the vessel with a lid and cook on low for 4-5 min. Bottle gourd can cook on its own mositure, so no need to add water at this stage. When the bottle gourd pieces turns soft add the butter milk and mix well. Swtich off the flame and let it stand for 20-30min. Serve warm with Rice.

Biscova...my new experiment

Last weekend when we were out for Grocery Shopping I happened to see a condensed milk tin in Tesco...I've been hearing about it that it's already sweetened and can be used in various sweets. The tin seemed so attractive with a recipe printed on it (Bannofi Pie)...So I thought I'ld make it and hence purchased the tin.

Yesterday when I wanted to make the Bannofi Pie, one of the cheif ingredients for that, 'BANANA' was missing at home...Huhhhh...I thought I shld have read the recipe there in Tesco so that I could check for the ingredients and purchase...hmmm lesson learnt...

Never mind, there are loads of recipes on the net with condensed milk...So I was browsing and came across a recipe called Kalakand (microwave version) with very few ingredients (Condensed milk,Yogurt and ghee)...Hehehehe...seemed to simple (Thanks to Prathibha for this quickie, It's on http://www.indiaparenting.com/cookingclub/mainrecipe.cgi?recipe_id=929&cuisine_id=10)

So I started to make this...While I was searching for my ghee tin, I came across a pack of McVities Tea biscuits...Poor biskies, they were there since one month...ehahahaha...I had a cruel smile, with a raised eyebrow...I had a thought "what if I crush these poor biskies to a powder and mix with the kalakand"...Afterall it's my experiment and I am the one who has to taste it..Ofcourse Suman as well...But he never complains abt my cooking..So I've altered the kalakand recipe and ended up doing a cake shaped sweet with biscuits n Kova (kalakand)

Biscuits + Kova - Biscova....Hehehehehe...I could name this on my own...I googled if there is anyword like Biscova. I found in some other language..[:o] definitely not in English...So please dont take me wrong if it means something weird in that language.

It's very easy n simple. So I'm posting the recipe I followed here,

Ingredients:

Condensed milk - 1 tin (400gm)

Yogurt - 2 table spoons

Elachi powder - from 5 pods

Cashews - 10-15 (roasted in Ghee)

Ghee - 1 tea spoon

Biscuits - 6 ( I used tea biscuits) - Grind them into a powder.

Method:

In a microwave safe bowl pour the condensed milk, add yogurt and mix well. Microwave on high for 2 min. After 2 min take out the bowl and mix well. Put it back on high for 2 min. Take it out and mix elachi powder and put it back for 4 min. Now the mix turns to slight brown color. At this stage remove the bowl from microwave. (If it doesn't turn brown cook for further 2min sessions until done). Let it cool. Now add the biscuits powder and mix well thoroughly. I shld be like a paste. Now grease a plate with Ghee and pour this mixture. Make cuts with a knife and put it in the freezer for 1-2hr. Cut across the lines and garnish with roasted cashews at the end.

This shld be eaten within a day or so I think. I made only 6 slices, we both liked the recipe so we finished them in 24hrs.

Omlet - Silly experiment

People who visited my blog left their comments that the recipes look very tempting and few of them even praised my cooking skills...Phewwwwww! Me a cook???? hehehehe...Most of my cooking experiments turn out to be disasters. If I keep posting only my successful recipes, my blog may end up as one of the many recipe blogs on the net. All those bloggers are genuinely good at cooking, but not me...So just to keep myself apart from such great cooks, I thought I'ld start posting my failures too...This microwave omlet is one among them...Not a disaster, but definitely not a good one.

Method: Mix two eggs, 2 tea spoons onion pieces, two green chillies cut into pieces, salt in a bowl just as you do for a normal omlet. Pour this mixture onto a microwavable plate and microwave it for abt 1min . After one min take the plate out and carefully reverse the omlet and put it back into the oven for one more min (depends on the power level - I did it for a total time of 2min on a 750W oven on High).

I didn't add any oil to this. May be that's the reason why it didn't taste as good as the stove top cooked omlet. For those who started wondering why this girl opted for a microwave version, I found this version in a telugu news paper and wanted to give a try. But somehow it was not tasty....:(