Kozhukattai- spicy version

Kozhukattai made with rice flour was one of the fav.snack/breakfast item in our house.After coming to US , i rarely make these as breakfast item as you can have cereal,toast, pancakes which is less painstaking right?.But i love these kozhukkattai, especially the spicy one.My mom and mother in law makes for me whenever i meet them.My husband is not a big fan of this one, but he loves sarkarai kozhukattai.Now my son loves this.so started making these whenever i get time.I used to bring rice flour from india, which home made.With that rice flour, this tastes very good.But i no long have that flour, so i used the store brought rice flour this time and dry roasted it.Surprisngly it came out very well, very soft.here goes the recipe..

Rice flour - 2cups(dry roasted)
Boiled water-as needed
Coconut-1/2 cup(optional)
For tadka
Oil-2 tspn
Mutatrd,curry leaves(chopped),red chillies(break into small pieces),urad dal

Method

In a pan,heat oil and fry the tadka ingredients and keep aside.After dry roasting the rice flour, add salt and boiled water.Slowly mix the water and make a dough.(just like u do for Idiyappam).Mix the tadka with the dough and make into small bitesize balls.Spray the cooking spray in the idly pan and wipe it off with a paper towel.(for avoiding sticking)Place this balls into the idly pan and steam cook it for about 7-10 min.s.If you like you can serve it as it is or mix it with fresh shredded coconut. To make it more spicy, you can mix idly podi into steamed kozhukattai.

I make the rice balls with the red chilly visible, 'coz i don't want my toddler to have one of those spicy ones...

Gobi-Peas masala

Yesterday night i cooked this Gobi-peas masala for husband's next day lunch.This again an easy one. I used frozen peas and fresh Gobi.

Ingredients

Peas-3/4 cup
Gobi- 1/2 cup florets
Onion-1 (sliced lenghtwise)
Everest Veg. masala-2 tspn
Oil
Salt

Method

In a pan. heat oil and fry mustard,curry leaves and urad dal.Add sliced onion and fry till onions are golden brown.Now add the peas and gobi and fry for abt 3 min.sNow add the masala powder and fry again for 2 min.s.Cook it covered , just sprinkle whenever water is needed.Don't add too much water.Serve it hot with chappathi.

Thanks to my friend Soumya,who introduced me to this Everest masala.If you don't have this masala, try this recipe by using chilli, turmeric,dhania and garam masala powder separately.

Sailu's badam kheer..love it..

Today i tried Sailu's badam kheer recipe also ...which turned out very well.
It was a rainy day and i tasted it hot ..couldn't wait..yummy..it was great....Chilled tasted better than hot..i should say..

Kathirikkai vatthakuzhambu

This is one of my fav. recipe given by my friend .It's very easy to make.This one goes well will rice (with little bit ghee)and potato poriyal as a side dish...hmmm yummy...My mother is not used to make this type of vathakuzhambu, she makes "theeyal" which is her version of vatthakuzhambu.Theeyal , to my knowledge is a kerala dish and we who migrated from tamilnadu made it our vatthakuzambu.Shall post "theeyal" recipe later.

Kathirikkai vatthakuzhambu.

Igredients

Kathirikkai - 2 medium ones
Sambhar powder - 2 tea sp
tamarind - lemon size.
Oil- 4 tbspn
For tadka - mustard,curry leaves,channa dal,urad dal and perungayam.

Method:
Soak tamarind and take a thick paste.Cut brinjals into quater pieces.You can use drumsticks, ladies finger also for this recipe.Heat oil in a pan and fry mustard,curry leaves,urad dal,channa dal and perungayam.Now add brinjals and fry for sometime.Now add the sambhar powder and fry until the raw smell goes.This usally take abt 5 min.s.Finall add the tamaring paste and salt.Afte adding little bit of water, let boil.When the gravy becomes thick enough turn off the heat.Serve it hot with rice.

Cherupayar Dal-chappathi

This the breakfast we had today.Sukha chappathi with cherupayar curry.I reallly don't know the measurements of the ingredients 'coz usually eye ball everything.

This one goes like this

Fry mustard, urad dal and onions in oil till onion turns golden.Now add 1/2 spn of ginger-garlic paste and sliced tomatoes and fry for sometime.Now add chilly powder,turmeric powder and salt and fry it.finally add boiled cherupayar and cook it for abt 4-5 min.s.this curry goes well with chappathi.

Nethili-Mango curry

Fish and Mango ---nothing can go wrong with this ...

What do you need :

Nethili meen -2 cup ( Frozen)
Raw Mango-1/2 cup ( Frozen)

Tamarind : small lemon sized ( adjust this depending on Mango)

Salt : as needed

Tempering

Coconut Oil- as needed

Mustard seeds : 1/2 tsp

Urad dal : 1/2 tsp

Curry leaves : few springs

To grind:
Small onion -1
Garlic-2 cloves
Shredded Coconut-1 cup
Turmeric powder - a pinch
Red chillies - 3
Whole Pepper-1 tsp.

How you make this :

I used Frozen nethili this time and they were little on the bigger side compared to the tiny ones I usually get.These are ready to use but I still thawed them and washed them on running water.Keep them aside.Grind the ingredients listed under ' To Grind' into a fine paste. Mix this paste with tamarind extract.In a heavy bottomed pan, on medium flame start boiling the coconut+tamarind mixture. Add water as needed. Once the raw smell of the coconut paste is gone, reduce the flame and add in the raw mango and fish with salt as needed. My frozen mango were like little shavings of mango without the skin. So I had added it with the fish pieces as both will cook faster.But If you were to use raw mango, then you might need to add mango little earlier. Once the mango pieces are 3/4th cooked then you add the fish pieces.Let this mixture cook slowly and in the mean time heat coconut oil in a separate pan, fry mustard, urad dal and curry leaves.Pour this tempering into the cooked fish curry and switch off the heat.

Do not stir the dish too much with the spoon as it might break the fish pieces. And you canal ways adjust the tamarind extract depending on the sourness of the mango.Note: I had added in some green chillies as well for some extra kick but this is completely optional.

We had this dish with some king fish fry and kappa Puzhukku.

Survival

After being butchered by rabbits my curry leaves and yellow button rose plants survived.It was a wonderful sight to see those flowers ...

Weekend cooking

This weekend flewed by..had some friends over for this weekend and had fun cooking.Tried Butter chicken masala and naan came out very nice and all my friends loved it.though i am not a big fan of canned tomato , i used it in butter chicken as per recipe and it smelled and tasted very good.For naan, i didn't have a grill pan so i used the usual iron skillet which i use for making dosas.I have a doubt whether we can store the naan dough for future use in the fridge just like chappathi dough.then it will be easy for me to make lunch for my hubby who leaves by 7.00 am.I am going to post abt this on Archana's blog. Cooked my mom's mutton dry curry.It tasted a bit sweet, may be the mistake was i didn't fry onion very well.When my mom's cooks this recipe you can't tell whether there is onion.Pictures for butter chicken and naan didn't turn out very well 'coz of the poor lighting.Mutton dry curry pic.below

Tilapia Fish Fry

Amma "Phish"..my toddler..from morning asking for fish fry.He loves fish fry and would love to have it everyday.soplanning to fry some tilapia today one of the best tasting fish I have tasted here in US.so the recipe goes like this..

Fish Fry

Ingredients :
Tilapia fish fillets : 4.(i usually buy frozen which comes in individual fillet packs)
(i have tried cat fish and halibut with this recipe)
Ginger-garlic paste : 1/4 spoon
Chilly Powder : 1 sp
Dania Powder : 1 sp
Turmeric Powder : 1/4 sp
Pepper Powder : 1 sp
Lime juice : few drops.
Salt : as needed.
Oil : as needed.
(Adjust the spices according to your tastebuds.)

Method :

Clean the fish fillets.Mix all the spices,salt and lime juice and marinate the fillets in this mixture for about 1/2 hour.Shallow fry them .That's it very easy.My husband loves this with little bit of red wine.For my son, i reduce the spices little bit.

Ingredients :
Fish fillets : 4
Small onions : 3-4
Pepper corns : 1 sp
Turmeric powder : 1/4 sp
Chilly Powder : 1 sp
Salt : as needed
Oil : as needed

Method :

Grind together all the ingredients except fillets.Marinate the Fish fillets in the ground mixture and salt for about 30 mts.shallow fry them.

Missed..

After a long year..i am back to blog..it was year full of surprises..went to meet my people after a long three years and they all were excited to see ram.came back and had to move two places 'coz of hubby's job and now comfortably settled (hope will stay here for long :))here.so thought of starting to blog now.Ram is growing so fast and started speaking quite nicely..now responding thru words and amazingly hooked onto books and tv..and learned all the alphabets and number1-10.i don't know whether it too early or not..anyway i am not pushing him and it's a comforting thing that he is doing it by himself..and hubby..poor guy he is so busy..he usually gets time for us only on the weekend..i don't know the feeling abt this place is very nice and felt like hom when i moved in..hope this works out..
Came across few nice food blogs when goggled for one authentic kerala recipe..a recipe for breadfruit..thaks to IngiPennu..this recipe somewhat alike my mom's recipe..
I will try this one over the weekend..Really amazed by the food blogs out there..and for people like me theses recipes are going to be very helpful and these are again coming from experienced cooks...Planning to try out Ingipennu's shredded chicken recipe this weekend..looks delicious..