Chitra Pournami means moonlight dinners. It’s been years since I last went out for a moonlight dinner with family. So, when mom suggested that we pack up and go to the beach on Sunday for Chitra Pournami, I said yes without a second thought. The fact that both the cousins are on holiday made the choice easier. As usual, the task of cooking fell on mom…probably because of the four sisters, she is the best cook. One thing I must say about my mother is she is a woman possessed when cooking for more than 3 people! She went about making rice and pulikkachal almost 6 hours before we were scheduled to depart! Yeah…we’re crazy like that! And since she was making puliyodarai anyway, I decided to take a photo of it and post a recipe of it, neglected as my poor food blog seems to be! All ye Iyengar brethren reading this, please tell me if this is authentic Iyengar Puliyodarai. If it is not, please tell me how exactly to make it. I’ll be eternally indebted to you! So, here we go!

For the rice, I used Basmati. This is mainly because the long-grain add a certain flavour to the dish. If you’re not too fond of Basmati, any thin, long-grain rice will do. Just make sure you don’t overcook the rice, or your puliyodarai will become sticky and gooey. Not nice! Also, you have the option of adding roasted groundnuts to the Pulikkachal. I don’t because I don’t like it. But a lot of people will say am crazy, so don’t take my word for it!

Ingredients

Long-grain rice – 1 cup
Tamarind – size of a large lemon
Cooking oil – 2 tbsps
Red Chillies – 12-15 (depending on how spicy you like your dish)
Groundnuts – 2 tablespoons (Optional)
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Urad Dal – 1 tsp
Channa Dal – 1 tsp
Curry leaves – 1/2 cup coarsely chopped
Asafoetida – a pinch
Dhania – 2 tbsps
Jeera – 2 tbsps
Black pepper – 1 tbsp
Turmeric powder – 1/2 tsp
Salt to taste

Puliyodarai...

Method

1. Cook the long-grain rice separately and allow to cool in a large pan. How much water you need to add depends on the kind of rice you use. Basmati doesn’t usually take more than 2 cups of water for every cup of rice cooked. In case you’re unsure, don’t use an electric rice cooker or pressure cooker. Cook the rice on open flame with lots of water and then drain. This method allows you to check if the rice is cooked properly. Take care not to overcook the rice.
2. Soak the tamarind in a little water and extract a think juice from it. Make sure the tamarind juice is not too watery. No problems if it is, but using a thick juice will reduce cooking time.
3. In a saucepan, heat the oil and season with red chillies, mustard, urad dal and channa dal. When the mustard seeds have spluttered, add the curry leaves and asafoetida. Add the tamarind juice, turmeric and salt to taste. Allow it to simmer. After some time, you will find that the mixture begins to thicken. Allow it to thicken until you see oil on the sides. Set aside.
4. In a dry kadai or wok, dry roast the Dhania (coriander seeds), black pepper and jeera. Powder it finely and remove from the mixer jar.
5. Once the rice is sufficiently cool, add the tamarind mixture and mix well. Taste to check for salt. Sometimes, mixing it with rice makes it bland and you may need to add more salt. Ensure that you don’t break the grains of rice while mixing. Finally, add the roasted powder and mix well.
6. Puliyodarai is best served with friend vadaams. Of course, it can be served with microwaved vadaams as well, but nothing like a high-calorie diet isn’t it?

So…finally back with a recipe worth its salt! After scouring various website, of which Tarla Dalal’s gave me the list of ingredients without the method, I finally succeeded in making Mughlai veg biryani. It turned out quite well, if I may say so myself, although my aunt and cousin thought it wasn’t spicy enough. So…here we go!

Ingredients

Uncooked Basmati rice – 1 ½ cups
Carrots – 3 nos.
Beans – 100 g
Potato – 1 medium sized
Tomato – 3 nos.
Onions – 4 nos. (medium sized)
Ginger – a quarter-inch piece
Cloves – 3
Cinnamon – 2 sticks
Poppy seeds – 1 tbsp
Cardamom – 3
Green chillies – 2 large
Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
Chilli powder – ½ tsp
Yoghurt – ¼ cup
Milk – 1 tbsp
Saffron – 4 strands
Ghee – 4 tbsps

Method

1. Chop the carrots, beans and potatoes into fairly large bits. Wash and keep aside.
2. Finely slice two onions and keep aside.
3. Add the saffron to the milk in a small cup and rub until the saffron dissolves.
4. In a mixer, grind the cloves, cinnamon, poppy seeds, cardamom, green chillies, turmeric powder and chilli powder with the other two onions to a fine paste.
5. In a large pan, add 2 tbsps of ghee and heat well. Once the ghee is heated, add the finely sliced onions and fry until they become crisp and caramelized. Remove into a separate dish.
6. Add some more ghee and heat well. Add the paste and fry until the oil starts coming out.
7. Now, add the tomatoes and fry until the tomatoes are well cooked.
8. Once done, add the yoghurt and simmer for 5 mins.
9. Add salt to taste and the rest of the cut vegetables and stir for a minute.
10. Layer a thick bottomed pan (I used a rice cooker) with washed Basmati and add a layer of the prepared gravy. On the gravy, sprinkle half the saffron milk and layer with onions.
11. Now, add the second layer of rice and repeat.
12. Once you have added all the ingredients, add 2 cups of water, shut it with a tight lid and cook on a low flame. This should take approximately 10 minutes. I used a rice cooker and this saved me the worry of burning. Once done, stir well so the rice is well coated with the gravy.
13. Serve hot with onion raitha.

This turned out surprisingly well. I am quite prone to messing up on complicated rice recipes due to pure, unadulterated laziness! This time around, I was quite determined to get it right. And trust me! This dish is well worth the effort!

So…for my few readers who were actually wondering where the hell I disappeared, I am back! Last Sunday, I tried my hand at some exotic cooking. Ok…let me clarify. Anything that does not form a part of my mother’s recipe set is exotic for me. For the rest of the sane world, it is just normal Tandoori Gobi. It turned out quite well, taste-wise. But, it just did not look as good I would have liked it to. A couple of mistakes, a microwave oven that just wouldn’t grill my cauliflower well enough and some improvisations later, I ended up with perfectly edible, albeit not very good-looking Tandori Gobi.

The problem basically was that I used a glass dish to grill. My microwave oven is capable of baking and grilling too, but I am not a very good baker. So, I somehow never bothered to acquire the necessary utensils for baking. The result was that after a good 15 minutes of grilling, my cauliflower remained fresh as ever. Frustrated with the result, I transferred it bit by bit into a shallow frying pan and ended up frying it. It turned out burnt at places, but quite tasty. At the end of the evening, I learnt one valuable lesson. If something goes wrong with the process, you can always improvise and make it palatable and edible anyway.

So, here we go with the recipe I used. I have added ginger-garlic paste as an ingredient here. I did not use it for two reasons. One, my mother is not very fond of garlic. Two, if the cauliflower ends up not cooking properly, the raw smell of the garlic will make the dish inedible.

Ingredients

One medium-sized cauliflower
Thick curds (or hung curd) – 2 cups
Kashmiri chili powder – 2 tsps
Chaat Masala – 2 tsps
Garam Masala – 2 tsps
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Salt to taste
Ginger-garlic paste (optional)
Oil – 3 tbsps

Preparation time: 30-40 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

Method

For the marinade

1. If you are using normal curds, hang it in a thin muslin cloth and let the water drain. This process takes a good two hours.
2. In a bowl, beat the curds well to ensure that there are no lumps.
3. Add the spices (chili powder, chaat masala, garam masala, turmeric and salt) and mix well. I used Kashmiri Chili powder because it is milder and gives a nice red shade to the dish. Watch the amount of salt added as chaat masala contains rock salt or black salt.
4. Keep aside.

Preparation

1. Cut the cauliflower into large florets and parboil with a bit of salt. Ensure that the cauliflower is still crunchy and not too soft.
2. Cool the parboiled cauliflower and stuff the marinade into the stems of the cauliflower.
3. Ensure that the marinade is fully coated around the cauliflower.
4. If you still have some masala left, pour it on the cauliflower and let it marinate for at least 3 hours.
5. Once it marinates, heat some oil in a shallow frying pan, transfer the cauliflower to the pan bit by bit and fry on high flame. Make sure you keep turning the florets regularly so that they do not burn.
6. Serve with chapathis or kulchas. Alternatively, it can be served as a starter with pudina chutney.

The tandoori gobi does not go very well with rice. I found I liked it much better with phulkas the following day.

Back after a rather long break. This one is a recycled post. As in, I published it on my previous food blog, now dead. I am putting it up again because it’s one of my better recipes. I recently made this using green chillies and lemon juice, instead of lemon. I found that it works quite well either way. In fact, the lemon juice idea is better if you like your pickles ultra-spicy.

Ingredients

Medium sized lemons – 25-30 nos.
Green Chillies – 1/2 kg
Salt – 1 cup
Mustard seeds – 1 cup
Fenugreek seeds (methi) – 1/2 cup
Mustard Oil – 200 ml
Gingelly oil (Sesame Oil) – 300 ml

Method

1. Wash the green chillies thoroughly and pat dry. Slit them vertically, taking care not to cut the chillies completely.
2. Wash and cut the lemons into eights.
3. In a food processor or blender, powder the fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds and salt.
4. Add this to the chillies and lemon.
5. Mix well.
6. Add the mustard oil and mix again.
7. Now add the sesame oil (the Indian untoasted variety) to the mixture.
8. Transfer the pickle to a bottle and set aside for at least a week.
9. Remember to mix the pickle well at least once a day to avoid fungus formation. The lemons will absorb spices and oil should begin to rise above the mixture in about a week. If you find that the pickle is too dry after a week, you may add some more sesame oil.
10. Serve with rice or chapathis once the spices are fully absorbed by the lemons and chillies.

Also known as Chutney Powder (especially in Karnataka), this is an ideal accompaniment to Idlis and Dosas. It is normally mixed in Sesame Oil before serving with hot idlis or dosas. Here again, there could be variations in the recipe depending on the family.

Ingredients

Bengal gram – 1 cup
Urad dal – 1 cup
Sesame seeds – ½ cup
Horse gram – ½ cup (optional)
Red chillies – 1 ½ cups (2 cups if you like your food really spicy)
Asafoetida – ½ teaspoon
Cooking oil – 2 tablespoons
Salt – to taste

Preparation

1. Add half a tablespoon of oil and fry the Bengal gram and the Urad dal separately until they turn golden brown. Remove into a container and allow it to cool.
2. Fry the sesame seeds, adding a little more oil if required and remove into a separate container. Allow it to cool.
3. Repeat the process with the horse gram and cool.
4. Fry the red chillies in a bit of oil and cool.
5. If the weather is humid, lightly fry the salt and asafoetida in a dry, hot pan and remove.
6. In a food processor, finely grind the red chillies first. Ensure that the seeds are finely ground. To this, add the Bengal gram and the urad dal and grind coarsely.
7. Finally add the horse gram and the sesame seeds and grind coarsely. Ensure that the sesame seeds are added right at the end. Adding them earlier will make them oily and ruin the taste of the powder.
8. Once the powder is ready, add the salt and asafoetida powder and blend well.
   

   

Note: Dosai milagai podi is generally well roasted, but coarse.

Like Sambar powder, rasam powder is also ground and stored in an airtight container for about two weeks to a month. However, unlike Sambar powder, there is no roasting involved in this. The ingredients are just ground together in the right proportion and stored. Here again, the recipe can differ from household to household. The one that I use is my mother’s recipe. My grandmother makes it slightly differently using both pepper and chillies. This one however, uses no chillies.

Ingredients

Dhania seeds – 4 cups
Black peppercorns – 1 cup
Jeera – 2 cups

Preparation

Grind all the ingredients together and store in an airtight container.

Note: If you want to reduce the quantity of pepper, you can do so. But, you need to compensate by adding red chillies to the above recipe, and reducing the quantity of pepper.

The recipe for Sambar powder differs from family to family, and depends on caste, community and place of origin. This recipe is my mother’s, tried, tested and perfected over the years. Don’t give me credit. I just blindly follow what she tells me to do!

All ingredients need to be added in the right proportions. Use whatever measure you want; just make sure you use the same measure for all the ingredients. A standard measuring cup would be ideal. My mother and grandmother use the “aazhaakku”, a standard South Indian measure of volume.

Ingredients

Dhania seeds – 1 measure
Red Chillies (dried) – 3 measures
Fenugreek seeds – ¼ measure
Cooking oil – 2 teaspoons

Preparation

1. Add one teaspoon of oil and heat a Kadai or a deep frying pan (use a Chinese wok if you don’t have this) over an open flame.
2. Add the red chillies and fry until it turns a dark shade of red. Remove into a food processor.
3. Check to see of the wok is still greasy. If not, add one more teaspoon of oil and heat. Add the dhania seeds and fry for about 3-5 minutes. Remove into the food processor.
4. Finally, roast the fenugreek seeds. They can be dry roasted if the wok is not greasy. Just keep stirring to ensure that it doesn’t burn. Remove the roasted fenugreek into the food processor.
5. Grind well and store in an airtight container.

This powder is used to make all kinds of sambars and can be stored for a fortnight at least. While it won’t spoil after that, it tends to lose its freshness after a while. If that happens, just dump the powder back into a hot, dry wok and dry roast. The final result must resemble what is in the picture above. It smells delicious provided you haven’t yet been distracted by the milkman at the door, the latest episode of Desperate Housewives or the maid servant wanting to mop the floor at precisely this point, and ended up burning the powder to a blackened mess! Happy cooking!

Finally, I resurrect a long-dead food blog, and re-present it to the world in an all-new avatar. A different URL and a slightly less random recipe sequence than my previous attempt at food blogging. To start with, let me clarify that all recipes on this site are creations (or improvisations) of my mother and grandmother. Yours truly only learnt to reproduce them with a modicum of authenticity from the said female relatives. My cooking is essentially South Indian with distinctive Tam-Bram and Kannada (read Udupi) influences. But before we begin to actually begin cooking complicated (and not-so-complicated) dishes, let’s take a look at the basic ingredients used in my cooking. They tend to remain more or less static from recipe to recipe. When I introduce a new spice, I will try putting up a picture to help my readers (assuming I get some by that time) actually try out the recipe in question. Ok…enough talking! On with the basic spices in South Indian cooking!

Mustard seeds (Rai/Sarson/Kadugu)

One of the most basic ingredients here in Tamil Nadu, it is used mainly for seasoning. Sometimes, it is powdered and added to dishes to enhance flavour.

Urad Dal (Ulutham paruppu)

Again used for seasoning, it is also used at times to make masala powders for certain types of dry curries. Will explain when we get there.

Fenugreek seeds (Methi seeds/Vendayam)

I get the impression that this is used exclusively in South Indian cooking, especially since most of my North Indian friends have no clue what to do with the dish when they see it. It is used for seasoning, like mustard, but also used in making Sambar Powder and the like.

Cumin seeds (Jeera)

Used in making rasam powder, and for seasoning like the spices mentioned above. It is the most expensive of the basic South Indian spices, but well worth the effort.

Bengal Gram (Kadalai Paruppu)

Used once again in making masala powders (paruppu podi, dosai milagai podi, etc.), it is quite a versatile pulse. It adds, not only taste, but also texture to the dish in question. Interesting ingredient…this!

Black pepper (Milagu/Kali mirch)

An essential ingredient in Rasam, which later morphed into the famous Mulligatawny Soup I believe, it adds taste and flavour to the dish like no other spice.

Cilantro Seeds (Dhania/Kothamalli seeds)

Most Tamilian sambars, rasams and other dishes use celery seeds in some form. Adds flavour to the dish, but can smell pretty strange if overused. So be careful!

Turmeric (Manjal/Haldi)

Well…you know the story! A powerful antiseptic, this is used in cooking to balance and cancel out the harmful effects of the strong spices we are so accustomed to using in our cuisine.

Red Chilli powder (Milagai podi)

Powdered red chillies are sometimes used in curries. But, more often, I tend to use whole red chillies. I roast them in a bit of oil them and powder them fresh, especially for Sambar and related dishes. This way, the dish tastes way better than if it were made with standard red chilli powder available in the market.

Asafoetida (Hing/Perungaayam)

This spice is extracted from the gum of the Ferula, native to Iran. (Source: Wikipedia) Powdered asafoetida is used as a seasoning in most South Indian dishes, such as Sambar, Rasam and other curries.

These spices will remain pretty much standard through many of my recipes, unless I decide to introduce a new one. Be back soon with recipes for Sambar and Rasam powder, before we move on to other recipes.

Credits: All pictures are taken from Wikipedia and are in the public domain, except that of Asafoetida. The picture was taken by me and can be reused by anyone, subject to the creative commons license.