Milagu kaarakozhumbu

    Hyderabad is found rainy these days, hunger peeps in quite randomly due to the season.  My mind carves for more hot n spicy food.  It was during one such moment that I recalled this dish.

This dish, milagu karakozhumbu is often made by my mom due to my dad's insistence.  Milagu kaarakozhumbu is an good cold- releiver and also heats up your body to prevent winter chill.  This is done so due to presence of wonderful n healthy indian spices like peppercorns, garlic, jeera combo.  Just imagine to have them with hot rice on a rainy day....  :) hm... wow.... No pizza's or no burgers can compensate for such an powerful Indian dose :)

I served this with cabbage-carrot poriyal and hot rice.  The entire combo felt great on stomach and my heart too!

Tutti- fruitti cookies

      I am so delighted to find Savaadhjevana FB page hitting more than hundred likes.  To dedicate this success, I made tutti-fruitti cookies.

  Initially I wanted to make them with wheat flour, but realized that these tutti-fruiti would be better with a white background than with a brown one.  That is with wheat flour, they can be hardly seen giving an less appetising look.  So,  I opted for tutti-fruiti with white or much lighter background.  As soon as I decided on white, the first three things that crossed my mind was Regular flour (of course, maida!), Cornflour and Rawa or semolina.  Hence with a mixture of abovesaid, I continued with addition of butter,  sugar and finally blended with delecious, colourful tutti-fruitti cookies.  After baking them, they were so crisp, light-coloured (though I browned a few  in my first batch!) and fell very less on stomach too!!

Vadakari (SouthIndian curry made with steamed dal dumplings)

    Vadakari is my all-time-favourite.  My mother used to prepare this dish atleast once a month and we used to rejoice it with idly, dosa and  pongal too!  I made it for first time and served it with mini-dosa (to come sooner) and my kid enjoyed it.  Here, Chana dal, which was first soaked, is later blended with selective spices, steamed and mixed with regular onion-tomato gravy base.  The spices usually added are red chilly and dhanya powder, here I added  chana masala which blended  soo well and gave an much richer aroma.  Do try guys and let me know.

Ingredients required

For dumplings

• 1/2 cup chana dal
• 1/2 tsp dry ginger powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp jeera powder
• 1/2 tsp haldi/turmeric powder
• 4 tsp coriander leaves, finely chopped
• Pinch of hing/asoeftida

Tawa arbi masala

   
    Arbi, one of the Colocasia species is an underground(grown) vegetable.  It finds an easy place in south-indian cooking.   Found as an fry or curry, it is also supposed to be an healthy alternative for potatos for aged people because the starch content found in arbi is easily digestable one.  Arbi is also found to nourish with contents like fibre, protein, calcium, phosphorous etc.

 Arbi tawa fry done here is an easy preparation that can go yummy with hot rice, sambhar, rasam or any kozhumbu type.  This can also be served as an vegetarian starter and can go great with parathas too.  To top that arbi prepared in tawa ensures uniform cooking on all sides (which is not guarenteed on kadaai), saves time and ends up spending up little amount of oil.

Chocolate eclairs - Baking partners challenge

Baking partners is a group for new bakers, they enhance the baking skills by alloting monthly challenges, mailing all suggested recipes, tips etc This month's challenge was Chocolate eclairs.  

Thanks to Baking partners for suggesting the same as honestly speaking the topic was quite new to me, but after coming across the recipes and few videos, I understood that chocolate eclairs is a french pastry filled with choco-custard cream (and also any fruit custard cream) and topped  with choco glaze.  The very difference of this to other pastry form is that the basic dough is first cooked in stove first, mixed with flour, then added to beaten eggs to obtain a glazy form.   I followed the pastry recipe by www.joyofbaking.com