Mahanandi

Lovely Sam of Beck & Posh chose vegan theme for this month’s IMBB. I never knew that vegans are called by these names or they feel that way about themselves here in US until I read her introductory post to this event. With much improved knowledge of stereotypes, here is my vegan contribution, ‘cashew sweet’: a traditional snack, my mother used to prepare and give us after school, when we were kids. The only thing I did differently because of vegan theme is I applied peanut oil to the settling pan instead of ghee.
The following recipe is simple, easy and adaptable to other types of nuts particularly peanuts.

Cashew Sweet:

2 cups of lightly toasted cashews
2 cups of powdered jaggery
1 cup of water
A greased tray to pour the cooked cashew mixture

In a large sturdy pan, combine jaggery and water. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until jaggery dissolves into water. Bring this to a boil. You see lot of bubbling and raising to the surface action going on by now. Stir, stir and stir until the jaggery syrup reaches soft- crack stage meaning when you drop a bit of this syrup into cold water, it will solidify into threads.

When jaggery syrup reaches this consistency, immediately & quickly add cashews, and stir constantly for few minutes. Turn off the heat and pour this mixture onto a greased pan. When it is still hot, make lines with a knife and leave it to cool. When cooled, break along the lines to make squares. Store them in an airtight container.

These Cashew brittles or tikkis are natural-food alternatives to the very fatty and sugary standard editions, a sublime and perfect pairing of nature’s goodness and man’s intelligence (or is it sweet tooth). The flavor is completely different and the jaggery really sings out. Go on.. try them.

Some tips:

1. Only a small quantity of water is sufficient while making the syrup. One cup of water is enough for upto 3 cups of jaggery powder.

2. Time it takes to make this sweet is maximum 30 minutes. Prepare to spend all this time infront of the stove, no multitasking.

3. And the most important thing is gauging the jaggery syrup readiness. When you are making this sweet, or any kind of brittle for that matter, always keep a cup of cool water by the stove side. You can check the readiness by drizzling a few drops of syrup into the cool water. If it forms strings that you can easily prod into a ball, it’s at the soft-crack stage. This is where you should add nuts to the syrup. As soon as you add the nuts to the syrup, the mixture starts to solidfy or reaches the hard-crack stage very fast, within a couple of minutes. You made a perfect brittle.
If the syrup dissolves and disintegrates in the water, the syrup is not cooked enough yet. If it tightly balls up and sinks to the bottom or if syrups color turns from gold to black, then you have overcooked it.
This website very clearly demonstrates the various stages of sugar syrup, check it out if you want to know more about candy making. It also has video demonstration of various sugar stages (applies to Jaggery syrup too) both in real player and quick time, cool!

4. Finally, even after following all these steps, if it doesn’t come out as brittle as it should be, then blame it on weather and high humidity. What I do in those cases is, keep the greased tray with cashew mixture in the freezer for atleast one hour. I don’t know how, but the freezer turns the sorry mess from saggy to solid brittle like and they can be easily breaked along the lines made earlier. This freezer version tastes ok but they will test your dental health. -

Tagged with: IMBB # 19 + Vegan

We were on the road, traveling for the past couple of days and returned “home sweet home”, last night. During our trip, we made a brief stop at Oak tree road, New Jersey to fill up our pantry and purchased lots Indian grocery and vegetables etc.

There are three main grocery shops on Oak tree road, NJ that I know of. Apna Bazar, Patel Brothers and Subji Mandi. I usually shop at Subji Mandi. Although I am satisfied with their prices and range of Indian stuff they carry, I am still curious to know about the other two shops. Are there any readers of this blog who are regular shoppers at Oak tree road, did or can compare the three and tell me which one you like better. I know it’s all personal, still I want to know what you think of these three shops and your experience of Oak tree road. Any tips and suggestions from a local shopper are greatly appreciated by this out of state, time constrained shopper on rush. Thanks.

One of the vegetables I bought at Subji Mandi are these drumsticks or Munaga Kaayalu. They look like musical sticks, so the name. Greenish firm outside but insides are filled with white colored mildly sweet flesh and tasty small white seeds. They are known to be a great source of Vitamin A. They taste great in sambhar and rasam but my favorite way to cook them is using my mother’s recipe, the traditional curry version with fresh coconut and tomatoes.

Recipe:

3 drumsticks - lightly scrapped with a peeler and cut into small finger length pieces.
3 big ripe juicy tomatoes - cut into small pieces
1 medium onion finely chopped lengthwise
½ tsp of each of red chilli powder and salt
Pinch of turmeric
Make a smooth paste
¼ cup of fresh coconut +
Half inch piece of ginger + 2 garlic cloves and 6 sprigs of fresh cilantro
For popu or tadka
½ teaspoon each of cumin, mustard seeds, minced garlic and few curry leaves

Preparation:

In a pan, heat one tsp of peanut oil over medium heat. Add half tsp each of cumin, mustard seeds, when they start to splutter, add onions, and saut� them for few minutes. Add tomatoes and half cup of water. Cook them covered until the tomatoes soften and turn into juicy mush.

At this stage, add the cut drumstick(Munaga Kaaya) pieces. Stir in coconut-cilantro paste, salt, red chilli powder, turmeric and half glass of water. Cover and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes or until drumstick pieces are tender to touch but intact in shape. Serve warm.

Taste great with rice and with pulao.

Drumstick Curry and Rice
The creamy flesh of drumsticks cooked in this way, soaks up the coconut milk-tomato juice and tastes sweet, spicy and tangy when chewed. Truly an Andhra delight to taste buds.

Recipe Source: Amma

Sleeping Beauty!

Checkout cute kitties and doggies of food blogging world.

For my first ever virtual blog party, a monthly event started and hosted by lovely Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness, I made these little golden parcels of potato-pea filling in all purpose flour wraps and a pitcher of refreshing watermelon juice.

They are a hit in my house, a party of two. Hope the hostess approves my contribution.

Recipe of Little Golden Parcels:

For Curry:
1 cup of mashed potato
Half onion, two green chillies, half cup of fresh peas, coarsely grinded
Pinch of turmeric and salt to taste
Prepare the curry by saut�ing the above ingredients.

Wraps:
1. Prepare a firm dough by mixing one cup of all-purpose flour, half cup of water and a pinch of baking powder & salt. Keep it aside for at least half an hour. Meanwhile prepare the curry. When the curry is ready and cool enough to handle, take out and divide the dough into small balls. And with a rolling pin, roll out the rounds. Or simply use wonton wraps.

2. Take one teaspoon of cornstarch in a cup, make a paste by adding little water.

3. In each wrap, put a teaspoonful of curry mixture in the center. Make a line of cornstarch paste around, about half inch from the edge. Bring all four corners to the center and press together firmly to form little bags.

4. In batches, deep-fry them in oil until golden brown. Makes about 15 to 20. I don’t have chives at home right now; otherwise I could have tied a chive around the neck of each bag as garnish.

5. Serve them with a dipping sauce of your choice.

I don’t know why but we both are losing weight, significant amounts, since coming back from India. We are not doing anything out of ordinary and on our recent yearly medical checkup, the family doctor billed our medical reports as excellent, so no problems there. This sudden weight loss is baffling us. The only reason for this I can think of is homesickness. Leaving the dear and near ones back home, I thought it would get easy with age and time, but not so in our case, it seems. The life we created here seems so dull, empty and purposeless. Is this what happens in 30’s, if so, I would love to go back to the carefree 20’s. Little bit early for a midlife crisis, I know.

To counter the weight loss and also to satiate my cravings for an Indian sweet, we made Mysore Pak last Sunday. A deliciously rich, decadent sweet, made of chickpea flour and pure ghee. South India’s favorite. The sweet is as colorful and mouthful as its name sounds. All of our sweets names are like that, unique and colorful… Badusha, Chandra Kala, Mohan Bhag etc.,

There are no shortcuts for this sweet; you need quality ingredients and no cutbacks on the amount of ghee. Otherwise you end up with not so tasty, yellow brick kind of mixture. So use freshest possible ingredients, mainly besan flour for this recipe. And also you need an extra pair of hands. So keep family or friends on the side.

Recipe:
1 cup Besan flour, sift to aerate & to remove any lumps
1 cup ghee, melted & at room temperature
3/4 to 1 cup sugar - your wish
2 cardamom pods, seeds powdered

In a big sturdy pot, take one cup of water, add sugar and bring them to boil till the sugar syrup reaches one string consistency. Reduce the heat.
Now pour the ghee and besan flour in a steady stream into the sugar syrup while stirring. You need an extra hand here. Continuously and thoroughly stirring, cook until the ghee starts to leave the sides of the pan and the mixture starts to thicken and turns to become porous and light gold in color. Stir in the cardamom powder.

Immediately pour onto a greased tray & evenly level it out with a spatula. When it is still hot, cut into diamond shapes. Makes about 10 to 12 pieces.

Mysore Pak - Simple, sinfully rich tasting, sweet golden diamond

I bought okra (benda Kaayalu) from Wal-Mart supercenter’s frozen section last weekend. As mush as I detest Wal-Mart business practices, I still shop there occasionally for groceries during fall and winter times, as we live in a rural area, and fresh vegetables that I prefer are really pricy after the summer. This behemoth shop carries quite a range of fresh and frozen vegetables at affordable prices year long.

After reading Mika’s and Nupur’s posts about okra, I was tempted to dish out my favorite okra recipe from Nandyala - okra sambar.

Smooth and silky okra when cooked in sambar, absorbs all the wonderful flavors of sambar spices, takes ‘I can’t believe this is okra’ kind of avatar, and goes down without resistance when eaten.

Recipe:

Toor dal (Kandi Pappu):
1 cup of Toor dal - In a pressure cooker, take toor dal and water in 1:2 ratio, cook to soft, and mash the dal to smooth consistency.
Sambar powder Preparation:
1 teaspoon each - cumin, coriander, fenugreek seeds, chana dal, urad dal and dry coconut, Dry roast. Cool. Powder them together to fine. Or buy readymade sambar powder from an Indian store. We need atleast a tablespoon of sambar powder for this recipe.
Tamarind:
Soak key-lime sized tamarind in half cup of water for 10min. This will soften the tamarind. Squeeze the pulp and discard the seeds.
Veggies for Sambhar:
Cut - 10 to 15 whole okra, 10 to 15 cherry tomatoes and one onion (What shape and size, see the photo above)
Seasoning:
Salt, red chilli powder and turmeric - half teaspoon each, or to taste.
For popu or tadka:
1 teaspoon peanut oil
½ tsp each - curry leaves, chopped garlic, cumin and mustard seeds

Cooked Okra-Tomato Veggie Mixture……. Toor dal added to the veggie mixture

Preparation:

In a big pot, take peanut oil. On medium heat, do the popu or tadka(toast curry leaves, garlic, cumin and mustard seeds). When seeds start to pop, add the onions and saute to soft. Then add tomatoes and okra pieces. Also stir in sambar powder, red chilli powder, turmeric, salt, tamarind and one glass of water. Bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat, cover the pan, let simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until the okra is tender.

Add the cooked and mashed toor dal to the simmering contents in the pot. Mix and have a taste. Adjust the salt and chilli powder to your taste and bring to a boil. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve. I usually let it sit for at least for about 15 to 30 minutes, so that when it is served, you can actually taste the flavor of sambar powder.

Okra Sambhar with rice ~ Our Meal Today

When it’s this easy to make flavorful, delicious pizza at home, I can only imagine restaurants suffer. Why? This homemade crisp pizza tastes as good or better as any thin crust pizza I have ever had in a restaurant.

I started with few leftover chapatis of yesterday. I added the tomato chutney layer and topped with red beans and cheese. Baked in an oven for few minutes, the outcome was a scrumptious looking, saliva inducing meal. An impressively, easy way to satiate the pizza cravings without doing the back-breaking pizza labor.

Recipe:

1. Pressure cook: One cup red beans(soaked in water overnight beforehand) to tender or use the canned red beans.

2. Prepare chutney: In a skillet, add oil and cook coarsely chopped one onion, two tomatoes, three cloves of garlic and four chillies to brown. Cool, then add salt and blend to coarse puree.

3. Take fresh or leftover chapatis, about 4 to 6. Cut each chapati to 4 wedge-shaped pieces of equal size.

4. Slice to thin strips or grate cheese. I used Monterey Jack cheese in this recipe - About half cup.

Before Meal Time:

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In an iron skillet or in an ovenproof dish:
First, place the chapati pieces, then on top, add and spread tomato chutney to a thin layer. Sprinkle some red beans, cheese and cilantro. Continue until the last chapati, ending with a layer of the chutney, beans and cheese on top. Place the skillet in the oven and bake at 400°F for about 10-15 minutes, until the cheese melts and chapatis start to brown. Remove, slice and serve.

The whole combination of baked chapatis, spicy tomato chutney, red beans and cheese came out very well and tasted real good.