carrot salad

Like most uncooked fresh food,this one packs with load of good things to nourish your health.carrots are an excellent source of the antioxidant vitamin A, while lime is rich in vitamin C.This has refreshing tangy sour taste with loads of goodness of carrot.

Preparation time -max 5 mins.

Ingredients.

 1.carrot -  3

 2.chilli 1 finely chopped  (optional)

 3. lime juice taken from one large lime

 4. little bit of salt and pepper(optional) for enhancing your taste bud 

Method.

1.Peel and grate the carrots.

2.In a bowl,add carrots,chopped chillies,lime juice and mix with salt and pepper.

Venkaya milakaipodi

I hope you couldnt find this one anywhere except here in sellamaniyin samayal thanthirangal..yes..this is very spicy..but yet very tasty.It goes well with all types of dosai and idly.Ensure you have enough sesame oil  for serving .

Ingredients

1.Dried red chillies 10-15

2.shallots - 10 to 15 numbers or 1 big oninon .

3.tamarind-small amt

4.salt 

5.oil for frying.

Method.

Heat the small amount of oil in wok , add all red chillies and saute until it release a fragrant smell .Grind roasted chillies ,tamarind and salt  and finally add the onions and make a coarse paste.

It should be served with Sesame oil jus like idly podi.

Home made hot and spicy Tomato and garlic Rasam .

Its cold winter and nothing can match a hot and garam rasam with hot rice for a night dinner.

This rasam is simple to make and very good if some one has cold and sore throat.So it is medicinal too.

Ingredients.

Tomato big 1

Garlic pods 3 to 4

Curry leaves

Corriander

Tamarind size of small lemon

cummin seeds 3 spoons

pepper black half spoon

little butter or ghee for seasoning along with mustard.

cooked Thoor dal small quantity may be 5 spoons

salt to taste and half spoon of sugar.

Asafoetida.

Method 

First pre cook the dal and keep it aside.

Roast the cumin seeds and black pepper in a kadai without oil till you can sense the smell of the ingredients.

With tamarind and water prepare a small quantity of tamarind juice,add salt and crush the tomato in it.Crush the corriander and curry leaves too with the help of hands and remember not to use  knife for cutting the tomato and for chopping the corriander and curry leaves.

The taste lies in crushing the tomato with hands and this gives a finer taste to the prepared tamarind juice. Add  little of asafoetida.

Now grind the roasted seeds with the help of mortar grind. With this powder finally crush the garlic pods also and transfer this into the prepared tamarind juice.

Heat a kadai and add 2 spoons of ghee and season it with mustard and cumin seeds. Once heated pour the prepared tamarind juice and bring to boil ,once it starts boiling immediately put the cooked dhal and switch off the burner and add little sugar and transfer the rasam into a container and close it with a lid for retaining the smell.

நீர் உருண்டை

This is one of our favourite snack during rainy days as well as summer days.It s simple yet delicious steamed food.
Ingredients:
Par boiled rice - 2 cups
Grated coconut - 1/4 cup
Urid dal - 1 T spoon
Chana dal - 1 T spoon
Asafoetida - 2 pinches
Mustard - 1/2 tspoon
Curry leaves - 1 sprig
Red chillies - 2
oil - 2 Tspoon
Soaked the rice for about 2 to 3 hours.Drain the rice and grind to a paste with little water . Add the salt to the batter. Heat the oil in the thick bottomed wide skillet . Once its hot ,add the mustard seeds and asafoetida. while spluttering add the urid dal and chana dal and saute till they turn golden brown. Add the curry leaves and split dry red chillies ,add the grated coconut and now put all the batter at once and stir well. Simmer the stove and keep stirring till the entire mix does not stick to the skillet,switch off the stove and let the mixture cool for few minutes. When it is still hot, make small urundais(balls) out of the dough(apply some oil in your palm to avoid sticking ), and steam the urundais .

வெந்தய தோசை

Vendhaya Dosai is a healthy dish and simple to prepare. This dosai does not have any urid dhal but it is soft,tasty and no bitter taste of fenugreek . I liked this dosa because it has little holes on top that looks great.It goes very well with poondumilagaipodi /chinna venkaya chutney.
Ingredients.
3 cups of parboiled rice
1 cup raw rice
3 tsp fenugreek seeds(it ill give bitter taste if exceeds the req level).
salt as required
Method
Soak all the ingredients in water except salt for 6 - 7 hours ,wash and grind them into a nice batter.
Add salt and leave the batter overnight for fermentation like idly batter .
Heat the tava and pour the batter into dosa,pour lil oil as it doesnt require more.
Cover the dosa with lid in tava , then only you will get the holes on top of the dosa,after 1 or 2 mins, take the dosa out .Remember there is no need to turn the dosai.For side dish,refer in chutney section.

தேங்காய் கடலைபருப்பு சட்னி

Here is our own பாட்டி வீட்டு kadalai parupu chutney with love...

Ingredients:

Coconut-2cups
Kadalai paruppu(bengal gram )-3 tsp
Dried Red chillies-4-5
tamarind as req
salt
Oil
For seaoning
Mustard seeds -1/2 tsp
urid dal-1/4 tsp
Kayam/hing-1/4 tsp
Curry leaves-a few
Method:
Heat 3 tsp oil in a pan. Add the bengal gram and fry till golden,add the red chillies and fry for a few seconds.Remove from fire,transfer contents to a flat dish and cool.Grind with coconut ,tamarind,salt adding enough water.Heat oil and temper using the mustard seeds and urad dal,add hing and curry leaves.Pour it over the chutney.

Idli & PoonduMilagaiPodi

One of the most delicious but simple breakfast of Thanjavur.

Idlies are made by steaming a batter consisting of fermented uriddal and parboiled rice. The fermentation process breaks down the starches so that the body digests easily.Poondu milagai podi is the mixtures of crushed chillies and garlic flakes which are the preferred side dish for idlis eaten on the go.
It will definitely make you cry the first time you eat it!


The ingredients ....

Idly

1.Par boiled rice - 4 cups
2. Urid dal - 1 cup (2 cups if you use a Blender)
3. Fenugreek seeds - 1 Tspoon
4. Salt


Preparation

Soak each seperately for about 2-3 hrs.
Grind Fenugreek seeds and Urid Dal in a wetgrinder until fine , add water as required. (Traditionaly this is ground using Ural - a stone mortar and pestle , this is believed to have given the unforgettable 'My mother's ' recipies of most of the old folks . It consists of a small stone bowl called "Attukhal" in Tamil , on which the ingredients are crushed together with a rounded piece of stone . )
Grind the soaked rice until little grainy.
Don't forget to wash them before grinding though.
Mix the two batters with some salt This batter is allowed to ferment overnight, until it expands to about two times of its original volume. Idly's are made in special idli-cookers (steamers),put the idly batter in to the ghee greased idly tray for steaming and steam cooked until soft and spongy.

- while the idlies are cooking, lets make the PoonduMilagaiPodi - aka - GarlicChilliSauce !

Ingredients

1. Red dried chillies 20 -30 (depends on how much you can withstand :))
2. Garlic cloves- 7-8
3. Gingelly oil
4. Tamarind
5.salt

Preparation

we have 3 types of preparations ...choose whatever you want..

Dry Coarse Flaky PoonduMilagaiPodi

Fry red chillies in a Pan with some oil. Grind fried red chillies with some salt to a coarse powder.
Add the garlic cloves and grind slightly(Flaky result).

Fine ground PoonduMilagaiPodi

Fry the chillies in little oil. Grind with some tamarind, salt and water to make a fine paste. Finally add garlic cloves and grind slightly.

ThengaiPoondumilagaiPodi

For this one you need scrapped coconut 1 cup,3 to 4 chillies,3-4 peeled garlic flakes and salt.Grind everything except garlic in blender to make fine paste and add garlic and grind slightly.

Serve the hot idlies and PoonduMilagaiPodi - with some gingelly oil.

Easy and Tasty

Hi,

Today I am going to write about 2 types of chutneys that are easy to make and far different from the normal coconut chutney.

1. Coconut chutney with small onions
2. Green chillies and small onions.

Coconut Chutney with small onions.

Ingredients

Grated coconut

Red chillies 3 to 4

Small onions 4 to 5 peeled and finely chopped

Tamarind

Curry leaves

Mustard seeds for seasoning

Sesame oil

Method

Grind the coconut and red chillies with tamarind and salt and keep it aside.

Preheat a pan and add sesame oil and season with mustard and curry leaves and finally add chopped small onions and fry them for few minutes and put it on the already prepared chutney.

This chutney is little different from ordinary coconut chutney that we prepare and the essence of the taste lies in the finely chopped small onions.

Green Chillies and Small onion.

This is really simple and very easy to prepare. But it is little hot and spicy.

Just grind 4 to 5 green chillies with salt and 2 to 3 small onions and no seasoning is required.

This one has a hot and tangy taste.

The result is best if we use mortar mix to crush the ingredients.

Tit Bits...

Few words about art of cooking

Cooking is an art. Methods and ingredients are always available but the taste varies from person to person depending upon the proportion we use and the mode of cooking,heating methods,utensils we use and even method of cutting of vegetables play vital role in getting the superior taste.

For making chutney and for grinding small amount of ingredients we use mixer grinder but taste is exceptionally superior if we can use our old traditional stone grinding methods.In tamil we call as Ammi. The equivalent we can get in most of the stores across the world is the mortar mix used for crushing herbs. We can substitute this for the traditional ammi. The difference between both method of grinding is the way in which the ingredients get mixed up. In mixer all the ingredients gets crushed uniformly under higher voltage and brings down the taste considerably if we grind the ingredients step by step, instead of putting all the ingredients at once and use half blade method(giva it a fast whirl, stop it & do it again) of grinding we can get a much better taste.

small onion chutney

Who does not love food? Like you, I too love food, especially tasty, delicious, mouth-watering South indian cuisine. Many people think that cooking is difficult, even I've thought so, but after learning a few dishes that could be easily prepared, I developed an interest towards cooking.
In this blog, I'll be sharing a few of my recipes and a few authentic tried and tested recipes from my mother and mother in law.
Since I love my food hotnspicy, let us start with a super easy hot n spicy chutney !!!
Hot & spicy Onion Chutney
The main ingredient in this is shallots(often referred as small onions/chinna venkayam in tamil)

Ingredients

20 to 25 small onions finely chopped
Tamarind,salt and 5 to 6 dried red chillies
Mustard seeds ,urad dal,kariveppilai (often referred as curry leaves) for seasoning
Gingelly oil (sesame oil)
Method

1.Grind the Red chillies, tamarind and salt with little water .
2.Heat the oil in the Pan and season it with mustard and urid dal. Once it is ready add the finely chopped onions and fry them till they change glassy,To this, add the paste we have prepared already and boil it for some time till chutney consistency is obtained.

This chutney is hot and spicy and goes well with idli and vendhaya dosa.