Mahanandi

Until I was married to Vijay, I never tried the donda kaya (Tindora in Hindi). My mother never cooked this vegetable, I don’t know why; lack of availability is not a reason, that’s for sure. One seed, it spreads like wild fire, climbing and occupying every inch of the garden and produces the fruits like there’s no tomorrow. Almost in all seasons, tindora is there to buy. Common and cheap, that’s how we regarded it, back in Nandyala, I never saw anyone get excited or salivated over tindora back then.

They look cute though. This small greenish vegetable with white lines is so pretty, when freshly picked, you just want to bite it. But don’t do that, raw food item it isn’t. It has a very thick skin and insides are white flesh filled with small seeds. Red flesh means it is overripe and not fit for consumption. I heard hearsay of people going brain-dead who ate over-ripe tindoras.:) Well I never tried the over-ripe ones, so I am not sure of its veracity.:) When comes to cooking, some people cook it to the death, but I prefer little bit of crunch, so most often I make a shallow fry of the vegetable.

Recipe:

If you have regular Indian cooking stuff in your pantry, then making the curry is as easy as saying 1, 2 and 3.

1. Cut each tindora into half lengthwise, then make another lengthwise cut in each half – you will end up with 4 long thin pieces. To make curry for two, for one decent serving, you have to cut at least 15 to 20 tindoras.

2. In a pan, heat one teaspoon of peanut oil, do the popu or tadka (toasting mustard seeds, cumin, minced garlic and curry leaves).

3. Add the cut tindoras, sprinkle turmeric, salt and red pepper flakes to your taste. (Sometimes I also add dry coconut powder.) Mix them once, cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid, then sauté openly for another 5 minutes or until the veggie reaches the crunchy consistency you desire.

Serve hot with chapatis or with rice and dal.

Tindora fry and fenugreek dal mixed with rice on the background.
Dondakaya kura mariyu menthi kura pappannam muddalu.

Tindora is available fresh or frozen in almost all of Indian grocery shops here in US. Fresh ones are most preferable.

First thing one notices about fresh fenugreek is how beautiful and delicate the leaves are. Then the smell, aromatherapy in truest sense, when pressure cooked with toor dal or sautéed with potatoes, any other vegetable, the leaves release wonderful fragrance. ‘Johnson and Johnson-A family company’, who makes money by beguiling the families with air fresheners and scented oils, if they get the whiff of fresh fenugreek, you bet, you’d see an ayurvedic or eastern themed fenugreek scented oil on shop shelves for sure.

Fenugreek is one of those green leafy veggies, looks innocently innocuous but when cooked, dazzles & grabs your attention by its wonderful aroma and makes you try and like it. For a dal-rice addict like me, nothing beats the taste of rice and dal made of fresh fenugreek leaves. Very tasty and nutrititous, it’s one of my favorite foods. Fenugreek and toor dal combination is a true and tested recipe, very popular in our Raayala seema region of Andhra, again one of those I learned from my mother.

Recipe:

One bunch of fresh fenugreek – washed and leaves plucked
4 fistfuls of Toor dal
1 medium sized onion and tomato – chopped
1o green chillies – finely chopped
Small lime sized tamarind
1/4 tsp of turmeric
Salt to taste

For popu or tadka :

1 tsp each of oil or ghee, mustard seeds, cumin and urad dal
1 garlic clove – finely chopped
Few curry leaves and few pieces of dry red chillies

Preparation:
Cook dal: In a pressure cooker, take toor dal, fenugreek leaves, onion, tomato, green chillies, tamarind and turmeric – add one glass of water and pressure cook them till 3 whistles. When the valve pressure is all released, remove the lid, add half teaspoon of salt and mash the dal using a wood masher to smooth paste.

Do the popu: In a deep bottomed vessel, heat one teaspoon of oil, add the remaining popu or tadka ingredients. Saute till the seeds start crackling, garlic turns red. Pour the cooked and mashed dal, stir well and cover. Tastes great with rice and chapati.

Fenugreek dal (Methi Dal or Menthi Kura Pappu) and rice with ghee.

Recipe Source: amma
Fenugreek is available both fresh and frozen in most of Indian grocery shops here in US

Vijay got a good grade in this semester. He is studying for his master’s degree in software engineering, part time at Carnegie Mellon University. And the walnut burfi is for celebration. The combination of walnuts and milk-sugar is a classic. The resulting walnut burfi or laddu is a rare indulgence for us.

Recipe:
(makes about 6 medium sized laddus)

2 cups of walnuts (Akhrots)
2 cups of whole milk
3/4 cup of sugar

Lightly roast walnuts in an iron skillet and let them cool down. Keep one fistful of nuts aside and grind the remaining walnuts into powder.

Boil milk and sugar until they come together into very thick mass almost like the final stages of pala kova. It takes about 30 minutes. At this stage, stir in powdered walnuts. Mix thoroughly and keep stirring until, the walnut-kova mixture leaves the sides of the pan and comes together into one big lump. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle the whole walnuts and mix once and remove the mixture into a pan. Allow it to cool and make small laddus with it or press the whole mixture evenly and tightly in a greased pan to cut squares.

Walnut burfi (Akhrot laddu) – Old fashioned

All last week, we were in Toronto. This was our first visit to this Canadian city and we also found that it is very tourist friendly. We stayed at a hotel in downtown. One of the things we liked about the city is its public transport system. Trams and subway system were excellent and we never had to use our car, it just sat in the hotel garage.

In addition to regular tourist attractions, we also visited India Bazaar on Gerrard street. Dined at a south Indian vegetarian restaurant on Gerrard Street called Udipi Palace. We enjoyed having hot masala Dosa, Idli and Vada. There is also a new grocery shop, Sabji Mandi, opened in Brampton. They had an outrageous opening sale going and I went nuts. Bought about 150 dollars worth of groceries there. The prices for items like rice, dals and vegetables were unbelievable. Two 10 pound Basmathi rice bags for $8.99, 8 pound dal bag $2.99! I think with the purchases I did, I am set for this winter.

Photos of Toronto in December winter weather:

For this week in Indian Kitchen:

I’m taking few days off from blogging for the holidays. See you all after Christmas.

Food bloggers and fans from all over the world are participating in a fundraising event hosted by lovely Pim for a good cause – helping the earthquake victims of Kashmir area.

You can feel good about yourself and goodbye this year proudly by giving money to this cause. Offer a prize for raffle or participate to win a raffle prize or directly give out money – these are the choices. I chose the last option.

The site Pim set up seems to be very secure and reputable, accepts both Visa and Master Card and I am confident that the money we donate goes to this cause only. Check it out and donate if you feel like it.

For Indian recipes, I can’t and won’t break the tradition and I will always follow the elder’s footsteps in preparing food. I believe the ingredients they use for a particular recipe have been chosen for a reason, and the steps they followed to make a recipe work are methodic, implicitly giving a perfect taste and nutritional boost.

But when it comes to western food, since I ‘m not used to making these traditionally, I feel very free to experiment. Also I believe most of ‘traditional’ recipes that I see in magazines and TV shows are the stuff that they makeup as they go, to promote some food ingredients or products following the corporate orders. When food ingredients have their own associations and mega budgets to promote and influence peoples opinion in their favor with advertisement blitzes, I am not sure how traditional most of these recipes are, though they proclaim otherwise.

Chestnut cookies first posted by Mine of Teatime then submitted to cookie swap event by Ulrike of Kuchenlatein, captivated me mainly because they sounded real authentic, traditional and old world. When I saw the beautiful photographs, I so wanted to try these cookies. I changed few things here and there, going all the way to make them rustic pure. Use of molasses in place of powdered sugar, turned the cookies golden brown instead of creamy white. I tried decorating cookies differently, but it didn’t come out as I expected. Except for that one gaffe, the cookies turned out to be mouthfuls of wholesome goodness. Thanks Mine and Ulrike for sharing this wonderful, traditional recipe.

Recipe:

2 cups of almonds, soaked in water overnight, then skins removed
15 chestnuts, roasted, then shells removed
1 cup of all purpose flour
11/2 cups of molasses
(Molasses is an acquired taste, difficult to like. Sugar/honey works fine too)
2 egg whites
1 inch cinnamon, 1 clove, and seeds from 1 cardamom pod – finely powdered together

Powdering Almonds and Chestnuts in a Food Processor…Almond-Chestnut cookie dough, ready to be baked

Preparation:

Powder the almonds and roasted chestnuts in a food processor to a smooth powder. Make it easy on the motor and do it in batches. In a vessel, take egg whites and beat them until they turn to foamy white. To these egg whites, add molasses and cardamom-cinnamon-clove powder. Mix and stir in all purpose flour and almond-chestnut powder. Mix them thoroughly. Shape the dough into a log, wrap it in a wax paper and store it in the freezer, until the cookie dough firms up. I had to keep it overnight in the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Remove the hardened cookie dough from the freezer, cut it into 1 to 2 inch rounds crosswise. Place them neatly in rows on a greased or parchment paper lined baking tray. I egg washed the tops and sprinkled some brown sugar on top of each cookie, my idea of decoration, not so successful, I have to say.:) Place the baking tray in preheated oven and bake them at 350°F for about 20 minutes.

Believe it or not, they tasted like, do you know the South Indian sweet “Ariselu“, exactly like that. Roasted chestnuts and molasses gave a special and characteristic taste to these cookies, a first for us and we liked them very much.

Chestnut-Almond Cookies

My first experience of roasted chestnuts was at a local winter fair. Team of two, wearing funny costumes in addition to roasting the chestnuts, were doing juggling, whistling holiday tunes. And they were handing out free samples; all to attract the customers. We tried the free sample… surprise, it was not like any nut I tasted until then.

The first word that came out of my mouth was ‘sweet potato’. Roasted chestnut tasted more like a roasted sweet potato, than a nut. When opened from the shell, they were warm to touch, had a starchy, crumbly texture, a unique sweet smell and buttery sweet taste. We were sold and we bought both roasted chestnuts for the ride home and raw ones to tryout at our home. They also gave us a pamphlet about how to roast chestnuts, different methods and some tips and recipes etc.,

From then on, every winter, we look forward to chestnuts. These winter holiday treats are not that expensive compared to other nuts. 2 dollars something for a pound and few roasted chestnuts fill you good. I am going to leave the cultural significance and nutritional value of roasted chestnuts to the storytellers and experts. I am sure you are going to see many more posts/paeans about chestnuts in future weeks from food blogosphere.:)

How we do the roasting: First we make a cut in the shell of chestnut, with a sharp knife. This is to release the steam from inside, which builds up during the roasting process. Otherwise, each one will explode just like pressure cooker whose valve is blocked. So take time and make a cut or a hole in each shell.

Turning them once in a while, roast them in an iron skillet. It’s better to use the skillet that you don’t normally use for regular cooking. Roasting process is not good for the vessel. I accumulated several iron skillets in my quest to find the right one. The brand new one, with no patina, I use it to for roasting not only for chestnuts also for peanuts.

Do the roasting, on medium high heat, for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the shells are all black and cracked. When done to perfection, you can easily open the shell, the chestnut inside is gold in colour and piece of chestnut has rosy hue and sweet to taste.
.

Pure, simple and satisfying – roasted chestnuts on a snowy winter day.

“Slurp.. slurp and burp..burp.
The simple pleasure of having dinner sitting on the floor“ – I totally agree.

yum.. my kind of food – “Avocado Parathas“.

Very useful tips on food photography from Food Blog School.

With winter storm dumping the snow, my brain needed some masala tea. Vijay, my dear husband, makes the best tea and he changes tea flavoring with seasons. For the past week, he is making tea with Indian cinnamon and cardamom.

Cardamom brings the sweet aroma. Whereas cinnamon takes it to another notch and gives the tea a peppery, earthy, bright yet slightly woodsy taste. Heady feeling is what I get from masala chai and I like it.

Masala Chai:
(for two)

1 big glass of water
1 teaspoon of Tea powder
(Preferably, Premium Assam tea, available in most of the Indian grocery shops)
1/2 inch cinnamon bark and one cardamom pod seeds –powdered using pestle&mortar
Milk and sugar or honey to your taste

Pour water into a small pot and bring to a rolling boil. Add the tea leaves. Wait for about 5 minutes. Then stir in the cardamom-cinnamon powder and tiny amount (one tablespoon is plenty) of milk. Mix with a spoon. On medium heat, simmer it away until the color changes from milky white to light brown/tan colour for another five to ten minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat, and pour the masala tea into cups, using a tea strainer to discard the tea leaves etc., Stir in sugar or honey to your liking. Enjoy the hot masala chai.

Hot Masala Tea and Pooris with Potato Curry – Warming up on a stormy, snowy day.

Thank you all, who took time to vote Ma’amoul as one of your favorite cookies. I really appreciate your interest. If I could, I would love to send you all a sample cookie. 🙂

Thanks to Chanit for introducing me to this wonderful cookie and thanks to Jennifer and Alberto for sponsoring this event and prizes. Also congrats to Nupur, my blog friend and to all others, who scored a cookie book.

“Brussels sprouts taste almost like cabbage and they have a pronounced and sweet nutty flavor”, said Martha, in one of the episodes on Martha Stewart Living daily show, back in the days. That’s all I needed to know before trying out this winter vegetable.

As a new immigrant to this country, unfamiliar with most of the vegetables available here, no friends or relatives to learn from, Martha is like a mother figure to me. Calm, collected, intelligent and informative, it seemed she actually knew, what she was talking about unlike the current crop of food TV stars. No bam bam.. No unnecessary giggles and no artificial mile-length smiles. What she has is dignity and love of her craft and it reflected on her shows. Back then, I watched her show almost daily and learned so many things too.

I wish she would go back to the old format, because her new shows these days are not like the shows two, three years ago. Don’t they already have enough talk shows to promote movies and TV sitcoms?

I prepare brussels sprouts just like cabbage curry: sliced thin, sautéed with onion and seasoned with green chillis and coconut. I also add some sort of beans, pre soaked in water, like kala chana, chickpeas or dried green peas. If you have not already tried this vegetable, try it this way. I am sure, you are going to like it very much and thank me with a Christmas gift for this wonderful recipe. 🙂

Recipe:

12 to 15 fresh brussels sprouts
1 big onion, sliced thin lengthwise
2 fistfuls of kala chana(black chickpeas), soaked in water overnight
(Dried green peas, chickpeas work too)
4 green chillies and 1 tablespoon of coconut – made into paste
Salt to taste and pinch of turmeric
1 tsp of cumin and mustard seeds, curry leaves etc., for tadka or popu

Preparation:

Wash and Remove outer leaves and trim the bases of brussels sprouts. Check atleast two layers of leaves and remove them too if you find any black spots etc., . Cut each one into half and slice them thin lengthwise.

In a big pan, heat one teaspoon of peanut oil, do the popu or tadka (toasting mustard seeds, cumin and curry leaves). Add and stir fry the onions and kala chana for few minutes. Stir in the brussels sprouts. Add all the seasoning (green chilli-coconut paste, salt, turmeric), mix them together. Cover and cook on low medium heat for about 10 minutes. Leave it like that, don’t open the lid and allow them to cook in their own steam. After 10 minutes, remove the lid, stir them once and add salt if necessary. By now, the sprouts will be tender and done. Switch off the heat and serve immediately.

Brussels sprouts prepared in this way, taste great with chapatis and naans.

Brussels Sprouts Curry and Chapatis ~ Our lunch today.

Recipe source: My own creation

Ragi skipped a generation in popularity. Though our educated parents knew how to make Ragi mudda, they didn’t think of it as a cool recipe for everyday meal. Education and jobs have moved them from villages to cities and old type of recipes was not fashionable to them anymore.

Recently there is a surge of pride in our agricultural products. I call it agricultural patriotism, elicited because, some evil global corporations (US based) which tried to claim patents on turmeric. If they had gotten these patents, no one except the company would have rights on this ancient agricultural product. numerous cases of this kind of attempts to steal the agricultural rights, virtues and history of ancient herbs and products, have surfaced in the recent past. People in countries like India stood steadfast to preserve their rights and they prevailed.

Okay… anyhow coming back to Ragi…
Like quinoa of South American indigenous people, Ragi also plays important part in the nutritional makeup of South India’s village populace. Unpretentious, basic and strength to body kind of food, rich in Calcium and iron, I love my ragi. Low in price, easy to make and versatile, the basic recipe can be adopted to suit any type of palate.

Here is the recipe of ragi mudda or sankati the way we make in our home.

Recipe:
(for two people, for one serving)

1 cup of ragi flour
Fistful of rice
1/4 teaspoon of salt
4 cups of water
1 teaspoon of ghee

Preparation:

Take water and rice in a saucepan, add salt and bring to a boil. Cover and cook the rice until the grains are soft. When the rice is soft, add – just pour or dump ragi flour into the pot. Donot stir now, this is the way folks back at home cook. Cover and put this mixture on medium heat for few minutes until the steam lifts the plate covering the pan. Remove the cover. Using a wooden masher or whisk, stir the ragi-rice mixure vigorously and thoroughly until you see no lumps.
Reduce the heat to low, cover and let it steam cook for about 15 minutes. Switch off the heat. Let it cool down a little bit and make mudda or balls with it. Back home, they dip their hands in cool water first and then immediately take a portion of ragi and shape them into a ball, all done very fast. Here, I use an ice cream scooper to make round balls.

How it is served: Place the ragi mudda in a bowl and pour the sambhar over it. Not too cold and not too hot, just warm is perfect for the palate. Drizzle ghee over it. Today I made carrot sambhar for ragi mudda. It tastes quite good not only with sambhar and but also with peanut chutney, potato kurma or any other vegetable gravy curry. People in Telangana region of Andhra, are particularly fond of ragi mudda/sankati-chicken kurma combination.

How it is eaten: Using your hand or with a spoon, take small portions from the big ragi mudda, dip them into sambhar and swallow. Don’t use teeth; let the tongue do the work. Ragi can be incredibly gummy so traditionally the small balls are never bitten, they are just swallowed. Warm ragi mudda coated all around with sambhar… gives an incredible satisfaction. Children love this kind of food.

Variations: As I mentioned above, you can change the recipe to suit your taste just by changing or adding ingredients. Basic method of preparation is the same, but you can make it mildly sweet by adding jaggery or sugar. Or more rich by substituting the water with milk. You can also add one tablespoon of ghee while still cooking. Also add toasted and finely powdered cashews or peanuts to make it even richer.

Ragi mudda or santaki in Carrot sambhar with ghee ~ Our meal today.

English translation of Ragi Mudda is – Ragi ball or porridge

Recipe Source: Attamma and Rajeswari – My mother in law and sister

Lovely Kate of Accidental Hedonist is hosting the 2nd annual Food Blog Awards. She is inviting all to participate in nominating your favorite food blogs in different categories. Now through December 16th, you can nominate your favorite food blog site for consideration, after which 5 finalists will be chosen in each category and then another voting will take place, to select the ultimate crowd pleaser in each category.

Just click on a category, and enter you favorite food blog name. Have fun!

We created our own winter holiday custom; making murukulu, our favorite savory snacks. Vijay’s birthday comes during this month, and he loves murukulu more than anything. So, I make them in large quantity for his b’day and also for us, to snack all throughout the month of December, the traditional holiday season here.

Murukulu and hot tea, South Indian style, under the gorgeous golden rays of wintry Sunset.

For the uninitiated, murukulu are India’s snack food. They are made with spiced up rice and lentil flour dough, pressed using a mold into beautiful round coils, then deep-fried in oil. Krum. karum is the sound they make when munched. Indian grocery shops usually carry several varieties of these snacks, try them out first, before trying out the recipe. For who know, love and want to try making murukulu at home, here is the recipe.

Recipe:

2 cups – Rice flour
1/2 cup – Gram flour (Besan)
1/2 cup – Moong flour (Pesara Pindi)
…
1/4 cup – sesame seeds
1 teaspoon each – cumin and ajwan/vaamu (carom seeds)
1/2 teaspoon each- red chilli powder and salt
Pinch of baking powder

Some tips for good quality murukulu:

1. Boiled and Mashed Potato – a tip from my attamma for soft yet crunchy murukulu. One small potato will do for the above measurements. To make the dough more easy to work with, and as emulsifier, she substituted the ghee with the boiled and mashed potato paste. It is a great tip that works.

2. Peanut oil for deep frying – I find it that murukulu tastes great when deep-fried in peanut oil. I tried canola, corn oil… They go rancid only after 15 minutes on high heat and murukulu also taste almost bitter.

Muruku maker with discs – You can buy it in almost all major Indian grocery/appliance shops here in US, or you can try online stores. Cookie press like Sawa or Cookie guns are also good for muruku making.

Preparation:

Sieve and mix together the flours. Add the sesame seeds, pureed potato paste, red chilli powder, baking powder, salt, cumin and ajwan seeds. Make a soft dough by adding the water gradually. Dough shouldn’t be too stiff. Take small portion of dough and make a cylindrical shaped log and drop it into the muruku mold, like shown in the photo above.

Deep Frying:

In a wok like deep, sturdy vessel, heat the peanut oil to hot. With your hands, press the muruku mold over the hot oil, making concentric circles, so that the coils of dough come out and drop into the hot oil in circle shape. When you are practiced at making them, you can get two to three circles of dough coils, successfully. My level of expertise at making these beautiful circles is a hit and miss. Anyway you make them, they will turn out, one tasty, crunchy snack, so don’t stress out too much about circles and technique, I don’t.

Fry both sides till golden, and then remove. It takes approximately 5 minutes to fry one batch. Repeat till all the dough is used. Let them cool and store in an airtight container.

During frying, always keep the stove heat on very high. Just by changing the discs, one can make several different shaped murukulu. Shammi of Food in the Main, made recently ribbon shaped muruku for Diwali. I usually use medium round holes disc and star shaped holes disc. The ones photographed here are made using the star shaped holes disc.

A plate of Murukulu