Kadalapparippu Ada (Bengal Gram and Coconut Parcels)

This is one recipe that I wanted to post quite long time back. I made it during Ramadan, and mis-placed the recipe ( I forgot where I scribbled down the recipe). I Have been searching for this precious recipe for many days actually.....Just found it today!phewww....

Kadalapparippu Ada is not a very common snack that’s made all around in Malabar areas, but it is one of my family’s favourite tea-time snacks especially my dearest dad’s and mine. These are normally made during iftar (breaking of fast) or to serve guests arriving home during evenings. The preparation method is some what like Sukhiyan, but substituting channa dal for moong dal and sugar for jaggery. Like Sukhiyan, this can also be dipped in batter and then deep –fried until golden to get a crispy outer covering and a rich coconut and dal filling in..Yummm.... I personally like it this way, and prepare them this way whenever I feel like having them. But traditionally it is made by using the rice dough, flattening the dough on a banana leaf, enclosing the filling in and steam-cooking it along with the leaf to infuse the wonderful aroma of the banan leaf. Since I couldn’t find the banana leaf, I used the baking paper instead. I prepared this way exclusively for the blog. It is a bit time consuming to prepare the traditional way using the dough, but to make it easier we dip it in batter and fry it in oil, like we do for Sukhiyan. It takes much less time when you prepare this way, but more oil....If you want to prepare this Ada and want to fry them instead of steaming, please refer the Sukhiyan recipe for the outer coating’s (batter) recipe. It is exactly the same.

Here I have made huge ones to finish up the process fast, you may make smaller ones. Smaller ones look better as well.

Kadalapparippu Ada (Bengal Gram and Coconut Parcels)
Makes 15- 17 large ones

Ingredients:
For the filling:
½ cup (100g) channa dal (Kadalapparippu)
1 ½ cup (150g) freshly grated coconut
¾ cup – 1 cup granulated sugar (adjust depending on the sweetness required)
1 tsp Ghee/clarified butter
1 small shallot sliced
½ heaped tsp cardamom powder
A good pinch of salt

For the rice dough:
2 ½ cup rice flour (unroasted)
2 ½ cup tap water
¾ tsp salt or as required

Preparation:
A) For the filling:
1.wash dal and cook until soft, not mushy. Cooking can be done in pressure cooker (I do it).

2. In a large frying pan, add coconut and sugar and simmer for few minutes until the sugar is completely melted. When the sugar is melted completely, you should be able to see bubbles appearing in the grated coconut. Make sure that the sugar is completely melted.

3. At this point, add the cooked dal and stir well. Cook until all the water from the sugar is vaporised and the mixture can be formed into balls.

4. Sprinkle a good pinch of salt over the filling and stir well. Add cardamom powder and stir well too.

5. In another pan/kadai, heat ghee. Add the sliced shallot and fry till slightly golden. Add it to the coconut and dal mixture and stir well. Cover and keep aside.

B). For the rice dough:

1 .In a large bowl add rice and stir in the salt. Gradually add in water and mix well until you get a smooth dough that you can shape into balls.

C). Assembling:


1. Divide the dough into 15 – 17 portions and equally divide the fillings. Cut 2 square shapes from baking paper. Shape the dough into balls and flatten them into discs. Spoon a heaped tablespoon of the filling on half of the disc leaving 2 cm from the circumference.

2. Fold the other end of the disc using the baking paper to form a semi-circle parcel sealing all the ingredients in.

3. Steam-cook them along with baking paper for about 5-10 minutes until cooked. Once the dough is cooked, it will be firm to touch. Carefully lift the Ada along with the baking paper and let it cool. You can also try placing the ada directly without the baking paper, but I was scared that it would stick to the steamer, so placed along with the baking paper. You may steam 2-3 at the same time depending on the size of the steamer.

4. Repeat the process with the rest of the dough. Best served warm.

Note:
1. As I have mentioned earlier, if you are preparing like Sukhiyan, make orm the filling into lemon sized balls. Dip the balls in the batter and deep fry them.

2. The filling and dough stays in fridge upto 4 days if not touched by hand. The filling can be eaten as it is as an evening snack or filled. Try making them fresh, since it doesn’t taste good when cold and reheated later on.

Special Fried Chicken

Ever since my friend handed over this recipe to me, this has been a regular visitor on our table. Be it a lunch or dinner...this dish is very much enjoyed by my family and we simply love it. The best part is that the chicken can be fried without adding any oil and it tastes as good as the fried ones. You can’t notice any difference at all. If you are a health freak and love good food, you will love this version. These days, I don’t add any oil while preparing this dish, since it tastes finger-licking good even without oil. So why bother add some unwanted fat when it doesn’t make any difference at all?



Ingredients:
500g-600 g Chicken pieces
4 large cloves of garlic thinly sliced and chopped (1 ½ tbs)
1” piece ginger , thinly sliced and chopped (3/4 - 1 tbsp)
30 curry leaves (2 twigs), chopped
2 tsp Kashmiri Chilli powder
½ tsp Turmeric powder
1 tsp salt or as required
¾ - 1 cup water
Oil- as required (Please read the instructions)
2-3 green chillies (optional)
1 twig curry leaves (optional)


Preparation:
1.Wash chicken, and pat dry. Marinate it with ginger, garlic, chilli powder, turmeric powder, curry leaves and salt for a minimum of 2 hours or overnight. If the pieces are big like leg, thigh or even breast, make 2-4 shallow slits on the meat so that the marinade can permeate through.

2. Heat a saucepan, add chicken along with enough water; cover and cook until the meat is tender. Open the lid, increase the flame and dry up almost all the water. At this point, you can see that the oil has cleared from the chicken.

3. After this, the frying process can be done in two ways as given below.

3.a) When all the water dries up and the oil clears, turn down the heat to low-medium and add 2-3 green chillies and a twig of curry leaves. Fry until the chicken is evenly browned by flipping them frequently. This is the healthier way of frying it without using oil.

Else:

3.b. Heat another frying pan, add 2-4 Tbs of oil, add 2 green chillies and a twig of curry leaves. Add the cooked chicken along with the juices and fry till brown.


Note: Adding chillies and green chillies at the end are purely optional. You may omit them. The dish is good even without adding them. I just love the flavour of green chillies and curry leaves, so added a bit more.

Tuna Chikkiyathu /Spicy Tuna Thoran (Stir-fried Tuna With Spices)

Tuna Chikkiyathu /Spicy Tuna Thoran:
Serves 3-4

Ran out of fish or prawns to prepare for an afternoon lunch? Got some tuna in stock? Then this recipe will help you out to sort the issue! Well, this recipe was somewhat my husband’s idea. It blinked in his brain on a day when we ran out of fish and seafood and the only thing we had was canned tuna. He then suggested me to prepare it this way, but I added some extra ingredients as well!!




Ingredients:
4 tsp coconut oil
¾ cup chopped onion
15 curry leaves
1/3 cupful (1 medium size) chopped tomato
1 tbsp + 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder (Adjust per taste)
Few tsp of water
½ tsp pepper powder
2*185g canned tuna, drained
1/3 cup grated coconut
½ tsp garam masala

Preparation:
1.Heat a large frying pan or saucepan and add oil. Add the chopped onions, curry leaves and sauté till onion becomes soft and translucent. Add the chopped tomato , pepper powder and chilli powder.

2. Cover and cook on very low flame until tomatoes are soft and masala is thick.

3.Add the drained tuna and cook on low – medium flame for about 10-15 minutes until the masala is quite dry and no moisture at all. Add coconut and stir well. Cook for few more minutes until well incorporated.

4. Add garam masala, stir well and cover and cook for a minute.

Serve as a side dish for chappathi, poori, ottil pollichathu, rice,paalappam, appam or even bread.

Potato and Cauliflower Soup with Cheese

Potato and Cauliflower Soup with Cheese
Serves 4 (1 cup each).

Soups are always a healthy alternative to fat filled snacks or any other dinner/lunch platter which contain enormous amount of oil/clarified butter etc. Recently I have been trying to reduce the use of saturated fats and other oils after an alarming discovery of the calories that is present in a Tablespoon of fat, be it an olive oil or sunflower oil. I am not sure about butter, coconut oil and clarified butter, but I guess it should be much more than the others mentioned. Yeah, Can you believe that a tablespoon of vegetable oil has 135 Kcal?!!!I read it on the label on the bottle.... So I am trying to cut down the amount of oil in my recipe, you may use more as you wish. But, the foods that contain more oil, is quite tasty if you agree, and I always had an affinity to add more oil.... I always think, why do all or almost all tasty food should be unhealthy or High in calories?!

So, on such a day when I was browsing for some healthy recipe, I came across this stunning soup at Saju’s blog. Her recipe was ‘Cauliflower and broccoli soup’. I badly wanted to have the soup ago, but dint have broccoli to start with. Hence I substituted broccoli for potato, the one vegetable that I always have in stock and made it. It was really tasty and a filling soup. Thanks to Saju for such a delicious recipe. We had it for afternoon tea along with French Baguette and had the rest at night a swell. I dint find much of a difference in taste when I had it at night, but it was really good at noon.

I have modified the recipe a bit and here goes my version. I have added little cheese - I just couldn’t hold my temptation, so added it to give a light cheesy taste. Also added water along with milk, you can use complete milk rather than adding water. The soup was very refreshing and filling. It tasted really yum with garlic bread and baguette.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cup (200g) chopped cauliflower florets
1 cup (170g) potato cut into small cubes
½ cup (80g) thinly sliced carrot
½ cup (70g) chopped onion
¼ cup (4 Tbsp, 25g) grated cheddar cheese (optional)
1 ¾ cup semi skimmed milk
1 ¼ cup water
1 maggi stock cube crumbled (chicken or vegetable)
3 Tbsp plain flour
1 Tbsp vegetable oil

Preparation :
1.Heat a saucepan, add oil. Add all the vegetables and sauté for 5 minutes. Add water, milk (leaving behind little milk to mix the flour) and stock cube and cook till vegetables are cooked well and is soft.

2. Mix the flour with little milk and add the milk to the vegetables. Let it boil for few minutes until thick. Don’t add the flour directly to soup without mixing it with milk since it becomes lumpy!

3. Add the grated cheddar and mix well until just melted. Season with pepper and serve hot.

4. Serve hot with any baguette or garlic bread.

(Salt was not added since there was adequate amount of salt in the stock cube. You may reduce the amount of stock cube in the beginning, if necessary, and add them later to adjust the salt level.)

This post is my entry for the ‘Monthly Mingle-Soups' organized by Meeta , author of one of the most stylish blogs around- "What's for lunch, Honey?". The event is hosted by yet another lovely blogger - Harini of Tongue Ticklers.

Banana Bread

What happens when you have a local farmers market nearby where you get fruits and vegetables at a very low cost?.....There will be more fruits and vegetables at home than required, and sometimes aiming to the bin! That’s what happened quite a few times at my home recently. The farmers market nearby is a whole sale market where we get loads of stuffs as cheap as chips.....Recently I had asked my HD to get some Bananas along with other stuffs and he bought more than dozen bananas! I am not much of a banana fan; I eat it once in a while but not so frequently to finish them all....So I had to think of options of how to use up the bananas without wasting any.....I used them in fruit salads, cornflakes, prepared some pancakes, drop scones and sometimes had them for breakfast!....I was still left with a few bananas which started developing black spots on them.....Then the thought of banana bread that recently appeared on many blogs struck me! Yes, I am Baking it........The Banana Bread, something that I was longing to try.... I then started googling for the recipe....googled and googled and got confused which one to follow since there were numerous amount of recipes........I wrote down many recipes, added and subtracted ingredients to my liking and finally referred www.Joyofbaking.com for the final recipe to see what I wrote down was almost the same.



I fell in love with banana flavoured cakes during my college days where I used to have banana muffins for breakfast. But after making the banana bread, I realised that the one I had in college just had the banana essence and dint have any banana in it. The recipe for Banan bread given here is very simple to follow and can be modified to suit your personal taste – you can omit the nuts if you don’t prefer them, or add more nuts, omit the cinnamon and add the spice of your choice, or omit it completely..... In this recipe I have used cinnamon powder and for nuts I used Brazil nuts even thethe original recipe calls for walnuts.. There is a story behind the using of Brazil nuts. There were only just enough amount of walnuts for baking. Lucky me, thought myself. Got all ready for baking, heated the oven, placed the walnuts on the sheet and popped it in the oven...When I was setting off with the other ingredients, came a phone call!! Guess who it was....Oh, not a surprise and not a minister...It was just my sis. But why do I have to mention it here?.....My sister, I don’t know how she does it, but always calls me at the worst possible hour......while I am sleeping early in the morning, or at midnight, or I am busy with something and running around like a headless chicken .........The phone kept ringing......I picked the phone and we started talking (The oven is still ON with walnuts in)....the talking went on for sometime until I sniffed a charred smell and made me think ‘Hey, what’s that funny smell all of a sudden?’......’Oops my walnuts’.....I dropped the phone and ran to the kitchen, and opened the oven, just to find my only walnuts turn into charcoal and smoke all over....So I had to find some substitute for the walnuts and used ended up using brazil nuts.... To be frank, even though brazil nuts are one of my favourites, I thought it just din’t click in this recipe...I thought the walnuts would give it the best crunchy bite... And for the cinnamon, I have been having too much of cinnamony stuffs, that I got bored of the taste. I am looking forward to baking banana bread again, but making sure I omit the nuts and cinnamon and add a tad more of vanilla extract.



The Bread, or rather a cake, was moist and had a true Banana flavour with a hint of cinnamon. It was deliciously crispy as soon it came out of the oven, but later on got moist, but yummy. The cake was quite dense cake and we loved it with tea. I tried toasting the slice of bread and drizzled with honey....It was great that way too...Well, while you choose the banana, go for the one that is really ripe, because the flavour of the banana intensifies as the banana ripens. My husband thought they were sweet enough for him, but I thought it was slightly less sweet for my taste. I would try adding a cup of sugar next time than ¾ cup. For checking the doneness, poke the bread at different place using a skewer. Since there is lot of banana in the bread, it will stick to the skewer and give a false idea

Banana Bread
Recipe adapted from: www.joyofbaking.com

Ingredients:
½ cup chopped nuts of your choice, preferably Walnuts or pecans
1 ¾ cup (250g) all purpose flour
¾ cup – 1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp Baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ cup (113 g) butter
450g banana, mashed (1 ½ cups), 4 Large ones
2 large eggs, lightly beaten with whisk
1 tsp vanilla extract/essence

Preparation: Courtesy of www.Joyofbaking.com

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place oven rack to middle position. Cover the base and the longer side of a 1 kg loaf pan with a baking paper. Set aside.

2. Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

3. In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

4. In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients just until combined and the batter is thick and chunky. (The important thing is not to over mix the batter. You do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery bread). Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake until bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes (It took me 1 hour and 10 minutes). Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. This bread can be frozen.

Eid Mubarak!

A warm Eid greetings to all my readers and fellow bloggers. May you and your family have a blessed Eid!..Eid Mubarak!...