Poori

Yaay...my husband and I had plans of having channa batura at Dosa place this weekend but had to compromise that plan. In the end we decided to make poori at home. I had made poori once before, and that was 3 or 4 years ago. I wasn't 100% sure but still decided to make it as we still had some lasagna that we baked as back up.

Even though I knew the basics I was looking up for poori recipes online but the fancy ones were really fancy therefore I just stuck to the recipe I knew. Here's the basic recipe:

1. 2.5 cups of wheat flour (I used 160ml cups)
2. 1/2 tsp baking powder
3. oil (for mixing and then frying)
4. salt (0.5 - 1 tsp)
5. Warm water (3/4 - 1 cup)

I kinda like poori simply because the chances of screwing up is very less. Anyways, here's the directions

First mix wheat flour, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. I typically use 2 tbsp of oil when mixing the dough. First add 1 tbsp oil and some warm water and start mixing, continue adding water as required, once the dough starts to get pliable add the remaining 1 tbsp of oil and mix well. Add water sparingly during the mixing procedure as the dough shouldn't have excess water. Once the dough is pliable and doesn't stick to your fingers it's time for you to set it aside. Just cover it and leave it alone for 20-30 mins (you could continue to make poori's without leaving the dough aside as well).

Now knead the dough once more and start making small 1.5 inch rounds with the dough mixture. Now start rolling the dough rounds that you made. Typically roll them out to have 4 or 5 inch diameter. The key to making nice poori is to have uniform thickness. First roll the center nicely and then roll around the corners so that the whole thing has uniform thickness. Even when you lift it to drop in the frying pan, the shape shouldn't change. If the dough is rolled out thin, there'll be elongations where you touch 'em.

Now heat generous amount of oil in a pan, drop the rolled out poori's gently, once the dough on the side on top rises, its time to turn the poori around to cook the other side. Poori's done once both sides are cooked. If you notice that the poori's turn to deep brown instead of golden then its time to turn down the heat. I use a gas stove so I have more precise heat control, but with electric stoves, it might just be better to have the heat set at med or med-hi.

Note: You can substitute half of wheat flour with maida if you want the poori's to be more softer.

We had a really great meal last night and I still think poori is one of the easiest dishes to make.

Blueberry Muffins

My husband and I try a new dish every week and we had tried making muffins a couple of weeks ago they turned out great, so this time I changed the quantity of ingredients a little bit and now the muffins taste even better.

I prefer homemade muffins to store bought muffins simply because the ones that are sold in stores are a bit big for one person to finish.

I got the base muffin recipe from allrecipes.com, I prefer using recipes from this site simply because they have user rating and you also read the suggested changes that could be made to make the dish more tasty. My cousin also tried this recipe and she said it came out great...so, I here I write my improvised recipe:

Servings: 12

Ingredients:

1.75 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter (oil can be used instead)
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions:

1. In a large bowl add the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and mix them nicely.
2. Take butter and cut into small pea sized cubes and measure 1/2 cup and add it to the flour mixture. Make sure the butter is mixed well with the flour that no large pieces of butter is seen.
3. Break two eggs and mix them well, and then add milk to the beaten eggs, add 2 teaspoons of vanilla to this mixture.
4. Now pour the entire egg and milk mixture in the flour and mix until the flour is fully moistened. It's okay to have lumps, as overworking the batter might end up ruining the end result.
5. Add blueberries to the mixture.
6. Grease the muffin pan with oil and fill each muffin cup to almost full. Fill the empty ones with water.
7. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes, you can either insert a toothpick to see if the muffin is done or just press it lightly to see if the top springs back.

I don't use baking soda simply because it reacts quickly and causes the muffin tops to crack and makes the muffins look ugly. By replacing baking soda with baking powder we get a much better moist and smooth muffins, that look elegant.

My husband and I loved it and we use these as our evening snack and it's wonderful :)

Recipes to dainty dishes :)

When I left India after marriage, my husband's granny showed me some recipe booklets that got published with the Aval Vikatan tamil magazine and asked me if I like them, I told her I'd definitely like to try them sometime. Basically, each small booklet contains 30 different recipes that would help you to cook 30 variations of the same basic dish (more like specializing it).

I went through the one for Rasam and tried some stuff and I really like it. I like the fact that 30 different recipes for one dish are provided and I could just pick one and make it instead of having to search the internet. Besides I really love to read the traditional south indian recipes in tamil. I guess its just a cheap satisfaction that I get :)

I've had the "samaithu paar" culinary book by meenakshi ammal which is pretty much what most south indian brahmins/vegans follow. I'd like to think of the aval vikatan recipes as a nice extension to that samaithu paar book that I have.

I was trying to find out what other recipe booklets had gotten published and during my pursuit I found all the booklets being shared on esnips. Here's the link to the page http://www.esnips.com/web/SamaithuPaar , it has all the booklets listed in nice PDF. If you are interested, you could just download these and try them out. The only catch is that they are all in tamil.

For those who know tamil and in the mood to try this out "Good luck"

Something's cooking!

I'm a South-Indian vegetarian that only knows how to cook south indian food. I don't know much about north indian cuisine. But, anyways I wanted to make some curry that I can have with roti and I was searching for recipes online and I found this Potato in Yogurt gravy recipe video. I was just wondering who in the world had all the time to make a video and post it.
Anyways, I decided to try the recipe.

When I was in the process of trying the recipe (actually watching the video), I realized how very nice it was for someone to upload the video. Watching the video eliminates any doubt regarding the actual quantity of the ingredients used. When they mention table spoon or cup you really get to see what kind of spoon or other utensil that they use for measuring. I know that a cup signifies 240ml or 8oz but I've noticed that in most Indian recipes people somehow have it wrong. I once read a recipe in which the cook had specified 1 cup of chillies for making rasam (south indian dish), I couldn't even bring myself to imagine eating a dish that has 1 cup of chillies!!! It's plainly brutal!

So, anyway the video was pretty good because unlike some other recipe blogs the person clearly tells at what heat you're supposed to cook and how long, most others miss this info and they let us use our judgment to decide. The video was about 8 mins long and the making the dish took me about 10 minutes in all. I was very happy the way it turned out (the most important reason, why I even thought of writing one such post).

So, I guess it is a lot more helpful when the person posts the recipe or the procedure to make a certain dish in the video format as opposed to just writing a few lines and just posting a pic of the end product. I'm in no way suggesting that everyone that posts their recipe online should do this, instead I'm just suggesting that it might be better to do it this way.

Here's the video for Potato Curry with Yogurt Gravy