Karappori / Spicy Puffed rice

Puffed rice is used in breakfast cereals, snack foods like puffed rice cakes, and is also a popular street food in some parts of the world. It is an ingredient of bhel puri, a popular Indian chaat(snack). It is also used in temples and gurdwaras as prasadam (an offering). 

And many of us forgot, that this puffed rice is good snack for the kids. It goes good with a cup of tea for all ages. A spicy puffed rice recipe adds taste to the puffed rice. As far as our family, it gives equal joy to eat spicy puffed rice similar to a fried pakodas / bonda. Even working moms can make use of this recipe to delight their family.

Ingredients:

Puffed rice - 2 lbs
Oil - 3 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Curry  leaves - 1 stem
Garlic pods crushed - 3 nos.
Dry red chillies - 7-8 nos. medium spicy.. (Add other masala powder instead to give a variation)
Turmeric powder - 1 tsp
Peanuts - few

Procedure:

• Heat a wide big pan which can hold the pori/puffed rice. Sputter mustard seeds, curry leaves, crushed garlic and peanuts dry red chillies in hot oil and add turmeric powder.

• At once add the pori. Stir into the spicy mixture.

• And serve hot. Optional: Sprinkle some finely chopped onion while serving.

• That's it. An easy snack is ready.

Tomato Chutney

Tomato chutney, a mouth watering dip for all kind of tifin varieties, like any kind of idly, dosa, uppma even chappathi too.

Ingredients:

Tomato - big size 1 number or 3 small, diced
Onion -  1 big size, diced
Sambar Powder - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil - 2 tsp

For Seasoning:
Oil - 1 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
Curry eaves - 1 stem
Urad dhal - 1 tsp

Procedure:

• Heat pan and add some oil. Saute onion. 
• Once the onion becomes transparent, add tomatoes and sprinkle some salt.

• Saute till the raw smell leaves tomatoes.
• Add some sambar powder to taste.

• Cook for another 2 minutes.
• Let the mixture cools down. Grind it finely.
• Add some boiling water if necessary, or up to your chutney consistency. Also correct for salt.
• Sputter mustard seeds, urad dhal and curry leaves in a tsp of oil in a small pan and pour it on to the chutney.

• Hmm.. tasty chutney is ready.

Pottukkadalai Chutney / Dip with split roasted chick peas

   Split dhalia - Split roasted chick peas chutney, is the very quick and easy tasty chutney that I can prepare when I don't want to use coconut or onion or tomato for my sides for dosas, idlies, uppma, bonda, bajji and so on. This is the recipe from my mother-in-law. Just improvised to taste more yummy with garlic.

Ingredients:  serves 2.

To grind:

Split dhalia - 1 cups

Dry red chilllies - 2-3 nos. Or up to your taste

Garlic pod - 1 nos.

Tamarind - a pinch

Salt - to taste

Water  - to grind

To saute:

Oil- to Saute

Mustard seeds - 1 tsp

Chenna dhal - 1 tsp

Curry leaves - 1 stem

Procedure:

• Grind the above said ingredients adding water. Add required water to bring it to the pouring consistency. 

• Saute mustard seeds chenna dhal and curry leaves. Add it to the chutney

• Serve with your main dish. Here it is shown with Dosa.

Keerai Koottu / Spinach-Coconut Curry

Bright, vibrant-looking spinach leaves are not only more appealing to the eye but more nourishing as well. Spinach leaves that look fully alive and vital have greater concentrations of vitamin C than spinach leaves that are pale in color. Doctors recommend that we need to include spinach in our diet 1-2 times per week. Most of the people, already knew about the health benefits of spinach. It helps to protect against inflammatory problems, oxidative stress-related problems, cardiovascular problems, bone problems, and cancers at the same time.

We can feed spinach in many ways. Keera koottu / Spinach-coconut Curry uses dhal too. Here is the simple way to prepare it.

Ingredients:

Spinach - 1 bunch
Moong dhal / Blanched split green gram - 1/4 cup
Coconut - 1/4 cup shredded
Cumin seeds - 2 tsp
Onion - preferably pearl onion 10 nos cut into halves. Or finely chopped onion 1/4 cup
Green chillies - 5 nos. Up to taste. Chopped finely
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil - 2 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp

Procedure:

• Cook moong dhal with turmeric powder. Cook spinach adding salt to it, in a separate vessel.

• Heat sauce pan and sputter mustard seeds. Saute onion and green chilies. 
• Meanwhile course grind spinach in a mixer.Add spinach to the saute.

• Add dhal to it.Grind coconut and cumin seeds. Add some water while grinding. It need not to be a fine paste.

• Add coconut paste to the spinach-dhal.

• Let it boil for a minute. The raw coconut smell goes off.
• And the koottu is ready to serve. Serve with hot rice. Also it goes good with chappathi, dosai.

Note: While cooking spinach, open cook it always, what ever the variety it is. It will retain its original green color.

Potato Chutney

Potatoes are a very popular food source. Unfortunately, most people eat potatoes in the form of greasy French fries or potato chips, and even baked potatoes are typically loaded down with fats such as butter, sour cream, melted cheese and bacon bits. Such treatment can make even baked potatoes a potential contributor to a heart attack. But take away the extra fat and deep frying, and a baked potato is an exceptionally healthful low calorie, high fiber food that offers significant protection against cardiovascular disease and cancer. It has vitamins and potassium and copper. Though it is definitely not a food for all people. 
Whether mashed, baked or roasted, people often consider potatoes as comfort food. It is an important food staple and the number one vegetable crop in the world. Potatoes are available year-round as they are harvested somewhere every month of the year.
Like the egg plant chutney/brinjal chutney., we follow similar kind of procedure for potato chutney, with little variation in the ingredient.
Potato chutney is a very good side for ragi dosa, bajra dosa, wheat dosa as well as idli and rice dosa.

Ingredients:


Potato - 4 no. medium size, Skin peeled and cut into big size cubes.
Onion - 1 no. finely chopped small size
Green Chilli - 5-6 nos up to your taste, chopped finely.
Ginger - finely chopped 2 tsp
Curry leaves - 1 stem
Tomato - 1 no. small size, finely chopped
Turmeric powder - 1 tsp
Oil - 2 tsp for sauteing
Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Water - for cooking potatoes.
Coriander leaves - for garnish



Procedure:
If you would like to make it very easy, cook it in a small size cooker. Also can be done using a sauce pan.
This procedure is given for pressure cooking. Do necessary change for sauce pan cooking.

• Heat cooker, saute cumin seeds in oil. Saute onion, green chillies, ginger.

• Once it is saute, add tomato and salt. Saute nicely, till the tomato oozes out oil.

• Add potato cubes and saute for a min. Add turmeric powder. Add water to cover potatoes and cover the cooker lid. Pressure cook potato mix till two whistles. If not using a cooker, just occasionally stir the mix and let cook the potatoes in the sauce. 

• Open the lid after the steam is all out and using a smasher, smash the potato into bits. Add some hot water if required to make the chutney little thin. Correct for salt. Proper salting gives very good taste. Sprinkle some coriander leaves.

• Now the potato chutney is ready to serve with your tiffin variety. Here t is with ragi dosa.

Avacado Rice Pops

Avocado, can be considered as a fruit when eaten with honey or a vegetable when mixed with vegetable.
It is rich in good fat. Check for Simple Avocado Dip for more about Avocados.
The recipe given here is a good breakfast from an year old kid to all ages. Also it could be a nice dessert party platter.

Ingredients:

For breakfast: 
Avocado - 1 no.
Honey -2 tsp
Rice Pops cereal - 1 cup
Milk - 1/2 cup

For Dessert:
Avocado - 1 no.
Honey -2 tsp
Rice Pops cereal - 1 cup
Milk - 1 cup
Cardamom - 1 no. crushed.
Cinnamon - powdered a pinch.
Almond - Blanched and sliced 1 tsp

Procedure:

 Smash avocado with little milk into a fine foam. Add honey and rest of the milk and mix well.

For Breakfast: Mix rice pops before serving and serve with little honey topped.

For Dessert:  Add rest of the above said ingredients for making dessert, other than rice pops and mix well. Just before serving add rice pops and serve. A simple, easy quick dessert is ready now.

Mysore Pak

A Traditional Sweet , if you are good at making kesari, and you want to try a traditional sweet., this could be the one. Making mysore pak has few steps, which should be done at the correct timings. Its nothing big to worry about the timings. Here is how you can simply do mysore pak in half an hour.

Ingredients:

Besan / Chick peas Flour - 1 cup
Oil & Ghee - 1 & 2 cup respectively  (Most of the times I use this ratio. If you want the mysore pak to be more rich, add ghee instead of oil. Or if you want to avoid ghee, use 3 cups of oil alone.)
Sugar - 3 cup
Water - to make sugar syrup

Get ready:

Since timing is very important., we prepare ourselves for making our good mysore pak.
You need a thick flat bottomed, medium height vessel for preparing mysrore pak. We need another vessel to heat 3 cups of oil/ghee and a tablespoon to scoop some oil from it. We need a good spatula, preferably a wooden kind to stir mysore pak.  Need both of your hands at the same time to work coordinately.
A tray, like a rectangular cake baking tray.

Procedure:

• Heat  a tbsp of ghee/oil in medium heat first. To avoid lumps while preparing, add it to the besan and mix well and sieve. Pour the remaining oil/ghee altogether and start heating it on a medium heat.

• Meanwhile prepare sugar syrup heating up the sugar with some water to cover it, in a heavy flat bottomed and a medium height vessel. Let it boil for some time (5-10 min) until it reaches string consistency. Also by the side heat oil/ghee in a vessel. It is recommended to use your left hand stove burner for oil and right hand burner for sugar syrup preparation, If you are right handed.

• Then add the sieve flour little by little into the sugar syrup. Stir while adding flour to easily incorporate it into the syrup. Check for lumps. Since we did the first step, it will be easy to incorporate the flour.

• Let it come to boil. Keep stirring. When it is forming bubbles, that's when you  pour hot oil/ghee one scoop at a time. Keep stirring. When the hot oil/ghee is poured, the besan flour cooks.

• Empty oil/ghee into the flour-syrup. Keep stirring. Watch out for spurting hot flour/oil. I'm just asking you to be cautious rather get hurt. 

• Mysore pak will be ready any time in less than 5 min once the oil is poured in. Keep stirring, until the flour particles stick each other making a cohesive bond and you can see a mild color change with a nice aroma. You can observe bubbles formed in the flour. Just lift the vessel and pour it into a tray.

• Wait for a little while to cool down little bit and make cuts of our own way...

• Just wait for some more time to completely cool down and try taking the mysore pak out. 
• Hmmmm, yammm, it melts in your mouth.

Note: String Consistency-When pinched with your indexed finger and thumb finger, it should form a thin sticky string. Otherwise, when a drop of syrup poured in a bowl of water, it should not dissolve, rather when touched it could be easy to make a small ball kind of.
The Texture- The air bubbles are locked inside the mixture. Once it cools down, it makes small pores in mysore pak.
Since the heat at the top and bottom portion get cool down first, those parts look light yellow in color. And the middle part take some time to cool down and the heat inside the mixture makes that portion look light brown in color.

Remember, Practice results in good perfection. So start doing now..