Kadalai Paruppu Payasam / Channa Dhal Kheer

It was not an occasion or a party. Just felt like making something special on an evening.  An easy and quick dessert with split Bengal gram, Kadalai Paruppu came to my  mind. Split Bengal Gram,  a healthy lentil which digests easily and is rich in fibers.
Once my mom told this recipe for making an easy prasadam for navarathri golu.
With very less ingredients, the payasam tasted delicious.

Ingredients:

Split Bengal gram - 1 cup
Milk - 1 cup
Jaggery / Brown sugar - powdered 1 cup
Cardamom, Raisin, Cashew nuts - few
Ghee - 2 tsp
Water - to cook dhal

Procedure:

• Pressure cook lentil  with 3 cups of water. Smash the cooked lentil with a ladle. Mix jaggery and milk and cook for 5 minutes.

• Roast raisins and cashew nuts in ghee and mix it with the dhal mixture, along with the crushed cardamom.

• Let the mixture boil for a minute and it is ready to serve. 

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..

Jangiri

Diwali..... Its a special occasion.. what could be an easy and a traditional sweet, easy to make? Oh ya, Jangiri is a sweet prepared in few steps.. with little accuracy..
Many of us felt like a big task to prepare jangiri.. Knowing the wright way to do it makes it easy and quick..

Ingredients:

Whole White Urad Dhal - 1 cup
Sugar - 1 cup
Lemon Juice - 1 tsp
Water - to make sugar syrup
Saffron food color - 2 pinch
Cardamom - 3 nos.
Oil - for deep frying

Procedure:

• Soak Urad dhal for 3 hours. Grind it in a wet grinder or mixer grinder. Grind it fluffy and soft, adding little water when necessary. Take a little batter and put it in a bowl of water. When it floats that's the wright fluffy, airy ground dhal.. 

• Mix a pinch of food color. Add a tbsp of rice flour if you feel you added extra amount of water while grinding. Presented here is only colored urad dhal.

• Meanwhile prepare sugar syrup by adding sugar and some water to cover the sugar in a container. Add a pinch of food color. Let it boil. Wait for string consistency. When it starts to form string, that's when you add lemon juice to avoid forming sugar. Crush cardamom and add it in the syrup.

• Heat oil in a wide heavy flat bottomed pan on a medium heat. Prepare a cone using thick zip lock cover and make a small cut at one  of its corner. I used a piece of thick cloth and made a small hole at its center by twice folding it and cutting a small bit at its corner.

• Fill a scoop of dhal batter in the cone or cloth and get ready to directly squeeze jangiris into hot oil. You can make jangiris any way you could able to do. Note to squeeze each jangiri as soon as possible. While shaping them, make bonds by swirls so that the batter sticks to make a good shape jangiris.

• Flip jangiris when one side is done. When jangiris are cooked in oil, transfer hot jangiris into sugar syrup one after the other. Make sure each of them get dipped in syrup completely.  Note : Hot jangiris straightly goes to the syrup. Don't keep them aside on a paper towel to drain oil.. When dipped hot, the jangiris absorbs sugar syrup and the sweetness gets into them. Otherwise, it is not possible to taste it sweet even when soaked in sugar syrup. I used a wooden spatula to slightly press it to submerge in the syrup for 3 sec. each.

• Keep the sweetened jangiris aside for serving.

Note: Sugar syrup 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.

Walnut Halwa

Walnut, is an edible seed. It contains Omega-3, which plays a role in brain and cardio benefits. Samolina, from wheat, is a good and fast energetic source. The recipe here is a sweet, and can be prepared as a snack time food.

Ingredients:

Walnut- 1/2 cup or 1 hand full.
Samolina - 1 cup
Sugar - 1 cup
Cardomom - 2 nos
Cashewnut - 5-6 nos
Raisins - 5-6 nos
Water - 3 cups
Food Color - a pinch (of your choice and optional)
Ghee - 2 tsp
Oil - 3 tsp

Procedure: 

• Grind walnuts in a mixer coarsely.
• Heat ghee in a wide heavy bottom pan and roast cashew nuts, raisins. Keep them aside.

• Put the ground walnut in the remaining ghee and let it cook for a min. Stir well.

• Add water into the pan. Let it start to boil. Add food color you would like. I used green, just to feel earthen color.

• Mix samolina and sugar. Pour little by little and mix while pouring into the pan.

• Now our halva would be done in 3-5 minutes. Keep stirring. 
• Once the samolina-walnut gets thicken, add some oil to it and continue stirring, to incorporate the oil into it.
• Add roasted cashews, raisins and cardomom.

• The halva is done when walnut and samolina, get mixed together and start to leave out the oil. Till then continue stirring. It will take another 2 min since incorporating the oil.

• Now halva is ready to serve hot.  An inverted Tree.

• Or transfer the halva in a baking pan or a glass container. Let it cool. Make Slices. It can be served as a sliced cubes or in any shape, our kids would like.

I'm so happy, that my picky eating kids finished their serving and wanted some more..

Vanilla-Walnut halwa

Vanilla Walnut halwa is a variation of rava kesari and walnut halwa, which is shown in my recipe posting. To follow, click here for the walnut halwa recipe. 

Just add an extra ingredient, a tsp of the vanilla extract while you add water to the walnut, as mentioned in the procedure.. This time I used a different food color.

Wow, the final dessert is mouth melting vanilla flavored walnut halwa. Just a tsp of vanila extract transforms the nutty kesari sweet into a western touch dessert..

Sweet Kozhukattai

Sweet Stuffing in Rice flour.

During Vinayagar Chathurthi in India, people prepare this God's (our's) favorite dish. Easy recipe and so yummy that I cant stop eating that.. Though its a sweet kind, It does not have artificial sugar. It has brown sugar (Jaggery). I got myself in doing the best kozhukattai(s) after seeing  one of my aunts preparing them.

Ingredients: 
Rice Flour - 2 cup
Coconut - Shredded 1 cup
Jaggery - 1 cup powdered, though not so fine
Cardamom - 3-4 nos
Ghee - 2 tsp
Salt - a pinch
Hot water - 2 cup
Coconut oil - 4 tsp (or any other cooking oil)

Procedure:

• Prepare stuffing first by heating coconut and jaggery together in a hot pan. The jaggery melts and the coconut starts smelling sweet.

• Add some crushed cardamom to the mixture.Let it cook till it gets little thicken add some ghee to it. We can add little rice flour to make it thick. But it needs some more cooking to take off the raw rice flour smell.

• Let it cool down for a while to handle easy to make some balls out of them.

• Now boil water in a separate container.
• In a mixing bowl, add a pinch of salt to the rice flour. Add hot water little by little and mix with the rice flour with a wooden spatula. Mix well so that the rice flour comes to a molding consistency. Mix it with your hand when its ok to handle

• Heat a wide pan and add some oil. Add the wet rice flour and saute for 5 min. Stir well until the rice flour is been nicely cooked with the oil.

• Take small ball of cooked rice flour and make a thin small bowl kind using your hands. To handle the flour, rub little oil on two palms. 

• Place a sweet ball inside it and close the bowl and pinch out the extra flour.Make some more kozhukattai like this. Now its ready to go for steaming.

• Using a steamer cook them for at least 5 minutes. Sweet kozhukattai is ready to go into your mouth.

• If we have some more rice flour left, just saute little chopped onion, curry leaves and green chillies and mix it with the flour and make some shape with your hand and steam cook them. Now kara kozhukattai is ready. It can be served as such or with some chutney.