Paper Dosa and Coconut Peanut Chutney

I have been MIA for the past month. Its not that I couldn't take time at all..but its the kind of void that you go thru sometimes..no mood to blog at all..It was first for a week, then two and so quickly its more than a month already..Even now I am just forcing myself so that my Blog Archive will show this month.

Summer is in full swing with temperatures hitting 28c-32c, feels like 40, something we are not used to here....kids are enjoying their summer holidays and having fun time.. so do we parents..Food is first thing first that pops up in holidays..With picky eaters we always have to be on the look out to entice them with something they look forward to eat.

Dosa with coconut chutney is one of kids fav..This coconut chutney is a variation by adding peanuts instead of roasted gram. Kids don't know the difference though. And the dosa is also made crispy to fold like a paper

Coconut Chutney - Type II

Coconut with Peanuts and Red chillies:
Ingredients :
To Grind:1 cup grated fresh/frozen coconut
1/2 cup Roasted Peanuts
1 tsp cumin seeds (optional)
4 Red chillies (increase or decrease accordingly)
A small piece of Ginger (about 1/4 inch)
1 Big marble size tamarind ball
Salt to taste
Enough water to grind these into a smooth paste

For Tempering/Tamlinpu:
1 tsp oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp urad dhal
2-3 red chillies cracked
8-10 curry leaves
1 pinch of Asafoetida/Hing/Inguva/Perumgayam

Method:
In a chutney grinder, put all the ingredients in the grinding list and grind them thoroughly to a smooth paste/chutney.
Transfer to a serving container.
Heat up the small tempering vessel add oil, after the oil is hot, allow mustard to splutter and add the rest of ingredients one by one ending with Asafoetida, fry for a few seconds and spread on the prepared chutney.

Paper Dosa
Follow the instructions here to make dosas, just increase the rice flour by 1/2 cup more and fry them for longer time to make them paper crisp...

Enjoy with coconut chutney and sambar.

Masala Dosa - A Love Affair

Welcome 2010....bring some blessings with you..this is my husband's latest Skype Profile message. So true....We all need blessings of good health, wealth, prosperity, etc..all the more than the last decade, as we start yet an era of this new decade. most of all we need God's grace to go through each single day and live it with full diligence and dedication - remembering not to take anything for granted but to acknowledge God's provision and protection and giving HIM all the Praise and not ceasing from Praying. Wooow!!! being a pastor's wife at times I tend to preach too..

I was on a break for the last few weeks from my regular once a week post bloging..Christmas and the New year fever is down and life is busy catching up with work and other regular activities...not to forget food bloging in its pace. After two weeks I may take a longer break..as I have to be accupied with something more exciting and important coming up in my life..but will soon be back as I have lots of pictures in my drafts waiting to be published.


Coming to the love affair "Masala Dosa"..I call it so because
'Masala Dosa" has incredible childhood memories of visiting restaurants with family and enjoying a breakfast or a dinner. In those days families were more used to home cooking. So going to a restaurant was a definte treat. And mostly we would visit restaurants to have tiffins. Though there are a variety of tiffins available, no trip to restaurant is complete without ordering the king of tiffins 'Masala Dosa'. Somehow we South Indians just love the smell and taste of this Masala Dosa. The name Masala Dosa comes from stuffing the plain dosa or accompaning it with a blissful Potato Masala. A typical Malasa Dosa thali consists of a thin dosa stuffed potato curry, sambar and an array of chutneys like coconut, coriander, mint, ginger, onion etc..

The taste of Masala Dosa with potato curry, sambar and coconut chutney that I had in my childhood is still fresh and the longing to have similar one in this part of the world is still unfullfilled. As years passed by the authentic taste also is diminishing. Often in our households(back home) we make dosa and have it with chutney, sometimes we are blessed to have sambar too. Very rarely we have the combo of three, Potato curry, sambar and chutney. So Masala Dosa had become a restraurant fair for me.

Mostly the Dosa recipe is the regular mix of Urad Dhal and Rice in 1 : 2 or 1: 3 or 1 : 4 of depending on whether you want the dosa to be soft or crispy or paper thin crispy. The urge to get a restraurant style Masala dosa made me try a different recipe for Dosa this time. More over, couple of months back I saw a Masala Dosa post in Usha Nandini's blog which really duplicated the restraurant style Paper Masala Dosa, by adding Rice flour, Maida and channa dhall to the regular Urad Dhall mixture. I was excited when my dosas turned out to be Saravana Bhavan and Udipi style.

Recipe for Dosa:
Ingredients :1 1/2 cup Rice flour
1/2 Cup Maida
3/4 cup Urad Dhal
1/4 cup Channa Dhall
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 tsp Bi-Carbonate
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp Sugar
Enough oil to fry the Dosas
Method :Soak Channa and urad dal + fenu greek seeds separately in water 3-4 hrs.
Grind them together into very fine smooth paste adding enough water.
In a steel bowl ideal for fermenting the batter, add rice flour, maida, soda, sugar and enough water to make a smooth batter with any lumps.
To this batter add both dal pastes and enough salt to form dosa consistency batter.
Let the dosa batter ferment and raise overnight.
Once the Dosa batter is fermented and its time to make dosas, mix thoroughly to level the raised batter and add more salt and water if required to obtain the consistency which is right to get thin dosa(if preferred)
Heat a non-stick pan or tawa on high, spread oil to cover the whole pan.
When the pan really hot, pour a ladle full of dosa batter on it and spread with the bottom of ladle in spiral motion to form a circular and thin dosa.
When the bottom side of dosa gets golden brown, turn on other side for few more seconds.
In restraurants they usyally do not turn the dosa on the other side. The thick hot wide tawa they use helps in cooking the upper side of the dosa too, so once the bottom is golden brown they add a laddle of spicy Potato masala in the centre and roll the dosa to serve it with hot sambar and chutney.
Will publish receipes for Potato Masala, Sambar, and green chutney as a seperate posts coming up.

Happy cooking & blogging to all my blog friends in 2010 !!!

Cheers
Rina

Kothu Roti / Parotta with Meat Gravy

AKA Muttai Parotta / Minced Egg Parotta
Kothu Parotta has some sweet memories of Nagapattinam/Velankanni beach side restaurants for me. As a small tourist attraction for those visiting Tamil Nadu, Velankkani, has quiet a festive look and the walk from the hotel to the seashore doing some petty shopping at beach side stores is a nice experience. By the time we reach the seashore our hungry belly is wanting the delicious seafood and other delicacies that this place has to offer. I have tasted the best fish fry ever in this place. They cut open a medium size fish and fry it on large tawas with marinated masalas. Not to mention the crab fry. I cannot understand how they can spice up the crab from within with out any gravy hanging out. If this is the seafood side they are nothing less when providing base foods to go with the seafood.
The Elegant Egg Dosa/Muttai Dosa, thin and crepe with beaten egg and masala on it, Parotta with Meen Kozhambu/fish gravy or the famous one and only Muttai Parotta/Kothu roti. I only remember tasting it 3 or 4 times. Often I and husband keep re chanting the memories of this. And it a must try on a visit to this place.

Procedure to make a Kothu Roti/Parotta is quiet interesting. Parottas are shredded into pieces beaten with long metal ladles on a large iron tawa, and egg, onions, gravy and other spices and ingredients are add to it and mixed to get the end result. It was totally new dish for a Telugu girl like me who has never heard about it in Andhra. Only after my marriage during the few years of my stay in Chennai I came to know it. Though in Chennai we do get this kothu Parotta, it is no comparison with the one I tasted in Nagapattinam/Velankanni. It is mostly a eaten for dinner and in Chennai/Tuticoran/Nagarcoil , you can hear the sound of making this dish in small restaurants nearly from very other street corner in the night time. In Toronto every Srilankan Tamil take out has this in there menu with added attraction of any meat/chicken to it. Again the same thing, the taste is no where satisfying near the Kothu Parotta we get in Velankanni.

This said I started to make it at home. Since we get the beaten shredded parotta/roti in the frozen food section in many srilankan Tamil stores, it makes it easy to try this dish at home.

Ingredients :
3 Fresh Parottas/Roti or Store bought Frozen Minced roti
1 Tbsp oil
1/4 tsp mustard seeds (optional)
2 thinly sliced/chopped red or white onions
5-6 Green chillies chopped
a handful of fresh curry leaves
1 Tomato chopped
1 tsp Black pepper powder
Salt to taste
2 -3 Eggs
1 Cup Meat curry (Mutton/Beef/Chicken)
Finely chopped coriander leaves
Lime wedges

Directions:
In a wok or kadai heat oil and allow mustard to splutter.
Add curry leaves and green chillies fry for 10 seconds.
Add sliced/chopped onions and fry till the onion is cooked.
Now add chopped tomato and fry till all the water from it is gone.
Now add the Minced roti or shredded parotta, eggs, salt and peeper and mix well.
Once the egg becomes hard, add the meat curry with gravy and keep stirring till all the gravy stick to the parotta and the out is dry but moist.
Add coriander leaves and remove from heat.
Serve hot with lime wedges.

Uthappam

Uthappam has loads of childhood memories. Every Friday evening/night tiffin was this Onion Uthappam back home. I would passionately wait for that Friday night when my mom used to make the tastiest uthappam for us. Though I was never able to come near the uthappam that my mom made because I use oil very sparingly, still that taste and smell linger in my mouth after years. In my early college days when I use to attend my maths tuition early in the morning, a hungry me would come home and while rest of household would eat idly as breakfast, I would make myself this tasty uthappam(spoilt Uh !!!!) and enjoy before i get into my routine study schedule. Then during my Bachelor's Degree, I use to end my Friday fasting with my grand mother's uthappam in the night with either raw onion chutney or coconut roasted gram chutney.
Uthappam though a Tamil word but equally recognized in Telugu and in almost all South Indian restaurants this is a tiffin item in the menu. Mostly consumed for breakfast or dinner. Usually in every South Indian home the left over idly batter is use to make Uthappam for the next meal. Again whether using rice or rice rava to make idli, Uthappam can be made with either of the idli batters. Also either the chopped onions, green chillies and other spices can either be spread on the flattened batter or can be mixed earlier in the batter itself, depending on one's preference.

Whats needed :
2- 3 cups Idli Batter
2 medium size chopped Onions
5 -6 Green Chillies minced
1 Tbsp cumin seeds (jeeragam/jeera)
Enough Oil & salt

Procedure:
Add around half cup of water to the idli batter to make it dilute and stir well
Heat the dosa tawa/non stick pan and grease it with a enough oil
Spread a big laddleful of uthappam batter in a circular shape with 1/3 inch thick on the heated tawa/pan
Add some cut onions, green chillies, cumin seeds from the centre towards the edges.

Cover and cook on medium heat.
Remove lid to check if the base is golden brown, flip onto the other side and cook till onions are done and the uthappam is cooked.
Serve hot with Raw Onion, ginger or Coconut chutney.

Idli with Coconut Chutney - A Humble Combo, A bond indeed

The relationship of a south Indian with Idli and coconut chutney so intense that we can write pages about it. This is one break fast that we South Indians grew up on back home.
I call it a humble combo because every household can afford to make it at home or even to take out from the near by breakfast restaurant or get from small street side stalls. I grew up in a joint family along with grand mothers, uncles and aunts. Idli is one easy breezy breakfast to feed large families. At my house back home it was a staple breakfast 2 to 3 times a week. Though I was not so fond of it those days and never use to eat more than 1 or 2, I very much long for Idly and coconut chutney in this part of the world. Obviously we know the value of things when we can't get them so readily. With very few South Indian restaurants in Toronto you got no option then to enjoy home made idlis and chutney. And I do prefer it than store bought..Though the preparation takes a few long steps, and involves using lot of equipments like wet grinder, Idli moulds and pressure cooker, scooper etc..it’s all worth to go through the process and enjoy it at least in the weekend. All the more when the whole family including my 3 year old loves it.

Idli is prepared mainly in two different ways. Though there are many other variations and varieties of Idlies. In Tamil Nadu they use whole rice and Urad dhal(White Lentils with Black husk on them usually called black gram) and in Andhra(at least in my home, I don't know in other parts) we use Rice Rava(Cream of Rice) and Urad dhal and also the proportion of rice or rice rava and urad dhal differs.

For a Tamil Nadu style idly I use 1 cup urad dhal to 3 to 4 cups rice( par boiled or combo of par boiled and raw rice or the Tamil nadu special idly rice), soak them separately and grind them separately. Usually the urad dhal is grinded to very fine batter and the rice is grinded to hold rava constituency, then both are mixed together with salt and allowed to ferment overnight, where by morning the batter almost rises to double or triple, so that you get that soft fluffy idlis.

With Andhra Style, I use 1 cup urad dhal to 2 to 3 cups rice rava(usually call Idli rava), soak them separately and then urad dhal is grinded to very fine batter and the rice rava is squeezed from all water and added to the ground urad dhal then both are mixed together with salt and allowed to ferment overnight. Unlike the batter made with whole ground rice, this one doesn't rice so much , but is good enough to make delicious idlies.. I find this method is easy too..as we need to grind the urad dhal only and add it to the already made rice rava.

Though home made idlis and chutney are tasty and hygenic..I still long for that street side idli and coconut chutney..I still remember those days even in a good restaurant a plate idli use to be only 1 rupee 25 ps with unlimited chutney. Just the smell of this combo was a simple pleasure. Mini idlies soaked in hot sambar topped with ghee is a frequent site for breakfast or lunch in Chennai restaurants.

Now if I don't get to some serious recipe time, I will never go out of my ranting.
For cream of the Rice (Rice rava)Idlis:

Ingredients :
1 cup urad dhal
2 to 3 cups Rice rava(Idli rava),
Salt to taste
Water enough to grind and mix
2 Tbsp Yeast (if desired) I usually don't use

Method:
1.Wash thoroughly and soak urad dhal for althea 3 hours.
2.Simultaneously soak rice rava separately.
3. Wet Grind urad dhal to very smooth batter, keep aside.
4. Now squeeze rice rava from all water with palms and added to the ground urad dhal. 5. Then add salt and enough water and mix thoroughly till all the rice rava and ground urad dhal combine well and mix into each other.
6. Allow this mixture to ferment overnight.
Tips : In cold places fermentation is a challenge. So I usually follow these steps. Always use thick steel vessel to ferment the batter. Heat up the oven for a few seconds, turn off and then place the steel vessel on the oven rac. Let it stay in the oven overnight isolated by the colder temperatures outside. You can repeat that process a few times for better results, if the temperature outside is too cold. Remember to place the steel vessel with batter on a wider plate when placing in the oven..at times the batter ferments and rises so much that it overflows on the oven rac..
7. After the overnight fermentation when the you are ready to make idlis, mix the raised batter, adjust salt if necessary keep aside.
8. Fill 2-3 cups water in the Idli Steamer depending upon the size of the cooker and heat up till the water starts to boil.
9. Meanwhile grease the idli moulds with oil or ghee and add a ladle full of idli batter into each single mould, taking care that the batter does not overflow the mould.
10. Now insert the idli mould plates into the idli steamer and steam on high first and then medium heat, for 15 - 20 minutes depending on the size and the number of idlis.
11. Once the time elapses, check to see if the idlis are done and then remove from heat.
12. Sprinkle cold water on the hot idly mould plates and use a special idly scooping spoon to separate the idlis from each mould.
13. Serve hot and fresh with choice of chutneys, podi/powders or gravies.

Coconut Chutney :

Though Idli can be eaten with various accompaniments like, chutneys, podis, curried gravies like fish, chicken, lamb; one best combo for Idli always rules..that is Idli with Coconut chutney.
Like variations in Idlis making, Coconut chutney is also prepared in a number of varieties..and different combination of ingredients.

1. Coconut with roasted gram with green chillies, yogurt based
2. Just with Plain Coconut
3 Coconut with roasted gram with red chillies
4. Coconut with peanuts & green or red chillies
5. Coconut with Coriander/mint leaves and green chillies

Here let's see the making of first variety mentioned above.
Coconut with roasted gram with green chillies, yogurt based:
Ingredients :

To Grind:1 cup grated fresh/frozen coconut
1 cup roasted gram/vepina chenaga pappu/varutha kadala parippu
1/2 cup sour yogurt
1 tsp cumin seeds (optional)
4 green chillies (increase or decrease accordingly)
1 marble size tamarind ball
Salt to taste
Enough water to grind these into a smooth paste

For Tempering/Tamlinpu:
1 tsp oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp urad dhal
2-3 red chillies cracked
8-10 curry leaves
1 pinch of Asafoetida/Hing/Inguva/Perumgayam

Method:
In a chutney grinder, put all the ingredients in the grinding list and grind them thoroughly to a smooth paste/chutney.
Transfer to a serving container.
Heat up the small tempering vessel add oil, after the oil is hot, allow mustard to splutter and add the rest of ingredients one by one ending with Asafoetida, fry for a few seconds and spread on the prepared chutney.

Serve with hot idlis, dosas etc..

Now that we made both Idli and Coconut chutney lets enjoy this combo.