Sukhiyan - Cooked Greengram-Jaggery balls dipped in wheat flour batter and fried

Sukhiyan (Sugiyan)

I remember the days when every tea shop in Kerala had a few standard snack items - Puttu (click here to view Puttu recipe), Pazham Pori (click here to view pazham pori recipe), Parippu Vada, Uzhunnu Vada, Appam (click here to view Appam recipe) and of course Sukhiyan. 

Now we are able to see this snack only in tea shops in village areas or small tea shops in cities... 

Many children today dont even know what a sukhiyan is... they want only junk snacks such as Kurkure, Lays etc :(

In fact it is a very nutritious dish because it contains green gram, jaggrey etc.

This is a typical tea-time snack... Children will also like it since its sweet too and hence can be given to school... 

Ingredients for Sukhiyan

Green gram/Moong - 1.5 cup
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Jaggery - 500gms
Cardamom - 4 nos.
Salt - 1/2 tspn

Process to prepare Sukhiyan

Clean the moogdal and cook in pressure cooker. Donot over-cook the moongdal. 

If the greengram gets overcooked, then it would become paste like while mixing and the sukhiyan would not come out well.

Powder the cardamom and keep it aside. 

Drain out the excess water (if there) from the moong dal.

Take a pan and heat in low flame. Powder/crush the jaggery and put it into the pan. Add 50ml of water into it and make it syrup-like. Add the cardamom powder into it.

Once it is ready, add the cooked green gram into it and mix it well. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until water vaporises and we get a dry mixture.

Allow it to cool down. Make small balls of this mix and keep them aside.

In a bowl, put the all purpose flour. Add salt and make a thick batter. 
I am sorry for not posting the pics of the batter...I could not take the photos since my hands were full of batter :(

Take a frying pan, pour oil (to fry the balls) and heat the oil in meduim flame. Once the oil is hot, dip each of the balls in the batter and fry them in the oil in low-medium flame.

Once the balls turn light brown, remove from the oil and drain the oil. 

Sukhiyan is ready... This is a typical tea time snack...

#sukhiyan; #keralarecipes; #teatimesnacks; #kidsrecipes

Indian Coffee House style Masala Dosa

Indian Coffee House Masala Dosa

Most women like Masala Dosa isnt it?? Most men dont!! There are many other things that men like!!
My mother's favourite is Masala Dosa and so is mine...

Click here to view my earlier blog post on Masala Dosa.

The Masala Dosa @ Indian coffee house tastes different since they use beetroot too in the masala...The way the masala is prepared is also different...

Unique ICH@Trivandrim

I heard about the Indian Coffee house (ICH) from my dad since this is his fav. hotel @ Ernakulam for snacks... My hubby also likes the ICH... 

In Chennai we used to go to the ICH @ T-Nagar often a few years back... Recently when we went to Pondicherry, we went to the ICH situated @  Jawaharlal Nehru Street (as shown on the right)... It was pure nostalgia...

Ingredients

Beetroot - 1 medium sized
Potato - 1 medium
Carrot - 1 medium
Onion - 1 medium
Turmeric Powder - 1/4 tspn
ChillyPowder - 1/2 tspn
Mustard seeds - 1/4 tspn
Urad dal - 1tspn
Ginger - a small piece
Green chillies - 3 nos
Curry leaves - 8-10 small leaves
Salt - to taste

Process

Clean and wash the potatoes, beetrot and carrot. 

Peel them and cut it into 2-3 pieces and put them into a pressure cooker. Pour 200 ml of water and sook these in full flame for two whistles and in low flame for one whistle.

Once the pressure of the cooker is released, open the lid and mash the cooked vegetables. Keep it aside.

Chop onions and green chillies lengh-wise. Keep them aside.

Take oil in a frying pan and put the mustard seeds. once they splutter, put the urad dal. Once the urud dal turn brown, add the curry leaves.

Then add the chopped onions, add little salt for frying them faster. Once the onions becomes light brown, add the chopped green chillies and saute them for a couple of minutes. Then add turmeric powder and chilly powder. Mix these well.

Then add the mashed vegetables (potato,carrot,beetrot) into the sauteed onions and mix well... 

The masala for the masala dosa is ready.

Next we will prepare the dosa.

Take a dosa tawa and heat in high flame. Lightly brush it with oil preferably sesame (til/gingelly) oil. 

If  you are using a non-stick pan, do not brush the tawa with oil; if you do so you will not able to spread the batter on the tawa. 

Take a ladle (around 50 ml) of dosa batter and pour it into the dosa tawa. Spread it on the tawa to form a thin and large circle. Spread oil or ghee over the dosa. Ghee is more tasty and healthy.

When it is cooked, it starts to turn brown. Put 2 tablespoons of the masala prepared earlier and spread it on one half of the dosa. 

Fold the dosa in half to cover the masala... 

Indian coffee house Masala Dosa is ready. Serve with coconut chutney...

#indiancoffeehouse, #indiancoffeehousemasaladosa, #breakfastrecipes, #southindianrecipes, #dosarecipes, #vegrecipes

Badusha - Sweet made of refined wheat flour (maida) fried and dipped in sugar syrup

Badusha

Next is a sweet recipe. This is my first non-keralite sweet/dessert recipe that I am posting in this blog.

Diwali is over and I know its too late to post this recipe. Since there were a lot of people who were posting sweets recipes before diwali, I didnot want to add to the chaos!!

Anyway take a look at how I made badusha. The reason I made this was that its my favourite sweet!! I am not a sweets fan and hence even this sweet is a bit too much for me...

Ingredients

For dough

Maida - 2 cups
Thick curd - 2 tbsp
Ghee - 1/4 cup
Baking soda - a pinch (be careful not to put more baking soda, other wise badusha will enlarge and become fluffy)
Water - to make dough

For sugar syrup

Sugar-1 cup
Water - 1/2
Lemon juice-1/4 tsp
Saffron - a pinch

Process

In a bowl add the ghee, baking soda and curd. Beat this well for 10 minutes, till they get mixed well.

In another bowl take the flour. Add all the beaten ghee, curd, baking soda mixture to the flour.

Mix this with your fingers. Add water and make it a soft dough.

Cover it and leave it for 10 minutes.

Make the sugar syrup by mixing sugar and water. In low flame, boil this and form one-string consistency (then only we know that the sugar is in correct condition)

Add lemon and saffron to this syrup and switch off the flame.

Make the dough into equal lemon sized balls .Take one ball and flatten it with your palm.

Make a small crater in the centre with your thumb. Repeat the same for the rest of the dough balls.

Take a pan, pour 200 ml of oil and heat the oil for deep frying the badusha. 

When the oil is hot, slowly put the badusha into the oil. After a few minutes, the badusha floats on the top. Alwaysb fry in low flame .

Once cooked, take it out from the oil and dip in the sugar syrup.

Ensure the syrup is warm.

Take it out and place it on a plate and decorate with badam (almond) pieces.

#badusha, #indiandesserts, #vegetarian, #sweets, #diwalisweets

Bhaji for Pav Bhaji

In my previous post, I wrote about Pav - click here to view that post.

Now I write about the dish used to eat Pav with - which is called Bhaji in Marathi, which essentially means dish of fried vegetables.

Ingredients to make Bhaji

Potatoes - 4nos
Tomatoes - 4 nos
Cauliflower - 1/4 th
Onion - 2 nos
Pav bhaji masala - 1 1/2 tbsn (we used Everest Pav Bhaji masala)
Butter - 3 tbsn
Garlic - 10 cloves
Ginger - 1 inch piece
Green chllies - 4 nos
Green peas - 1/4 cup
Lemon - 2 nos
Coriander leaves-1/4 cup

Process to make Bhaji

Clean the potatoes and cut it into half and keep it aside.

Wash the Cauliflower with a bit of turmeric powder and salt in hot water (it helps to remove all the germs/worms if any inside it). 

In a pressure cooker, add these 2 vegetables, add enought water for it to cook and close the pressure cooker. Allow 1 whistle in high flame followed by 2 whistles in low flame. 

Keep aside.

Meanwhile, make the ginger -garlic paste by grinding in mixie. You can buy ready-made paste too but making these @ home is always better to avoid consuming unnecessary preservatives. 

Chopped the onions and tomatoes keep it aside.

Once the pressure in the cooker is down, open the lid and add peas. Here I used fresh peas, so I put it after the potatoes and cauliflower are cooked. If you are using the dry peas, you need to cook that separately in the cooker first. 

Heat oil in a pan and add 2 nos. of chopped onions. 
Saute them till they turn light brown. 

Add chopped green chillies and ginger garlic paste. Stir fry for half a minute. 

Add the chopped tomatoes and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes stirring continously or till oil  separates from the masala. 

Add the cooked potatoes and cauliflower and peas .

Bring it to a boil and simmer for ten minutes, pressing with the back of the spoon/ladle. 

Add pav bhaji masala into this, add salt to taste and mix it well. Cook it for 5-10 minutes.

Garnish the Bhaji with chopped coriander leaves, butter and serve hot with Pav.

#pavbhaji, #snacks, #maharashtrarecipes, #streetrecipes, #vegrecipes, #indianrecipes

Pav (a form of Bun) in Pressure cooker

Preparing the Pav (a form of bun) of Pav-Bhaji in pressure cooker

Click here to view my post on Bhaji used in Pav-Bhaji

My next item is also a item cooked in pressure cooker though not using the pressure of the pressure cooker :) 

Pav in pressure cooker...

First I thought it would not be easy, since Pav (a form of bun) is usually baked in an oven and not in a cooker...but I have managed to make it, thanks to a youtube video :) 

The idea of making the Pav came when I ate it @ Ganga sweets and it tasted good. The pav was so soft-I was impressed. Fortunately (thank god) the one that I made is also soft. The other reason for making this pav is that in our gated community there was a dandia programme during navaratri and many items such as pav-bhaji, bhelpuri, cholebhature etc. were being served. That too inspired me to give it a try!!

I cannot imagine that I made it since I thought its very tough... Now I can confidently say that you all can try and make it... 
In my next post, I will write about the Bhaji (side dish for Pav)!

For now, lets get into making the pav...

Ingredients for PAV

All purpose flour (maida) - 1 cup
Butter - around 90 gm
Milk - 100 ml

Milk powder - 1 tblspn

Yeast - 1 tsp
Sugar - 1 tblsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Milk and butter for brushing

Process

Take warm milk, add sugar and yeast. Stir and keep aside for 10 -15 minutes. This is to prepare proofed yeast mixture.

Next, take a vessel, pour the all purpose flour, salt & milk powder and mix these well.

Add the proofed yeast mixture into the flour with your hands and make this into a soft pasty kind of dough.

Next add the butter and knead it thoroughly. Continue kneading for 10- 15 minutes till it becomes soft.

After 10-15 minutes of kneading, this will become a very soft dough.

Place this  into a bowl and coat the dough on top with a little bit of oil, and cover it with a damp cloth. Keep aside and let it be there for 1 hour.

Once it doubles in volume, take the dough out, sprinkle a bit of flour and knead one more time.

Divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Roll them with your palms and shape each in one like  pav and place in the cake die.

Then cover the cake die with a cloth and leave for another 45 minutes or more, till its risen.



Once the pav is risen brush them with milk.

In a pressure cooker/pan, add 300 ml of water. 

Place a separator plate in the cooker and then place the cake die on the separator plate. The cake die MUST NOT touch the bottom of the cooker and hence the separator plate. 

Donot put the whistle. Put the cooker in high flame. Once the steam starts coming out from the cooker, switch to low flame and steam for 30 minutes.

Take them out once they are baked well. Brush the tops with butter. 

Now take a damp cloth and cover the die for  a minimum of 20-30 minutes.

This is the Pav used in Pav-Bhaji

Before serving with Bhaji, heat butter in a thick bottomed tawa. Slice pav horizontally into two and fry in a butter for half a minute.

Press the pav on the tawa a few times till the pav is little brown in colour and soft.

#pavbhaji, #snacks, #maharashtrarecipes, #streetrecipes, #vegrecipes, #indianrecipes