Orange thol pulikachal / Orange tholi puliinji / Orange Peel Sauce

Compliments of the season!  



Life is extremely busy and  i miss you and blogging very much

While bidding farewell to the year 2014, i would like to share with you a citrus flavoured chatpata and tangy side dish using Orange Peel.

The winter season has finally arrived at our place! For the last two weeks, the air is cold and dry. Sunrise is late. There is a light fog everywhere.

This is the season of Oranges, Strawberries and Grapes here! I could get nice organic oranges from our weekly market this time. They tasted awesome. I saved some peel to make our favourite side dish called Orange thol Pulickachal or the orange inji-puli. Orange Tamarind Sauce (yeah it can be used as a spread on wheat bread too or a side dish for dosa or for rice or for chapaties). An all rounder!! ;-)

Ingredients :-

1. Orange peel of one Orange
2. Tamarind - A big Lemon size
3. Ginger - 2" piece (finely chopped) - [Optional]
4. Green Chillie - 2 Nos. (finely chopped)
5. Curry leaves - 10 Nos.
6. Sesame Oil - 3 Tbsp
7. Mustard Seeds - 1 tsp
8. Asafoetida Powder - 1/4 tsp
9. Red Chilli Powder - 1/4 tsp
10. Chana Dal - 1/2 tsp ( split bengal gram)
11. Jaggery - 1.5 tbsp
12. Salt to taste

Video Recipe is here :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G5tUTcRc9Q&t=22s

Procedure :

•  Boil tamarind in hot water till becomes tender. Extract thick pulp and keep it aside.
• Chop the orange peel into big pieces.
• Heat oil in a wok, add mustard seeds. After they splutter add, Chana Dal. When it turns light red in color, add the cut orange peel and fry till it turns light golden in color.
• add curry leaves, Green chillies, Ginger and fry for a minute. 
• Add Tamarind Pulp, Turmeric powder, Asafoetida powder, Red Chilli Powder, Jaggery and salt to taste, bring to boil.
• Then lower the flame and keep it covered till the gravy thickens into paste consistency.
• Bring to room temperature and refrigerate.

In case if you have added more water by mistake, you can dissolve some rice flour or wheat flour in little water and add to it, bring to boil till the gravy thickens and turns glossy on top. Cool and refrigerate.

Masal Vadai

We had a pot luck lunch today and I prepared some masal vadai and joined my buddies for this event. It was very interesting as it was the first pot lunch event in my life.  We had a variety of delicious spread in front of us in the lunch table viz., Sindhi Curry, Dahi Balla, Dahi Vada, Soft rotis, Rice, Ladies finger curry, cauliflower, potato curries, two varieties of dal vadais, two varieties of milk kheer, Besan Ladoo, garlic chutney, etc.  Each dish had a unique touch of the person who prepared it, thus making it very special.  It was droolicious. I wish I had taken photo of the same. But the foodie inside me was more eager to taste them so I just got busy in helping myself with the goodies :p

Masal vadai is a flavourful form of dal vada (paruppu vadai / parippu vadai) which make the otherwise normal dal vada even more interesting. 

I used a bit of yellow peas dal (pattani parippu) which  makes it crunch rather than the regular soft vadais. Use of toor dal add to its taste than the regular mono channa dal.

Let us get on to the making of crunchy and tasty masala vadai.

You will need :- (makes approx. 30 meidum sized vadais)

1. Toor Dal - 1 Cup
2. Channa Dal - 1/4 Cup
3. Peas Dal - 1/4 cup
4. Urad dal - 1 tbsp
5. Salt to taste
6. Curry leaves - 12 Nos.
7. Coriander leaves - 2 tbsp
8. Red chillies - 5 Nos. (or as per taste)
9. Onion - 2 Nos (medium)
10. Ginger - 1.5" piece
11. Garlic - 3 pods (big)
12. Asafoetida powder - 2 pinches
13. Fennel seeds - 2 tsp
14. Oil for frying

Procedure :-

• Soak the dals together for 2 hours along with red chillies.
• Drain the water. Take a tbsp of the soaked dal, put it in a mixing bowl and keep it aside.
• Finely chop Onion, Coriander leaves, Curry leaves, ginger, garlic pods
• In a blender grind the dal coarsely along with chillies, chopped ginger and garlic pods.
• Transfer the coarsely ground dal mixture to the mixing bowl.
• Add chopped onion, coriander leaves, curry leaves, fennel seeds, asafoetida powder, salt to taste.
• Mix well.
• Divide into equal portions.
• Roll and flatten them. 

 I used to flatten with just one hand, by placing the ball on the four fingers and placing the thumb over it as shown in the above picture. thus you get a nice impression of your fingers on the back side while the other side reminds flat.

• Heat the oil in a wok. Put a piece of dal mix. If it rise immediately, then oil is ready for frying. If not, wait for some more time.
• Fry each flat vadais in hot oil on medium flame, by turning them in between so that they get friend equally. 

• Fry till they are nice golden in color.

• Drain them, transfer on a paper to remove excess oil.
• Store in an air tight container when cools down.
• Crunchy and tasty, flavourful masala vadai is ready to go as a snack or as an accompaniment with hot tea or coffee.

Vada Pav - The Indian Burger

The famous street food of Mumbai - Vadapav. Also known as Indian Burger / Poor Man's Burger is a quick n fillling snack which you get most of the places in Maharashtra and more in Mumbai city.  

You get down the street, take a walk through it.....the familiar smell floats in the air which leads you to the near by vadapavwala..... The small cart on a corner, surrounded by many hungry mouths.... An experienced hand quickly dips the potato balls into the batter and put it into the hot oil.... it bubbles and get nicely fried, comes out the hot vada in golden color, ready to get inside the soft bread called 'Pav', which is cut into two and on which is applied the sweet chutney, the green chutney and the garlic chutney as per your choice, closed and kept on a paper plate accompanied by few glazing fried green chillies sprinkled over the top of it is some salt..... steaming hot... you take a bite... the taste and flavour it throws into your mouth....get lost into the absolute foodie bliss...... ohooooo..... I am badly drooling..... m... let me now serve you the virtual vadapav with some details on how it is made.

I have already shared the recipes separately for the potato vada, sweet chutney. Green chutney and Garlic chutney is left out which I will be posting soon.

Get a ladhi pav bread

For the Potato Patis / Batata Vada recipe please click here

For the Garlic Chutney  I will give detailed proportion in a separate post. If you would like to give it a quick try, here it is :- You need 8 Nos. of garlic pods, 1/2 cup Grated dry coconut (kopra) and 4 Nos. of dried red chilli, Salt to taste. First grind the garlic pods, salt and dried red chilli together. Then add the grated dried kopra and using whipper grind it by giving frequent break so that oil doesn't ooze out. In the picture the chutney may be in bigger chunks because my garlic chutney stock got over and instead of grating, I add the slices of dried coconut directly to the blender (which is not a good option to get the texture, though there is no compromise in taste).

For the Sweet chutney please click here

For the Green chutney :- (will make a detailed post later) Coriander leaves a  cup, two green chillies, 1/2" ginger, salt to taste. blend all to a smooth paste.

Here is how vadapav is arranged and served. 

and the vadapav is ready!

Chashni Ki Chutney / Sweet Chutney

This sugar based sweet chutney can be served with snacks viz., samosas, kothimbir vadi, methi vadi etc... and the most important street food of mumbai - the 'Vada Pav'

You will need :

1. Sugar - 1/4 cup
2. Water - 1 tbsp
3. Deggi Mirch Powder -  a pinch (or as per taste)
4. Roasted cumin seed powder - a pinch
5. Black salt - a pinch (or as per taste)
6. Orange food color - less than 1/2 pinch measure

• Dissolve sugar in water and bring to boil. Add all other ingredients and boil till it thickens slightly.

•  Cool and use 

• You can adjust the seasoning as per your taste preference. For a change you may add a pinch of chat masala too.

• If you use deggi mirch or kashmiri mirch powder, the use of food color is optional.

I apply it on the pav for my vada pav along with green chutney and garlic chutney :-) 

You may check the cookbook label on the right hand side or use search option for the vadapav, batata vada recipes.

Kolam rangavali design

A design that kept haunting me increasing my curiosity for the last two decades........

I saw this design in DoorDarshan as a graphical logo of a television production house. Since then I was searching for the design to learn and finally wish fulfilled recently 

sharing my joy with you.....

 

this way you can accordingly increase its size.

Brown chickpea chundal / Brown channa / Brown kondakadalai sundal

A nurtrient legume chundal that supply good amount of energy. The brown variety chickpea is used in the traditional chundal making during navaratri celebrations as it  is "desi" / country variety. But you can make using Kabuli Channa as well. You can see vido of this in Youtube - Mira's Akshaya Patram - https://youtu.be/euCVGABBrWE

You will need :-

1. Brown chickpea / channa / kondakadalai - 1 cup
2. Salt to taste
3. Turmeric powder - a pinch
4. Oil for tempering - 2 tbsp
5. Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
6. Curry leaves - 10 Nos.
7. Asafoetida - a pinch
8. Green chilli - 2 nos
9. Grated Coconut- 1/4 cup
10. Dried red chilli

 Procedure :

• Soak chickpea for 8 hours or overnight. Adding salt and a pinch of turmeric powder, pressure cook tilll done.

•  In a mixer dry grind grated coconut, green chilli and few curry leaves. This is the masala that is going to add taste & flavour to the chundal.

•  Heat oil in a wok, add mustard seeds. After they start spluttering, add remaining curry leaves, dried red chilli and asafoetida powder

• Add the cooked chickpeas, ground coconut mixture and mix well. switch off the gas.

• Brown chickpea chundal is ready! 

Other sundals that you may like to have a look :-

Sweet Cowpea / karamani / lobia chundal 

Cowpea / Karamani payaru Chundal - sweet version, for Navaratri

A Festive period which I long for, every year is Navaratri. It had always been a very pleasant and joyful experience as we have the opportunity to visit golu kept at other's place, hear devotional songs sung by guests - sometimes by hosts, get variety of chundal prashad and what not!

Finally navaratri has arrived.....  My 500th Post! celebrating it with a sweet offering!

Elders say 'start with a sweet', which is considered as a good sign for starting good things. So here I am making Sweet Chundal and sharing with you the procedure using cowpeas (chawli bean / Karamani payaru). Chundal is a very healthy snack as it contains legumes rich in nutrients. Our ancestors always included healthy dishes specially on festive occasions. Cow peas supplies Proteins, Carbs, Vitamins and minerals. You may use the white or the red colored cow peas for this recipe.

Ingredients :

1. Cowpea - 1 Cup
2. Jaggery  - 1/2 Cup (shredded)
3. Coconut - 1/4 Cup (grated)
4. Ghee - 3 tbsp

Procedure :-

Lobiya | Karamani | Payaru | Chavli | Cow Pea (Black eyed Pea)

• Soak cowpea for 8 hours (or overnight). Discard that water and fill with fresh water. Pressure cook adding a pinch of salt, till done

• Mix jagery with little water and dissolve it. Filter to remove impurities.

• Heat a wok, add the filtered jaggery water and bring to boil

• When it starts bubbling, add the cowpeas, boil till it becomes dry.

• Add grated coconut and ghee (Clarified Butter), Mix well.

• Cowpea | Karamani Payaru  | Lobia - Sweet Chundal is ready !

• Other legume / lentil that can be used for this sweet chundal recipe is Green Gram (Moong).

• Serve it with Ripe Banana - Best combo to enjoy this healthy snack. Can be given to children as a evening snack.

Jai Ma Ambe!

Chickpea Salad

With interesting ingredients and salad dressing, a simple salad can turn out tasty.  Sharing with you a simple  salad using chickpeas.

Ingredients :  (serves : 1)

1. Boiled Chickpea - 1/2 cup
2. Yellow Bell pepper - 2 tbsp
3. Red Bell Pepper - 2 tbsp
4. Green bell pepper - 2 tbsp
5. Onion - 1No. sliced
6. Coriander leaves - 1 tsp
7. Olive oil - 1 tsp
8. Garlic finely chopped - 1 tbsp
9. Lemon juice -  1 tsp
10. Salt to taste
11. Pepper powder - a pinch
12. Ice berg lettuce leaf  (optional)

 Procedure :-

• Soak & cook chickpea adding salt, till tender

• Dice the bell peppers

• Slice the onion thinly

• Finely chop coriander leaves

• Heat oil in a wok, add finely chopped garlic and fry it for 30 seconds in low flame.

• add the cubed bell peppers, boiled chick pea and toss it for a minute in medium flame. switch off the flame.

• Add onion slices, lemon juice, pepper powder, salt. Mix well

• Place a iceberg lettu leaf on serving bowl / plate

• Transfer the chickpea mixture to the lettuce leaf, sprinkle coriander leaves on top and serve.

Another Milestone - with your support

Another milestone!


 

With your continuous support, another milestone reached. Mira's Talent Gallery @ My Hobby Lounge crossed over 3 lakh hits!

   

Thank you for making this happen!

Special thanks to Shri. Vai. Gopalakrishnan ji,  for being with me, in every post with your comments.

 

This is for you sir  

 

   

Continuing my journey towards another milestone!  

Looking forward to your continuous support!