Moongphali chat / kadalai sundal / Groundnut salad

Groundnut belongs to legume family and not a nut as the name suggests.  It helps to fight malnutrition, by providing 30 essential nutrients & minerals, no transfat.

So if your child is a poor eater, please go ahead and give this wondernut in various forms.

1. You can boil & give them in a chat form as I have shared here.
2. Roasted peanut with little salt sprinkled over it.
3. Soak it along with other ingredients of adai & make nice adai dosai
4. Make peanut powder chutney & use it as a side dish even for rice.
5. Make masala pea nut but if you bake it instead of frying it is very good for health.
6. Roast & coarsely powder peanut, add it to the dry vegetable dishes
7. Chikkis (burfi)

and many more recipes.....

As we are experiencing pre-monsoon showers, hot beverages & snacks are in our monsoon recipe list.

Sharing with you a  healthy & simple recipe to make a nice colourful  Nutritious evening snack.

Ingredients :-

1. Ground nut - 1 cup (Fresh ones)
2. Onion - 1 no. (finely chopped)
3. Cucumber -1 tbsp (finely chopped)
4. Carrot - 2 tbsp (grated)
5. Raw Mango - 1 tbsp (optional)
6. Green chilli - 1 no. (optional)
7.  Lemon juice - few drops
8. salt to taste
9. Coriander leaves -2 tsp (finely chopped)

Procedure :-

• Pressure cook the groundnuts with skin adding water & salt
• Remove the pearls & discard the shells
• To the pearls add chopped onion, cucumber, raw mango, grated carrot, finely chopped green chilli, coriander leaves, salt, lemon juice and mix well
• Yummy & nutritious snack is ready to eat.
• Tastes best when served hot. So keep all the other ingridients ready, steam the nuts. Then add the other ingredients, mix & serve hot. 

Serving suggestion :-

To make the snack more interesting, serve it hot by steaming the pearls so that it stays hot and keep the other ingridients ready to be added to the groundnut before serving.

If you don't have fresh ones, then you can soak the dried ones & pressure cook it.

Sweet Wheat Dosai

Sharing with you a different variety of dosa which has no grinding or fermenting work.

Whole Wheat Flour - A Nutritious flour. Good source of calcium, iron, fiber and other minerals.

Jaggery - Also known as medicinal sugar has numerous health benefits. It is rich in minerals, vitamin. The magnesium in jaggery helps relaxing muscles, nerves. Iron helps to improve anaemic conditions.

Wheat dosai are made in two ways. One by soaking whole wheat & grinding it second method is the easiest way using wheat flour.

Just let the batter stand for 15 minutes or more and go ahead preparing it.

Ingredients :-

1. Wheat Flour - 2.5 cups
2. Rice flour - 1 cup
3. Semolina (rava) - 1/4 cup
4. Jaggery - 1 cup

Procedure :-

• Mix all the ingredinets except jaggery.
• Dissolve jaggery over medium flame adding a glass of water.
• Strain the impurities and add it to the mixed flour. Mix well.
• Add water little by little & prepare the batter without lumps
• If you find lumps, don't worry, take the big mixer jar, pour the prepared batter, blend well.
• Add salt to taste (lesser than normal consumption)
• The batter should not be too watery or too thick.
• Heat the dosa tawa, grease it, pour a laddle of the prepared batter & immediately & very very gently spread it to circular dosa shape.
• Pour few drops of oil around it 
• When one side is done, flip and cook the other side too till it turns golden in colour.

Note : If you are not able to spread it properly, then don't worry just add little more rice flour, required water & check the consistency. I use the traditional iron dosa tava into which the above ratio comes out well for me. You can use a non-stick tava too.

Flavouring :- By making some variations in the ingredients you can bring a twist in taste.

1. You can add some cardamom powder to the batter to bring in a nice flavour to your sweet dosa. 
2. Use ghee instead of oil.

Variation : - With the given ingredient minus Jaggery you can make the normal salt wheat dosa.

Enjoy the yummy sweet wheat dosa along with chutney / gun powder / pulikachal (puli inji).

easy mango curry - pickle (manga kari)

Sharing an easy pickle with you. It don't require any tempering and use few simple ingredients. It comes handy when you want an instant pickle for quick use.

It makes an excellent accompaniment for the curd rice & add twist in taste in feasts. One of my favourite. It tastes the best using coconut oil as it the important flavouring ingredient other than mango.

This is low shelf life. So refrigerate & consume within 3 days.

Ingredients :-

1. Raw Mango - 1 no (thothapuri / kilimooku mangai are the best)
2. Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp (or as per taste)
3. salt to taste
4. Coconut oil - 1.5 tbsp

Procedure :- 

• Cut the raw mango into small cubes
• Mix in salt, red chilli powder, coconut oil to it. 
• Easy simple pickle is ready to eat.

You can use other variety of raw mangoes too but Less sour ones suits best for this recipe.

You can even use the partially ripen mango as it tickles the toungue with a combination of the slight sweet taste.

Easy crispy Bread sticks for soup

crunchy soup sticks makes a good accompaniment to the soup and makes it even more interesting when you want to avoid fried bread cubes. 

If you don't have a soup stick but have few slices of bread (I use brown bread), then here is an easy way to prepare a crunchy bread stick to accompany an yummy soup you made.

In a pop up toaster, cut the breadslices vertically without getting fully detached on one side using a scissor as shown in the picture below :- 

Drop it into the toaster and toast till crispy. Have it along the hot soup. 

For packing, wrap the crispy pieces into a kitchen tissue & store in an air tight container to prevent it absorbing moisture & getting soggy.

If you don't have a pop up toaster, go ahead using your tawa, in a low flame roast the bread slice till it turns golden brown & crisp- without oil. Once done, cut lengthy strips.

A nice crispy sticks are ready to accompany  the soup.