Milagu Thattai

I buy milagu thattai from AAB from central, whenever I go Coimbatore in train. It is super crunchy and has this beautiful taste of Milagu.

I wanted to make this for Diwali, so tried it. It was just with the same taste as AAB.

It is very good alternate to the usual thataai.

Ingredients:

• Processed Raw rice flour -  2 cups
• Chutney Dal / Pottu kadalai – 6 tbsp
• Chenna Dal – 2 tbsp
• Black Pepper – 1 tbsp
• Butter – 2 tbsp
• Asotifida – ¼ tsp
• Salt as per taste
• Coconut Oil to deep fry

Method:

Wash and soak chenna dal atleast for 45 mins. Or else soak it hot water for quicker results.

We have to use processed rice flour for this recipe. Wash and soak raw rice, dry it in veshti cloth. Powder and sift it. You can also buy Processed Murukku mavu from stores. I usually make a big batch and have at home.

Dry roast the rice flour in medium flame about 2 mins. Need not roast wait for change in color.

Dry roast the Chutney dal for about a minute and make it into fine powder.

Dry roast black pepper for less than a minute and make it into Very coarse powder.

In a bowl, take the rice flour, Chutney dal powder, butter, aosfitida, salt and mix well.

Drain the water from the chenna dal, and add it to the bowl.

Add the crushed pepper.

Add water little by little and make it into smooth pliable dough. I missed picture after mixing the pepper.

Heat the coconut oil in the kadai. You can use regular oil that you use for cooking.

Take a piece of thick plastic paper and grease it with oil.

Take a small portion from the dough, make it into small ball, and flat in the plastic paper, make few holes with fork and transfer carefully into the oil.

Repeat the process for about 5- 6 pieces, depending on the quantity of oil you have taken.

Fry it till crispy in medium flame, flipping the sides occasionally.

Once fried, take out from the oil, and drain the excess oil.

Once cooled, store it in Closed container to retain the crispness.

Jaggery coated Sweet potato

I grew up in a joint family. My mom was working. There were many oldies (patti, china thatha, china patti, athai patti) at home to take care of the kids.

Can u spot me?

After we come back from school, daily we will have some variety of snacks waiting at home.

We throw the bags in the corner, freshen up and rush to eat.

Mostly there will be any of these items… murukku, pazham puzhungiyadhu, Jevvarisi upma, kozhakkatai, undili kozhakattai, and this sweet potato too.

When I saw some sweet potato posts from my blogger friends.. I got reminded about this dish and I made this for my daughter… She dint like it though. But I enjoyed it very much.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

• Sweet potatoes – 2 medium sized
• Jaggery – 3 to 4 tbsp  (U can increase if you want a sweeter version)
• Cardamom powder – ¼ tsp
• Ghee – 1 tsp
• Chopped Coconut pieces / Grated coconut as required

Method:

Wash the sweet potato, cut into 2 and pressure cook it for a whistle in the cooker. Alternatively you can steam in idli pan too.

Once cooled, peel the skin and cut into small rings.

Grate jaggery

Heat a thick kadai add jaggery; add water till it covers the jaggery, nearly 4 tbsp I used.

Once it starts boiling, add the sweet potatoes.

Add a tsp of ghee and cardamom powder and mix well.

Cook until the jaggery is nicely coated on the sweet potatoes.

Switch off the stove.

Garnish with grated or chopped coconut . Adding coconut is optional.  You can skip that too.

  

A Trip to Wayanad

Trip Date : (18, 19, 20 Oct 2015)

I love road trips because that much I hate train food. Road trips are adventurous and you get to meet lot of new people and gain a lot of experience. You can feel the place much better basically.

We planned for Vythiri during the dussera holidays.  

We had to pick my daughter from palani, She was in her vacation in my inlaws' place. So our trip was basically from Palani - Wayanad (Vythiri). We started the trip on Sunday early morning by 6 am.

We took the Palani – Pollachi – Palakkad – Mannarkad – Manjeri – Thamaraseri – Vythiri  route

There are more routes from Palakkad to Vythiri. It is better if you decide the route before you start, because when you ask the route to the passersby, they will give their own suggestion and confuse you. So better freeze your plan and start.

If you are planning from chennai, I think you have to take the Mysore -Bandhipur route. 

We had breakfast  before Mannarkad in a small restaurant. The food was so good and simple. We had appam. It was soooo soft.

The drive was so nice. The climate was good and everywhere it was green. We stopped in a place to drink some sugar cane juice, there I clicked some of the below pics.

By afternoon we reached Vythiri and had a nice lunch.

We had planned our stay in Rain country resort. It is in Lakkidi exactly.

The resort is quite inside the main road for about 4 kms. For some distance it is thar road, then mud road. The experience is so thrilling. It is definitely an adventurous drive. 

The resort is spread in very big area, with around 22 cottages. It has different types of rooms. Independent and semi independent. All are perfect wooden vintage cottages. We chose the basic stuff after reading good amount of reviews. The resort is best for honey mooners.;)

There is a natural stream running across the resort. And a big pond. It was amazing. We had a nice bath in the stream in the evening itself.  We ordered some snacks too and enjoyed them along with the bath.

We simply walked around the resort and had dinner and slept early, as the day started early. I took some long exposure shots.

Next morning, we got up early and planned to go for a trek. There is a trek route inside the resort itself. It’s about 1 km simple trek. The climate was so chill and good. Good that it dint rain that time, then it will be too slippery. We spent some time in the top, took some pictures and came back. There were many leeches, they bit us. So better carry some salt in hand. If you put salt, they leave you immediately.. Otherwise you have to pull them out forcibly.

We came back and again had a nice bath in stream. Every time drying the wet clothes was such a head ache. So I made her wear same clothes all time she went to stream. Breakfast was ready by that time and it was dosa with sambar and poori – alu. Yumm.

Since my husband was driving all along Chennai – palani – vythiri, we had planned to arrange a Jeep to take us for sightseeing that day. Since we started only around 10.30, we could cover only one place. In vythiri,  there are many tourist attractions, but all of them are very distant, you need to travel around 25-30 kms to cover one place. And even that place.. you need to walk a bit. So we can cover only 2 or 3 places per day if you start your day early. My family doesn’t like shuttling here and there on holidays. So we decided to go to one place and return to resort.

We fixed to go Sooji paara waterfalls. It was around 40 mins travel from resort. Also we have to walk / climb down / up around 2 kms inside to reach the falls. We cannot take bath in the falls as the water force is much more. We can play around the water for a while and watch the scenic falls and walk back. 

Walking back is the toughest thing. The steps are too steep and it was quite an experience. It was test for our stamina. In that place we tasted the pickled pineapple. This was delicious. I cant wait to make it at home. Pickled gooseberries, honey soaked gooseberries are also the highlight. Also saw such thing with Raw mango.. wow..

On the way we stopped for lunch. Wonderful and simple veg meals.

We asked for a good kadi (snack) shop and got few pazhamporis, sugiyan, bondas and packed them to resort. For the below pack it was only Rs. 88.

The resort had indoor games, so we had to entertain her for a while.

Dinner we had in resort. Taste was good and priced reasonable too.

Next day morning we took few family photographs with help of our tripod, had breakfast and left the place.

Overall, it was a wonderful experience.