Sprouts Idli

Sprouts idli is very simple and healthy breakfast choice.

Ingredients:

• ·         Idli batter
• ·         Sprouts – (1 tsp sprouts for each idli)

Method:

I have used the green gram sprouts here. Either you can prepare it at home or buy sprouts from store. Homemade is the best.

Pour the idli batter in the idli plates. Add a tea spoon of sprouts in all the idli plates. Gently press them with spoon. Don't mix them completely.

Steam the idlis and serve hot with sambar or chutney.

Aval Vadai / Poha vada

My mom in law watched this recipe in a TV channel and asked me to try and post in the blog.

Usual paruppu vadai is made with Chenna dal. This vadai is aval  + Chenna dal.

Simple and crunchy vadai.

Ingredients:

·         Chenna Dal / Kadala Paruppu – ½ cup

·         Poha / Aval – ½ cup (Thick red variety)

·         Ginger – 1 inch piece

·         Garlic – 3 pods – finely chopped.

·         Onion – 1 small size - finely chopped

·         Curry leaves + coriander leaves – fistful

·         Fennel Seeds  / Sombu– 1 tsp

·         Red chilies – 2

·         Green chili – 2 (Change according to ur taste)

·         Asafetida – ¼ tsp

·         Salt to taste

·         Oil for deep frying.

Method:

Soak Chennai dal and poha separately for half an hour.

After half an hour , drain the water completely from Chenna dal, add ginger, curry leaves, coriander leaves, green chili, red chili and grind to a coarse paste. Don’t add water while grinding, and don’t grind it smooth. Transfer the contents to a wide bowl.

Drain the water from poha and squeeze well to remove the excess water.

Add the poha to the dal mixture and add the chopped onion, garlic and fennel seeds.

Add salt and asotifida and mix well.

Make them 10 equal sized balls and make into patties.

Heat the oil in a pan. Once heated fry them well golden brown flipping the sides in 2 batches.

Serve hot with coffee / tea.

Granola Bar

 

Granola is breakfast / snack made with oats, nuts and honey. For my family Granola is not just enough for breakfast. I prefer to have little heavier breakfast. So I make it for snacks. I make them as bars unlike the cereals, so it is easy to carry and eat in snacks box.

It is very handy and healthy guilt free snack to munch on. How much ever I make, it will get over in couple of days. The culprits are my husband and daughter. 

I referred the recipe from sharmi. This time for a change, I use Jaggery instead of Honey. It was little different in taste, but we liked it.

Ingredients:

·         Oats -  1 cup (Quick cooking oats)

·         Butter – 1 tbsp

·         Jaggery – ½ cup (Or little less)

·         Water – 2 tbsp (For the jaggery to dissolve)

·         Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp

·         Corn flakes – ¼ cup (crushed with hands)

·         Dry fruits – ¼ cup (Roughly chopped - Dates / dried figs / raisins any choice of yours)

·         Nuts – ¼ cup (Roughly chopped - Almonds / walnuts any choice of yours)

Method:

Line the butter paper in tray. This will help us to easily to handle the bars. I used my Tupperware lunch box for this.

Dry roast Oats, jaggery, dry fruits and nuts in a pan in medium flame. Just for couple of minutes will do. Keep it aside.

In the same pan, add butter. Let it melt.

Add jaggery and water.

When the jaggery melts completely and starts to boil, add the dry roasted oats and nuts mixture.

Add vanilla essence and mix them well. Vanilla is for flavoring, you can also skip it. Switch off the stove. If the mixture is very loose, add some more oats.

Transfer the mixture to the tray lined with butter paper.

Let it cool for a while; cut them into bars with sharp knife.

While removing the pieces, lift the butter paper out of the tray and pull out the pieces.

If you find the butter paper, tray, cutting, pulling process a headache, just make them into small bite sized balls.

Store it in refrigerator in an airtight container.

  

Thambittu

I planned to make something sweet as well as healthy for my daughter’s snacks box. On Fridays she is allowed to take sweets or cakes.  Roasted gram laddu strike my mind. It’s called maaladu. Its mix of roasted gram powder, powdered sugar and ghee.

But I planned to replace sugar with jaggery so, googled for the laddu recipe with jaggery and bumped into Thambittu recipe here. It’s Karnataka’s authentic recipe. This has not only roasted gram, it has other ingredients which enhances the flavors. So tried this. In just 15 mins, the laddu is ready.

Here is the recipe for Thambittu, roasted gram jaggery ladoo :)

Ingredients:

·         Roasted gram  / Pottu kadalai – 1

·         Grated coconut – ¼ cups 

·         Sesame seeds – ½ tbsp  (Original Recipe calls for 1 tbsp, but the flavor is so dominating, so I reduced the quantity)

·         White poppy seeds  - 1 tbsp (khus khus)

·         Cardamom powder –1/4  tsp

·         Ghee -  ½ cup

·         Jaggery – ½ cup

Method:

First we need to dry roast few ingredients separately.

Dry roast roasted gram for couple of minutes. Let it cool. Then grind it into fine powder.

Dry roast, grated coconut till it is little brown.

Dry roast sesame seeds till it splutter

Roast the poppy seeds too.

Heat the ghee in a thick kadai. Once heated, add the jaggery.

Once the jaggery is melted, switch off the stove. No need to wait for any syrup consistency.

Add the raosted ingredients and cardamom powder immediately and mix well.  

It will little semi solid. Once its warm enough, make into ladoos.

Mango Oats Kulfi

 

One more Mango dessert. This is purely for weight watchers like me. (I simply watch... but do nothing about it. It’s a different story).

I referred the recipe from here.

Ingredients:

·         Ripe mangoes - 2

·         Quick cooking oats – ½ cup

·         Milk – 1.5 cups

·         Sugar / Honey – as per the taste

·         Nuts (almonds, pistachios) – fistful – chopped roughly

·         Saffron – few strands

·         Cardamom powder – ¼ tsp

Preparation:

Take about half cup of oats and powder it.

Peel and pit 2 ripe mangoes and cut into pieces. In mixer puree the mango pieces.

Soak saffron strands in 2 tbsp of milk.

Method:

Heat a pan, add oats powder and milk and cook till the oats is well cooked. Switch off the stove.

Add the mango pulp, sugar, nuts, saffron strands, chopped nuts, cardamom powder and milk well.

Transfer into kulfi molds and freeze them.

Freeze it overnight and serve.

Bovonto Ice cream soda

Recently when I was planning to go for lunch out, I came across this resto called ‘Maplai’ in Chennai. I read thru the menu online to check if it’s of my type. I came across this Bovonto Ice cream Soda. I couldn’t wait to try that at home. It’s a very simple recipe and something different to serve guests.

Bovonto is a soft drink popular in South India, especially Tamil Nadu with a select fan following.

It is manufactured and marketed by Kali Mark (Kalis Sparkling Water (P) Ltd.), which has offices and bottling plants at several locations in Tamil Nadu. At present it has put up a distribution point at Chennai.

The drink is mildly carbonated and has a tangy grape-cola taste.

Ingredients:

·         Bovonto – 2 cup

·         Vanilla ice cream – 2 scoops.

Method:

In a blender, combine bovonto and a scoop vanilla ice cream, and blend for few seconds. Ice cream soda is ready.

Transfer it to a serving glass and garnish with a scoop of ice cream.

Note:

·         You can experiment it with Fanta, coke too. Its yumm.

·         You can change the ratio of the bovonto and ice cream based on ur taste.

·         It is a calorie bomb. So think and drink.

PS: Pics are not making much justise.. made it in the evening so could not take pics in natural light. :(

Mango Cheese Cake

I find layered desserts very attractive. Well… Who don’t?

In this Mango season, I am trying many deserts with Mango, apart from eating the fruit as such.

This is one easy and attractive dessert to impress ur kids and family.

Its a No Bake Cheese cake

The usual cheese cake uses cream cheese for a layer, i have used hung curd instead of cream cheese.

I tried to follow the low calorie version of the cheese cake and skipped fresh cream.. so it’s a cheat cake. If you prefer, you can add some fresh cream as well.

I followed the recipe from Sharmis passion..

We will have 3 layers.

·         Bottom – Biscuit layer

·         Between –Hung curd layer

·         Top is the Mango Pulp layer

To set the layers, we will be using agar agar. Here is a pic of agar agar. 

4 medium servings.

Ingredients :

·         Disgestive buiscuits – 8

·         Melted Butter – 4 tbsp

·         Mango Pulp – 2 cups

·         Hung curd – 1 cup

·         Fresh cream – ¼ cup (I skipped it)

·         Agar Agar / China Grass – 1 tbsp. Its difficult to measure. Take about few strands.

·         Water – 1/4 cup

·         Sugar – as per ur taste

Method:

Hang the curd at least for 30 mins in a muslin cloth (I used Veshti cloth) for all the whey water to release out. Use the fresh curd, it should not be sour at all.

No we will fix up the biscuit layer.Powder the digestive biscuits, add the melted butter. Divide into 4 portions and fill the serving cups and press them firmly. Refrigerate at least for 15 mins for the layer to set well.

Remove the skin from the mangoes, cut and puree the mangoes using a mixer. Keep it aside.

Heat a pan, add ¼ cup of water and agar agar. Let it boil and agar agar should melt completely.

Add the melted agar agar water and Sugar to the mango puree and mix well.

Take about one cup of puree and reserve for the top layer.

With the rest of the puree add the hung curd and fresh cream. Mix well. Check for sugar and add if required.

Now take the serving cups from the refrigerator and fill it ¾ in all the cups above the biscuit layer. Refrigerate for about 3 hrs. Check if the layer is set well. If not keep for some more time. Else the top layer will get mixed up with the middle layer.

Once the middle layer is set, fill in the top layer with the mango pulp which we already reserved for the top layer.

Refrigerate again for an hour and serve chilled.

I added few drops of rose milk essence on the top for a extra twist and color. That is purely optional.