I sometimes have a guilt feeling, that i am not cooking or blogging healthy food. i wonder how much effort i put on learning to bake and make all those cakes or bread made with maida / plain flour. On comparing, i decided to blog about greens recipes and some least known traditional recipes here after. hope you all will agree with me and look forward for the healthy and good recipes here and there:)

                                                        Pasalai keerai kootu

This stuffed puri is a famous north indian break-fast. Bedmi puri is between kachori and puri, as the stuffing is made with urad dal. I eyed on this puri from tarla dalal's cookbook. even i made it once long back, me and hubby liked these puri's a lot! Who would say no to a healthy puri like this? when i tried out these puri's last saturday, i clicked pictures of these lovely puri's to share with you all.
 

                                                             Stuffed Urad dal puri

Ingredients:

To fry the puri - 1 and 1/4 cup sunflower oil

For the dough:

Wheat flour - 1 and 1/4 cup
Nigella seeds / karunjeeragam / kalonji  - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1 tsp
Water - 1 cup (approx. to knead)
Oil - 1/2 tsp

For the stuffing:

Urad dal  / Split black gram - 1/2 cup
Oil - 1 tsp

Dry roast and ground the following into a corase powder: (spice mix)

Corriander seeds - 1 tsp
Dry red chilli - 2
Pepper - 5
Saunf / sombu - 1 tsp
Cumin - 1 tsp

Method:

Soak the split black gram / urad dal / udacha ulundhu with skin in water for about 4 hours.

To prepare the dough, take wheat flour in a large bowl, add salt and nigella seeda and mix with the flour. keep sprinkling little water and knead them all together into a pilable dough. add 1/2 tsp oil towards the end of kneading and knead well. the dough should be little tight than we knead for  chapathi/phulka. Divide the dough into 8-9 balls. keep aside.

Dry roast the corriander seeds, dry red chilli, pepper, saunf and cumin. grind the roasted one's into a coarse powder.

Drain the soaked dal completely without water and grind them coarsely in your mixer. sprinkle little water if needed. add salt to taste and grind the dal coarser.

Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan, add the coarsely ground urad dal and the spice mix and mix well. mix them in medium flame for about a minute. the urad dal tends to stick to the pan, anyways make sure the mix is dry and well mixed with the spice mix. remove from flame and let it cool. once cooled divide the urad dal mix into small ball's that has to be stuffed.


Now roll the wheat dough into a thick 3'inch diameter round and place the urad dal stuffing in centre and fold all the edges of the dough to cover the urad dal stuffing. dust it with little flour and roll them lightly into a medium shaped puri. similarly do the stuffing and roll the other puri's.


Heat 1 and 1/4 cup of oil in deep pan and fry the rolled out stuffed puri's. fry till they reach golden brown in colour. fry the both sides of the puri. serve the puri hot with aloo sabzi or with curd and pickle.


Notes:

I used skinned split urad dal. as skinned dal is good, you can also use it. you can also try it in whole urad dal de-skinned.

Make sure the urad dal is grinded coarsely with little water, only then the stuffing will be intact when rolling the puri.

 

Sirukeerai Masiyal Recipe

Prep Time: 15 mins 
Ingredients:

Sirukeerai - 1 bunch

Moong dal - 1/4 cup
Small onions - 8 (finely chopped)
Garlic - 2 (crushed)
Oil - 2 tsp
Mustard - 1/4 tsp
Split urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Cumin - 1/4 tsp
Hing - a pinch
Turmeric powder - a pinch
Dry red chilli - 2



Method:

Pluck the sirukeerai from the bunch, put them in a strainer and wash the greens atleast thrice to remove the sand and dust.

Wash the moong dal and cook the dal in 2 cups of water with a pinch of turmeric. it takes atleast 10-15 mins to get cooked.

While the dal is getting cooked, in a small pan, heat oil, add mustard, and let it splutter, add urad dal, dry red chilli, cumin and hing. roast them for few seconds and add crushed garlic and finely chopped small onions. saute till it turns translucent.

Once the dal is cooked, add the sirukeerai to the dal and cook the keerai, it takes almost 5 minutes. add little water, if needed to cook the keerai. once the keerai is cooked, add the tempering and sauted onions and garlic to the keerai and dal.

Add salt to taste and mix well. now you can either use your blender and blend them all together or use your mathu and mash the greens. its the more traditional way and this gives the tastier keerai masiyal.