I have tried many recipes from Rak's kitchen. Recently i tried her rava idly last week. gobi manchurian the previous week. every recipe from her blog comes out great! when it comes to diwali preparations, for the past two three years i have been cooking her murukku, seedai, badhusha, kara sev, etc. Her step wise pictures makes the recipes easy all the time. i always wonder, how she manages to click all the step wise pictures with much clarity!! 

This post is for Tried and Tested hosted by sowmya. click the recipe name to go for the recipe.

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.

Though i was in idea to prepare traditional christmas plum cake, my Gemini mind as usual took a left turn and here you see is Christmas pudding. This is such a easy recipe and the mixing part takes less than 15 minutes. you can even prepare this pudding without soaking the dry fruits in rum or brandy.


You know that the traditional pudding calls for steaming, i did not have enough patience to steam. it was  impossible for me to steam for 3 or 5 hours by constantly checking! easier way is to bake them for an hour and half. i made this pudding in two batches, one for steaming and the other for baking. thats when i discovered baking takes less time and effort.


serves: 6
baking time: 90 minutes
preparation time: less than 20 minutes
200 gms = 1 cup
recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients:

To Prepare fruit mix:

Candied peels mix - 100 gms
Candied peel of a citrus fruit - 50 gms
Dried Fig - 7
Dry grapes / kishmish - 50 gms
Dates - 7
Apricots - 5
Dry Black grapes / Sultana's - 50 gms
Glazed cherries - 50 gms
Tutti fruitti - 1/4 cup
Zest of 1 orange- 1 tbsp
Orange juice - 1/2 cup

Method:

Finely chop the candied peels into small chunks. chop all the other dry fruits, fig, kishmish, dates, apricots, sultana's, cherries and mix with the tutti fruitti and the zest of orange in a pan.

Mix orange juice with the dried fruits and place the pan in medium flame. keep stirring till the orange juice is completely absorbed. it may take uto 3-5 minutes. remove the pan from flame.

If you wish add 40 ml. of  Rum or Brandy, when the mix gets cooled down.

Ingredients for Pudding:

 Fruit mix - 400 gms / 2 cup's
 All purpose flour / Maida  - 200 gms / 1 cup
 Baking soda - 1 tsp
 Baking powder - 1 tsp
 Cinnamon powder - 1/2 tsp
 Nutmeg powder - a small pinch
 Dry Ginger powder - 1 tsp
 Brown sugar - 100 gms / 1/2 cup
 Butter - 100 gms
 Eggs - 2 small

Method:

Brush some melted butter in small aluminum bowl's in which the pudding is to be baked. line the bottom of the bowl's with butter paper and set aside.

Pre-heat the oven at 180C / 350F for about 10 mins.

Sieve the all purpose flour with baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon powder, nutmeg and dry ginger powder. sieve atleast twice so that all get mixed up evenly.

In a small pan, melt the brown sugar with a tbsp of water. need not caramelise. just the sugar crystals has to get dissolved. in another seperate pan, melt the butter and set aside.

In a wide bowl, put the 2 cup's of fruit mix and add flour to it. mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula, next add dissolved brown sugar and melted butter. mix well. finally break in egg's one at a time and mix well. 

Once the pudding mix is ready, divide and transfer to the small individual greased aluminium bowls. fill the bowl's 3/4th so that there is enough space for the pudding to rise while baking.

Finally grease a aluminum foil sheet with butter and place the greased side facing the pudding and cover the pudding bowls. With a thread tie over the neck of the bowl so that the aluminium foil is tightly tied to the neck of the bowl.

Now bake the pudding at 180C for about 90 minutes, till a tooth pick inserted to the centre of the pudding comes out clean. if you are placing a large bowl of pudding, time may differ.


In case if you are interested in steaming the pudding the traditional way, you can steam in a large pan of boiling water or in a wide pressure cooker filled with boiling water. place a small bowl turned upside down in the pressure cooker and pour 6 cup's of boiling water and place the pudding bowl(with aluminium foil tied) carefully over the bowl turned upside down. close the pressure cooker and do not put the weight/whistle. steam the pudding for about 3-4 hours in medium flame. every 1 hour check the water level and keep adding boiling water so that half of the pudding bowl is in boiling water always. steam till the pudding is done. check by inserting a toothpick to the centre of the pudding comes out clean.

Notes:

Once the pudding is baked, remove the pudding from oven and place on a wet towel, so that it easily comes out of the bowl when pudding get cooled down.

This pudding keeps well for a week after baking, if you want to mature the pudding, keep adding 1/2 tsp of rum or brandy over the pudding  once in 2 days.

This pudding is served along with custard, so you can try serving that way too.

This is such a easy pudding recipe and it turns out perfect. just follow the ingredients. the ratio is 2 cups of dry fruits : 1 cup flour : 1/2 cup sugar : 1/2 cup butter.

 

First i need to scream and tell you, that i am doing a work continously, it is - i am blogging here for the past five years!! Sounds Great right? Things that keeps me hooked in blogging is, mails from my readers who write up after trying recipes from here. it's like drinking some enegy drink when you read your readers mail. i wanted to share a comment which i could never forget and makes me smile, whenever i think about it.

Thank You Anonymous!!!!