Aratikaya Vada

South Indian: Raw Banana Vada/Plantain Vada/Aratikaya Vada

Plaintains are rich in fiber and they can be a good addition to our daily diet. Cilantro added in this recipe is very good for our digestive system and it tends to remove bad cholesterol and increases good cholesterol. Turmeric removes bacteria from the digestive track. So, overall this is a healthy food and can be taken frequently.

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2 plantains, grated

1/2 cup rice flour

1 cup besan flour

2 green chillies (more if like it hot)

1/2 bunch curry leaves

1/2 bunch coriander/cilantro

1/2 chana dal

red chilly powder to taste

a pinch of turmeric

oil for deep frying

salt to taste

1. Mix all the ingredients together and make them into disc shapes and deep fry them in oil.

Serve with ketchup or as it is.

Tip: Plantains tend to become dark after cutting, putting them in water after cutting will retain their color.

Badusha

If you want real authentic recipe with correct quantities, please refer to the recipe here

I made Badusha many many times and each time it turned out different, I don’t know why. May be the quality of maida or yogurt made them different. I learnt little from each experiment and I used that experience today while making this Badusha. Seriously speaking, I have not measured oil and yogurt in this recipe. And the Badusha has turned out really well. Ravi and Naveen loved those instantly and we finished all at one go.

What I did was, I took 2 cups of maida, added little salt to it, a spoon of baking powder and 1/6th cup of rice flour and mixed them thoroughly (usually people sieve the whole thing together). I kept on adding oil instead of ghee (as I ran out of ghee) until the mixture became like breadcrumbs. Then I kept adding yogurt until the mixture looked like layers and made that into a ball. Do not put water. These are the ground rules for making badusha. Oil/ghee and yogurt form an important part of the recipe. Then covered it with a wet cloth for half an hour. Made small balls out of the dough and pressed in the center. Made thin sugar syrup on the side. Deep fried the balls and soaked in sugar syrup for 15 mins. Took them out and left them aside for an hour.

You can store them for more than a month in a refrigerator. Heat those for 10 sec before eating.

Appam

This recipe is the outcome of a failure. Initially I started making this with the idea of making Chekkalu (I know Andhra guys would laugh at this). I read somewhere sometime back the instructions to make this but I never tried this before and out of blue I felt the urge to eat this right away. I tried the ready made ones from the Indian store but didn’t like any brand so I started making mine.

I made the dough and started frying them but they were coming out soft (Initially I made small circles) and I knew then and there that the recipe failed. After frying a batch, Ravi was disappointed too and asked me do you really want to eat such deep friend stuff? This was taking so much oil and we had to use many paper towels to remove oil from them. I switched off the stove, thinking of keeping the dough in the refrigerator and make Akki Rotis the next day.

I asked Ravi to taste one and he immediately said: oh! this is Appam. It seems like his mom used to make this often in summer holidays. And I asked him if I should continue making them, he said yeah, but make them big and round and thick. I went back to the kitchen, heated the oil again and made appams with the remaining dough. He said we can use various gourds to that and fry them. I thought I will try that next time. But, as I said this needs lot of oil and people with cholesterol problems should better avoid that.

I put a stock pot on the stove, added 6 cups of water, about 4 tbsps of jeera, half cup of chana dal (soaked for half hour), turmeric, and salt and boiled it. Added 2 cups of rice flour and mixed (the end result would be a big ball of rice flour). Used ziploc or wax paper to make shapes, applied oil to palms (because the dough gets sticky) and deep fried in oil. And this frying takes a lot of time and you need to have lot of patience with this.

Akki Roti

I got so excited after seeing this recipe at Supriya Krishna's blog that I was determined to try this out soon after coming home. I saw this just before leaving the office tonight and on my way I was thinking if I had the right ingredients at home but this recipe doesn't need a lot of stuff, just the regular variety like onions, carrots, curry leaves etc..

I came home and asked Ravi what he wants to eat, he said anything that you want to make or let's order a pizza if you are not interested to cook. I immediately asked him if he likes to eat "Akki Roti" he was like, sure, why not? And then I asked him, do you know what that is, he said no I don't! but I am sure it must be good. And that's how I went down to make this recipe and this was ready in minutes. My first 3 rotis have come really in nice shape but the later ones got broken. May be because the dough became cold after a while. I kept the remaining dough in a container to make some more, may be tomorrow.

Thought of adding more veggies but since this is rice flour that we are dealing with, I thought it would break if I add too many, so I didn't bother. I just went with the recipe posted on http://supriyakrishna.blogspot.com. Please refer to the recipe over there.

Rava Dosa

I seriously wanted to name my blog site “Dosa” and I tried for it everywhere but the name was taken. I don’t know if there is anyone in this world who loves dosa so much as I do. I love dosas made by Tower, a south Indian restaurant near my place. They have so many varieties of dosa to eat and each one is great on its own. Whenever I feel like eating something outside, I prefer going to Tower and eating dosa and I never get bored going there.

I do make dosas at home from scratch, some of them are Plain Dosa, Paper Dosa, Paneer Dosa, Pav Bhaji Dosa, Masala Dosa, Mysore Masala Dosa, Gunpowder Dosa, Cheese Dosa. Out of all I make Rava Dosa frequently because it takes less preparation time but it is tough to make. Once you get hang of it, I know you will keep making it every week.


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Ingredients
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1 cup each of Rava, Rice Flour and Maida
Readymade Buttermilk from grocery store
Popu- oil, ½ spoon each of jeera, rai, chana dal, urad dal. Add 3 chopped greenchillies, ½ inch chopped ginger, few curry leaves

• Mix Rava, Rice Flour and Maida and add salt to it.
• Keep mixing the above mixture with buttermilk until the semi-solid consistency is reached. Don’t put too much water, a little to dilute the buttermilk and the mixture should be sour.
• Add the popu to the mixture and mix.
• Keep the mixture aside for half hour.
• Heat the pan a lot, pan should be very very hot and don’t put the dosa mixture like you do for the regular dosas, you should drop the dough from little height and spread by gently rotating the griddle.
• Reduce the heat and cook dosa for long time until it is cooked thoroughly, turn it to the other side and cook for a minute and your crunchy dosa is ready.

Don’t lose patience, it takes a while to get the hang of it. Once you do, you will love to make these dosas all the time.
Serve it with coconut chutney, sambhar or any podi.