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.

Achari Noodles

My friend's mom (in Hyderabad) used to make this often whenever we went to her place for combined studies. I tried contacting her to get the Recipe and tried many times to get this kind of taste. Finally I found the recipe today and made this with a lot of enthusiasm. The food got ready in 15 mins; I was surprised at how fast this was done. I cooked noodles and the seasoning separately and that saved a lot of time.

I think this is the first recipe I made without any curry leaves, coriander or mint; otherwise I always used to think that there is nothing delicious without those going into the cooking.

Try this recipe and see for yourself how tasty this is. I thought of adding a bit of pickle oil to bring that Achari taste but amchur brought that taste and combined with yogurt, this kind of become like sour noodles. I liked it a lot but Ravi kind of said that I make better things than this. But I enjoyed every bit of it. In just half hour, the cooking was done and food was finished too. Next time, I will try this with organic whole wheat noodles.

You need....

1/2 packet of haka noodles
1/2 onion
1 cup sour yogurt (sweet should work fine)
1 tbsp rice flour
a pinch of turmeric
1 tbsp Jeera/Cumin
1/4 Rai/Mustard
1/2 tbsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 tbsp amchur powder
salt as per taste
1/2 tbsp black salt (optional)
2 tbsp oil
water for boiling noodles

1. Heat water in a pan and cook noodles (follow the cooking instructions on the packet).
2. On the side, heat oil in a pan. Add jeera, rai, fenugreek seeds and fry for a minute.
3. Add onions and fry until they become brown.
4. Add ginger-garlic paste, turmeric, chilli powder, amchur powder, black salt (recipe calls for this, but I didn't have it in my kitchen) and fry all of them for one minute.
5. Add rice flour, mix well. Lower the flame, add yogurt (whisk it well) and cook for 2 minutes.
6. Finally add noodles and mix well with the yogurt mixture. Remove after a minute and serve hot.

source:tajrecipe

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.

Besan Toast

These days I am making things out of the leftover stuff lying in the fridge, I am in the process of clearing the fridge and concentrating on many veggies and other stuff. In this case, it is bread, there is a big packet of it unused yet. We don't normally feel like eating bread but I got about 2 packets thinking of making bread roll but I made many with just one packet. Looks like I am wasting a lot of money on food...

Anyways, this is a simple food for the weekend brunches if you are in the middle of weekend chores. Add anything you like to the besan and make a toast of your choice.

I added salt, pepper, chilly powder, turmeric, ginger-garlic paste, fresh chopped coriander to the besan and added some warm water to mix it. Don't make it too thick as it takes sometime to cook and will not cook well. Make the batter into a semisolid consistency and leave aside for 15-20 mins.

Heat a pan, smear some oil on the pan. Dip the bread and shallow fry in little bit of oil. Actually I didn't use oil at all and it was good that way too. I don't know how nutritious this is, it can be if we make the toast with either whole grain or wheat bread. But besan is all protein and I guess that's enough for one meal. Serve it with sauce (something hot) and some juice or milk. I served pista and saffron milk with this meal. It was full and we were not hungry until late night.

Our Saturday's brunch

Kool Kabuli

One more recipe for my buddy Ray. I hear only protein! from men these days, my hubby keeps asking me to make at least one complete protein dish for a day and I think I am running out of ideas though there are some that I haven’t made recently like Pesarattu, Rajma soup, Adai dosa…

I read something in a health magazine recently that Indian vegetarians eat more protein than the required amount, we kind of laughed at it thinking do we? I know that we make sure to have at least one portion of dal every day and I don’t think it has so much protein necessary for the body… anyways!

While I made Chole for Ravi’s potluck this morning, I took out a bowl of boiled Kabuli Chana for this dish. This one is very healthy, loaded with protein and full of nutrients. You can call it Chana poriyal also as it follows the lines of poriyal recipe.

You need…

a bowl of boiled kabuli chana /chick peas (boiled in salt and turmeric)
½ tbsp each of jeera, rai, chana dal, urad dal
3 green chillies, chopped
½ inch ginger, chopped
½ tbsp coconut powder
1 tbsp oil
few curry leaves
coriander for garnishing

1. Heat oil in a pan.
2. Do bagara (tadka, we call it bagara in hyderabadi lang) by adding jeera, rai, chana dal, urad dal into the hot oil. Fry them for half a minute.
3. Add green chillies, fresh ginger and curry leaves and fry until you get a nice aroma of all the mixed spices. (I love this part in cooking, this combination is so aromatic and flavorful and I don’t think I will be able to describe that taste well in my words, it is indescribable).
4. Add boiled kabuli chana and coconut powder and leave it for a minute.
   Remove and garnish with coriander leaves.

Serve it hot or cold, it tastes great and don’t forget a cup of orange juice to go with it.

My breakfast this morning!

4:3:2:1 Lunch Box!

This is my entry to "Show your lunch box" event. I looked at the deadline just last night and I started preparing this for the lunch early in the morning. I had to get up early for one more reason as I had to cook lunch for the potluck at Ravi's work place. I cooked Chole and made some peas and carrots Pulav as an accompaniment for Chole.

My lunch box got ready in no time since most of them are taken directly from the refrigerator, washed and arranged in a box. The only effort I put in was for Dhokla, put the batter in pressure cooker for 12 mins on high and cut them into different shapes, hearts and flowers with cookie cutter and made diamonds with a sharp knife. And in parallel, I put baby potatoes, peas and carrots for roasting in a toaster oven. By the time I finished making Chole, my roasted veggies and Dokhla got ready and here you see my awesome lunch.

Used the 4:3:2:1 ratio of Japanese Bento method with Dhokla, roasted Veggies (baby potatoes, green peas and carrots), Fruits (strawberry and grapes), and I replaced Dessert with dried fruits Walnuts and Cranberries. We eat few walnuts and cranberries everyday as walnuts are supposed to increase the good cholesterol and decrease the bad one and cranberries for their anti-oxidant properties.

There is no recipe to provide for Dokhla as that is made with Swad Instant mix (recipe is on the box) and I will make another post for Roasted Potatoes very soon...