Countdown to the feast...

Dear Foodies,


A platter filled with fritters made from stuffed green peppers, potatoes, capsicum and onions all made by two dear friends and ofcourse with some help (well I had to add my name, you'll know why when u see the pics :-)) and .....

Starting this year with a sweet, carrot-banana cake

Closer look at the stuffed green peppers with a side of chopped onions, coriander leaves, a dash of lime juice, pinch of salt, pepper and garam masala.

The perfectly puffed up potato fritters


And finishing off all this with a glass of flavored buttermilk-store bought buttermilk spiced with crushed ginger, chopped curry leaves, crushed cumin seeds and salt.

Snack Time !!

Dear Foodies,

Buttermilk Biscuits
Wanna bite too :-)

I spent my Christmas and New Years weekend with my brother and had a wonderful time there. On the weekdays, he went to work & I stayed at home studying (supposedly)and watched Food Network alllllllllll day. I don't have cable in my apt (good that I don't too or I would never get anything else done). I was totally hooked onto the TV and watched all the shows by: Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, Giada, Paula, Michael, Emril Lagasse, Ina Garten......well basically anything that got screened :-P. I also managed to try out a few when I was there. Will post the recipes soon. I am just waiting to get out of school and get cable !! haha

On one of Emril's shows he made buttermilk biscuits. I am always on the look out for eggless baking recipes and this one caught my attention. I was going to try this one too while I was with my brother, but well ....

So when I got back and finally made my way into the kitchen after a break, I made this for a surprise dinner we arranged for a dear friends b'day. I have never eaten biscuits here in the US before( not that I knew these were called Biscuits...what happened to Parle G !!) , but my frnds told me they taste a lot similar to the ones at Popoye's and KFC. yayyyyyyyyyyyy :-)

You can find the original recipe at the end of this post :

I can't follow a recipe word-by-word and so added some garlic salt that I had instead of plain salt. I eyeballed all the ingredients and might not have stuck by the measurements he gave, and that surely dint matter :-) Double check to see if you are using salted or unsalted butter before you add salt. I also used lesser butter, just abt 1/4th of a stick (~ 1 - 1 1/2 Tbsp) for 2 cups of flour and it did not effect the texture too much.

To add a special twist I added some finely chopped jalapeños and red onions and some grated mozzarella cheese as a topping. You could also added them to the dough. I intended to do that but forgot about them while making the dough and dint want to over work the dough by adding them in the end.

After extracting rounds from the rolled dough instead of reworking the extra pieces I just rolled them out to make perfect finger foods with tea.

All the recipes I saw insisted on these being served immediately after they are out of the oven. That is because they are warm and soft from the butter in it. Also rite out of the oven they have a crunchy crust and a soft melt-in-mouth inside. This is lost after the initial hour. I had a few leftover for the next few days and found them good to eat even then. A 20sec microwave made them soft again but they loose their crunchy crust though.

These are surely a must try recipe guys, do add your own twist to them and enjoy :-)

The link does not seem to work well, so here is the recipe:

Buttermilk Biscuits:
2 cups flour, sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons buttermilkPreheat oven to 375 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients and blend thoroughly. Using your fingers or a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and quickly blend in, making sure to not overwork the dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/2-inch. Use a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, press out as many biscuits as possible. Gather up scraps and quickly knead back together, then cut out as many additional biscuits as possible. Place biscuits on prepared baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

From Emril Lagasse's show on Food Network given here.

Thank you all for your suggestions/comments regarding the template. Your views did give me new ideas. I am going to stick to the current one for now and work on the color combo of the other template. The green in the center column wasn't supposed to be green in the first place. It looks 2 shades lighter & more sober on my computer screen !! This is a problem with many colors, they don't look the same on all computer screen resolutions. There are very few web-safe colors and until I find one that universally looks similar on all screens I am going to go with the white background. Thank you again :-)

Majjiga Pulusu/Mor Kuzhambu

Dear Foodies,


After a very long time I am posting a recipe from my mom. She sent me a few recipes with pictures quiet a few months back, but I never got around to putting it up. She had made Aratipoola pappu podi ( also known as patoli or usili) and majjiga pulusu for lunch at home. I was going to put in both of them in this post but realized there was a lot more I wanted to write about the plantain flowers, so thats again going to be a post some time hopefully in the near future !! For today I'll be serving some cool and extremely comforting pulusu made with buttermilk.

This one is called 'majjiga(buttermilk) pulusu' in Telugu and 'Mor Kozhambu' in Tamil. It is similar to the North Indian 'Kadi'. You can add veggies like okra, brinjal, white pumpkin or bottle gourd or some spinach or collard greens to it, or when your fridge is empty you can add lil fried besan bajji's or steamed chana dal-toor dal dumplings. I generally end up making this when we have loads of buttermilk nearing its expiry date !! hehe

Ingredients:

• 3 cups - Buttermilk

• 1/2 cup - Coconut (freshly grated/dessicated)

• 2 tsp - Chana dal

• 1 tsp - Toor dal

• 2 tsp - Rice

• 2-3 nos - Green chillies/dry red ones if thats all you have !

• 1 tsp - Cumin seeds

• Pinch of turmeric (optional)
• Salt to taste.
• 1 tsp -Coconut oil
• 1 tsp - Mustard seeds
  
• A sprig of curry leaves and coriander leaves for garnish.

Procedure:

1. Soak the chana dal, toor dal and rice in some warm water for 15-20 mins. I generally toss in the dessicated coconut, cumin seeds and the chillies in the water too, just to make it easier to grind in my very delicate blender.
2. Heat some oil in a pan and saute the veggies and reserve or blanch some spinach or collard greens.
3. Grind the soaked ingredients to a coarse paste by adding sufficient water.
4. Add this to the buttermilk along with some salt and the veggies or greens or the steamed dal dumplings/besan bajjis and heat the whole thing on medium heat.
5. Don't let it boil, but just until it raises up and then turn off the heat.
6. Season it by spluttering some mustard seeds, and curry leaves in coconut oil.
   

Sit back and enjoy every morsel of rice had along with this extremely delightful and soothing dish !! Pair it with this for a absolutely wonderful combo and you can use the same steamed dal as dumplings for the pulusu :-)

Steamed, coarsely pulsed chana dal, toor dal and red chilli dumplings. recipe??