Morkali/Koozhu

It is a very traditional tiffin. It is mostly prepapred in the evenings since it is labelled as a ligh tiffin. It is known as Koozhu in Kerala whereas in TamilNadu it is called morkali.
It is an easy to make tiffin with simple ingredients.

Rice flour - 1 cup

Buttermilk - 1 cup

Water - 1 cup

Salt as required

For Seasoning

Oil - 1 tblspn

Mustard - 1 tspn

Chana dal- 1 tspn

Curry leaves- few nos

Green chilly (chopped) - 1 nos

Curd chillies (thayir molagai) - 3 Nos

Take a bowl. Add oil. Keep in MW for 30 seconds.

Add mustard and again keep for 30 seconds. When mustard splutters, add the rest of the seasoning and leave for 1 minute.

In another bowl, make a thin batter out of the rice flour, buttermilk, water and salt. Mix well. Pour the batter over the seasonings in the first bowl.

Cook in MW high for 4 minutes. Stir once in between.It will be cooked well.

If you touch with a wet finger, it should not stick to your finger.

It can be eaten as it is else can be cut in to pieces.

To cut into pieces,grease a plate with oil and spread the kali on it and level it with a spoon. Cut into squares and serve cool with pickle or chutney of your choice.

This can be cooked on stove top also. Now you can guess why I cooked in MW. Yes, this goes to Srivalli for her MEC-Tiffin, the theme for the month of January.

Kolli Vadam (Tapioca Papad-Sundried)

Once summer sets in, one can see plastic sheets with various type of karuvadams and vathals dried in front of the houses. This is a common sight in my village.

I started before the actual summer set in. Then I will have rush to finish the drying before it gets really hot. Now, I can be little late in starting with the drying work, since sun is bearable till around 10:30 in the morning.

This weekend I made kolli vadam. I have to prepare one more batch. May be in the coming weekend.



Tapioca powder (store bought) - 1/2 kg

Raw rice - 1/2 cup

Pepper powder - 3 tspn

Salt and Hing - as per taste

Oil - 2 tbspn


Wash and soak the raw rice for 2 hrs and grind it to a fine paste.

Allow it to ferment for 6 hrs. It should get a sour taste. I left it overnight.



Make a batter of the tapioca powder and the rice paste with water. Add hing and salt. The batter should be thinner than dosa batter.You measure the said batter. Water required is twice the measure of the batter.


Take a thick bottomed vessel big enough to accomodate the water and batter and some extra space. Once cooked, it will increase in quantity. I used the uruli. It is convenient to prepare karuvadam maavu (dough for sun dried fritters) in the uruli.



Add water. When water is warm, slowly add the batter without forming lumps. Keep stirring. When it starts to thicken, add 2 tbspn of oil and the pepper powder. Mix well. Make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.



It took 10 minutes for me to get the glazy texture. May be it cooked fast since I used uruli. When it gets a glazy texture, you can switch off the heat. Keep it in the same vessel for 5 minutes before you transfer to another vessel.



When it comes to room temperature, drop spoonfuls on a plastic sheet and slightly spread them to the size of a puri with the back of the spoon. Don't make it too thin.

After 4 hours of drying in the sun, try flipping it over. It should get dried in 2 days if it is very sunny.

Happy Pongal

Happy Pongal/Shankaranthi to all of you......
With the start of Makaram/Thai month, every thursday evening, our courtyards will be cleaned and adorned by kolam/rangoli. We put using rice/kola powder and rice paste. Some people change the kolams on monday evenings also. That is Tuesdays and Fridays will have fresh kolams made. I rarely change on tuesdays. But for Fridays it is always new kolam.
This is the start of the series for the month of kolam

Neivedyam for pongal