Happy Vishu

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous VISHU

Coconut Burfi

Coconut/Thengai Burfi is one of the signature dish of Amma. She makes it often at home. Many variations can be done to this burfi. But amma always follows the traditional method. I sometimes add few tablespoons of roasted besan flour or some milk. This is the traditional recipe with a slight change in flavor. Usually, cardamom powder is added. My MIL adds cloves instead.Since it is always cardamom for sweets, I find adding cloves gives a very different flavor, which is nice for a change.

Fresh Grated coconut - 1 cup

Sugar - 1 1/2 cups

Ghee - 4 tblspn

Cloves - 6 nos

Water - 1 cup

Preparation

When you grate the coconut, grate only the white part. Don't grate the bottom brown part. This is to ensure the white color for burfi. Pulse the grated coconut for few seconds in mixie to get a fine texture. This is optional
Heat a kadai with water and sugar.

When sugar is fully melted, add a teaspoon of milk. Impurities, if any will float. Remove and boil the syrup to one string consistency. To test for consitency, if you drop a teaspoon of syrup , it should fall like a thread.

Stir in the grated coconut. Add a teaspoon of ghee. Keep stirring.

It will start thickening and it will froth from all sides.

Add crushed cloves.

When it starts crystallizing on the edges, transfer to a greased plate.

Flatten it evenly using a greased cup (katori/dawarah) which has a flat base.

When cool, mark and cut into pieces.

I am sending this to Think Spice -Think Cloves event hosted by Gretchen for April, originally started by Sunita

Vella Dosai

During my school days, most of my summer holidays are spent in my mom's native. Me and sister will be packed off to be with our grandparents for 2 months. Amma might join during the last week of the stay or so. So it was only two of us with thaatha and paati. How I miss those two months stay. Those were the days without TV. So it was always play and play alone. The whole day we used to spent in the backyard which is full of mango trees. We used to eat mangoes - raw, beginning to ripe, ripe ones etc. We had two kids of our neighbor to join us. So it was all fun. We cut the mangoes, mix chilly powder, salt and coconut oil. Paati used to scold if we eat more of this and she will make us eat curd rice again in the noon. Those days we used to have brunch.

Evening, when we come for tea, she will have some delicious tiffins made ready for us. This was one of them. This is a very traditional recipe. Its almost an instant kind. Whenever my paati makes this, she prepares adai also to complement the sweetness of the dosai. Even I prepared adai the same day. Shall post that later.

Ingredients
Wheat flour - 2 cups
jaggary - almost 1 cup. (Adjust this according to your taste)
water - 2 cups

Melt the jaggery in 1 cup of water. Remove scum if any.
Add the melted jaggery slowly to the flour and mix without forming lumps.
Adjust the consistency by adding water. Make dosa the usual way. Cook both sides.
This time I used karipatti vellam (palm jaggery) .

You can use ghee instead of oil or smear little ghee while serving if u make using oil. It will taste yummy with the flavor of ghee.

Eating Vella dosai with a dollop of homemade butter is truly out of this world.

I think it is only dosa posts for the last few days in my blog as it is the case in the blogosphere. Another entry to Srivalli's dosa mela