July Notes from The Kitchen Sisterhood

Dear Friends,

So much crosses our desks and our microphones. Only so much of it makes it to the air. Here are some collaborations and projects that have recently caught our attention we thought you'd want to know about.

Keep the faith,

The Kitchen Sisters

Archives we're visiting

Free Music Archive. "It's not just free music, it's good music."

Rock'n'Roll Public Library: A five-week free archival "civic endeavor" of The Clash's Mick Jones. "These 10,000 items are relics of the last century. A part of British musical history." London, July 16-August 25

Books in our pile

Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner

Farm City by Novella Carpenter

I-5 by Summer Brenner

Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela by Anna Trapido

Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano

How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons by Sam Barry

Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Events on our Calendar

Puckerbrush Potluck, Iowa State Fair, August 19

Eat Real Festival in downtown Oakland, August 28-30. A tribal gathering of taco trucks, hot dog stands, and mobile food vendors all using locally sourced sustainable ingredients.

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Santa Cruz, CA, August 2-16. Marin Alsop conducts.

Movies to see

Tetro

Corner Store: A work-in-progress documentary feature

Away We Go, written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida of 826 Valencia

Websites we're browsing

Obama Foodorama

Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles

Mapping Main Street: A collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through stories, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets.

Yes, We Can: A community canning project

Music on our turntable

Lura, a singer from Portugal and Cape Verde

Orquestra Imperial from Brazil. A Samba big band fronted by Caetano Veloso's son Moreno and his friends Alexandre Kassin and Domênico Lancelotti

High Wide and Handsome. Loudon Wainwright III's tribute to Charlie Poole

Darling Just Walk by Tess Dunn

Dai Lam Linh. Our friend Nguyen Qui Duc sent us this startling new music from Vietnam.

Organizations we're tracking

Share Our Strength's Operation Frontline in Los Angeles

Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

Carecen: Central American Resource Center Cuerpo Sano/Healthy Bodies Program

CCROPP: Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program

Music National Service Initiative, a new social enterprise that supports and expands the use of music to meet important civic and social goals.

Rest In Peace

Artist, David Ireland

Activist, Luke Cole

Actor, Luis Saguar

"People need stories in hard times. We’ve had an enormous moral, spiritual, and economic collapse. People go to storytellers when times are like that." -Bruce Springsteen

"The Kitchen Sisters have done some of the best radio stories ever broadcast" -Ira Glass

Radio producers we hope you'll support

The Kitchen Sisters. Click here to donate.

Recipes of Maa-vilakku Neivedyam

In my previous post, I have written the pooja to be done for the maa vilakku. Here I am giving the recipes of the dishes made for neivedyam.

Pachha Maavu - Dough to make the lamp





Ingredients
Raw rice/Pacharisi - 2 1/2 cups
Powdered jaggery - 1 cup + 3 tblspn

Wash and soak rice in water for 2-3 hrs. Drain and spread on a towel to dry. Powder in the mixer grinder and sieve the ground powder to get fine rice flour. Grind the coarse rice again and continue until few tablespoons of coarse rice is left.

Grind the powdered jaggery and fine rice flour together. Transfer the rice flour and jaggery mix to a bowl. Keep mixing them by your hand and you should be able to make a ball of it. It might look as thought you cannot hold the flour together. Don't add jaggery since it will not end up in a stiff dough later. Its by the warmth of the hand that the flour and jaggery will come together. It requires some 20 minutes of constant kneading. If you are making the dough just for eating then more of jaggery will not be a problem. But since we need to light the lamp in it, it should be a stiff one else after few hours of burning the lamp, the jaggery in the dough will start melting and the lamp will lose the shape. We have the custom of placing two lamps. So divided the dough into two ball and shaped it well. While eating the maavu, its had along with coconut pieces.

Vella Kozhukaatai


Ingredients
Rice flour - 1 1/2 Cups
Powdered jaggery - 3/4 Cup
Water - 1 1/2 cups
Coconut chopped into tiny pieces - few

Mix jaggery in 1 1/2 cups of water in a bowl and heat it. When the jaggery is fully melt, strain to remove any dirt. Bring the jaggery syrup to a boil. Stir in the coconut pieces and a tablespoon of ghee. Slowly stir in the rice flour. Keep mixing to avoid lumps. Continue to cook till it is not sticky to touch and the dough will have shiny coat to it. Leave it to cool. Make small marble sized balls. Steam it for 10 minutes using an idly steamer or any steamer of your choice.

Paal Pongal





Ingredients
Raw rice - 3/4 cup
Roasted moong dal - 1/2 Cup
Jaggery - 3/4 cup
Water - 1/2 cup
Coconut milk extracted from one coconut.
Cardamom powder - 1/4 tspn

Extract two sets of milk from the coconut. To extract milk, grind the fresh, grated coconut with 1 cup of water. Squeeze to extract the milk. This is the first milk. Repeat grinding with another cup of water and extract the thinner second milk. Instead of coconut milk, ordinary milk can also be used.

Pressure cook rice and moong dal in 3 cups of water. It must have cooked mushy.
Make jaggery syrup by boiling water and jaggery. Bring the syrup to rolling boil. Slowly stir in the cooked rice+ dal mix to the boiling jaggery syrup. Keep stirring. It will start thickening. Add the second milk and continue to cook till the rice + dal absorbs the flavors. Stir in the thick first milk and cardamom powder. Remove from fire.

Pachharisi Idli - Idli with raw rice and urad dal
Raw rice - 1 cup
Urad dal - 1/2 cup
Salt

Usually idli is prepared by grinding soaked boiled rice/puzhungalarisi. When ever any bhakshanam is made for nivedyam, its customary to use raw rice. So since idli is offered as nivedyam, its made using raw rice.

Soak 1 cup of raw rice and urad dal separately, for 3 hrs. Drain and spread on a towel to dry. Powder the rice coarsely like rava. Grind urad dal into a smooth batter. Mix the rice rava and urad dal batter. Add salt and adjust the consistency by adding water. Leave it to ferment overnight. Scoop the batter into greased idli moulds and steam cook for 10-12 minutes. If rice is ground to a smooth batter, idlis will not turn soft and fluffy. For that reason, coarse rice is used.

The steamed goodies - Kozhukkattai and Idly are being part of the Steamed Treats organized by Shruti

Recipes from HHB

I like her blog very much because every time she gives very detail descriptions and all the recipes on her blog I've tried is unforgettable. I was inspired by her scones recipe recently. I like scones crazily, it's my all time favorites snacks. I've tried many scones recipe, all of them are yummy! I find the goodness of this recipe is quite low in fat.

Normally those scone recipes I've baked contain lots of butter whereas this is not. That's why I like to give it a try. Yes, it's not very buttery flavour on it. I added some raisin and chopped walnut to give it some sweetness and crunchy texture. It's good to eat!

I freezes some doughs so that's I can have fresh scones at anytime :P

The other recipe I've tried recently from HHB recipe is the banana bread. The goodness of the recipe are low in fat, low sugar and contain fifty percent of wholemeal flour.

The texture is like cakes and bread. As it contains little sugar, I eat it with some jam. When you think that it's healthy than those banana cake, it's nice to eat! Guilty free! All thanks to HHB recipes!