Arusuvai Friendship Chain and an Event Entry

During one of my usual blog hop, Meera's post on Eggless Banana Cake caught my attention. I always look for eggless cakes. Among the list of the ingredients, she had mentioned about doodh masala. She has posted the recipe for the same earlier. In the recipe for doodh masala , found one ingredient which was new to me.Haven't heard about that before. On further googling,landed at Indira's. Needless to say, its a treasure house of recipes featuring all most all ingredients used in various regions of India. She has introduced the ingredient for doodh masala in one of her posts on Indian ingredients. What to say about her pictures. They are so real that you might extend your hand to pick them from your screen.

Now cut to the Arusuvai Friendship Chain. Arusuvai is started in India by the mother-daughter duo - Latha amma and Lakshmi of The Yum blog. I had mailed Srivalli, of interest to be a part of the chain. Ever since, Srivalli mailed me that I was to receive from Gaurav, I have been visitng his blog everyday to see if he has posted on his arusuvai ingredient. What to say about the post
on Arusuvai, there wasn't any updations on his blog then. One fine day, there arrived his post. He made up for the delay with 3 posts on the ingredient he received. Still a week passed, with out his mail confirming he sending me the courier. Finally received the intimation from him. He had mentioned the courier guys asking for door no etc. In my place, the building/door no doesn't have any significance. Rest of the address details is enough to locate.

And it arrived at my door two days back. As soon as I opened I found a packet of some seeds. If not I have stumbled on Meera's post, I will not have known what it is. How hard I might guess. If I taste it, I might have a feeling of having tasted it before, but never its name. It was Charoli/Chironji/Saara Pappu. Many thanks to Indira for introdcing it to me and to Gaurav for giving me an opportunity to use it. I feel, this is the spirit of Arusuvai.

I prepared Dates Banana Milkshake adopting recipe of Chandrika of Akshayapatra.
Since I had to prepare for 5 and didnot have enough dates, I added some Dates syrup also. Garnished with the charoli seeds sent by Gaurav.

I am sending this off to Sig's MBP event, which has Mixed Drinks as the theme.

I will be sending a secret ingredient to Sunshinemom of TongueTicklers.

PS. If any of you , who reside in India and is interested to part of this friendship, please leave a comment in Srivalli's or at Bharathy's blog, who are co-ordinating this.

Grilled Veggie Burrito - Baja fresh style

I love grilled veggie burrito from Baja Fresh(fast food mexican place). If you haven't eaten there, give it a try.

Ingredients:
Flour tortillas - 2 (burrito size)
Salsa(mixture of finely chopped onions, tomatoes, coriander leaves, salt and lemon juice) - 1/2 cup
Onion and capsicum - chopped - 1/2 cup
Cooked chick peas - 1/4 cup
Sour cream - a dollop(optional)
Cheddar cheese(optional) - 2 tbsp

Method:
Heat a pan. Add a tsp of oil and fry onions and capsicum till they are cooked. Set aside.
In another pan, heat the tortillas.
In the center of each tortilla, place a handful of salsa, cooked onions and capsicum, cooked chick peas, sour cream and cheddar cheese. Wrap the burrito as shown in http://billgrady.com/wp/2002/11/14/how-to-wrap-a-burrito/

Enjoy!

Corn flour roti with Sprouts kurma

I had a packet of corn flour lying in my pantry for some days, waiting to be used. I bought it with the idea of making roti. This is the first time I was going to lay my hands on corn flour. So I was not sure of the end result. Thats one of the reasons I kept postponing. Finally decided to take the plunge. Since corn flour is not elastic like our regular roti atta or maida, I decided to add some atta along with the corn flour for making rotis.

Corn flour roti /Makki ka atta ki roti
Corn flour - 1 cup

Whole wheat flour - 1 cup

salt to taste

Warm water to knead
Butter/Oil

Method

Mix cornflour, wheat flour and salt in a bowl. Knead to a medium soft dough using warm water.
It is not elastic enough to be flattened with a rolling pin directly. Grease a plastic sheet with oil. Take a lemon sized dough and shape into a ball. Flatten it with your hand. Alternatively, you can roll out each ball between the folds of two greased plastic sheets.
Heat a tawa and place a roti on it.

Cook on medium heat till one side is half done. Turn over and spread some butter/oil. Again tuurn over and spread some butter/oil on the other side . Cook both sides till golden brown.
Serve hot with a dollop of butter on it.

I served with sprouted green gram kurma.

Green Gram Sprouts Kurma

This is adapted from a recipe of Mallika Badrinath.

Making Sprouts

Wash and soak 1 cup of whole green gram for 3 hours.

Drain the water and tie soaked grams in a muslin cloth and hang on a hook in your kitchen. Sprinkle water occassionaly, never leaving the gram dry. On the next you can see some shoots coming out. By the third day it must have fully sprouted. This is the general method.

I usually transfer the soaked gram to a casserole (hot pack). It starts sprouting the next day. This is the sprout on the third day.

Sprouted green gram - 2 cups

Onion - 2 nos

Tomatoes - 2 nos

Tamarind - marble sized

Grated coconut - 2 tblspn

Salt to taste

Jaggery - little (optional)

For roasting

Dried Red chillies- 4 nos

Coriander seeds (dhania)- 1 tblspn

Chana dal - 1 tblspn

Poppy seeds - 1 tspn

Method
Steam cook the sprouts in a pressure cooker for 5 minutes or in a Microwave

Soak tamarind in hot water and take a thick extract. Alternatively can use tamarind paste.
Dry roast poppy seeds.

Roast red chillies,coriander seeds and chana dal in a tspn of oil
Dry frind the fried spices, poppy seeds and coconut. Add little water and grind it to a smooth paste.
Heat litle oil in a kadai. Add chopped onion and fry till golden.

Add chopped tomatoes and cook till they turn mushy and the moisture is fully absorbed.

Mix ground paste, salt and jaggery?(if you are adding).

Keep stirring till nice aroma comes.

Pour the tamarind extract and steam cooked sprouts. Cook till gravy thickens.

I have used ingredients from 3 out of the 4 groups mentioned by Mansi of Fun and Food, who is hosting the WBB for this month, which is started byNandita of SaffronTrail. Mansi has chosen 'Balanced Breakfast Meal' as the theme. She has made it easy by giving the groups to make the meal balanced.