Mix Dalicha Uttapa/ Adai Uttapam

Eat Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince, and Dine like a Pauper
This is an ancient proverb that we all have probably heard many a times, but sadly our life is so busy and fast paced that we conveniently skip this most important meal of the day. I'm no different. I have gone without having breakfast for days and weeks and though I feel guilty later for doing so, there is always some excuse every morning to not have breakfast or just grab a pack of sugar loaded cookies or cereal bars which I'm sure do more harm than good. Breakfast is exactly what it says....breaking your fast since the previous day's last meal. Which is why starting your day with a healthy breakfast is so important.

So by participating in 'JIHVA for Breakfast' this month hosted by Suma of Veggie Platter, I'm making a resolution to start the day right – By not letting me and my family skip breakfast and also eating a healthy breakfast. 'JIHVA for Ingredients' is a popular blog event started by Indira of Mahanandi and I'm very excited to participate in this event.

Keeping this resolution in mind, I made this protein rich healthy 'Adai Uttapams' or 'MIX Dalicha Uttapa' as we would call it in Marathi for breakfast last Sunday. In addition to the rice and urad dal which are the main ingredients in the traditional sada dosa/ uttapam, it also has a combination of variety of dals like chana, toor/ tuvar and yellow/ green moong dal. The addition of dried red chillies, ginger, cumin seeds and curry leaves makes the batter very flavorful by itself. But I took a step further and threw in some chopped veggies like onions, tomatoes, peas, carrots and cilantro to transform these into an even more flavorful and healthy breakfast item. Though this batter does not require any fermentation, it does require some planning to allow for soaking the rice and dals. These can be served with any chutney of your choice and sambar. I served mine with some fresh Coconut Chutney and also some traditional Maharashtrian Dried Coconut and Garlic Peanut Chutney (Khobra Ani Danyachi Lasanichi Chutney).

Ingredients -
1/2 cup rice
1/4 urad dal
1/4 cup toor/ tuvar dal
1/4 cup chana dal
1/4 cup yellow/ green moong dal
1/2 tsp methi/ fenugreek seeds
3-4 dried red chillies
8-10 curry leaves
1 small onion
1 inch ginger
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 pinch hing/ asafotida
1/2 tsp sugar
salt to taste

FOR UTTAPAM TOPPING-
grated carrots
finely chopped onions
finely chopped tomatoes
green peas
finely chopped cilantro

Method -
1. Soak the rice, dals and fenugreek seeds in water for 6 -7 hours or overnight.
2. Grind the soaked rice and dals into a coarse paste along with cumin seeds, dried red chillies, curry leaves, ginger and onion.
3. Now add salt, sugar and hing to the batter.
4. Heat the dosa pan on medium heat and rub some oil on the pan.
5. Pour a ladleful of batter on the pan and spread into a 6-7 inch diameter circle.
6. Spread the grated/ chopped veggies on the uttapam. Sprinkle few drops of oil on and around the edges of the uttapam and cook it till its golden brown.
7. Then flip the uttapam over and cook on the other side for sometime.
8. Serve hot with chutney of your choice or sambar

COCONUT CHUTNEY -
Ingredients -
1/2 cup fresh grated coconut
2 green chillies
1 inch ginger piece
3-4 sprigs cilantro
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp lime juice
salt to taste

Method -
Blend all the above ingredients with very little water into a coarse paste

DRIED COCONUT & GARLIC PEANUT CHUTNEY (KHOBRA ANI DANYACHI LASANICHI CHUTNEY)
Ingredients -
1/4 cup dried grated coconut
1/4 cup roasted shelled peanuts
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tsp red chilli powder
salt to taste
1 pinch sugar

Method -
1. In a pan lightly roast the dried coconut.
2. Combine all the ingredients in your blender/ spice grinder and grind into a fine powder.

Broccoli Dal Vadai

Dal vadai is a popular south Indian snack which is usually made from chana dal. I have been making these regularly since both D and I love them a lot. In the past, I have made these vadais by adding different veggies like onions, grated carrots and spinach. Since I had few broccoli heads in the refrigerator, I thought of adding these to the vadai for a new spin on the traditional recipe. I love these innovative ideas of sneaking in more veggies into our diet. Although, I was a bit apprehensive of the outcome of these broccoli vadais, they tasted really good.

I recently read about 'My Legume Love Affair (MLLA)' event and thought of participating in this interesting event. This is my entry for the MLLA - Edition 21 hosted by Mirch Masala for the month of March 2010



Ingredients -
1 cup chana dal
1 medium sized onion finely chopped
2 cups finely chopped broccoli
2-3 one inch pieces of cinnamon
2-3 dried red chillies
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
4 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
2 green chillies finely chopped
1 inch piece ginger finely chopped
2-3 tbsp rice flour
salt to taste

Method -
1. Soak chana dal in water for about 5-6 hours.
2. Grind the chana dal along with cinnamon, dried red chillies and cumin seeds into a coarse mixture.
3. Take this mixture in a bowl and add finely chopped onions, broccoli, green chillies, ginger, cilantro, fennel seeds and salt and mix well.
4. Heat oil in a pan.
5. Just before deep frying the vadais, add some rice flour to the mixture.
6. Make round flattened balls of the mixture and deep fry in hot oil till they turn crisp and golden brown.
7. Serve the vadais with coconut chutney or with ketchup.

Rustic Carrot Herb Rolls

Bread baking is another art I want to learn/ master one day. This is my first attempt at baking bread from scratch. The minute I saw these gorgeous Carrot Herb Rolls on Nupur's blog, I wanted to give it a try. Nupur has got an interesting style of writing that would inspire anybody to immediately try out the dishes she has blogged about. I have heard some horror stories about bread baking, so I followed the recipe without making any major changes as I didn’t want to take any chances. I used some cilantro and Pizza masala that I bought from India during my last trip in place of the herbs used in the original recipe. Pizza masala has a combination of dried herbs like thyme, rosemary and oregano. The rolls turned out to be delicious. They remind me of those rustic gourmet dinner rolls that we get in Specialty stores like Trader Joes, Panera Bread, Whole foods etc.
We had the first few rolls with cream cheese while they were still warm out of the oven. The remaining were served as Pav with the spicy Pav Bhaji I made for dinner the following night.

Ingredients -
1 cup whole wheat flour (regular chapati flour)
3 cups bread flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tbsp butter melted
2 1/4 cups carrots finely shredded
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 tbsp Pizza Masala
2 1/2 tsp salt

Method -
1. In a large bowl, mix the whole wheat flour, bread flour, and yeast. Make a well in the center and pour in the water and melted butter. Stir until combined. Mix in the carrots, cilantro and pizza masala and stir until a soft sticky dough forms.
2. Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead 5 minutes, sprinkling on a little more bread flour if necessary to keep dough from sticking to your hands and the work surface.
3. Keep the dough covered in the bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.
4. Sprinkle the salt over the dough and knead for 5 minutes, until salt is fully incorporated and the dough is smooth and still slightly sticky, adding more flour if necessary.
5. Put the dough back in the bowl and let it rise until doubled in size, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Punch down, then let rest for 10 minutes.
6. Divide the dough into pieces of desired sizes. Shape into balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle rolls lightly with flour and cover with a tea towel. Proof until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.
7. About 20 minutes before baking, heat oven to 400F.
8. Now brush the rolls with salt water. Bake in preheated oven until the tops are golden brown and the bottoms sound hollow when tapped, about 25 to 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
9. Store in an airtight container or freeze. If desired, reheat at 350F for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

I recently came across the 'Food Blog S'cool Calendar' and thought of participating in some of these events. This is my entry for Bread Baking Day (BBD) #28 - Bread Buns hosted by Tangerine's Kitchen for the month of March.

Chawli Methi Dhokla

This is my first successful attempt at making dhokla from SCRATCH. I have tried making dhokla several times while I was in college, but unfortunately they never came out soft and spongy. So I finally gave up and never tried making these from scratch for all these years since I got married. Last week I stumbled upon a dhokla recipe on Tarla Dalal's website which motivated me to give this yet another try. Mustering up courage, I finally made these dhoklas and was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. That’s when I realized that probably the key to making good dhokla is using fresh fruit salt and baking soda (if the recipe calls for it) and not over mixing the batter after adding these ingredients.

The most common traditional dhokla is made from gram flour, but this unusual combination of chawli dal (black eyed peas), spinach and methi made these soft fluffy dhoklas very flavorful and unique tasting. I garnished the dhoklas with fresh grated coconut, finely chopped cilantro and a sweet and spicy vaghar ("Phodni" in marathi or "tempering" in English) which enhanced the flavor even more.

Ingredients -

1 cup chawli dal / dal of black eyed beans
½ cup chopped methi/ fenugreek leaves
½ cup chopped spinach leaves
3 green chillies
¼ teaspoon hing/ asafoetida
2 tablespoon yoghurt
¼ teaspoon haldi/ turmeric powder
2 teaspoon oil
2 tsp sugar
1 teaspoon fruit salt
salt to taste

For the tempering -
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 pinch hing
1 chopped green chilli
5-6 curry leaves
2 tsp sugar (optional)
2-3 teaspoons oil

For the garnish -
grated coconut
finely chopped cilantro

Method -
1. Soak the dal for 4 hours.
2. Grind the soaked dal with the green chillies, adding a little water.
3. Add the methi, spinach, hing, turmeric, yoghurt, oil and salt and mix well.
4. When you wish to steam the dhoklas add the fruit salt to the batter, sprinkle a little water over it and mix gently.
5. Pour into a greased thali or pressure cooker pans and steam for 10 to 15 minutes. Insert the tip of the knife in the dhokla and if it comes out clean it is ready.
6. Allow it to cool for a few minutes.
7. Prepare the tempering by heating the oil; add the mustard seeds and allow to crackle.
8. Add the cumin seeds, sesame seeds, chopped green chilli, curry leaves and hing and remove from the flame. Pour 3-4 teaspoon of water into the oil once it has cooled and add some sugar to this. Pour the tempering over the dhoklas.
9. Cut into squares, garnish with the coconut and cilantro
10. Serve hot with green chutney.

Aloo Palak Paneer Paratha

With a 15 month old toddler in the house, I'm always looking for ideas to make simple yet flavorful meals on week nights. Sometimes, it’s so much easier to make vegetable parathas versus making separate vegetable curry and rotis/ chapatis.
I had half a bag of spinach left in my refrigerator which I wanted to use up before it went bad. For some reason, I was not in a mood to have any kind of spinach curry so I made these parathas which came out very soft and yummy. I used Tarla Dalal's "Aloo Palak Paratha" recipe for reference but these parathas turned out to be quite different as I started kneading the dough. Along with spinach, I also added grated boiled potatoes and grated paneer for some softness and added grated carrots to make these more nutritious. I served these with some carrot boondi raita and coconut peanut chutney. I'm definitely going to make these very often.



Ingredients -
2 cups wheat flour
1/2 cup gram flour/ besan
1 grated boiled potato
1 cup chopped spinach
1/2 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup grated/ crumbled paneer
2 tbsp ginger, garlic and green chillies coarse paste
2 tbsp cumin and coriander powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
2 tsp sugar (optional)
4 tablespoons yoghurt
oil
salt to taste

Method -
1. Mix all the ingredients along with 1 tbsp oil and make a dough.
2. Roll out the dough into small rotis with the help of a little flour.
3. Cook on a griddle/ tava on both sides with some oil.
4. Serve hot with boondi raita, pickle or simply serve with butter.

Bread Dosa

I first read about "Bread Dosa" on Shilpa's blog few months back. Though she had good things to say about this dosa, I had my own doubts about how these would turn out. So I did not attempt to try these out at that time. Few days back I also saw these on Sanjeev Kapoor's website and finally decided to give it a shot. I made some changes to the recipe and came up with my own version that tasted really good. I actually bought fresh bread to specially make these dosas, but I think this is a creative way of using leftover bread. These dosas didn’t taste very different than the rava maida dosas that I make very often at home. However, the seasonings did give it a nice unique flavor. I served these with my mom's tomato chutney.



Ingredients -
8 slices of white bread
1/2 cup semolina/ rawa/ suji
2 tbsp rice flour
salt to taste
1/2 cup whisked yogurt
Oil - for frying the dosas + 2 tbsp
1 tsp Mustard seeds
2 tsp split black gram skinless/ dhuli urad dal
5-6 chopped curry leaves
1/2 inch finely chopped ginger
3-4 finely chopped green chillies
1 medium finely chopped onion
1 tbsp roughly crushed cashewnuts

Method -
1. Trim the edges of the bread slices and soak the slices in some warm sufficient water for few minutes. Squeeze out water from the soaked bread and lightly crumble with hand.
2. Take semolina, rice flour, salt in a bowl and add sufficient water to make a thin batter.
3. Add this crumbled bread to the batter along with whisked yogurt.
4. Put the mixture in blender/ food processor and grind it to a fine paste.
6. Transfer to a clean bowl and adjust the consistency.
7. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a pan.
8. Add mustard seeds, dhuli urad dal, curry leaves, chopped ginger, green chillies, onion, cashewnuts and sauté till onions are lightly browned. Set aside to cool.
9. Heat a dosa tawa. Put some oil on it and wipe with a clean wet cloth.
10. Add the tempering to the batter and mix well.
11. Pour a ladleful of the batter onto the hot tawa and spread. Pour a little oil on top and sides and cook for two to three minutes. Turn and cook the other side similarly.
12. Prepare the other dosas similarly. Serve hot with chutney of choice.

Egg Methi Pakoda

Chef. Sanjeev Kapoor of the "Khana Khazana" fame needs no introduction. He was one of my inspirations during my formative years in cooking. I used to religiously watch his cooking show every Sunday at noon and I still have all the handwritten recipes that I would jot down every week while watching his show. While browsing through his website last week, I came across these egg methi pakodas. They sounded like a delicious yet healthy protein rich pakodas and I decided to make these as part of the Valentine day celebration. This is an excellent dish for kids as well, as these would add some good protein to their diet. The methi / fenugreek leaf enhances the flavor of the pakoda, but we can always leave the methi out. I shaped these pakodas to look like eggs and deep fried them to a nice golden brown color. They were awesome. I served these with some sweet and spicy sauce (regular ketchup + spicy Shiracha chilli sauce). I modified the recipe and proportions slightly to suit our taste.

I served these pakodas on this lovely oyster platter with chinese print. We bought this platter and mini sauce serving bowls from China Town in Montreal, Canada when we were on vacation couple of years back.




Ingredients -
3 Eggs
1 cup chopped methi/ fenugreek leaves
3 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 inch ginger finely chopped
3 green chillies finely chopped
1 stalk spring onions finely chopped
3 tbsp gram flour/ besan
1/4 tsp carom seeds/ ajwain
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp chaat masala
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 pinch soda bicarbonate
salt to taste
oil to deep fry

Method -
1. Boil water and cook eggs for about ten to twelve minutes or until hard-boiled. 2. Drain and immediately put into cold water. Remove shell and finely chop.
3. Mix methi leaves, coriander leaves, onion, ginger, green chillies and spring onions.
4. Sprinkle besan and mix well.
5. Add ajwain, red chilli powder, chaat masala, cumin powder, soda bicarbonate and salt.
6. Add chopped boiled egg, sprinkle a little water and mix to combine all the ingredients well.
7. Heat sufficient oil in a deep frying pan/ kadhai,
8. Shape the mixture into small oval balls and drop in the hot oil. You may need to wet your hands to shape the balls.
8. Reduce heat to medium and deep-fry the pakoras in small batches without overcrowding the kadhai.
9. Turn the pakoras occasionally for even browning.
10. Once they are golden brown, drain onto an absorbent paper.
11. Serve hot with sauce/ chutney of your choice.

Sweet & Spicy Banana Dosa

Gone are the carefree weekends, when we woke up several hours after sunrise, ate lunch @ 3-4 pm in the afternoon, shopped till we dropped at the mall and watched back to back movies till wee hours in the morning. I always thought losing all this freedom after having a baby would bother me. But believe me motherhood changes life for the better and I feel like I could give up anything for my little angel. These days our weekend mornings are busier than ever and much more hectic than weekdays. A lot of time is spent cooking, feeding, diapering, bathing , playing with Swara and also dealing with stuffy noses, teething, tummy problems etc from time to time. This leaves me very little time to cook. So I love whoever invented the Saturday brunch concept…skip the breakfast and have an early lunch :-).

I had these bananas sitting in the fruit basket since last week and wanted to put them to good use before they went bad. Fruits have a very bad destiny when they end up in our house:-(. Both D and I are not very fond of fruits. So, last Saturday, I made these sweet and spicy banana dosas for brunch. It does require some prep work ahead of time like our regular fermented traditional dosas. I soaked the rice and urad dal on Thursday morning and got the batter ready for fermentation by Thursday evening. Its pretty cold in this part of the world and it takes at least a couple of days for fermentation. I served these with coconut chutney, but from my internet research it appears that most people have these with honey. They turned out pretty good.



Ingredients -
1 cup rice
1/4 cup urad dal
2 pinches fenugreek/ methi seeds
2 bananas
2 finely chopped green chillies
3-4 tbsps finely chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon sugar
salt to taste
ghee/ butter for frying

Method -
1. Soak the rice, urad dal and fenugreek seeds overnight.
2. Drain and grind to a fine paste with some warm water.
3. The dosa mixture should be quite thick. Add salt to taste and set the batter aside for fermentation.
4. Mash the bananas. Add to the fermented dosa batter. Add the green chillies and sugar.
5. Grease a non-stick frying pan with a little butter or ghee and heat.
6. Spread the mixture in small rounds about 2" diameter. Put a little ghee around the sides of the rounds and cook for a few minutes.
7. Turn and cook again.
8. Serve hot with coconut chutney or honey

Doodhi Bateta Nu Shaak - Bottle Gourd and Potato Curry

"Doodhi Bateta Nu Shaak" is a traditional vegetable curry from Gujarat. I tasted this dish for the first time a few years back when we were invited over for a pooja lunch at a friend's place. Though my friend is from the North, her MIL is a Gujarati and had prepared this simple yet delicious dish as part of the pooja naivedyam (as it is made without onions and garlic). I loved this shaak a lot and immediately requested her for the recipe. She willingly shared her recipe with me and I have been making this curry very often since then.



Ingredients -
1 medium sized doodhi/ Bottle Gourd
2 small boiled potatoes
Oil
Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
Pinch of hing
Red chilli powder
Turmeric
Dhana jeera powder (coriander and cumin powder)
Cilantro
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste

Method -
1. Peel the outer skin of the doodhi and chop it into small pieces. Boil the doodhi
pieces with some water till tender
2. Chop 1 boiled potato into small pieces
3. Mash the other potato and add some water to it to make a smooth potato paste
Heat oil in a pan.
4. Then add some mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds splutter, add some cumin seeds
Add pinch of hing and little turmeric
5. Now add dhana jeera powder and red chilli powder and mix well. Turn off the
stove if needed or add few spoons of water to prevent the spices from burning.
6. Add potato pieces to the pan and mix well. Then add the boiled doodhi pieces and
also the potato paste to the pan. Add salt and sugar to taste and mix well.
7. Now cook the vegetables some more so they absorb the spices and form a delicious
thick gravy. Garnish with cilantro.
8. This shaak tastes best with hot chapattis and some yogurt.

Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake

Though baking is my passion, I'm feeling a little exhausted with all this baking I have been doing for the last few months since Swara was born. With each passing day, she is becoming more demanding and requires our full attention when at home. So I usually pursue my baking/ cake decorating hobby at night after I put her to bed. Although I am exhausted by then, the idea of whipping up new and creative confections puts me back in high gear. Believe me, its really very rewarding to bake your own cakes & nothing tastes sweeter than fruits of your own labor.

Anyways, so continuing with the tradition of celebrating her monthly B'days, I decided to bake this Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake from my "The Cook's Encyclopedia of Baking" book for her 11th month B'day. I like the fact that the recipe calls for brown sugar, making it a little different than the other cakes I have baked so far. The layer of brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts on top of the cake was a little too sweet for us, but nevertheless, the cake turned out to be very moist and delicious.

Time just flies….can't believe my little princess will be 1 year old next month. We have already started planning for her first B'day. Although it's a big challenge, I'm planning to bake and decorate the cake at home.



Ingredients -
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs, at room temperature
1½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup sour cream

FOR THE TOPPING -
1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
4 tbsp cold butter, cut in pieces

Method -
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line the bottom of a 9- inch square cake pan with wax paper and grease.
2. For the topping, place the brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts in a bowl. Mix with your fingertips, then add the butter and continue working with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. To make the cake, cream the butter with an electric mixer until soft. Add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. In another bowl, sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder together 3 times
6. Fold the dry ingredients into the butter mixture in 3 batches, alternating with the sour cream. Fold until blended after each addition.
7. Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle over half of the walnut topping mixture.
8. Pour the remaining batter on top and sprinkle over the remaining walnut mixture.
9. Bake until browned, 60 -70 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes, then unmold and transfer to a cooling rack.