Virundu

Virundu in Tamil means feast. When I came to know about the RCI event hosted by Lakshmi I made up my mind to do something big. This contribution is based on the major main course meal that is served anywhere in Tamilnadu like restaurants, weddings or gatherings. For this you need to have a great appetite. This full course meal is served in almost all small towns, villages and cities in Tamilnadu
I have always enjoyed having such meals while in India and for the first time I am cooking so many dishes all together at a time. I am going to explain the recipes based on how they are served.

Paruppu podi(Dal Powder)

Ingredients
1cup roasted gram dal (pottu kadalai in tamil)
½ cup gram dal (chana dal)
½ cup sesame seed
3-4 dry red chillies
1tbsp cumin
Desiccated coconut (optional)
2pinch asafoetida
Salt to taste.

Preparation
Roast the dals, sesame seeds, chillies and cumin separately till golden brown and aroma rises. After cooling grind all the ingredients together to make powder. This podi is served first with ghee and rice.

Paruppu-nei sadam(Dal-ghee rice)

This is plain pressure-cooked thoor dal (tuvaram parupu) to which salt and ghee is added and is relished with rice. Ohh .. Nothing can beat its taste. The aroma of melting ghee in hot dal rice is real heaven.

Ennai Kathirikai (eggplant in oil)
(Poriyal category)

Ingredients
10-12 Small sized Eggplant
2tbsp Dhaniya powder (coriander)
3tbsp Idly or dosa powder (Idly/dosa milagai podi)
2tbsp Besan (gram flour)
1tbsp desiccated coconut
Salt as per requirement, as there is some salt in Idly/dosa powder.
3-4 tbsp oil

Preparation
Slit the eggplant in to 4 from the bottom alone. Mix all the above given powders together and fill it into the eggplant as shown in picture. In a deep-bottomed frying pan add oil and gently place the eggplants, such that the powders don’t spill out. In medium heat gently stir the eggplants so that each one gets a coating of oil. Cover it with lid for 5-10 minutes and toss gently to check if it’s cooked. That’s it!! It tastes heavenly with rice.

Vendakkai sambar (okra sambar)

Ingredients
1cup medium cut okra
½ cup medium cut onions
1cup thoor dal
1cup tamarind water
1cup tomato puree
1tsp dhaniya powder (coriander)
½ tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tsp sambar powder
Chopped fresh cilantro
Salt and water as per requirement.

For tempering
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
Asafoetida
Red chillies
Curry leaves
2tsp oil or ghee

Preparation
Fry the okra in 2 tsp oil in a pan for 10 –13 min till it gets soft. Keep separately. In a saucepan add tamarind water, turmeric and salt and bring to boil. Now add the okra, onions, sambar powder and dhaniya powder and let it cook for another 10 minutes.
Add tomato puree to this and again it should come to a boil. Finally add pressure-cooked and mashed dal and stir together. Add water if the sambar gets too thick. That depends on how you want the sambar to be. Temper with given ingredients and add cilantro. A small tip. As soon as you temper, cover the sambar or rasam with a lid. This will keep the aroma trapped inside the dish and will later fill the whole house with mind blowing aroma.


Vathal kulambu (sour gravy made with sundried veggies)

Ingredients
½ cup sundakkai or manathakali vatral
1cup medium sliced onions
1cup tomato puree
1cup tamarind puree
1tsp turmeric powder
½ cup water
3-4 tbsp oil
vathal kulambu powder

1-2 tbsp Jaggery or cane sugar
Salt

For Tempering

Mustard seeds – 1/3 tsp

Fenugreek Seeds 1/3 tsp
Red chillies- 3-4

Curry leaves- a handful
Asafoetida- 1/3 tsp

For people who don’t have vathal kulambu powder
1tsp coriander seeds
2tsp red gram dal (thoor dal)
2tsp gram dal (chana dal)
1tsp cumin seed
1tsp sesame seed
2tsp roasted gram dal (pottu kadalai in Tamil)
Red dry chillies
Asafoetida

Preparing vathal kulambu powder
Roast all the ingredients separately in medium heat. The aroma should come out of the dals. After cooling, grind them all into powder. You can increase to ratio and store them.

Preparation of Vathal Kulambu

In a deep bottom frying pan add 2-3 tbsp oil and fry the vathal till aroma rises. Remove it from the pan and keep separately. In the same pan fry onions and add tamarind puree, tomato puree, vathal powder, salt, turmeric and bring to boil. Once it has come to a good boil, add the vathal and jaggery, cook for 3-5 minutes. Temper this curry with mustard, fenugreek seeds, curry leaves, red chillies and asafetida. If you don’t have vathal, no worries you can use fried bitter gourd or okra.
Sundakki (Turkey berry) is Canthium inerme scientifically. Or manathakali vathal (BLACK NIGHTSHADE) is Solanum nigrum. These are prepared by soaking them in sour yoghurt and salt. Later they are sun dried till crisp and dry.

The small ones are Manatakkali and bigger ones are sundakai
Food Facts
Manathakkli is high in vitamins and has got a lot of medicinal properties. It is used as a Cardiac tonic. It corrects disorders of nutrition. the fruit of the plant serves as an effective laxative & improves appetite. It is known as sun berry or wonder cherry or the black nightshade in English. The blacks nightshade is used as an important ingredient in several Indian medicines.

Sundakai is good for skin ailments and liver disorders. It has the medicinal values for opening the appetite and relieves colds. Root and leaves used for waist cramp, traumatic injury and gastric pain; also as antitussive, amenorrhea and analgesic. For chronic coughs. This is just some of its properties.





Sorakai Pal kootu (bottle gourd kootu with milk)
Ingredients
1cup chopped sorakai (bottle gourd)
½ cup cooked chana dal
½ cup coconut
Green chillies
1tsp pepper powder
½ cup milk
½ tsp turmeric
Salt

For tempering
Mustard seeds
Cumin seeds
Curry leaves
Red chillies
Oil

Preparation
Pressure-cook the dal and sorakai together. Only 2 whistles in the pressure cooker. It should not get over cooked. Grind coconut and green chillies along with pepper. Add the coconut mix to the sorakai and dal. Also add salt and turmeric and bring to boil. When the coconut gets cooked completely, remove from heat, add milk and stir gently. If your dal and sorakai has got cooked more. In a separate saucepan cook the coconut mixture and later add the dal and sorakai. This way you would not over cook the sorakai.
Temper it with the given ingredients.

Takkali Rasam (tomato rasam)

Ingredients
1cup tamarind water
1cup tomato puree
½ tsp turmeric
1-2 tsp rasam powder
½ cup water
Chopped cilantro
½ cup cooked thoor dal
salt

For tempering
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
asafoetida
ghee
Curry leaves

Preparation
Boil tamarind water along with turmeric, salt, rasam powder and water. To this add tomato puree and let it boil for 10 minutes. At last add cooked thoor dal and cilantro. After a boil remove from stove and temper. Rasam is always in my every day menu.
It’s a great comfort food.



Rava Kesari

Ingredients
1cup Sooji (semolina)
½ cup sugar
½ cup ghee
2cups water
kesari coloring powder
Cashews and raisins fried in ghee (clarified butter)

Preparation
Fry the sooji in ghee till aroma rises. Add sugar, water and coloring powder to it and keep stirring. The sooji should leave the corners of the thick-bottomed pan. Add ghee fried cashews and raisins.


Getti thayir(thick yoghurt)
Thick yoghurt to be had with rice. Mor milagai (Green chillies soaked in buttermilk and is sun dried) is fried in oil till aroma rises and served with rice. Other pickles like lemon or mango are also served. The pickle in the picture is called the Vadu mangai urugai. Small tender mango pickle.


Neer moru
This is buttermilk with chopped ginger, coriander, green chillies and salt.

The other side dishes to cherish with rice are tomato vadagam, rice vadagam, javarisi vadagam, and madras appalam. In dessert variety the sweets you see in the picture are mysorepak and badushah that is store bought.

After all this you get bananas or sweet pan (vetrilai paku) at the end.

Brussels sprout curry (Indian Style)

My grandmother and mom makes this curry and it tastes real great. I could never make it that way but this is just an effort. Even brussels sprout sambar tastes great.
Brussels sprout contain good amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, folic acid and dietary fibre. Moreover, they are believed to protect against colon cancer, due to their content in sinigrin.

Ingredients

1 cup Brussels sprout
2 onions
1cup tomato puree
2 green chillies
1tbsp chopped ginger
½ cup tamarind water
1tsp turmeric
1tsp dhaniya powder(coriander powder)
1tsp sambar powder (optional)
Salt
Oil for tempering
Mustard seeds
Asafoetida

Preparation
Cut brussels sprout as given in the pic. Do not cut them into halves, just cut them on the top. Boil it in 2 cups of water for 3-5 minutes. Remember, Brussels sprouts gets cooked very fast so make sure not to over cook them.
In a frying pan , add 2 tsp oil and fry mediumly chopped onions till the raw smell leaves.
After it cools down , grind the onions, chillies and ginger together.
In a sauce pan add tamarind water, turmeric and salt and bring it to boil. Add onion- chilli paste and tomato puree to it. Also add dhaniya powder and any other masala like garam masala or sambar powder if desired.Bring it to boil. When all the ingredients get blend together, add the brussels sprouts and let it cook for another 2-3 minutes. Make sure they don’t break. Temper it with mustard and asafoetida.
Serve with hot rice.

This is my contribution to Sushma’s Monthly Cooking Tipology . I contribute this recipe in the memory of my grandmother who was an amazing cook.

My Weekend trip

I had been to Sri Venkateswara Temple, Pittsburgh, PA. and New Vrindaban temple in West Virginia. Here are some pics of the New vrindaban temple. A disaster happened with my camera. The LCD of my camera got cracked, so I was disappointed and couldn’t take pics properly.

The Palace of Gold is a beautiful and must visit place. The place is very scenic and amazing. It was too cold for us to get out of the car so couldn’t enjoy the small pond and white peacocks. I had to take pics sitting in my car.

This is called the palace of Gold.

This is the glass painted celing of the temple.

Majestically carved doors


These are some beautiful hand paintings by devotees and some are from India.



This is the hand painted ceiling

This is teak-wood carved doors from India


This is the small pond with white ducks and peacocks. The cottages are for guests who visits.

Punjabi Kadi

Kadi is one recipe, which sounds simple to make but only the right amount of all the ingredients can make a perfect kadi and bring out the real taste. I had this Punjabi kadi in India long back. After that I recently had it at a restaurant where the chef who made it was a sardar himself. Oh my!! The taste was heavenly and so good that I could have the kadi simply without any rice or roti. I owner of the restaurant passed by us asking if everything was fine and I thought this is the chance to make the right move and asked him for the kadi recipe but that guy was too clever!! He said that I would have to join the cooking class offered by them, where they teach 2 recipes a month for $ 40 to learn about the kadi.I know you guys are laughing out loud there.
It was not over. I still was bent upon knowing the recipe and asked him “ do you mix up all the ingredients and the start boiling it on the stove top? Did you add spinach to the pakodis? And so on… you know how that guy answered “ehhh ya something like that and ya something like this” hmmmm I thought!! What a Guy??!!!!

I am very lazy at making deep fried stuff, so I usually make plain kadi, not with the pakodis. This is my first effort to bring out the original Punjabi kadi but the taste wasn’t absolutely the same. It is my first contribution to Nupur's A-Z of Indian Vegetables. "K" for Kadi!!


Ingredients for Pakodis

2 cup Besan (chickpea flour)
½ tsp Ajawain
1cup chopped onions
1tsp kasuri methi
½ tsp chilli powder
1tsp cummin powder
chopped spinach (optional)
Salt
Water
Oil for deep-frying

Ingredients for the kadi

2-cup yogurt
1cup water
½ cup besan
1tsp chilli powder
1tsp turmeric powder
1tsp Cummin powder

For tempering

2tbsp oil
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
Pinch of Asafoetida
Dry chillies (optional)

Preparation

For pakodis mix up all the ingredients with water in to a batter consistency. In a deep frying pan heat oil and make small pakodis and keep aside.

For making kadi, mix water to the yogurt and dilute it into buttermilk consistency. Add besan, turmeric, salt, cummin powder and chilli powder to it. Bring this mix to a boil on medium heat. If the kadi gets too thick, water can be added to dilute it. Once the kadi comes to a good boil, remove it from stove and add the pakodis and temper it with the given ingredients.
This is how I made it. If anyone has a better recipe please help me improve it.

I am going on a trip for the long weekend to this place, so taking a small blog break. I will catch up with you all after a week. Wish you all a happy weekend and Happy Easter.