The Making of Ghee/ clarified Butter

After many experiments, I now regularly make Ghee/clarified butter at home. It make me feel happy and tastes good too. In India my mom collects cream from milk and makes butter and then ghee out of it. It used to be a wonderful process.
This is how I make it here in US.


Preparation

Drop 2 sticks of unsalted butter in a deep bottomed pan and heat it on medium low flame. once the sticks have melted lower the flame slightly and leave it for about 10 minutes. Never increase the flame to high. The butter will be of a pale yellow color and it will start changing its color to light golden. once the color starts changing, turn off the flame, else it will burn. The heat of the pan will complete the process of making Ghee. It is a very delicate process and once you understand when to turn off the flame, you will get a very nice consistency of ghee.


Ghee / Clarified butter is a very important ingredient in Indian cooking especially in sweets. Along with Ghee I contribute all the following recipes to RCI Tamil Festival hosted by a very talented cook and lovely fellow blogger Viji of Vcuisine.

Urad dal vada/ ulundu vadai

Ingredients

3 cups urad dal
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1tsp crushed pepper
1 tsp crushed ginger (optional)
2-3 crushed green chillies (optional)
Salt
Oil for deep frying

Preparation

Soak urad dal and fenugreek seeds in warm water for one hour. Grind the dal by adding very little water as possible. The batter should be very thick. When the batter is dropped in water it should float as a ball without getting dissolved.
Mix Salt, pepper, ginger and green chillies to the batter.
In a heavy bottomed pan heat oil. Wet your hands with little water so that the batter does not stick to the hands and make a donut shape out of the batter. Drop it in hot oil and deep fry till golden brown. Crispy vadas are ready!

Janmashtami Seedai


Dry fruit laddus


Sakkarai pongal


Murukku



Rama Navami Panakam


Rava Kesari


Paruppu vadai/ masal vadai



Tamil Festive Food


There is a new member in our family! Wanted to share with you guys pictures and pleasure of our new "Toyota Highlander".

Eggs, eggs everywhere!!

Ever since Bee and Jai have announced their event named Click, my brain started thinking about how to give a special effect to the eggs. Then I got the idea of shooting the eggs at its birth place "The Nest".
The eggs seem pretty happy at their home! The nest was created by me.

My Camera is Canon power shot G7, 10 mega pixels. I used the color accent technique in my camera to give a natural feel to the picture.

I had shot about 100 pictures and went mad selecting the best one!! The eggs too had to go through a lot of torture posing differently:)



I liked this one the best!!

Amish Friendship Bread !

Amish Friendship Bread is a type of bread designed to be baked and sent along in a manner similar to a chain letter. The idea is very simple: a friend gives you a cup of yeast culture (also known as "starter") and a copy of instructions. Following the instructions, you add sugar, flour and milk and it rises. Eventually, you end up with 4 cups of the starter. You use one cup to make bread (the instructions provide you with the recipe), keep one cup to start a new cycle and give two cups to your friends. Each of your friends also gets a copy of the instructions for what to do with the yeast starter. The latter part makes it somewhat like a chain letter.



The first time "Amish Friendship Bread" was discussed on Usenet was in a posting on February 5, 1990. The results yielding from a traditional Amish Friendship Bread recipe is a sweet quickbread with a taste and crumb very similar to a cake. The starter, however, may be used to make lots of different types of bread.



DAY 1 This is the day you receive the starter. It is never refrigerated, just left on the kitchen counter.

DAY 2, 3, 4, 5 Mash the bag to mix up the contents.

DAY 6 Feed the starter: Add 1 Cup all-purpose Flour, 1 Cup Sugar and 1 Cup Milk to the bag. Squeeze the bag a few times.

DAY 7-9 Mash the bag to mix up the contents.

DAY 10 Place starter in a bowl. Add 1 1/2 Cup flour, 1 1/2 Cup sugar and 1 1/2 Cup milk and mix well. Now place 1 cup starter into each plastic bags you want to send your friend, and use the remaining to make 1 loaf of bread.

The starter was sent to me by a dear friend and fellow blogger Swapna of Swad.
I made a simple coconut and walnut bread out of this starter. I don't like my bread to be too sweet, so reduced the amount of sugar.



Making of the Bread

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oil
2-3 tbsp sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes
3 tbsp chopped walnuts



Preparation

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
To one cup starter add all the dry ingredients like flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder and fold together.
To this add the wet ingredients and mix well. At last fold in the coconut flakes and walnuts.
Bake for 1 hour and insert a dry knife to see it come out clean.
Let it cool. The bread tastes great.



I passed 2 cups of starter to Susan and Sig in the blog sphere. The 3rd cup was passed to one of my friend Neitha.