For countries where there is
no enough sunshine or places where people have no facility of leaving the
CHHUNDO in the Sun, I have an alternative. After you drain off the liquid
from the julienned mango mass, set it aside. Prepare sugar syrup of one
thread consistency .Do not make it more than one thread or else the whole
effort will be wasted. Once the sugar syrup is sufficiently cool, add the
julienned mango mass in the syrup and add four to five spoons of chilli
powder with a little salt to taste. Mix thoroughly. Garnish as above and
the CHHUNDO with second variation is ready. THE QUANTITY OF SUGAR MAY BE
INCREASED IF THE MANGOES ARE MORE SOUR. You can use smaller varieties of
mangoes also if large variety is not available.
There is a thumb rule about
the usage of SAMBAR POWDER. You must use the same number of spoonfuls of
sambar powder as many people who are going to take lunch. If you have four
people having food at your place, use four spoons of SAMBAR POWDER along
with dhall.!!!
In khandvi preparation, you
need at least two people or if you are alone, you need very strong hands.
The trick lies in constantly stirring thick khandvi dough for at least
twenty minutes on a medium flame till the besan gets fully cooked. It is
important to check after fifteen minutes to take a small lump of the dough
and spread on a plate by patting with fingers. If the dough cools and
remains like a dosa without sticking to fingers, than you are sure that
the dough has fully cooked. There is another method of making khandvi,
which involves pre-cooking of the dough. Once you find out that the dough
has fully got cooked, smear oil on an upturned Thali and immediately
spread khandvi dough on it. Smear a plastic sheet with oil and cover the
dough with it. Now roll the dough like a roti on the thali with a rolling
pin. Leave it aside once the rolling is over. After ten minutes, cut it in
to stripes and roll the khandavis and garnish with gingely seeds and
Kothmir
Take only two ounces of oil
as frying measure and this is meant for only one person and making about
small sized ten poories. You can increase the volume of oil as per your
needs.
If you don't like the raw
smell of Chillies, the best time to add chilli powder is when your
ingredients are semi cooked. If you want your cutlet extra spicy then use
a little powder of black pepper and five or six cloves (powdered) when
cutlet mix is ready.
Mixed Vegetable palaya When
you add Wet spices paste to the semi cooked vegetables, add along with it
one spoon of Garam Masala. Let it cook for about three to five minutes.
Finally, heat some oil or ghee in a Tampering Ladle and add six to eight
cloves, four Cardamoms and 3 Nos of 1" Cinnamon Sticks. When the
Cloves puff up, tamper the palaya and cover the vessel immediately. Serve
hot. You will be surprised to find that the palaya taste has totally
altered
Coconut milk is meant to add
an EMULSION. This gives body and add taste of its own to the dish. Apart
from that, it acts as a solvent and a dispersal medium to spicy oils of
different spices used. This helps in retention and even distribution of
spice flavors in the recipe. Use paste of Cashewnuts(use abt 10 nos of
cashewnuts made into thick liquid and add that after all the wet masalas
are fried in oil and you add cashew paste/liquid and immediately add a
little water and stir properly while letting it simmer for about three to
four minutes. This would give you almost same taste as Kurma with coconut.
You may be surprised but you can use thick milk also. The whole idea of
using coconut in Kurma is to add an emulsion. This emulsion can be Milk,
Coconut milk or Cashew Milk.
When your Rasam, sambar or
Kozumbu becomes too sour, add a pinch of cooking soda (however I don't
approve of it).But cooking soda spoils the taste of the dish sometimes if
you are not careful. So I have found out a fine method. Hold your
breath.......If you have an antacid tablet at home, add half a tablet. It
does not spoil the taste. Add more if the acidic taste is 2 much.
For excess of salt in curry
with gravy, remove half of the gravy and later thicken the gravy with
cream of Tomato or Mashed potato, no one will even know. Also put peeled
raw potatoes in the curry to reduce saltiness. If the dish is dry curry,
it is better to remove the vegetables, wash cooked vegetables and again
put back in the masala. I have done this sometimes. Please slice the
peeled potatoes into thin slices like in wafers and then add to the curry.
This will increase the surface of absorption for extra salt and also will
give a new dimension to your curry.
If the dish is having extra
chillies, again remove gravy and replace as in previous suggestion and add
a spoon of Ghee to the curry. This will remove extra spiciness from the
dish.
ON PREPARING DRY CURRIES (PORIYALS)
When you are preparing dry curries, you must make it a point not to use
too much of oil and too much of fuel and TOO MUCH OF FLAME .AND TOO MUCH
OF TIME.!!!
I have seen people frying vegetables in a kadai for over half an hour on
low flame and going on turning it .This is ridiculous. Vegetables need to
be properly cooked and at the same time they should not lose their taste
and colour.
You can avoid this by following the under mentioned tips.
1) Half cook the vegetables like potatoes and other hard vegetables in
steam or pressure cook.
2) Add little bit of Sugar to green vegetables before steam cooking. And
after semi steam cooking, fry as usual in kadai with little oil.
3) Make it a point to cover the kadai with a large thattu filled with some
water. This will let the vegetables be cooked with own water of
evaporation.
4) Never fry vegetables for a long time.
5) Never fry vegetables for long after adding dry /wet spices as burnt
spices spoil the aroma of food.
6) While re-heating the dry curries, use non-stick pan or Micro oven or
dry steam in a pressure cooker.
7) It is good to pre-soak the vegetables for some time in water.
If you follow the above tips, your poriyals and other dry curries would
taste better. By pre cooking half in steam, you can cut down on fuel and
time. Also your vegetables would not lose their nutrients and vitamins.
Ingredients Milk - 1 liter Citric Acid or Lemon (juice) - 1/2 tsp Water - 2 tbsp Method Dissolve the
citric acid in water. Bring milk to boil, stirring continuously. Add the
acid solution gradually, while stirring. When the milk curdles fully,
switch off the gas. Cover for 3-4 minutes. Drain into a muslin cloth. Hold
pouch under running water. Press out excess water. Shape and place cloth
under heavy weight required (stone slab) for 2-3 hours before using as
required.
Chilli powder should have 70%
to 80% of Bedagi Chillies which have colour and fantastic Pungent flavour
and are mild to taste.20% should constitute Warangal red chillies which
are hot. The powdering must be done at home If you are in India, or else
hand pounded if you are in Bombay and Maharashtra.Or select a chilli
powder which is mild and of high colour and then add any hot chillies.
Asfoetida is the most
important spice and also the most tricky. Always buy the real asafoetida which costs around 2500 Rupees per kilo. Buy that and dilute it at home
with other local Asafoetida powder .Block variety is useless. Only Marwadi
shops in South India have real Hing called Hira Hing.Some company in Udupi
sells real hing.If you are in USA or othe places in west try and buy from
Afghani/ persian store. Ask for Hingua.
Garam masala must be added
3/4 th of the way of cooking any dish.Garam masala added at the end, gives
off strong uneven aroma. It sometimes smells less if there is a lot of oil
in gravy. So add when you are 3/4 th way.
Coriander leaves must be added at the end of cooking.
Roast khus khus lightly before grinding. You will get fine powder.
To preserve any colour, you must add a little sugar before steam cooking
any coloured vegetable. Adding soda to beans kills the colour.
To cook rajma very soft, you must soak it in warm/hot water for at least 24
hours. I don't like adding soda.
To avoid jaggery getting soggy, store it in PET jars and keeping a pocket
of roasted rice in that jar will ensure no moisture. Potlam of rice should
be made of cloth.
Roti tawa need not be maintained with onion. Only dosai tawa or dosaikal
gives better performance if you use onion.
Wooden chopping board is the best for cutting vegetables. Wood has some
inherent property which does not allow bacteria to grow on it. Even if
bacterias grow, they die when you cook .So go ahead and be happy using
wooden board. Another disadvantage in using plastic boards is that your
knives need to be sharpened often.
To get crisp vadas as in Restaurants, add quarter spoon of Soda Bui Carb
to about 1/2 liter of Vadai Dough just before you pat the vadais .Dont
keep soda added dough for long. You will get very soft and crisp vadais .
Chalna or filter or sieve ,
are very essential for proper dry/wet frying of ingredients. If you do not
have appropriate chalna/sieve, it becomes almost impossible to fry some ingredients. Example
is frying of Aval.You need a chalna which has many
holes and is mini kadai shaped with a handle.Same can be used for Dhall,
Groundnut frying. If you do not have anything similar, please read the
following carefully and use the guidelines to create your own version of
chalna/sieve.
1) Use metal sieve fine wire mash sieve) for sieving flour which you might
have .The only condition is that you must use larger kadai or frying pan
than flour sieve for frying DHALLS or AVAL.
2) If you do not have even flour chalna, go to the nearest supermarket and
buy thinnest Aluminium tea maker with handle which u get everywher in India. come
home Take a big nail and hammer out about 100 holes at the
bottom .Take care to keep it on wooden board when you perforate it.Or ask
your husband to use electric drill to make holes.
3) Contact all your friends and find out if they have a chalna to your
specs.
4) If you have rice strainer, try and use it to put dhalls/Aval in it and
keep it in frying pan/kadai and fry them.
5) If everything fails, use a tin container which you have used to unpack
tinned foods, remove the top lid properly and make as many holes as
possible in it and using a chimta as a handle, complete your frying.
This has been a tricky field
for many hubbers.I had posted this piece last march .But it seems to have
gone un-noticed. I am reposting it for the benefit of the hubbers.
METHOD OF PREPARATION
To make nice chappathis/Phulkas which Balloon when Roasted on fire, you
need to make the dough in the following manner. Take required amount of
(two cups) Whole wheat flour. Add Two or three table spoons of cooking oil
and half a spoon of salt. Mix the oil , salt and the whole wheat flour
thoroughly. Now take some water and slowly start adding and kneading the dough. When
the dough is sufficiently soft, keep it aside for at least one
hour after smearing the whole kneaded dough with half a spoonful of oil to
avoid drying up. Make urndais of only lemon size of dough to roll
Chappathis.(sometimes on keeping for an hour, you may have to still soften
the dough with a little bit of water as wheat flour sometimes absorbs
water more than usual). You must not add too much water or else the
chappathis will not balloon and you will not be able to make thin chapattis
or Phulkas.
Take a little dry flour and set it aside, With a rolling pin, roll the
chappathis on the stone. Once the flattened dough is thin and starts
sticking to roller pin, turn the chappathi in dry flour on both the sides
and start rolling in round shape. You may have to turn the chappathis in
dry flour twice or thrice in order to get very thin (2.5-3mm) thickness
without sticking. (Do not under any circumstances let dry flour stick too
much to rolled chappathis surface or else, when roasting on naked flame,
burning smell of flour will spoil the taste of chappathis.) Now take the
rolled flat uncooked chappathi and first place it on Tava.As soon as
slight bulges start forming, With a chimta or a fork remove the chappathi
from Tava and place directly on fire or flame of the stove. You will be
amazed to see perfectly round Phulkas .Turn it and cook it on both the
sides. Remove from flame and apply nei (ghee) on the thinner side of the phulka.Serve
it hot. If you are making Phulkas for eating with payasam or
sweet things like Mambazam Juice etc, don't use salt .Punjab wheat flour
will be more sticky and uses more water.So adjust the water addition as
per the quality of flour you get in the place or any country you are now.
Without ghee, it is
impossible to think of many sweets. Take away ghee from a Marwari kitchen
and the result would be a disaster.Rice and sambar with a spoon of ghee on
top makes an appealing first morsel. Body needs of animal fat is supplied
by ghee for vegetarians. If you buy ghee from out side, you are likely to
get Mutton Tallow in boiled form. Ghee made by big name dairies , have no
smell that you identify ghee with. So why not make it at home? It is easy
and you are sure of A1 Quality.
METHOD OF PREPARING GHEE
Buy 2 pounds/1 kg of cooking butter (without salt). Take a 2 litre vessel
and heat the butter on a medium flame.Keep a constant watch and go on
stirring the melted butter which would start boiling after some time. A
scum would start forming in the form of EDU and small flakes. Finally they
will settle at the bottom in hard mass and stick. You must be on a constant
watch with a ladle stirring every now and then. After about 30 minutes to
45 minutes, the bubbles of the boiling butter would suddenly become minute
and there will be a surge of foam towards over flowing. This is the signal
that your Ghee is ready .But take care that the ghee does not over flow
and does not get burnt. Remove from atop stove and keep the vessel under a
fan to cool immediately or else, self heat may burn ghee. You would find
the scum of dirty white or brownish colour from the middle of the process
which would ultimately settle down. Take a filter and filter off the scum
after ghee is cold. Some people in India add Betel leaves at the end of
process to refine the ghee. I, however have never tried it except once .
Out of 1 kg of butter , the yield of Ghee would be aroung 600 gems. Better
buy yellow (cow's) butter.
Thanks to all the
ForumHubbers
for making this happen