Sweet Nombu Adai

Nombu Adai is prepared as a neivedhyam for the Karadayar Nombu Festival. Check out my post about the festival.

Ingredients

Rice Flour 1 cup
Jaggery 1 cup
Water 2 cups
Karamani (or Black eyes peas) 3 tbsp
Coconut pieces few
Cardamom 2 powdered

Method of Preparation

1. Cook the Karamani beans and keep aside. You can use a pressure cooker. Make sure that it retains its shape, but cooked well.

2. Dry roast the rice flour till it starts to loose a little colour. Keep aside.

3. Chop the coconut into small pieces and roast in a little ghee.

4. Heat 2 cups of water in a pan and add the jaggery. Melt it. Strain to remove any sand from it.

5. Pour back into the pan and bring to a boil. Add the rice flour making sure no lumps are formed.

6. Mix in the rest of the ingredients as well.

7. Make small balls out of this mix and pat it on a banana leaf or plastic cover. I use ghee in my hands to prevent it from sticking. Make a small hole in the center.

8. Transfer it as is in the banana leaves to idli plates. Or you can slightly grease the plates and put the adai directly on the plate.

9. Steam for around 10 min (or till cooked well).

Serve with a dollop of butter.

Badam Sharjah

Being a Keralite, I have been in love with this drink. Yes yes - I am not talking about the Emitire, part of UAE. I am talking about the popular milkshake available here called Sharjah.

This month I am glad to be back with another installment of Blog Hop Wednesday. This time, I am not doing an exact recreation. I decided to make Sharjah after I saw the recipe for ABC Smoothie in Riddhima's site.

Sharjah is basically a drink made from frozen milk. Different variations are available. The traditional recipe uses frozen milk, banana and some peanuts along with some sugar.



Ingredients

Frozen milk - I used 1 1/2 litre packet that you get in India.
Almonds/Badam - 10
Small Banana - 2
Badam Powder - 4-5 tbsp
Sugar - if needed

Method of Preparation

1. Soak and peal the Almonds.

2. In a mixie, coarsely grind the almonds. Add the bananas and run the blender again.

3. I used for badam powder for flavour. You can skip this and add some more almonds and then add some cardamom and saffron as well if you want.

4. Add the powder, sugar (if using, I used 1 tsp) and the frozen milk. Blend it all together.

5. Do not overblend. The milk should have its frozen to creamy texture (not watery).

6. Sevre in tall glasses. Top it with some sliced almonds.

Submitting this to Blog Hop Wednesday and Kerala Kitchen hosted by Prathibha

One recipe to rule them all

This is a guest post from my husband. He is on his own for 4 more weeks while I vacation in India, so I was worried what's happening to my kitchen. He promised to enlighten me through a blog post, so here it goes.

I was 22 when I went to US and managed to keep myself fed for 7 more years. I have one trusted recipe that I used consistently during all those years, which is coming handy now. It is extremely simple. It will be useful for someone who is terrified about turning on the stove. Conversely, it's unexciting and extremely useless for someone well versed in the art of cooking, especially if you have a cooking blog of yourself. You are not going to find pretty pictures or detailed description for this recipe - you don't need it.

What you need:
Onions, Tomatoes, Cauliflower (Gobi), Frozen peas (mutter), oil, salt and chilli powder.

Preparation:
1. Chop 1-2 onions into fine pieces. You will get faster and better at this as you do it frequently. Don't worry about the tears in your eyes, it will go away.
2. Heat a pan and pour some oil.
3. Stir the onion till the pieces start turning golden brown. Many times you won't get this colour. Simply stir them till you get bored of it.
4. Cut 1-2 tomatoes into small pieces.
5. Stir them with the onion.
6. Add salt and chilli powder, stir the pan till you get a thick mixture.
7. Cut Cauliflower into pieces and add.
8. Microwave frozen peas for about 4 minutes and add.
9. Pour some water and cook till they are done.
10. Remember to turn off the stove - this may come back and bite you sometimes.

That's it. Eat it with rice or store bought chapathi.

I believe this onion-tomato-veg curry is simply the best thing invented since sliced bread for the following reasons:

1. It tastes better than most curries you eat from Indian restaurants. For some reason, stuff you cook simply tastes better. Don't know why.
2. It is extremely healthy. Just watch the amount of oil you put in.
3. It takes less than 30 minutes to cook - less time than picking up something from your friendly neighbourhood Indian restaurant.
4. Remember, I didn't call the recipe "Gobi mutter recipe" - it's a generic recipe. You can make 20 different curries with this one - Mushroom mutter, Mutter paneer, Palak paneer, Aloo mutter, Dhal palak, Aloo palak, Aloo gobi, Aloo gobi mutter - you get the idea. Start experimenting with dhals (channa dhal, masoor dhal, moong dhal, green moong dhal, toor dhal) and legumes (chick peas, rajma). You need to soak legumes overnight and cook them in a pressure cooker. The possibilities are endless and mind boggling.
5. You don't need any fancy ingredients (believe me there are some fancy stuff out there. You just have to open my kitchen cupboard to see 48 boxes of stuff - I am not kidding). You need to go to the supermarket once in two weeks to buy some veggies. Go to Indian store once in two months to replenish chilli powder, salt and dhals.

Bottom line - cooking is not hard, if you are looking to just survive. If you get tired of eating this, I can't help you. Go read a real cooking blog post or find yourself a spouse who thinks cooking is great.