Medu vada/garelu

Vada/vadai/garelu (in telugu) has been my favourite breakfast item since childhood. As I already mentioned earlier, while at home, I never ever bothered to look how something is made. Mom feeds, I eat, that's it :) Its only after I began to cook that I realized making garelu isn't my cup of tea. But my craving for vadas doesn't end even though I can't make them. And talking about Indian restaurants in San Diego, sheaaaa!! I am a much better cook than any chef at these places.

The solution to my problem was to make "hole-less" vadas.. :D I know its funny, but I just don't get the vada-with-a-hole ever right. So both of us kind of compromised on the shape of the vada. After all, who cares about the shape when they do taste good. This was until my ma-in-law came and made garelu, the way they were meant to be made. Maannnn! They were so crispy, so light, evenly cooked, what not. But I was scared to drop the vadas in hot oil like she did. More days pass by, she goes back to India, and I get back to my spherical vadas, and then this friend drops by, I offer her my vada, she laughs at it lacking a hole, though she says it tastes good. A day later, she emails me that there is indeed a gadget for vada-craver-no-maker like me. :) Had it not been for her, I would have spent all my life making golu-golu vadai, and may be even telling my children-to-be that this is what a vada looks like. :)

And then, I share this exciting news of vada maker with my mom who's already packaging a bunch of things for me. In goes the vada maker, and here it comes travelling across oceans to give me the boundless satisfaction of making the "holed" vada.

That's the story part.. Recipe, a very popular one, can be found on vahrevah.com. Even if you know the recipe, I suggest you take a look at the video. His aeration technique helped me make softer and lighter garelu.

Now this vada maker thingy did a mind-blowing job for the first batch of say 10 vadai. After that, the batter stuck to the bottom of the tool and didn't fall out of it as freely as it did for the initial round of garelu. Probably it needs to be cleaned after every batch. I had the bestest vadas in round 1 and because I felt lazy to clean the gadget, my batch 2 vadas ended up looking like shrimp and crabs. :)

Here are the clicks:

The vada-maker:



Batch 1:



Batch 2:


And once upon a time,


FYI, some of the objects arranged in a circular fashion above are garelu, the rest being burelu. Hardly distinguishable, ain't they? :) I had to weigh each piece to determine which is which. The heavier ones are sweet and the lighter ones vadai. Hahhahhaaa.. I have come a long way from Pic#4 to Pic#2, haven't I?

IMO, vada-maker is the most innovative kitchen tool ever invented. If you're like me too, scared of dropping the vada-with-hole batter into oil, this will amaze you.

All's good about the vada maker except for the cleaning part. Its sort of complicated on the inside, the design, and hence cleaning becomes tougher. With all that sheet metal, I even got my fingers pricked. :( So, be careful while cleaning.

On a concluding note, thank you dear S. I'll forever be grateful to you.. :)

Vanilla cupcakes

A simple cake was all I wanted to bake for a long time. The one I remember eating from my Mom's kitchen long long ago. Neither she remembers what the cake is called nor does she remember the recipe. So, I gave up all hope of baking the simplest of simple cakes. This was until Lakshmi blogged her plain cake recipe. So, this was it. "Plain cake" - so simple a name, yet I never knew about it. A zillion thanks to dear Lakshmi. Both me & my husband love it.

Recipe is exactly as shown in the blog referred to. However when you're making cupcakes out of this batter, make sure you only fill the cup until half-full. This is very very important. For all other muffins that I make from instant cake-mixes, I generally fill-up the cup until 75% full and they always come out neat and nice. But with the "plain cake" batter, I had a terrible experience the very first time I tried the much awaited recipe. As usual, the cup was filled upto 75%. Within 10 minutes, I smell something really yummy. Quickly rush to the oven to see the status. My!! the batter puffed up and the cake looked pretty and almost done. It rose to almost 1.5 inches above the level of the cup. Whenever something interesting happens in my kitchen, I scream out for my dear husband (if he's at home). It took him about a minute to come, and you won't believe what I saw. The cupcake was oozing out the batter from the center just like a volcanic mountain oozes out lava. Damn! Should have taken a picture. But, all my hopes and dreams of having a simple cake were shattered at that very moment. Quickly had to turn off the oven and empty the extra batter from each cupcake by inverting it vertically. There was batter all over the place, yucky.. Finally, the cakes were done, and they were yum.

The next time when I baked "plain" cupcakes, I filled up only till 50%. They were neater this time.

Also, one more caveat. Whenever you bake, make sure you keep checking your oven now and then and don't just go by the baking time shown in the recipe. Had I not smelt the cake, and left it for 30min, I can't imagine how my cakes might have ended up.

I also added some raisins and walnut pieces to the batter. But since the batter was quite thin, all the dry fruits settled down at the bottom of the cake. Got to fix them next time. For blending the ingredients, I used a stand mixer from India and not a hand-mixer. It did a good job, and I didn't need to buy one more gadget.

Now, the shots:

First time (that lava time):

Second time:

The other day, I baked a round pound-cake for a change. Here it is..
That's the simplest cake decoration I could think of - whipping cream with candy dots.

Samosa

Samosa sure qualifies as the most popular and most likeable Indian snack item. Garam garam samosas on a cool wintry afternoon is the best treat you can give yourself. Again, I'm posting this now (after weeks of clicking the pic) since I so much want to eat it right away (its 15degrees where I stay), but laziness is what is holding me back from cooking. Bah! Its too cold outside, who'll go and cook. So, satisfying my appetite by drooling at this picture below:

Now, don't laugh looking at the shape of the samosa :) My Second attempt, I think I did a decent job. 

Recipe is from Sanjay Tumma @ vahrevah.com. He's right about adding oil while kneading the dough. Samosas were lot crispier than what I made earlier.

Experiments from Lakshmi's Kitchen

Lakshmi is the first "new friend" I made in the USA. A nice girl who's really good at cooking, and the one who kind of got me into food blogging. She blogs at: Lakshmi's Kitchen  

This post is dedicated to Lakshmi. Couple of recipes I tried from her blog would be presented here.

To start with, the mouth-watering Gobi Manchurian

My changes:

Added tomato ketchup along with other sauces

Vegetable Frittata - Not much of an omlette lover, but enjoyed eating this one. May be because of the veggies.

Many more to try....

Vegetable puffs

Veg puffs are sold in most Indian bakeries. A very popular snack liked by both young & old. This is called "veggie pattie" in some of the Northern & Western states of India. It hardly takes 10 minutes to prepare them, provided you have all the ingredients. All you need is a pack of puff-pastry sheets (you'll find them in the frozen section of most grocery stores) and mixed vegetables (I use the frozen ones). 

During one of those weekend get-togethers, a friend of mine made vegetable puffs. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined that veg puffs could be made at home. Though its been like 9 months since I had them at her place, I didn't get the enthu to make them until I started to food-blog. 

I generally don't browse cooking videos for recipes, unless I have a gut feeling that the recipe calls for some level of manual dexterity which can only be learnt when watched. The recipe I followed is the one by Vah chef, Sanjay. If you stock up the puff-pastry sheets and cut vegetables, you can prepare the puffs in less than 10 minutes. But it could take upto an hour starting from the the point when you pull out the ingredients from the fridge to the point when you take out the baked puffs from the oven. That's bcoz the pastry sheets should be thawed for atleast 20minutes. 

Look at how I made them:

Using Pepperidge farm pastry sheets, I could make 9 large puffs using one sheet. The unbaked puffs can be kept frozen for - .... I don't know how many days :) I prepared the filling for 9 puffs and sealed the puffs ready to bake, and then felt we couldn't eat them all at once. So, I placed 4 of them in a Ziploc bag and kept them in the freezer. Unable to resist the temptation, I baked them the very next day :) They tasted just as good as they did on Day 1. 

I've had the experience of having microwave-fresh puffs at the bakeries in India, but never had oven-fresh ones. Can't wait to make them for my sister who loves them! 

Pav bhaji

I'm going to start my "Street food" series with this. This is a copy-pasted recipe from Nupur's kitchen to mine :)

The recipe

The shot:

Extremely authentic, Superly delicious!

She is absolutely right about adding onions in the end, and not while cooking. After making in both the styles (fry onion in the beginning, add onions just in the end), I could only wonder how much one small change could alter the taste of the dish. Since I couldn't find pav bread here in San Diego, I ate my bhaji with ghee-roasted white bread slices. :) Wasn't much different from the taste of pav.

Feel like sipping something? Me too :)

How about a glass of Strawberry banana milkshake on the side?

Chole chaat

Blogging would be the last thing on my mind on a Sunday morning. Why then am I posting something now? Well, I'm actually waiting for several things ...

1. for the tomato pulp to cool, so that I can grind it
2. for the chutney (1) so that I can have my breakfast
3. for my husband, so that I can go out shopping
4. for my sister, who gave me an appointment at 10:30 to call her

Now that I have nothing else to do, I decided to post my first recipe. Something I made yesterday for evening snacks. Chaat with Badam milkshake.

Call it channa masala, chole chaat, whatever, its essentially a delicious curry made with chickpeas/garbanzo beans. We either have it with chapathis or just as a light snack. This is one "fast to cook, good to eat" dish. When I made it the first time using my mom's recipe, I was like "Is that all?". Very very simple recipe, yet very very tasty.

Ingredients:

1. Chickpeas/garbanzo beans
2. Tomatoes
3. Green chillies
4. Onions
5. Dhania-jeera powder
6. Channa masala
7. Lemon juice
8. Coriander leaves

Procedure:

1. Soak chickpeas for atleast 8 hours and boil them with a little salt. If you use the canned beans, you can skip this step.
2. Puree tomatoes (quantity depends on the amount of chickpeas) and keep it ready.
3. Heat a little oil (I just use 1 tbsp for a cup of chickpeas) in a pan and fry the tadka (mustard and jeera).
4. Add little turmeric to the oil and fry green chillis.
5. Add the chopped onions to the pan and saute them.
6. Tomato puree to be added next along with some salt.
7. Add the boiled/canned chickpeas to the puree and some dhania-jeera powder, little sugar, any store-bought chole masala.
8. Cover the pan and let the contents cook for about 10 minutes. If the gravy is too thick, add some water.
9. Add some lemon juice and garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves and onions.

That's all it takes for a bowl of chatpata chaat to land on your table.



I've got something to say about dhania-jeera powder. Store-bought powder neither has the taste nor the aroma of home-made powder. I use it in most of the curries, particularly the ones with gravy. Once in a while, when I'm really jobless, I grind equal quantities of coriander seeds (dhania) and jeera along with few red chillies to a fine powder. This stays fresh for about two weeks when stored in an air-tight tin.

Along with chaat, we also had a glass of chilled badam milk. For the recipe, well, buy a packet of MTR badam feast and DAD (do-as-directed) :). Blend milk and the MTR powder along with an ice cube or two and savour the drink.