Tamilnadu's village style mixture

Mixture / namkeen  / மிக்ஸர் is a popular spicy snack of India. Just as the name says, the snack mixture is a mix of various snacks like omapodi, kaara boonthi, nuts, spices etc.
The North Indian namkeen mixtures are made with thin sev and we can see this trend in Chennai mixture too. Most of those namkeens contain a hint of sweetness.  But there is one more mixture variety from my native place, which may not be much popular, but I like it very much. I have seen this kind of mixture in Kerala too. This mixture should be made with thick sev and the spice level should be high. We call it as 'Thisayanvilai mixture'. One of our good relatives, AnnaPazham paatti used to buy this for us. This mixture would be packed in palm leaf containers (olai petti) and that adds more glamour to it.
I tried to create it at home and it turned out to be a great success. Should I say hubby dear and me enjoyed this mixture throughout that weekend with tea!

Tamilnadu's village style mixture

Omapodi and kaara poonthi 

plantain chips

soaked channa dal

frying the channa dal

fried peanut, curry leaf, channa dal

Every goodness in one bowl together, the MIXTURE

After mixing the snacks together...

Fruit of my work ♥ Mixture stored in airtight container.....for snack time !

Ingredients:
Omapodi (thick sev) - 1/4 kg  (or) crushed - 2 cups
kara boondi - 1/4 kg (or) 2 cups
banana chips - from one plantain  (or) 100 gms
peanut  (ver kadalai)- 1 cup (or) fried masala peanut - 1 cup
channa dal (kadalai paruppu) - 1/2 cup
murukku -  1 or 2 (optional)
curry leaf - few
garlic - 4 cloves
red chili powder -  1 tbsp
hing - 1/2 tsp
salt - to taste
oil - for deep frying

Method:
1.Prepare the omapodi, boondi, chips ahead. I suggest making them a day ahead. Buying them from store is also a good option. Gently crush the omapodi into medium size pieces.
Put them all together in a wide mixing bowl.
2.Soak the channa dal for 4 to 5 hours. Drain water. Pat dry in a fresh kitchen towel. Let it dry in room temperature for 30 minutes. Heat oil to deep fry in a wok. Deep fry the channa dal.
Add this to the bowl.
3. Fry the masala peanuts. My recipe would be for baking, but use the same ingredients and deep fry them for mixture. Put this with other items in the bowl. We can simply fry the peanuts too (like me).  If we add masala peanuts, then it gets the touch of kovilpatti mixture.
4. In the same hot wok, fry a handful of curry leaves to crispy. Put that to the mixing bowl.
5. Peel and crush coarsely few cloves of garlic. Fry till crispy. Add to the bowl.
6. Now add some crushed murukku to the bowl.
7. Then add chili powder, hing , salt to all those items in the mixing bowl. Mix well using a spatula or hands. Check and add salt little by little as many already contain salt.
8.Let cool and store in air tight containers.
Village style mixture is ready !

Serving suggestion:
Serve as snack with coffee or tea.
In my house, we enjoy this with sambar rice too.

Note:
*The difficult to make ingredients like sev (omapodi), kara poonthi, chips, fried peanut can be bought as readymade from any Indian grocery store and this snack can be made in a jiffy.

Sapota ice cream

Chickoo fruit / sappotte / sapota / sappotta
The Indian sapota (Manilkara zapota) tree is a beautiful short tree. I would say Indian sapotta is more sweeter but smaller than many varieties.  My relationship with this tree started during my childhood. My grandma (dad's mom's sister) had two big shady sapotta trees in her front yard and her house used to be one of my favorite places because of her and these fruits :) So whenever I see sapotta fruits, the only thing I remember is her pretty smiling face !
Click to see my sapote mikshake too.

Coming to ice cream, the secret behind a creamy rich ice cream is butter and eggs with heavy cream milk. With the invention of ice cream churners, low calorie versions starts showing up, and that makes ice cream good for most people.  Making ice cream using pudding or custard (custard has egg while pudding won't) is one of the traditional methods. But this ice cream recipe is my very own version. I learned the basic ice cream from the kitchenaid ice cream maker manual and developed a lower calorie version (still soft and tastes like rich ice cream).
Sapote is a common fruit in India, whereas it costs around $4.99 / lb in USA. But Indian grocery stores here sell frozen sapote for around $2 per pack (340 gm). Also that frozen sapote is extremely sweeter and lovable than fresh ones (fresh ones never ripe in my house....I don't know much about other's experiences. May be I am not picking up the right ones). So I always go for this frozen one.
Here goes the recipe for sapote ice cream.

Chikoo ice cream in Kitchenaid Ice cream maker ♥ 

Frozen fruit pack from Indian grocery store

                           

                   

Grind the fruit to a fine paste.

Homemade custard (simple version).

Attach the ice cream maker to stand mixer and start at speed 1.

Pour the mixture and keep churning at speed 1 for 10 to 15 minutes

keep churning till the ice cream starts thicken.

Immediately take it out 

Keep in a serving bowl and enjoy immediately or keep it frozen till we need.

A big bowl of sapota ice cream :)

Ingredients:
half and half milk (or) whole milk - 1 1/2 cup
egg - 1
butter - 1 tbsp
sugar - 1/ 2 cup
chicku fruit (sappotta) - 4 ( puree 1 3/4 cup)
(or) a 340 gm pack from frozen aisle.
cardamom powder - 1/4 tsp

Preparation:
Keep the kitchenaid mixer's ice cream attachment in freezer overnight (more than 12 hours). I would suggest keeping it in freezer always, as we can make an ice cream or sorbet, whenever we wish.
Keep the fruit in water for few minutes to defrost.

Method:
Whisk egg thoroughly. Add to milk , butter and start heating  slowly. Cook in very little heat , till it reaches little thick stage (coats the back of spoon). Let cool. (This is not traditional custard, but a quick version to make my recipe easier).
Peel the sappota fruit, remove seeds. In a blender, grind together the fruit and sugar to a fine paste.
Add everything to the ice cream maker along with pinch of salt and cardamom powder.
Keep the setting to speed 1. Churn for nearly 10 - 15 minutes . Slow churning is the best. By this time, it will get thicker ice cream consistency. In kitchenaid mixer it takes 15 minutes.
Take it out and serve immediately as soft ice cream.
Or keep in freezer for 2-4 hours for a more firm ice cream.
Keep the left over in freezer.

Note: (Ice cream using mixie and freezer).
*This ice cream can be made without ice cream maker too. For that we have to do these steps:
1. In the above method, do everything till I mentioned 'add to ice cream maker'....then skip that step.
Put the prepared ice cream mix in a tight container. Keep frozen for 2 hours. Take out, beat / run in a blender ( or Indian mixie) for 1 minute. Then transfer this to the same box and keep frozen for 2 more hours. Again , take it out and beat in a blender. Keep frozen. repeat another time and keep frozen for 1 hour before serving.
* In this recipe, we can replace whole milk with fat free milk and it would taste closer.
*while using an ice cream maker, I start the process just before serving, as soft ice creams taste incredible and won't need much fat.

Serving suggestions:
Serve as dessert.
Makes 4  1/2 cup ice cream.
I think this would be enough to make 9 medium size servings.

Shrimp head curry

Era meen thalai kulambu / prawn head curry / shrimp shell curry.

My mom used to do this more often, whenever she had bought shrimp. Shrimp is usually made into a thick stir-fry in Tamilnadu cuisine, but that won't be enough for a large family , even if we buy a kg (which is way too expensive).The person in-charge of the kitchen should be clever enough to satisfy everyone (!). So ladies in my mom's generation could have invented curries like this :)
Optimistically  I guess this shrimp head curry is a way to utilize the shrimp completely. After observing many cuisines of the globe, I assume that this is not an unusual way to extract juices from shell fish.  I am sure this is a more economical as well as delicious way to get the nutrients from shrimp. Here in my house, I make this curry sometimes, as it can be used as a side dish for idli, the next morning.

I had this recipe in my draft for a very long time, since 2010. Hope you all love this flavorful shrimp curry in coconut sauce.

Fresh whole shrimp

                             

Shrimp taken out of shell

Shrimp head curry with potatoes.

Ingredients:
Shrimp - 1/2 kg
Onion - 1
oil - 1 tbsp
tomato - 2
curry leaf - 2 sprig
green chilly - 2 slit
mustard - 1 tsp
sea salt - to taste 
chopped potato - 2

Masala to grind:
shredded coconut - 1/2 cup
cumin - 1 tsp
shallot - 4
fennel - 1 tsp
red chilly powder - 1 tsp
turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
coriander powder - 3 tsp

Preparation:
Buy fresh small or medium size shrimp. (Larger variety prawn / shrimp may taste bland - my opinion only). Separate the head portion and keep aside. This head part has some juicy fleshy parts too. 
 Remove the shell , keep it separate. 
Remove and throw away the intestines (green stuff seen at back of shrimp). 
Now we got our usable portion of shell and flesh of shrimp separated.
Keep the shrimp for further cooking separately
Now rinse the shrimp head and keep it for kulambu.
Rinse the remaining shell with legs and put in a mixie jar. Pulse it few times and crush it. Extract juice out of it using a cup of water.Repeat it twice to get the most of the juices. Discard the crushed shell.  Keep aside.

Method: 
Heat oil in a deep wok.
Add mustard.
After mustard gets cracked, add finely chopped onion, curry leaf.
After sauteing it for a minute, add chopped tomato and saute till it gets mushy and caramelized.  Add potato cubes.
Cook this closed with  1 cup water.
Peel the garlic, shallot and grind the masala together to a fine paste with some water. 
Add  prepared masala, green chilly, curry leaf and bring it to a boil.
Then add the cleaned shrimp head and the extracted shrimp juice.
Boil it for 5 minutes and see that the raw smell goes off. 
The curry would have started to smell very delicious now. Then switch off.
Shrimp head curry / era thalai kulambu is ready! 

Serving suggestions:
Serve this curry over rice as main course along with  shrimp pepper fry or shrimp thokku or shrimp roast or shrimp kebab.

Cool salad

All salads are supposed to be easy to cook and cool to consume. But somehow they start getting more makeovers with store bought dressings and toppings. Though I like all kinds of dressings, I make the below version of salad more often as it needs only a few ingredients.
Enjoy !

Cool cool salad

Salad dressing : Olive oil, lemon juice, honey, salt, pepper

Red / purple cabbage.

Ingredients:
Chopped purple cabbage -  1 cup
lettuce - 3 leaf
onion - 1/2
tomato - 1
canned olives - few
cucumber - 1
cilantro - few

dressing:
Lemon - 1/4
honey - 1 tbsp
salt - to taste
extra virgin olive oil - 1 tbsp
pepper powder - to taste.
Mix everything in a bowl and keep aside. we can keep this handy in fridge and it would be much helpful, if we have to pack this for lunch.

Method:
Rinse the vegetables and remove the water completely. Chop the tomato, cucumber, cabbage , onion and lettuce into bite size pieces. Keep them in a bowl inside fridge or in a serving container. Before serving add the salad dressing, minced cilantro.  Toss well.

Serving suggestion:
Serves 3 to 4 people.
I use the leftover salad as sandwich-stuffing.

Wheat paniyaram (baked)

When I saw this cake pop maker in Aldi and the first thing that came to my mind was kuzhi paniyaram. It was almost sold out as USA's cake pops are popular. The nice cashier lady asked me if I am going to try any Indian recipes using that and also told me that her mom has started making spicy paniyarams. I told her that that's the idea :)
That weekend I made a  'whole wheat paniyaram' (just like  unniappam). It took only 5 minutes to prepare the batter. By that time I started preheating and poured the paniyarams and baked everything within 30 minutes.

Now I am pretty sure that this cake pop maker can be used to make any kind of paniyaram by baking and the best part is this baking needs very little oil only. 

This is not an ad for cake pop maker machine but I tell you all how much this equipment is useful in creating Indian dishes too :)  So, what is the difference between baked paniyaram and one that is cooked in a non stick pan ? Almost the same..... if we are using the usual rice batter, but this baking process helps us make our own version of paniyarams using various healthy ingredients.

Here is the 'baked kuli paniyaram' for you all !

Ingredients:

Whole wheat flour - 1 cup

ravai (sooji / semolina) - 1/4 cup

Indian brown sugar (jaggery / vellam) - 3/4 cup 

ripe banana - 1 

salt - 1/4 tsp

baking soda - 1/4 tsp

oil - few drops

Method:

Mash the banana in a wide mixing bowl. To the same bowl, add wheat flour, semolina, jaggery, salt, baking soda,  fruit salt or orange juice or curd 1 tbsp, 

Grease the non stick paniyaram pan or electric cake pop maker with one or two drops of ghee or oil.

I used an electric cake pop maker. If you are using a stove top paniyaram pan, the click to see 'how to make kuli paniyaram'.

The following instructions are for electric cake pop maker. 

Grease the lower plate of the pan. The upper plate may not need any greasing.

Switch ON the cake pop maker and preheat for 5 minutes.

Then using a spoon carefully fill the bottom holes upto 3/4 th. 

Close it. Let it cook for 6-7 minutes.  Insert a toothpick and see if it comes out clean. The paniyaram would be baked perfectly. No need to flip. Just take out using a wooden skewer or plastic fork (no metals).

Whole wheat sweet paniyaram is ready !

Serving suggestions:

Time taken less than 30 minutes.

Number of paniyaram : 30 (tiny size)

Bok choy stir fry

Bok choy also known as Chinese cabbage belongs to the cabbage family. Unlike cabbage , the greener leaf tastes mildly like kale or drumstick leaf (my view) and the white stems taste like lettuce. This is one vegetable that is always sold in the nearby Asian store. So I buy this and simply make a stir fry by water-saute method. It can be enjoyed as a side dish or added to cooked noodles too.

The recipe is very straight forward and even a child can do this :) I hesitated to write it as a post, but still wanted to show how cooking can be done quicker and healthier too.

Ingredients:
Bok choy - 4
water / olive oil- 1 tbsp
salt and pepper - to taste
lime / lemon - 1/8 of  a fruit.

Method:
Rinse the bok choy thoroughly (no need to separate the stems).
Chop to 1 inch pieces.
Heat water or oil in a wok.
Add the bok choy and saute without closing the lid for 2 minutes.
Switch off.
Add lemon juice , salt, pepper.
Bok choy stir fry is ready !

Serving suggestion:
Serve as side dish.
Add to noodles or pasta, just like spinach.

Protein rich laddu

This is my own version of a homemade protein bar (say protein ball) / சத்து மாவு உருண்டை , which I prepare whenever we need to buy a snack bar. Hope my readers like it too.

Happy Valentines's day !

Snack balls.

keep it covered to prevent drying.

Ingredients:

Almond - 10

green gram - 1 cup

puffed channa dal - 1/4 cup

peanut  - 1/2 cup

brown sugar - 3/4 cup

ghee / coconut oil - 2 tsp

coconut - 1 tbsp

salt - 1/4 tsp

cardamom powder  - 1/4 tsp

dry ginger powder - 1 tsp

Method:

Dry roast the almond in a frying pan (or microwave 1 minute) and let it cool.

Dry roast the green gram in a frying pan in low heat till it smells good (takes nearly 5 minutes).

Then take it out and let cool.

In the same pan, dry roast the shredded coconut, peanut separately.

Let everything cool.

Grind together everything to a fine powder except sugar and butter.

In the same pan add the brown sugar, heat at low with 2 tbsp water and dissolve. Switch off.

Add the powder , cardamom powder, ginger powder and mix with a spatula. If needed add few drops of coconut oil and mix well. Let cool.

Make lime size balls. Apply little ghee or oil in palm to get a smooth ball.

Serving suggestion:

Serve as snack or dessert.

We can use honey instead of brown sugar too.

It can be kept at room temperature for up to 2 days and after that keep refrigerated up to a month or more.

Makes nearly 20 balls.