Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Monday, October 23, 2023
Monday, October 16, 2023
Sundal Salad #navaratri
Hello Friends,
Today I am going to show you how to make a different variety of sundal for Navarathri.
Sundal is prepared during Navaratri festival in India.
Navarathri is a 9 day festival followed by Dussera on the 10 th day.
It is a colorful festival with lots of food , devotional music and dance.
My mom used to make different varieties of sundal on those 10 days.
Sundal is a healthy snack made with different dals and grams
Channa and peanut are extremely healthy protein rich snacks with nearly 100 calories per cup after cooking.
Having sundal (salad with lentils) for snack / meal is a great way to stay fit. It is a slimming secret too.
I always try to keep a batch of sundal in my fridge for that tea time cravings:) Though the easiest way is to buy a canned lentil, I prefer the home cooked ones better. Dried nuts are lesser expensive, healthy and delicious. Pressure cooker makes perfectly cooked chickpeas very easily. We can do stove top cooking too, but it will take nearly 2 hours. Sometimes I cook the chickpeas in a big batch and freeze in small portion / containers, so that I can add some protein in any dish I want.
Chickpea - channa, konda kadalai ; groundnut - peanut, nilakadalai, verkadalai.
Now let's go to the recipe.
You can watch this recipe in my youtube channel also. Kindly Subscribe, Like , share and encourage. Your subsription and encouragement will help my channel to grow and hence I can make more useful videos for us all !
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The ingredients needed are :
Kabuli channa or
White chick peas - 1 cup
Peanut - 1 cup
Peanut oil - 1 tbsp
salt - to taste
water (to cook) - to immerse and 1 cup standing over.
For salad:
cucumber - 1
onion - 1
tomato - 1
lemon - 1/8 of a fruit
salt - to taste.
Method:
Rinse the groundnut, chickpeas thoroughly and Soak them for 12 hours or over night. They will double in size after soaking. Fast Soaking can be done in hot water for 5 - 6 hours along with some baking soda
Remove the soaked water which is frothy (must). Wash again and add some more water. They should be totally covered with water and add some water to stand 1 inch above. Pressure cook the peas to one whistle, then reduce the flame and cook in low flame for 15 minutes. Release pressure and take out. Add salt, drain the water.
Before serving finely chop the onion, cucumber, tomato, grated carrot, coconut and add to the green gram. Top with finely chopped cilantro.
Sundal salad is ready!
Serving suggestion:
Serve as snack with tea / coffee.
Note:
It would be better to make channa sundal and peanut sundal separately and mix them for the peanut lovers, as some can't take peanuts.
Red channa has more fiber than the white one.
Red chickpeas takes only 6 hours to soak (more the better) and it is easy to sprout too.
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Crunchy Ulunthu vadai in English #ulunthuvadai
Urid dhal - 1 cup (200 gm)
Oil (peanut oil / corn oil) - 200 ml
Shallot / red onion (chopped) - 1/2 cup
green chilly - 2 (finely chopped)
cumin - 1/4 tsp
whole black pepper - 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
curry leaf - 1 sprig
Ginger - 1 tsp (finely chopped) -
Wash the urid dhal twice thoroughly. Soak the urid dhal in cold water for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Grind it to a fine paste with very little water. The final consistency should be like the above photo. Imagine the consistency of soften butter to get the correct batter(vadai mavu).
Add the required salt + 1 tsp black pepper and grind again for a while.
Pour the batter to a mixing bowl. Taste and adjust the salt now.
Mix the finely chopped onion, green chilly, curry leaf , whole pepper, cumin with the batter.
Heat the oil in a wok. Wait till it reaches the hottest point. Reduce the flame to medium.
Wet a plastic sheet or banana leaf (small square). Take a small ball of batter , place it on the sheet, gently flatten it and make a small hole at the center.
Deep fry the vadai in medium heat till it gets the golden red color.
Drain the oil , take out and place on kitchen towel / multi holed basin to drain excess oil.
Ulunthu vadai is ready!
Serving suggestions;
Serve with coconut chutney along with hot coffee or tea in the evening.
Also makes a good side dish with Idly, Venn pongal, sarkarai pongal etc.
Tips for a perfect ulunthu vadai:
Making ulunthu vadai is always a challenge for many. So I insist on the following points whenever any one asks me.
1.Always use unsplit, whole skinless urid dhal for making vada and idly. (If we are using split dhal with skin then increase the amount of dhal while soaking. But we can't get more fluffy batter with them).
2.It is better to soak the dhal inside fridge. The purpose is to prevent fermentation of urid dhal, as leaving the batter in hot weather results in little fermentation, which makes the vadai absorb more oil while frying. So I always soak it inside fridge.
3.The batter can be prepared 2 days earlier, but should be kept inside fridge till we add onion and fry.
4.Never add more water to grind the batter. The vadai batter made using Indian grinder yields more number of vadai than that of the Indian mixer made. Most days I use mixie to prepare my batter, sometimes my Ultra grinder (after 2014).
5.If the vadai batter becomes little watery,add a tbsp or more of rice flour. But it will reduce the taste. So leave the watery batter overnight in fridge to remove the excess water.
6.The vadai should be crispy in the outer layer and soft at the inside. So fry it in medium heat. Never allow the oil till smoking point.