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Carrot Apple Salad


Salads are a great way to make a simple meal luxurious. Usually I prefer to make a quick salad of cucumber and tomatoes but today I wanted to do something different. Opened the fridge and found I had some lovely apples from last weeks shopping so I made a colourful carrot apple salad that turned out really well.

Ingredients
Carrots - 2 large shredded
Onion - 1 small finely cut
Apple - 1 thinly cut along with the skin.
Whole Moong Dal -- Soaked for an hour in water
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil - 2 tsp
lemon juice - 2tsp

Method
Mix the carrots, apple, onion and drained whole moong dal. Toss with olive oil. Add the lemon juice, salt and pepper 10 minutes before serving.
The sweetness of the apple contrasted well with the salt and spicyness of the carrots and onion.

Aviyal


One of my all time favourite dishes is aviyal. It is an important side dish for all festival and auspicious lunches. My mother once told me that the origin of the dish was infact due to a totally different reason. Sometimes the lady of the house will find that she has a small quantity of every vegetable and each not enough to make the required quantity of a dish for the whole family. So the aviyal came about.

Ingredients
The vegetables for avial are chenai (suran or elephant yam), cucumber (indian variety preferable but you can use field cucumbers too), ash gourd, carrots, beans, long beans (payar), zucchini, drumstick, cheeni avarakkai, eggplant all cut into 1" length thin pieces. Raw mango is optional and only one half of the mango is needed. Potatoes too can be added but you will not find this in the traditional recipe. Most of these vegetables will reduce in quantity when cooked, so you will need a medium sized bowl amount of uncooked veggies for a family of 4.

coconut oil - 3 tsp
shredded coconut - 3tbsp (fresh or dry)
red chillis -- 4-5 nos according to taste
tamarind paste - 1/2 tsp(reduce quantity if you have added raw mango)
Jeera / Cumin -- 1/2 tsp
curry leaves -- 1 sprig
turmeric powder - a pinch
salt as per taste
water

Method
In a deep vessel put 1 tsp of coconut oil and then add all the cut veggies along with water to cover half the quantity. Add salt, turmeric and semi cook the veggies. An alternative is to cook the veggies in the pressure cooker with a little water for 2 steams. In the meanwhile grind the coconut, cumin and redchillies to a semi smooth paste and set aside. Once the vegetables get semi cooked add the tamarind paste and let it mix well and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add the coconut paste, mix well. Make a well at the center of the aviyal and add the remaining coconut oil and curry leaves, cover it with aviyal from the sides. Cover the vessel for a few minutes and then switch off the heat. Your aviyal is ready.

Another version of aviyal is made by using sour curds(used instead of tamarind) and green chillis (used instead of red chillis), and omitting turmeric. The rest of the method is the same and the result is a white aviyal.

Aviyal Kuzhambu is made by the same method, but you need to add little more water so that the dish has gravy. It is best eaten with ghee rice with or without any other side dish accompaniment.

Ghee Making

No Indian pantry is complete without this most important ingredient, Ghee or Nei (tamil). Almost all sweets are made with this aromatic ingredient and just a "chottu" or drop of it will make a plain meal fit for gods which is infact true, as ghee is a major offering in yagna's.

At home making ghee from butter was always a coveted process. I have seen my mom do it a number of times with the exact same result -- a lovely tasting aromatic ghee.

For those of us who live in this part of the world with electric cooking ranges patience is the key to get the perfect tasting ghee.



Method:
Take a deep non stick sauce pan. Keep the heat at medium and place the slab of saltless butter in the saucepan. In about 10 minutes the butter would have completly melted starts to foam and rise. Keep stirring so that it does not overflow. At this time the fat is melting and the water content is evaporating. The foam starts to subside and the liquid starts to become clear. But you will still find yellow fat at the bottom of the pan, so keep stirring so that it does not burn. Once the ghee starts to turn pale brown turn off the heat. Remove from heat if you are using a thick bottomed pan as the pan will cause the ghee to burn. If the vessel is not thick bottomed, keep it in on the coil and the residual heat will turn the ghee to a beautiful brown colour and give out a rich and beautiful smell. Store in a clean dry bottle.

Note: The butter must turn pale brown, if not it will turn bad soon giving off an oily smell.