Barley and Green Lintel Salad

I am trying out different grains and today its the turn of the barley. umm... know what my earliest memories of barley are associated with? you guessed right, sick days....

Amma would make soup from barley add a bit of sugar and it will be given to us, to keep up the strength, over the few days when no food would taste good. It's been a long time since I had any barley, so this week I wanted to try this super grain used in a salad, which I saw featured in a magazine. I tweaked and adjusted the recipe to suit my pantry.

Ingredients

Pearl Barley -0.5 cup

Green lintels (whole moong dal) - 0.5 cup
Water - 2 cups
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Cucumber - 1 no diced
Cherry tomatoes - a handful halved
Green onions - 2 nos chopped

Dressing
Olive oil - 2 tbsp
Lemon juice - 2 tbsp
Honey - 1 tbsp
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Pre-soak green lintels(whole moong dal) for 1 hour.
2. Barley and green lintels cook at the same rate. Boil water and add salt to taste. Add barley and lintels and cook at low heat for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cover for 5 minutes. Drain any remaining water. Let it cool.
3. Add the diced vegetables cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
4. Prepare the dressing add to the salad and toss just before serving.

Medhu vada - Savoury lintel doughnut

Vegetarianism comes with the need to include proteins in the daily diet as a much needed requirement. Lintels satisfy this need and the variety keeps the taste buds tingling and asking for more. Vada is a recipe that uses white lintels or urad dal and is a deep fried snack that is also a comfort food on cold and clammy days.
Amma used to make vada or vadai as it is called in tamil quite frequently. It is also an important festival food such as Saraswati Pooja, Vishu and the like. Also when we go out of town, the morning breakfasts ordered in the restaurants which were usually idly or dosas were always accompanied by crispy vadas. When I was younger, I used to love the spicy vadai paired up with some refrigerated tomato ketchup!!! Now I make it here whenever the craving strikes and my little one loves its crunchy outer texture and the yummy soft inner part of this vadai.

Ingredients
Urad dal (white lintels) - 1 cup soaked for 2 hours
Green chillies - 2 or 3 as per taste chopped med size
Salt to taste
Hing asofeteida - a big pinch
Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
Curry leaves- 8 to 10 shredded
Peppercorns 10 to 12 leave as whole if feeding little kids else crush with mortar and pestle.
Water 1/4cup
Oil - For deep frying

 Method

1. Grind the urad dal to a med fine paste* with very little water such that it has a dropping consistency.
2. Combine with the rest of the ingredients and set aside.
3. Heat oil in a wok for deep frying.
4. Take some water in a small bowl and set aside. Take a zip lock bag and place in your left hand. Dip your right hand in the bowl of water and take a small amount of the dough and place it on the plastic cover. Make a hole in the center of the dough and flip it onto your right hand and drop the dough into hot oil.
5. Make as many as your wok will hold and fry until golden brown.
6. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain.
7. Serve warm with coconut chutney or with tomato sauce for the little ones.

*Note: If your dough gets a little watery after grinding add some roasted rava or sooji which will absorb the water and make the vada more crunchy. Do not add rice powder to the urad dal dough as it will absorb more oil while deep frying.

Ven Pongal

Ven Pongal is a traditional breakfast or tiffin dish served mainly in Tamil Nadu. It is a delicious mix of Cheru paruppu (split moong dal) and rice. I have tasted many a different variety of Ven Pongal ranging from gooey kind, to the not so watery kind, but the best of which I liked is my mom's style of preparing Ven Pongal which is different from the traditional method. I am posting the same here.

Ingredients
Rice --- 1 cup
Moong Dal split -- 1/4 cup
Ghee -- 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
Black Pepper -- 1 tsp
Jeeragam (Cumin) 1/2 tsp

For Garnish
Ghee -- 1 tsp
Cashew Nuts (split) -- 5-8 pieces
Raisins --5-6

Method

1. In a pressure cooker cook the rice and moong dal separately. For cooking rice add 3.5 cups of water for 1 cup of rice and for cooking moong dal for 1/4 cup add 1 cup of water.
2. While the rice and daal are cooking in a kadai take a tsp of ghee and roast the black pepper and cumin until the cumin turns brown. After it cools, crush it using a pestle.
3. Once the rice and daal is cooked remove from cooker after the steam has gone. Take the cooked rice in a bowl and let it cool for a 10 minutes. While the rice is still warm add the cooked daal, ghee, the crushed mixture and salt and mix well taking care not to break the rice too much.
4. Roast the cashews and raisins in ghee until the cashews turn golden brown. Pour this over the rice mixture and Ven Pongal is ready.

Serve warm with coconut chutney or sambaar.

Lip smacking Idli : Steamed Rice Cakes

Idlis have always been the norm for breakfast at least once a week at my house. It is a wholesome breakfast dish as it is steam cooked and during any of the travels it is one of the best dishes that you can carry with you. It is the most famous dish coming from southern India.

Ingredients

Idli rice -- 4 cups
Urad Daal -- 2 cups
Fenugreek seeds (Methi/ Uluva/ Menthayam) - 1 tsp
Salt - 3 tsp
Sesame oil - 1 tsp
Idli mould.

Wash the rice and daal separately until the water runs clear. Soak urad daal and rice separately with enough water to cover them. Add the fenugreek to rice and let it soak for 4 hours.

The proportion of rice to urad daal is 2: 1 if you are grinding in a blender. If you have a wet grinder then the ratio is 4:1. This is because the grinder does a good job of fluffing up the urad daal as it grinds giving a larger quantity.

The dish does have a long preparation time. Idli rice is a special type of short grained and round rice with a distinct white core. It is meaty and once soaked and ground will give a thick batter. The trick to making soft spongy idlis is in the grind and the ambient heat with in the house. Drain the urad daal and grind by adding water little by little to a fine smooth paste. Do not add too much water. The water added must be just enough to let the blender grind without difficulty. Take a bit of the urad daal paste and test it between your fingers. If you cannot find any grainy texture and it feels creamy and smooth to touch than it is well ground. The batter must be of a thick creamy soup like consistency. Transfer this to a deep container. You may have to do this twice if you are using a blender.

Drain the rice, and add a cupful to the blender. Just as before add just enough water so that the blender can grind without difficulty. Take a bit of the rice paste and test it between your fingers. It should feel like you have added rava or semolina to a smooth creamy soup or a grainy texture in a smooth thick rich soup. Transfer this to the same deep container. You may have to do this a couple of more times if you are using a blender.

Mix the two batters well and add salt and mix well again. Cover the vessel and keep in a warm place overnight. During winters grind the batter in the afternoon when your house is the warmest. Many recommend placing the batter in the oven but I have felt a kind of a stuffy smell coming from the batter the next day. The mix needs atleast 15 hours of fermentation time when the quantity increases. Make sure you place a large plate under the vessel so that any spill out from the fermented batter does not overrun your kitchen counter top.

Method

Actually the easiest part of making idlis is its preparation the next day.
1. The fermentation would have caused to urad daal to rise to the top while the heavier rice lies in the bottom of the vessel. Mix the batter 3-4 times so that the rice and daal mix well. Make sure not to overmix it as all the air pockets will go away and your idli will be hard. If you do not mix after fermentation your idli will fall flat.
2. Grease idli moulds with a drop of sesame oil each. Drop a ladle full of batter in the moulds so that only 3/4th of the mould is covered. This is because idlis will enlarge in size when cooked. Store the rest of the batter in the fridge if not be using immediately. The same batter can be used to make dosas or crepes the next day, when it has become more sour.
3. Pour about a couple of centimeters height of water into the idli steamer or the water level indicated.
4. Place the mould into the steamer, close the lid and steam the idlis for 6-7 minutes on high heat.
5. To check if the idlis are done, open the lid and if the topmost idlis have cracked as shown in the picture above, the idlis are cooked. Switch off the stove.
6. The idlis will be very hot and it is dangerous to try take the mould right now as you can get scalded by the steam. Cover the steamer with the lid and let it stand for 10 minutes to cool down.
7. Carefully take the mould out. Remove each plate and let it rest for a few minutes.
8. Use a spoon to remove the idlis from the moulds. Since you have greased the moulds the idlis will come out easily.

Serve with sambar, coconut chutney or molagai podi for a delicious breakfast.

Drumstick Leaves in Daal Fry

Drumstick leaves or muringai ilai is a commonly available leafy green in South India. So imagine my surprise when I saw it in the local chinese market, I grabbed it up. In my home town we would find these trees in many people's backyards and whenever the tree was pruned the leaves and drumsticks would be distributed to the neighbours.

The leaves are a powerhouse of nutrients and have high vitamin C, phosphorous, calcium and iron content, more so than the commonly known oranges, bananas or milk. It also has high antibacterial properties and is used for cleansing the stomach when eaten at regular intervals. If regularly fed to expectant and new mothers, it increases resistance to infections and increases breast milk supply. So when something is this good how can I pass up on making a tasty dish out of it.

The toughest part in the whole process of cooking the leaves is separating the leaves from the twigs. Once that's out of the way it takes hardly 15 minutes to prepare this delicious dish.

Ingredients

Drumstick Leaves (Murungai ilai) - 2 cups (washed)
Toor daal/ Moong daal (cooked)- 1/2 cup
Asofeteida (hing) - a pinch
Turmeric - a pinch
Grated Coconut - 2 tbsp
Red Chillis - 2 nos (or more depending on spice level)
Oil - 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
Urad daal - 1/2 tsp
Water - 1/4 cup
Salt to taste

Method

1. Add oil to a pan and add mustard seeds, urad daal and red chillis.
2. Once the mustard seeds splutter, add the drumstick leaves. Saute for a few minutes. Add salt and turmeric and mix.
3. Add water, cover and let the leaves cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the cooked moong or toor daal, mix well and let it cook some more until all the water content evaporates.
5. Add the grated coconut and hing, mix well and saute it for a couple of minutes. Remove and serve with rice for a healthy nutritious meal.