Soulful Creations

The wise guy came home to this- how lucky eh!! Although I get treated to Madras Pavillion food when I return from travel (enh....who is paying attention I say!) This month we were tasked with Dapka Kadhis for the May I ndian Cooking Ch allenge and here it goes- a fairly straightforward recipe. Ingredients Dapka Recipe from Tarla Dalal 1 cup yellow moong dal (split yellow gram) 1 tbsp oil   1 tsp ginger-green chilli paste 1/2 tsp sugar a pinch of soda bi carb (I did not add this, may be that is why mine turned out denser) salt to taste This was also home to mashed roasted eggplant (tiny home grown) and a roasted tomato (again tiny homegrown)   Ingredients Kadhi from Tarla Dala 2 cups yogurt 5 tbsp besan (Chick Pea flour) 1 tsp ginger-green chilli paste 5 curry leaves (kadi patta) 3 tbsp sugar salt to taste 2 tsp ghee 1/2 tsp cumin...

Besan (chick pea flour) ki masala roti for this month's ICC hosted by Srivalli. I followed the recipe closely except I made a double batch and froze half uncooked (rolled the rotis out, layered them on to parchment paper, let them harden in the freezer for a few hours before I put them in a ziplock bag!) Below is the recipe from Srivalli's blog Ingredients Needed For roti Gram flour / Besan - 1 cup Whole Wheat Flour / Atta - 1/2 cup Salt to taste Ghee - 2 tbsp For masala filling Cumin powder - 1 1/2 tsp Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp Green chilli paste - 1/2 tsp Salt to taste Dry mango powder / Amchur - 1/2 tsp Red chilli powder ; ;1/2 tsp Pure ghee - 1& 1/2 tbsp How to make the Besan Ki Masala Roti In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for the masala filling. If the ghee is not enough you can add little oil to make the paste little runny. For the dough, combine all the ingredients, knead into a soft dough using wate...

This month @ ICC we were challenged with Jalebis. I made them as soon as the challenge was announced- experimented with it for Ganesh Chathurthi. I am not going to post the entire recipe here- I followed  the one here very closely. While it tasted great, it was too thin to form any shape- hence the ugly clawy photograph (but do not be fooled by the looks- they tasted like jalebis, I was quite proud of it :D)

Its been 2 months since my last post, isn't it? Our move from Boston to Houston was a long wonderful winding road. We flew to Denver, CO and drove from there to San Diego CA. On our way we did devour some great food. From San Diego the wise guy flew to Boston for some last bits of work while I set sail to SFO and had a great time there- oh so much to eat, so little time! More on that in a later post- but today read on for my first Indian Cooking Challenge post The melt-in-your-mouth tirunelveli halwa Ingredients Wheat berries- 3/4 cups Sugar- 1 cup almonds & walnuts, chopped- 3/4 cup, reserve 1/4 cup for garnish Ghee- 5 tbsp cardamom- 1tsp Pachai karpooram- a pinch Food color Method Soak the wheat berries overnight. Grind in a blender with about a cup of water. Strain the milk into a bowl. Return the husk to the blender and grind again with water. Strain and repeat the process about 4-5 times. Note*: Clean the strainer and blender immediately, otherwise you wo...