Godhuma Rava Pongali

Blogging Marathon# 60: Week 1/ Day 3

Theme: Festival of the month Recipes

Dish: Godhuma Rava Pongali
I have another sweet dish for the last day of this week's marathon. Sweet pongali or Shakkara pongali is traditionally made for Sankranthi. Coincidentally in Tamil Nadu, sankranthi is called pongal which is also the name of a rice & lentil based dish.

My sweet pongal slightly deviates from the traditional dish because I used godhuma rawa/ wheat rawa/ cracked wheat instead of rice. I think fine bulgur will be a good substitute for cracked wheat. Other than change in the grain everything else remains the same as the rice based version.

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Moong dal Salad (Vadapappu Salad)

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 3/ Day 1

Theme: Salads

Dish: Moong dal Salad (Vadapappu Salad)

We are starting a new week of blogging marathon today and my theme for this week is 'Salads'. Growing up, salads were never part of our meal and the first time I ate a salad was during my Masters orientation in the US. The less about the experience the better and most of my fellow Indian students shared the same feeling.

But through the years I grew older, wiser and my palate changed for the better. Salads used to be just part of the meal once but now I can eat a salad and call it a day. So I'm always looking for new salads to add to my repertoire.

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Oats Khichdi (Oats-Lentil Porridge)

Blogging Marathon# 57: Week 4/ Day 1

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Cooking with Whole grains

Dish: Oats Khichdi

We are starting a new week of blogging marathon and my theme for theme this week is 'Kid's Delight -- Cooking with Whole grains' being hosted by lovely Kalyani @ the sizzling tastebuds. Kid's Delight event is a brainchild of Valli.

Coming up with kid approved whole grain dishes was not easy as I thought it would be. My kids are a little picky and I have blogged about most of the whole grain dishes that they eat. So coming up with new ones was a good exercise for the brain. I cook/ bake with brown rice, quinoa, wholewheat flour etc., and they eat most of what I serve.

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Menthikura-Pesarapappu Chaaru (Methi-Moongdal Soup)

There's an overdose of Methi recipes on my blog this week. After Methi Matar Masala, Methi Chana Pulao & Methi pulusu/ stew, I have a lentil based methi dish today. Recipe is from a Telugu cooking show.

Methi and moong dal are a good combination to make pappu or dal. But in this recipe, the consistency is more like a soup instead of thick like a dal. Soup is flavored with freshly made spice powder made with coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds and peppercorns. This makes the dish taste very earthy and spicy. Finally adding lemon juice to the rasam/ soup gives it the required tang or zing that makes this dish super delicious.

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Zucchini Dry Curry (Zucchini Pesarapappu Podi Kura)

Blogging Marathon# 49: Week 3/ Day 1

Theme: 1 Vegetable - 3 Dishes

Dish: Dry Curry -- Zucchini Pesarapappu Iguru

My theme for this week of blogging marathon is to 'Pick 1 veggie and make 3 dishes with it'. I had to think really hard on what vegetable to choose and after a lot of internal deliberations, I zeroed on Zucchini. Zucchini, courgette, green squash a staple along with potatoes and tomatoes in my kitchen and I thought this is a good opportunity to post some recipes that I frequently make at home.

Zucchini is available almost all year round and I make sure to buy them whenever I see some good looking ones. They are pretty bland by themselves and I almost always use them along with other veggies -- roasted or stewed with eggplant and peppers. It is very versatile vegetable and can be used to bake bread, cake and cupcakes too.

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Vietnam -- Crispy Rice & Mung bean Pancakes (Bánh Xèo)

BM# 44: A-Z Cooking Series -- Around the World in 30 days
Country: V for Vietnam

Dish: Crispy Rice & Mung bean Pancakes (Bánh Xèo)
We are visiting Vietnam today. Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia and is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest and Cambodia to southwest.
Vietnamese cuisine features a combination of 5 fundamental taste elements/ senses: spicy, sour, bitter, salty and sweet which sounds much like Indian tastes as well. Traditional Vietnamese cooking uses lot of fresh ingredients, minimum use of oil and relies on herbs and vegetables. Vietnamese food is considered as one of the healthiest cuisines worldwide.

Last month's Vegetarian times magazine had a whole spread of Vietnamese dishes and I knew right away that it is going to be Vietnam for V. These rice and mung bean pancakes sounded very similar to Andhra Pesarattu and the stuffing with mushrooms and bean sprouts sounded really interesting to me.

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Philippines -- Guinisang Mongo (Mung Beans & Tomato)

BM# 44: A-Z Cooking Series -- Around the World in 30 days
Country: P for Philippines

Dish: Guinisang Mongo (Mung Beans & Tomato)
We are going to Philippines today. One of my very dear friend is from Philippines and she was really kind enough to send me today's recipe that I followed to the 'T'.
Philippines is an island country in Southeast Asia. It is 64th largest country in the world, but is the 12th most populated country, making it quite densely populated country. I didn't know until recently that Filipino American community is the second largest Asian American group in the United States (after Chinese). I thought Indian community was much larger, but I guess I was wrong.
I have had Filipino colleagues in all of my jobs and from what I learnt from them is that they DO NOT like spicy food and they go bonkers when they eat Indian food -- it is way too spicy for them. Their cuisine has Hispanic, Chinese, American and other Asian influences. Popular dishes include adobo, sinangang, lumpia and halo-halo. Common ingredients include coconuts, mangoes, milkfish and fish sauce.

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Orissa -- Mitha Khechudi & Mitha Dali

Blogging Marathon# 39 - Indian States: Day 21
State: Orissa
Dish: Mitha Khechudi & Mitha Dali (Sweet Khichdi with Sweet Dal)

Today we are going to Odisha, formerly known as Orissa, located in the east coast of India. Orissa shares a border with Andhra Pradesh, but I never had a chance to visit it. My dad went there for work years ago and brought back a souvenir from Konark Sun Temple. I've seen his pictures at Puri Jagannath temple and Bhubaneshwar. That's the most I knew about Orissa.
Cuisine: Odisha has culinary tradition spanning centuries. I was really surprised to read that rasgulla actually originated from Odisha, I always thought it was from Bengal. Also Kheer or rice pudding, that is relished all over India, also originated in Puri 2000 years ago.
Oriya cuisine is rich and varied and relies heavily on local ingredients. The flavors are usually subtle and lightly spiced, unlike the fiery curries typically associated with Indian cuisine. Only 6% of the population of Odisha is vegetarian. Oriyas are very fond of sweets and no Oriya meal is complete without the dessert course at the end.
Specialties: Dali, Dalma, Khechedi, Mittha Dali, Pakhala, Chena Poda, Dahi Bara, Kalakand etc.

Today's Dish(es): After reading about the Oriya cuisine, I initially planned on making a dessert. But after making quite a few desserts for the marathon, I decided against it. I wanted to make something simple, yet traditional and authentic to Orissa. So after a lot of searching, I found this Oriya blog, Turmeric Kitchen, by Jagruthi. She has a ton of traditional dishes and I picked two that were simple and easy to make.

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Dal Kootu (Poritha Kootu)

Dal is something that is made almost every other day in my household. Not just my home, but that is the case in almost every Indian households. Lentils form one of the main source of protein to vegetarians. I am always looking for new ways of making the same old pappu/ dal.

My everyday dals are usually very simple like this tomato pappu or this palakura pappu. But occasionally I do make kootu where dal is cooked with vegetables and coconut-peppercorn masala paste. My mom learned it from a Tamil neighbor.

Today's recipe is from the cookbook, Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan. Masala pasta is almost similar to what my mom makes, but the addition of mixed vegetables was interesting to me. This is a perfect recipe to make when you have those odds and ends of veggies in the fridge that need to be used up. Any combination of veggies can be used here -- apart from the ones I have used potato, zucchini, cauliflower can also be added to the kootu.

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Moong Dal Kachori

I'm really late posting for last month's International Food Challenge. Our host Manjula @ Desi Fiesta wanted us to explore the amazing Marwari cuisine. She gave us a wide variety of dishes from curries, rotis, halwas etc to try from. I wanted to try each and every one of her dishes, but as luck has it November got way too busy and I couldn't cook even one dish. 

Finally this weekend I made 1 kachori and 1 halwa using Manjula's recipes and loved them a lot. I made onion kachori a while back and so I tried making Moong dal Kachori this time. They came out crispy and delicious. The moong dal filling is super simple to make and tasted amazing. We had them as our tea time snack and it was perfect munching on hot kachoris and sipping the tea while browsing through my smartphone.

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Raj Kachori ~ Rajasthani Chaat Recipe

For this month's Indian Cooking Challenge, Valli & Vaishali wanted us to make Raj Kachori, a Rajathani chaat item. When Valli announced the challenge, I read the recipe and thought it was really elaborate with quite a few components to be prepared and then completely forgot about it. Then suddenly this past weekend I realized it was almost time to post for ICC and I didn't make the dish. I knew I had no sooji in the pantry and gave up on the challenge. But when I checked again I found a small container of sooji (!!), I'm not even sure where that came from. Anyway that meant I was going to make this delicious chaat for this month's challenge.

It is definitely an elaborate dish and cannot be made in a rush. So make sure that you read the recipe completely and plan to make the components ahead of time or plan to give yourself enough time to complete them.

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Upma-Pesarattu

Blogging Marathon# 32: Letter U
Theme: A-Z Vegetarian Dishes of Andhra Pradesh
Dish: Upma-Pesarattu

The final 6 letters were quite challenging to find dishes for. I had to play around with the names a little bit to come up with dishes to match.

Letter U stands for Ullipaya (onion), Uppudu rawa (idli rawa). I was kind of stuck for a long time on what to make for letter U. Then I thought of Upma, but upma is not Andhra special, pair it with Pesarattu, it definitely is Andhra special. So I finally settled with Upma-Pesarattu (hopefully the purists will forgive me for reversing the order in the name).

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Chana Dal Kebabs (Vegetarian Kebabs with Chickpeas)

Blogging Marathon# 30: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Get it Rolled
Dish: Chana Dal Kebabs

Day 2 of BM# 30 and today's dish under 'Get it Rolled' theme is Chana dal Kebabs. When you think of kebabs, you think of skewers and meat. Here's some Wiki gyan about Kebabs - 'Kebab is derived from the Arabic word 'kabab' which means to 'fry'. I especially like this story about the origin of kebabs -- Persian soldiers used their swords to cook meat on open fire and hence started the 'kebab' way of cooking meat.

Well since this is a vegetarian food blog, I decided to make some kebabs with beans. This recipe is inspired from one of the Telugu cooking shows. Original recipe used only chickpeas, but I had some cooked mixed beans (from this dal biryani I made earlier) which is used instead. These kebabs were filling and delicious.

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Dal Biryani

It's been a while that I sent an entry to Susan @ Well Seasoned Cook's famous My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) event. This month's edition is being hosted by lovely Nupur @ One Hot Stove. I love legumes and they are integral part of my cooking. My 5 year old LOVES dal chawal and I'm very glad that I can sneak in any veggie in to a dal and he'll eat it without complaining. So much for little victories :-)

This Dal Biryani recipe is adapted from one of the Telugu cooking shows that I recently watched. I really loved the idea of using dal in biryani, it makes it a complete dish with the required carbs, protein and fat. It is filling and delicious to boot.

The original recipe was for 'Panchratan Dal Biryani' with 5 different legumes. But I remember a nutrition expert on one of the other cooking shows saying that 'adding more good things to a dish is not necessarily good for health'. She mentioned that using a lot of different beans/ nuts/ oils/ seeds (anything for that matter) slows down the body from absorbing the good nutrients from each of the ingredient. I don't know if that is true or not, but I used only 3 legumes -- Chickpeas, Adzuki beans and Moong beans. But the recipe is versatile and any sturdy legume that doesn't become mushy when cooked can be used.

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Sorakaya Pesarapappu Podi Kura (Lauki/ Doodhi Moong dal Subji)

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 4/ Day 1
Theme: Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Soraka Podi Kura from Sharmi's Neivedyam

We are in the final week of June (can't believe we are about to hit the mid year mark soon--this year seems to just fly past) and also the final week for this month's BM# 29. My theme for this week is 'Bookmarked Recipes' and I tried 3 different recipes that have been in my bookmarks folder for a very long time.

For the first I made this dry Sorakaya curry from Sharmi's blog. What caught my attention was the addition of roasted pesarapappu (moong dal) powder to the curry. I knew the combination would taste great, but it took me all these years to actually make it -- not sure why I kept postponing it. If you notice in her post I was the first one to comment, so it has been in my bookmark folder for as many years as the post on Sharmi's blog.

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Misal Pav

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Course Wise Meal from any State - Maharashtra/ Lunch Dishes
Dish: Usal-Misal Pav

After 2 days of easy one-pot Maharashtrian dishes (Masala Bhath & Vaal Khichdi), today's dish is slightly elaborate and spicy. It's a great dish to entertain as well. I remember one of our dear Marwari friend serving this for dinner and it was probably one of the best tasting Misal Pav I've ever had. Being a rice obsessed South Indian, I was initially skeptical if that sprouts curry with bread on the side is going to fill me up -- but I was really surprised how filling and delicious that combo can be.

I referred to quite a few blogs for the recipe, but in the end I stuck with Sangeetha @ Kothiyavanu's recipe. Her pictures were gorgeous and I loved her step by step explanation. This dish is a little time consuming with quite a few steps involved, but the final dish is well worth the effort. I've tried to explain the process as clearly as possible.

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Dapka Kadhi (Gujarati Kadhi with Moong dal Dumplings)

It has been quite some time that I made anything for Indian Cooking Challenge. When I see Valli's email announcing the dish of the month, I get excited and plan on making it, but some time between the announcement and the actual date of posting I either completely forget about it or don't find the time to make it.

Anyway I didn't want to miss this month's challenge because kadhi is one of my favorite dishes, But I don't make it often because my husband doesn't eat milk/ yogurt based dishes and so I avoid making them when he's around. Lucky for me, he's been travelling and I went ahead and made this yummy kadhi with moong dal dumplings.

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Quinoa Pongal

Blogging Marathon# 28: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: BM Pairs
Dish: Quinoa Pongal from Suma's Veggie Platter 

For day 2 under "Cooking from BM members" theme, I'm paired with Suma @ Veggie Platter. Suma has been blogging for over 6 years and I've probably known her virtually for almost 5 years. Her blog is filled with ton of delicious Andhra, Karnataka and kid friendly recipes. I love the way she writes her recipes, she makes everything seem so easy even the most elaborate ones.

I've tried a lot of recipes from Veggie Platter in the past. Her onion-tomoato raita, tomato bhath have become our household favorites too.

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Sindhi Whole Green Gram dal & Aloo Took

Blogging Marathon# 28: Week 3/ Day 2
Theme: Sindhi Dishes
Dish: Sindhi Mung-a & Aloo Took

For day 2 of BM under 'Sindhi dishes' theme, I made 2 very delicious and simple dishes. Dal with moong beans and a dry curry with potato. I had a lot of Sindhi dishes bookmarked to try like this amazing Sindhi Saibhaji, Kokis and other veggies dishes. But my husband's been travelling and I didn't want to make these just for myself because even if I make just a little bit, there will be a lot leftover for me to eat for a whole week. So after browsing through Vaishali's & Alka's blogs, I ended up with 2 dishes that can be made with minimum ingredients and in small quantity, so I won't have too much leftover.

First up is this simple dal made with whole moong beans. I love all beans, both for their health benefits and texture. When I saw the recipe on Vaishali's blog, I thought how different can it be from the dishes I'm used to. But I was pleasantly surprised on how much flavor just finely chopped ginger and garlic imparts to a dish.

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Raw Mango Salad with Moong Dal (Mango Kosambari)

Blogging Marathon# 28: Week 2/ Day 1
Theme: Mango Special Dishes
Dish: Raw Mango Salad with Moong Dal

We start our 2nd week of Blogging Marathon today and my theme for this week is "Mango Special dishes". It's not summer yet in our neck of woods, but nothing can stop us from enjoying mangoes. We get mangoes all round the year but the taste of summer mangoes cannot be beat, in my opinion. 

For this week, I have tried 3 new recipes with raw green mangoes that I've never made before. I usually make dal or rice or pickle with raw mango. But I wanted to try raw mango in completely different form for this week.

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