Lemon Rasam

Blogging Marathon#66: Week 4/ Day 1

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes 

Dish: Lemon Rasam from Nalini

We are starting our final week of blogging marathon today and my theme for the week is 'Bookmarked recipes'. For the first day I made this simple yet very tasty Lemon rasam from Nalini's blog.

Nalini made it for the April mega marathon and I bookmarked and made it right away. It took this long to post the recipe here. Rasam in our households is made with tomato and tamarind. Toor dal or any kind of dal is not usually added. Our version is rather watery and is usually eaten along with a thicker dal.

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Potato Rice for Lunch box (Aloo bhath)

Blogging Marathon# 66: Week 3/ Day 2

Theme: Kid's Delight -- Lunch Box Recipes

Dish: Potato Rice with Spice powder 
Both my kids love potatoes and can eat it every single day without getting bored. I'm the one getting bored to make them the same potato curry. So when I saw this recipe on a cooking show, I noted it down and made it for my kids.

This rice has crispy fried potatoes mixed with a homemade spice powder. The use of lentils (dals) in the powder adds some protein to the dish. Serve it with some yogurt for a filling meal.

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Vankaya Perugu Pachadi (Eggplant in Yogurt gravy)

Blogging Marathon# 66: Week 1/ Day 3

Theme: 3 Veggies that are Fruit

Dish: Vankaya Perugu Pachadi

For the final day of this week's theme '3 veggies that are fruit', I have a dish made with eggplant -- you know I can't miss an opportunity to try and post a new recipe with my favorite veggie. I watched this yogurt based eggplant dish being made on a Telugu cooking show.

I planted a few eggplant saplings in my backyard this year and they just started to flower and grow. My daughter counts the flowers and the tiny eggplants everyday. Hopefully I'll have more eggplant dishes for you this summer.

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Coconut Peanut Sesame Chutney

Blogging Marathon#65: Week 4/ Day 2

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes 

Dish: Coconut-Sesame Chutney from Priya

I'm always looking for different chutneys to serve with idli, dosa or upma. So when Priya did a whole month of Dosa-chutney recipes for the mega marathon, I knew I will have a lot of interesting chutneys and dosas bookmarked to try. 

I really wanted to try her jackfruit savory dosa and the breadfruit peel chutney, but haven't had a chance. Do check Priya's space from some amazing Indian and International dishes, her bakes are out of this world.

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Wheat flour Kuzhi Paniyaram

Blogging Marathon#65: Week 4/ Day 1

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes 

Dish: Wheat flour Kuzhi Paniyaram from Sandhya

We are starting the last week of blogging marathon today and my theme is 'Bookmarked Recipes'. This happens to be one of my favorite themes because it gives me a chance to try some of the recipes that I bookmarked. First up are these delicious Wheat flour Kuzhi Paniyaram from Sandhya.

Sandhya made these instant paniyaram for the mega marathon and they looked too good to pass up. So I bookmarked them and tried them right away. Paniyarams are usually made with leftover idli batter, but this instant version uses atta (or whole wheat flour) and doesn't need any fermenting.

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Chettinad Beet Kola Urundai (Indian style Beet Croquettes)

Blogging Marathon# 65: Week 3/ Day 3

Theme: 1 Vegetable -- 3 Dishes

Dish: Beet Kola Urundai

For the final day of this week's marathon, I made these delicious Chettinad style Beet kola urundai. Some of my BM friends have made them during the last mega marathon and I thought they were very interesting but I wasn't sure how they would taste.

These urundai can be made by soaking and grinding dal like in Gayathri's recipe. But I wasn't really prepared to make this dish the day I made them, so went with Nalini's recipe for an instant recipe which uses ground roasted gram to hold them together.

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Homemade Sambar Powder

I usually use store bought Sambar powder and MTR brand happens to be my favorite. But recently I ran out of it and couldn't go to the Indian store to buy more. So that is when I made this homemade sambar powder from Dakshin cookbook by Chandra Padmanabhan.

Freshly made sambar powder is very flavorful and adds a lot of taste to the dish. It can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Here are some sambar recipes on the blog for some inspiration.

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Quinoa Oats Idli

Idli is one of my husband's favorite dishes, but me being lazy don't usually make them that often for him. Pulling out my Ultra grinder is a big chore for me and then the weather plays spoil sport and the batter doesn't ferment properly. Well whatever might be the reason I end up not making those idlis.

Here comes in instant idli recipes that don't need grinding batter and fermenting. I've tried a couple of different recipes (like this oats-rava idli) for instant idli, but these quinoa-oats idlis are the best of the bunch. Recipe is from a Telugu cooking show and I made them right away.

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Coconut & Tamarind Rice

Blogging Marathon# 61: Week 4/ Day 2

Theme: Bookmarked Recipes from Fellow BM Bloggers

Dish: Coconut & Tamarind Rice
Today I have a delicious variation to tamarind rice. I bookmarked this coconut tamarind rice recipe from Priya's blog the minute I saw it. I made it couple of weeks back and it tasted amazing, so simple to make but very flavorful and delicious.

Tamarind rice is one of the dishes that is made very frequently in my household, typically around the end of the week when I'm running out of veggies and also during festival season. Both my kids love peanuts, so I had a little extra for them in this dish.

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Pavakkai Pitlai (Bittergourd Coconut Curry)

Blogging Marathon# 61: Week 2/ Day 1

Theme: Meal Ideas

Dish: Bittergourd Pitlai

My theme for this week's Blogging marathon is probably one of my favorite. It is 'Meal Ideas', Valli wants us to showcase a complete meal even if that means sharing just one recipe. Coming up with a plan for a meal is quite an exercise for the brain which is why most of us try to delegate the task to the family by asking, 'what do you want to eat today?' I am one of those people who will ask this question and then reject almost everything that is being requested, only on very rare occasions a suggestion is actually cooked. But I don't fail to ask the question ;-)

Coming from south India, most of our meals revolve around rice, so for the next 3 days, I'm going to share some interesting meal ideas with rice as one of the component.

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Mysore Rasam Powder

Here's the recipe for the Rasam powder I used in this Mysore Rasam. Like I said in that post, I don't usually make spice powders from scratch. I know freshly homemade spice mixes add a lot of flavor to dishes but I get lazy to make them.

But when I saw this Mysore rasam in Dakshin cookbook by Chandra Padmanabhan, I was tempted to make the spice mix. Glad that I made it because this is one of the more flavorful rasam powder (I'm comparing it with the store-bought rasam powders).

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Pepper Gojju (Mysore style Masala curry)

Blogging Marathon #60: Week 3/ Day 2

Theme: Regional Specials

Dish: Pepper & Onion Gojju (Mysore style Masala curry)

For the second day of this week's BM, I made a lip smacking Mysore curry with peppers and onions. Highlight and the base of the dish is a delicious coconut gravy. 

This recipe is again from Vani's blog, Mysoorean. I made her Kattina dal and this pepper curry for a simple, comforting and delicious meal.

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Mysore Kattina Saaru

Blogging Marathon# 60: Week 3/ Day 1

Theme: Regional Specials

Dish: Mysone Kattina Saaru
We are starting 3rd week of blogging marathon today and my theme for the week is 'Regional Specials'. I chose Mysore as my region and I have 3 delicious dishes from there.

Vani who blogs at Mysoorean has a ton of authentic dishes from Mysore. After a lot of browsing on her site, I found this simple dal recipe that only needed few ingredients which was perfect because I only had a couple of veggies left in the fridge and it was time to go grocery shopping.

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Green Beans Masala Poriyal

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Dry Vegetable Sautes

Dish: Green Beans Masala Poriyal

This green beans curry is spicy and is a great variation to regular green beans curry that I make at home. Recipe is from Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan.

Poriyal is Tamil name for fried or sauteed vegetables. In our home, anything made with a vegetable is called 'kura'. If it is a dry curry it is called podi kura, gravy based curries don't usually get any prefix and they are simply called kura. So it is interesting to hear the various names for curries in other languages -- poriyal, thoran, palya etc etc.

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Chayote & Carrot Dry Curry

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 2/ Day 1

Theme: Dry Vegetable Sautes

Dish: Chayote & Carrot Dry Curry

We are starting a brand new week of blogging marathon and my theme for this week is 'Dry Vegetable Sautes or Dry Curries'. I just realized that all the themes I picked for this month require easy to make, everyday dishes which was just perfect because with the upcoming festive season, it is going to be a food fest wherever you turn :-)

This first curry doesn't even need a recipe, it is extremely easy to make. Just saute the chopped veggies until tender and sprinkle some grated coconut on top. My mom used to make a lot of dry curries like that using cabbage, carrot, green beans, snake gourd, chayote and so on.

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Rice with Urad dal spice powder (Ulundu Ogaray)

Blogging Marathon# 58: Week 1/ Day 1

Theme: Bring on your Rice

Dish: Rice with Urad dal spice powder (Ulundu Ogaray)
Can't believe we are only few weeks away from a New year, time sure seems to fly. We are starting a new edition of Blogging marathon today and my theme for this week is 'Bring on your Rice', Valli wants us to post any rice based dish.

As a South Indian, rice is our staple food and every meal essentially revolves around rice. So it is only natural that I take up this theme to try some more new rice dishes.

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Muvva Vankaya Kura (Baby Eggplant Curry)

I'm always looking for new eggplant recipes and when I find a new recipe, I try to make as soon as I can :-) This muvva vankaya (muvva=pearl vankaya=eggplant) curry recipe is from a Telugu cooking show that I duly noted down in my recipe diary. Valli already made the same dish few months back.

We rarely get really small baby eggplants here, so it took me a while to get to this recipe. But luckily my mom found some beautiful baby eggplants at the Indian grocery a month back and I made this curry right away (so it has been sitting in the drafts for  while :-)).

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Erra Karam Dosa

Buffet on Table: Week 2 -- Indian States

Day 7: Andhra Pradesh -- Erra Karam Dosa

I am making a dish from my home state of Andhra today. It was quite a task deciding on dishes for this week. I had big plans but things got hectic and I lost track of time. Finally I decided on making simple recipes that have been on my bookmarks for a long time.

This Erra Karam Dosa from Suma's blog is something I have been planning to make for a while now. It is a spicy and delicious variation of dosa from the Rayalaseema region in Andhra. According to Suma it is a dish that is a popular street food.

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Potato Curry

We are a potato loving family. They are happy if I make anything with potato, which is great because I add it to dishes that they normally wouldn't eat and the potato in it lures them to eat it. For example, which kid really likes wheat rava upma (godhuma rawa upma)? At least I didn't while growing up, but my kids eat it without fuss when I add potatoes to it -- happy mama :-)

Today's potato curry is super simple and my kids absolutely love it. It tastes great as is, but tastes even better with mor kuzhambu. Give this combo a try, you'll know what I'm talking about.

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Mor Kuzhambu and Potato Curry

Buffet on Table: Week 1 -- Combos from Countries

Day 1: Mor Kuzhanbu & Potato Curry

We are starting our Mega marathon today and it's going to be a very very interesting September with lots of delicious International and Indian dishes. Theme for the first week is Combo dishes from different countries.
My first stop is in India, Tamil Nadu in particular. Ever since I saw this combo of mor kuzhambu with aloo/ potato curry in Sandhya's blog, I wanted to try it too. But since the husband is a yogurt-phobic, I was waiting for the right opportunity to make these dishes. Finally I made them while he was travelling and enjoyed all by myself :-)

My mom makes majjiga pulusu too but the method is slightly different from the Tamil Nadu version. Even with my very limited Tamil knowledge, I think even mor kuzhambu literally means majjiga (buttermilk), pulusu (stew). Correct me if I'm wrong my dear Tamil friends :-)

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