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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Eggless No-Bake Mango Cheesecake (using Agar-Agar)

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 4/ Day 3
Theme: Bookmarked Recipes

Dish: Individual Eggless Mango Cheesecake without Gelatin based on Nags recipe @ Edible Garden

Day 3 of BM# 29 and today I have made a delicious No-Bake Eggless Mango Cheesecake that is to die for. I actually made it 3 times to get the measurement of agar-agar (Chinagrass) right (and to gobble it down of course). Nags original recipe used gelatin and the first time I tried I added the same quantity of agar and the result was rubbery mango jelly. As I said it took me two more attempts to get the right quantity for soft and smooth mango layer.

This dessert is a crowd pleaser. I made it for my blog buddies and also for another get-together party. This is one recipe that looks sophisticated, but it takes very little time to put together.

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Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong Starter (Eggless)

Blogging Marathon# 29: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: Bookmarked Recipes
Dish: Hokkaido Bread from Sandhya's My Cooking Journey & Aparna's My Diverse Kitchen

For day 2 of BM# 29 under 'Bookmarked Recipes', I made a bread that was featured on almost all of the food blogs. Every baking group in the blog world baked this amazing Hokkaido Milk Bread using Tangzhong starter. I've drooled over the pictures of a ton of my favorite bloggers and finally I made it and enjoyed it at home. Like the saying goes, "it's better late than never".

This bread uses 'Tangzhong Starter' unlike Sourdough this is a cooked starter and keeps well only for 3-4 days in the fridge. The resulting bread is super soft and stores well for a longer time.

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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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