Multi Grain Rotis with Amma’s Tomato Soup

For day 3 of Blogging marathon, I made these simple rotis with a combination of different flours. I guess you can use any combination of flours to make these healthy rotis. I used atta (whole wheat flour), soy, besan (chickpea flour) and jowar flours.

What did I learn: Sky is the limit for making Rotis.

Ingredients:
Atta (Chapathi flour) – 2cups
Besan – ½ cup
Soy flour – ¼ cup
Jowar flour – ¼ cup
Salt – ½ tsp
Oil/ Ghee – as needed

Method:

• Sift flours and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Add warm water, little at a time, to the flour and mix and knead into smooth dough. Knead for about 5-8 minutes.
• Cover with plastic wrap, damp paper towel or kitchen towel and rest for 20-30 minutes. Divide the dough into 8-10 equal parts.
• Roll each dough ball into 5-6” disc.
• Cook on pre-heated skillet (tawa) until brown spots are formed on both sides, about 2 minutes per side. Spread oil or ghee while cooking for added flavor (optional).

Serve hot with my Mom’s tomato soup. This is not your typical tomato soup; I’m even not sure why my Mom calls this a soup. It is actually tomato curry thickened with rice flour, it tastes great with rotis or puri. Only change I made is to add some tomato paste to jazz up the bland tomatoes we get here and to give the curry some more tomatoey flavor.

Amma's Tomato Soup:

Ingredients:

Tomatoes – 4 medium, chopped

Onion – 1 medium, chopped

Green chilies – 2, slit vertically

Tomato paste – 1tbsp

Red chili powder – ½ tsp (or to taste)

Garam masala – ½ tsp

Turmeric – ¼ tsp

Rice flour – 2tsp

Sugar – 1tsp

Salt – to taste

For tempering:

Chana dal – ½ tsp

Urad dal – ½ tsp

Mustard seeds – ½ tsp

Cumin seeds – ½ tsp

Curry leaves – 6-8

Method:

• Heat 1tbsp oil in a sauté pan; add the tempering ingredients and once the seeds start spluttering, add onions, green chilies and sauté until the onions are lightly browned.
• Add tomato paste and chopped tomatoes, cover and cook on medium flame until the tomatoes turn mushy.
• Next add turmeric, red chili powder, garam masala, sugar and salt. Cook for 2 minutes.
• Whisk rice flour with ¼ cup of water, making sure that there are no lumps.
• Add the slurry to the tomatoes and cook until the curry starts to simmer and thicken, should take another 2-3 minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve.

Lets see what my fellow marathoners BM#4 have been cooking up today.

Diabetes Diet/Management: Kamalika, Smitha, Suma
Kid Friendly Recipes: Anusha, Cool Lassi(e)
Seven Days of Soup: Priya Suresh
Seven Days of Indian Bread: Jayasree
Seven Days of Cakes:Priya Vasu
Seven Days of Preserves: Gayathri Kumar, Vaishali
30 Minutes Meals: Priya Mahadevan, Srivalli

Lachcha Paratha

Day 2 of Blogging Marathon #4: As I mentioned in my previous post, my roti rolling skills need to be honed too. I prefer not to make triangular or any other shaped rotis since (I think) that involves certain skill, which I firmly believe, I lack. But for today’s post I made a flaky unleavened, folded and rolled paratha recipe that was much easier to make than I thought.

Dough is similar to regular roti, but when rolling it is folded like a Chinese hand-fan or saree pleats, then rolled and cooked like regular roti. Valli actually posted a recipe for it @ Beyond Curries a while back.

What did I learn: Making Lachcha parathas is not as difficult as spelling them.

Ingredients:
Atta (Whole wheat flour) – 3 cups
Salt – 1 tsp
Ghee (Shortening) – 1tbsp

Method:

• Add ghee and salt to the flour and work it in, so the flour resembles crumbles. Slowly add hot water to the flour, mixing steadily to make smooth, pliable dough. (I used about 1 to 1¼ cups of water). Cover with plastic wrap or damp paper towel and set aside for 30 minutes.
• Divide the dough into 8-10 equal pieces.
• Roll 1 piece into a 6” circle (or similar shaped), then start folding it from one end like saree pleats or Chinese hand-fan. Next roll the folded log tightly into itself. Press on the top lightly and gently roll out into a 6” circle.

• Cook on a preheated skillet (tawa) until brown spots form on both sides. Add some oil/ ghee while cooking (optional). Serve hot with any spicy curry.

I served mine with Aloo-gobhi (Potato-Cauliflower in creamy cashew butter gravy).

Lets see what my fellow marathoners BM#4 have been cooking up today.

Diabetes Diet/Management: Kamalika, Smitha, Suma
Kid Friendly Recipes: Anusha, Cool Lassi(e)
Seven Days of Soup: Priya Suresh
Seven Days of Indian Bread: Jayasree
Seven Days of Cakes:Priya Vasu
Seven Days of Preserves: Gayathri Kumar, Vaishali
30 Minutes Meals: Priya Mahadevan, Srivalli

Aloo Paratha

I have nothing to boast about my roti making skills. I have to kick myself in the back for not even trying to watch and learn when my mom made rotis. I couldn’t even roll a roti (I’m not too confident even now, to be honest) until my husband taught me how to. He used to make rotis for us and slowly I started learning and making them on my own. Both of us are not big roti eaters and frankly during the week I don’t have time to make them. When my MIL visits us, she makes the rotis since I don’t want to embarrass myself with the outcome. I only have a couple of recipes that work well for me and with my limited skills I avoid any recipe that has any complicated instructions like stuffing, folding etc.

So when Valli announced that “Indian Breads” was one of the themes for4th blogging marathon, I decided to challenge myself and make 7 different types of Indian breads that I’ve never made before. For the next one week I’ll be posting my roti successes and mishaps as they occur in my kitchen. I found an excellent site by Yogi Gupta that has detailed recipes for a ton of Indian dishes along with a whole section on Indian breads. Most of my trials are from this website.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m trying to make (and learn) 7 different types of Indian breads that involve stuffing, rolling, using different flours, leaveners etc. To start of my Blogging Marathon #4 (Group 3), I made this basic Aloo Paratha – Potato Stuffed Indian Bread. I was skeptical about filling oozing out and rotis turning into disks, but the end result were soft yummy parathas that were just perfect (for my standards).

What did I learn: Making Stuffed parathas is not Rocket Science.

Ingredients:
Atta (Chapati flour) – 3 cups
Salt – ½ tsp Ghee – 2tbsp (I used vegetable shortening instead)
Water – 1 cup (or as needed)

Filling:
Potatoes – 3-4 medium, boiled and mashed
Red chili powder – ½ tsp (or to taste)
Lime juice – 1tbsp
Ghee – 1tbsp (optional)
Salt – to taste

Method:

• Sift flour, salt and red chili powder. Add ghee and rub into the flour mixture until it forms crumbs. Add water and knead to make soft and smooth dough. Cover dough with a damp paper towel or plastic wrap for about an hour.
• In the meantime, make the filling by mixing all the ingredients under “Filling”, this should have the consistency of dough. Divide the filling mixture into 8 equal parts.
• Divide the dough into 8 equal parts.
• Roll out the dough to about 4-5” diameter circle. Place the one of the filling part in the center. Pull the dough around the filling to cover and forms a ball. Gently flatten the dough ball with the fill and roll out carefully to form a 6” diameter circle.
• Heat tawa and cook the paratha for about 1 minute; flip over and cook for another 1 minute. Brush some ghee/ oil on the top surface; flip and cook for another 1 minute. Brush the other side with ghee/ oil and cook for another 1 minute. So it takes about 4 minutes to make the paratha with each side cooked for 2 minutes each.
• Remove on a clean kitchen towel, cover until all the parathas are made. Serve with yogurt and pickle.

Lets see what my fellow marathoners BM#4 have been cooking up today.

Diabetes Diet/Management: Kamalika, Smitha, Suma
Kid Friendly Recipes: Anusha, Cool Lassi(e)
Seven Days of Soup: Priya Suresh
Seven Days of Indian Bread: Jayasree
Seven Days of Cakes:Priya Vasu
Seven Days of Preserves: Gayathri Kumar, Vaishali
30 Minutes Meals: Priya Mahadevan, Srivalli

Vatteppam for ICC-March

For this month’s Indian Cooking Challenge, Valli chose a delicious rice cake dish from Kerala, Vatteppam. Recipe is courtesy from an Keralite who knows her rice cakes very well, SHN @ Kitchenmishmash. SHN’s pictures are breathtaking and when I saw her mouthwatering pictures of Vatteppam, I wanted to try and make them right away and for the first time ever, I made them almost 2 weeks before the deadline.

I halved the recipe, since I was making for just the 3 of us at home and I made them in idli stand instead of a round mold. I also used coconut milk instead of fresh grated coconut as I didn’t have any fresh coconut on hand. I really loved the sweet, spongy, yeasty treat. Thanks to Valli for choosing the dish and to SHN for providing the detailed recipe.

Here's how I made these delicious Rice cakes:

• Soak ½ cup of Raw Rice (Par boiled rice) for 6-8 hours. Then grind the drained rice with about 1-2tsp water to make a coarse paste.
• Set 2 tbsps of the coarsely ground rice to the side.
• To the remaining rice, add 1/3 cup coconut milk and grind to a fine paste.
• Next add 1tbsp cooked rice (I used cooked brown rice) and ¼ cup of water to make a batter that is as thick as idli batter.
• Cook the coarsely ground rice with 1/3 cup of water. Bring the mixture to a boil in a small saucepan and simmer until it gets to porridge consistency. Set aside to cool.
• In the meantime, proof ¼ tsp yeast by adding it to ¼ cup luke warm water and 1tsp sugar. Set aside in a warm place to foam up.
• Once the rice porridge is cool enough to handle, add 2tbsp of it to the blender with the rice and coconut batter and blend well until combined.
• Finally add the frothy yeast solution and blend until mixed well.
• Pour the batter in a glass/ steel container and leave in a warm place for about 8-12 hours to ferment. Choose a container that can hold about double the batter once it rises.
• After the batter has doubled and fermented, add 1/3 cup sugar, mix gently and set aside to ferment for another1½ - 2 hours.
• In the meantime, fry some cashews and raisins in ghee until golden brown and plump. Set aside.
• When ready to steam, add the fried cashews and raisins and 1tsp of ground cardamom (elaichi).
• Mix well and pour into greased idli molds. Steam in a pressure cooker for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Cool completely before enjoying them.