Paal Payasam

I never realized my blog is one year old!!!!! What a bad mother.... Time runs pretty fast... It seems like just few days back I wrote my first recipe.. Phew...its hard to accept that more than 365 days have gone from there. Well anyways a belated birthday wishes to my blog :-)

My mom usually makes payasams on our birthday! And for my birthday it is always paal payasam since thats my favourite. There is a Krishna temple in Kerala in a place called Ambalapuzha. There they give paal payasam as the prasadam. That paal payasam tastes awesome, just out of the world. That temple has lot of cows and it is said that the paal payasam is made in the temple itself with the milk from the cows. If you get a chance do visit this temple atleast for the sake of paal payasam.

So celebrating my blog's birthday too with paal payasam. This is a very easy to make sweet dish with very few ingredients.

Ingredients:
Milk - One litre
Rice - 50 grams (just 2 fistful)
Sugar - 300 grams
butter - 15 grams



Method:

• Wash rice thoroughly in water, 2 to 3 times. Drain the water completely. 
• Now pour 1 liter milk to this. Do not add any water. 
• Now, place this in a pressure cooker close it and place the whistle. 
• The payasam should cook on low flame from the beginning for about 30 to 45 mins. Turn off heat. After the cooker cools down, remove the vessel from the cooker, you will  find that the milk has turned a nice pink color. 
• Now add the sugar (Adjust sweetness according to taste) and keep stirring for about 10 to 15 mins on low heat.
• In the end add the butter and mix well.
• Paal Payasam is ready. Traditionally no garnishing is done. If required cashews and raisins can be added. Serve this Payasam hot or cold. 
• We can also use broken rice to make this payasam.

Poli / Obbattu

Diwali  is just around the corner. And everyone would have started planning their list of sweets and snacks to be prepared. Here I am with a recipe of Poli (in Kerala) or Obbattu (in Karnataka).
In Karnataka, This sweet is usually prepared on festival days like Ugadi, Vara Maha Lakshmi Vrata and Diwali. On the other side It will be hard   to think about a marriage feast in the Thiruvananthapuram region of Kerala without poli and payasam.

 

Now this is the first time I am trying out Poli. I heard this is also called as Puran Poli and in Palakkad side iyer families this is called upputtu. The funny thing is in Karnataka Uppittu is actually Upma. Well my hubby after eating this was explaining to his friend about this dish and his friend has not heard the word poli or obbattu. My hubby said "well in aaloo paratha remove the aaloo and have a sweet filling - thats it". What a tag line for Poli!!! 

I also saw recipes where the ingredients for the filling differs. In karnataka people use only toor dal whereas in Kerala channa dal is used. In, Andhra, pasi paruppu is used. Well I used a mixture of toor dal and channa dal.

Ingredients:

For the filling:

Toor dal - 1/2 cup - 125 grams

Channa dal - 1/2 cup - 125 grams

Jaggery - 1 cup - 225 grams

cardamom powder - 10 grams

nutmeg powder - 5 grams

For the dough / outer layer:

Maida - 3/4 cup - 200 grams

Fine rava - 1/2 cup - 100 grams

Turmeric powder - 5 grams

Salt - to taste 

Oil -  preferably gingelly oil

Ghee - 150 grams

Method:

For the dough:

•  I didn't have fine rava. So I powdered the rava and used it.
• Sieve maida, fine rava, turmeric and salt together.
• Make a soft dough using water. The consistency should be that of chapathi dough.
• Transfer the dough to a utensil. Add water to it, so that the dough is immersed in the water completely.
• Keep aside for two to three hours.
• After about 3 hours Drain the water completely from the dough.
• Add 4-6 tablespoons of oil. Knead the dough, using your fingers till the dough becomes soft. When you pull-up small quantity of the dough, it should stretch without breaking. If it does not stretch, add little oil and knead again. The dough should look similar to that of a parotta dough now.
• Smear the dough with little oil. Cover with a bowl upside down. Keep aside for at least one hour.

For the filling:

• Wash toor dal and channa dal. Add about four cups of water, two pinches of turmeric and 1 teaspoon of oil. Cook till the dal is just tender. Do not cook till the dal is soft.
• The toor dal and channa dal would have different levels of cooking time. So cook thm separately for best results.
• Separate the water from the dal, using a strainer. Keep aside the water to make sambar or rasam.
• Break the jaggery into small pieces. Fry the jaggery pieces and  the cooked dal in a thick-bottomed kadai. After few minutes, turn the flame to low and keep mixing.  Otherwise, the mixture will get burnt quickly
• First, the mix becomes little watery. After sometime it becomes thick.
• Add cardamom powder and nutmeg powder. Mix. Switch off the stove. 
• Grind this mixture to a paste. The filling is ready.

The polis:

• Make lemon-sized balls from the filling and the dough.
• The traditional ways is to take a plaintain leaf and on the outer side (the side which is plain) apply some oil. take a dough ball and spread the dough to the size of poori.
• Place one ball of the filing in the center of the dough. Cover the filling completely with the dough, by lifting its edges and placing them on the top of the filling.
• Reverse the dough and press it lightly.
• Spread the dough into a thin chapathi, using your fingers or a rolling pin.
• Instead of plaintain leaf we can also use a butter paper.
• I have a chapathi press which I generally use for making pooris and pathiris. I made this poli with the help of that press and my life was easy...
• Heat a tawa. Spread little ghee.
• Reverse the plaintain leaf/butter paper which has the uncooked poli and place it on the tawa, so the poli will be placed directly on the tawa. Remove the plaintain leaf/butter paper.
• Wait for 1-2 minutes. When the poli color changes, sprinkle few drops of ghee and flip the poli. Cook till both sides are cooked well.
• I used a iron tawa so I always had the heat on minimum.

Poli / Obbattu is ready. Serve this with a teaspoon of ghee spread on the Poli.

Mango Halwa

Yup I am posting after a very looooooooooong time. Life is very hectic these days.... I am not finding time for blogging... And yes when there are numerous priorities, blogging takes the last one...

Now that I am posting after a long break I thought of starting with a sweet. Here comes mango halwa. Though the mango season is over, I still find mangoes in the market and do we need a reason to take home this king of fruits? Well I made this for the first time. It was simply delicious and very easy to prepare with very few ingredients... The inspiration was ofcourse from the blogging world.

Ingredients:

Mango Pulp - taken from 1.5 kgs of mangoes
Sugar - 250 grams
Ghee -  5 tablespoons
Cardamom powder - a pinch

Method:

• I took the mango pulp from a mango available in the name of "sendhooram". Its a nice pink and yellow colour on the outside.
• In a non stick kadai, Heat 2 tablespoon of ghee and add the mango pulp and sugar.
• Simmer for around 30 minutes stirring once every 10 minutes.
• Add the remaining ghee little by little and simmer for another 20- 30 minutes until the whole mixture changes color and becomes glossy
• Switch off the flame and pour the halwa into a greased plate
• Allow it to set for 2 hrs and then cut it into desired shapes

Note:

• There is no food color added. The color should change by itself to dark
• We can also add cashews, raisins etc.... to make it more flavourful.