Falafel

For this week's Blogging Marathon I have picked "Pick one Category, do 3 or Do one from each category". I decided to do one from each category. Today I have picked up List_of_fried_dough_foods. Valli has requested me to pick up recipes which are not Indian. So here I am posting FALAFEL - a traditional middle eastern food

Falafel is a deep-fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both. I have used chick peas here. I found many variations of this recipe in internet. After reading all I understood that it is basically our vada made with chick peas (kondai kadalai in tamil).   

From internet I also understood that most of the time falafel is used as a patty inside a sandwich. But for us it tasted more like vada and we enjoyed it as it is. Also falafel is made in various shapes like balls or donut shaped. There is also a tool available in the name of "aleb falafel" to shape these falafels. Falafel is a very famous street food. 

Another change or I don't know if I should say improvement - is that I have tried to capture some step-wise snaps :-). At least for the important steps. Will try to do so more often. I understand that step-wise snaps are more helpful for my readers but most of the time I make recipes in hurry. I will have to plan more efficiently my future recipes.

Ingredients:

Dried chickpea / Kabuli Channa - 150 grams

Onions - 1 medium

Coriander leaves, chopped - 2 tbsp

Garlic - 3 pods

Salt to taste

Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Red chilly - 2 nos

All purpose flour / Maida - 3 tbsp

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Wash and soak the chickpeas overnight or atleast for 8 hours.

In a mixer take the soaked chickpeas (without water), along with onions, garlic, cumin seeds, coriander leaves and salt. Pulse into a coarse mixture

Transfer to a bowl. Add flour an mix everything together. 

Form into small medium sized patties. Heat oil in a kadai and deep fry in batches.

Drain into tissues and serve hot.

Falafels are ready!!! Serve with sauce or chutney of your choice. We had it plain!!!

Notes:

• While researching on Falafel I also saw that Falafel (falafil) in arabic meant pepper. So adding pepper powder would be an apt choice I believe.
• I added only 2 red chillies. But after preparing the first batch we felt it needs to be more spicy. Chick peas has a very little sweetening taste so I added 1/2 tsp of chilly powder for the remaining mixture.
• The mixture can be refrigerated as such or make patties and refrigerate and fry them just before serving.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM

Chettinadu Biriyani | Vegetarian

When I heard of colorful dishes the first recipe that came to my mind is biriyani. That is colorful as well as all time kids favourite at my place. But I have already posted Biriyani recipes.
Egg biriyani
Khushka biriyani
Malabar chicken biriyani

But then I have never posted a vegetable biriyani. Yeah its a rare occurance in my home. That is when I came across this chettinadu biriyani recipe in Srivalli's space. Tamilnadu - an Indian state has very varied types of cuisine wherein the chettinad cuisine is very famous for its spicyness and tanginess. I am also an avid fan of Chettinad recipes - that too non-veg recipes.

In chettinadu biriyani recipe the spice ingredients that bring out a difference is marathi moggu, and star anise. I just got these spices from the store but as Srivalli says I am not sure if the marathi moggu I got is the actual marathi moggu.

If you don't get this marathi moggu, the same can be replaced with extra cloves. It might not give the exact taste. Also, in chettinad recipes the Jeeraga samba rice is used instead of the basmati rice. The jeeraga samba rice is available in the name of Jeera rice in some of the stores. I always use Jeera rice for making Biriyanis and fried rice since somehow we both don't like basmati rice... Another speciality in chettinadu cuisine is using shallots (small onions) instead of the bigger ones.

Ingredients:

Jeeraga Samba Rice - 3 cups
Mixed Vegetables - 2 cups
Small onions / Shallots- 3/4 cup
Tomatoes, finely chopped - 2 nos
Green Chillies - 4 nos
Ginger Garlic paste- 2 tbsp
Red Chilli powder- 2 tsp
Coriander powder- 2 tsp
Turmeric powder- 1/4 tsp
Pudina / Mint leaves- handful
Coriander leaves- handful bunch
Spring onions - few
Cashew Nuts- 20 nos
Ghee- 2 tbsp
Salt to taste
Water- 4 and 1/2 cups

Spices:

Bay leaves- 2 nos
Cinnamon stick 1" piece- 2 nos
Cardamom- 4 nos
Cloves- 6 nos
Marati moggu- 1 no
Annachi poo / Star Anise- 1
Javitri / Mace - 1 no
Oil- 1/4 cup

Method:

• Wash the rice and soak for 30 minutes.
• Wash and dice the vegetables like potato, carrot into medium cubes, cauliflower into medium florets, slice green beans into 1" lengthwise and some green peas.
• Peel and chop the shallots. Chop the tomatoes. Fry the cashewnuts in ghee until golden brown. Clean and chop both pudina and coriander leaves. Slit the green chillies into half.
• Heat oil in a pressure cooker, add the whole spices to the hot oil and saute for 1 minute.
• Next add the shallots, green chillies to the pan, saute until onion turns pale. Add the ginger garlic paste and saute until raw smell leaves. Add the mixed vegetables to the pan and fry for 3 minutes. Add chopped pudina and coriander leaves (reserve some to garnish) to the pan and saute for 1 minute.
• At this stage add chopped tomatoes, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder to the vegetables and mix well until tomatoes are tender. Add water to the pan, slightly cover with lid and bring vegetable mixture to boil.
• When the water reaches rolling boil stage, add drained rice along with required salt to the pan. Stir well to combine everything and cover with lid, Pressure cook for 1 whistle then lower the flame and cook for 2 minutes.
• Once the pressure falls, remove the lid, garnish with fired cashews, coriander leaves and spring onions.

Serve with onion Raitha

Note:

• I served this with raita and boiled eggs.
• In chettinadu, this is usually served with pickle, raita.
• If jeera rice is not available, use short basmati rice
• I added spring onions since it was growing in my kitchen garden. This is not part of chettinadu cuisine.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM

Batata Poha

Poha and Paav is like Idli and Dosa for the Maharashtrians. I have spent some years of my childhood in Maharashtra surrounded with so many marathi people. I have seen everyday along with a bottle of milk, a packet of paav gets delivered. They start their day with a tea and paav.

That reminds me - in maharashtra we used to get milk in bottles. Daily half litre glass bottle used to be delivered with milk. And we have to return the previous day's bottle. So that was recycling of bottles. It would have been good if that trend had continued. I don't know why milk was introduced in plastic covers later... 

So we have all these famous paav related recipes like paav bhaji, vada paav, batata paav, masala paav, misal paav etc.... Hmmm I have to post all these recipes. And since Maharashtra is one of the largest potato farming state, the maharashtrians use potato in almost all their recipes. Batata is potato in Marathi.

Batata poha is again served with plain paav or paav roasted in ghee. Since I didn't get paav I served it along with bread slices. I am posting this for kid's delight - colorful dishes since I felt yellow and red are a good color combination. This recipe has potato and groundnuts. 

Ingredients:

Poha / Aval / Beaten rice - 250 grams

Potato (cubed) - 150 grams

Onion (finely chopped) - 75 grams

Green chilly (finely chopped) - 1

Curry leaves - 1 sprig

Mustard - 1 tsp

Cumin seeds / Jeera - 1/2 tsp

Peanuts - 2 tbsp

Turmeric powder - 1 tsp

Oil - 2 tbsp

Salt - to taste

Method:

• Rinse the poha in clean running water. Use a strainer to rinse the poha. While rinsing, the poha absorbs enough water and it becomes soft. The poha must become soft but remain intact, whole and separate. If the poha does not become soft, sprinkle few drops of water on the poha in the strainer.
• Sprinkle the turmeric powder and little salt in the poha. Mix gently.
• Roast the peanuts in a small pan till they become crunchy and keep aside.
• In a kadai, heat oil. Before sauting the aloo/potatoes, just sprinkle some salt and mix it well with the potatoes. Immediately put the potatoes in the hot oil. By using this technique, the potatoes will have salt in them and yet do not loose water and become moist before sauting.
• Saute the potatoes till light golden color and crisp. Keep aside.
• In the same kadai, add the mustard seeds to the hot oil.
• When they splutter, add the cumin seeds. when the cumin seeds sizzle, add the onions. Saute the onions till they become translucent and soften.
• Now add the curry leaves, green chili and roasted peanuts. saute for a minute.
• Add the fried potatoes and then the poha. Mix gently with the rest of the mixture.
• Saute the entire poha mixture for 2-3 minutes on a low flame, stirring gently in between.
• Switch off the flame and cover the pan tightly with a lid for the poha to get steamed for a few minutes.

Note:

• We can also add lemon juice to this poha. Once the poha is done, sprinkle approx 1 tsp lime juice on the batata poha. Mix it well with the poha. Or serve the batata poha with cut lemon pieces.
• We can also garnish the batata poha with little grated coconut and coriander leaves.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM