Savoury Pancakes

It may look like another kind of dosa, but it is actually savoury pancake. My husband does not like the sweet American pancakes, so at home we do an Indian savoury version of the pancakes. Its very healthy and he hogs them down when he is back from a long run.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 small carrot, grated
3-4 french beans finely chopped
1/2 small onion finely chopped
4-5 spinach leaves finely chopped
milk + water  mixture to prepare the batter
Mix flours (maida+atta+roasted oats grounded+ragi)
Salt to taste
Red chili powder to taste
Black pepper powder to taste

Recipes:
Break both eggs and whisk them for couple of min. Add the vegetables and spices.
Mix the flours, add milk+water mixture as per requirements. Prepare batter with dosa  like consistency. Prepare thin dosa like pancakes. Serve hot with tomato and chili sauce.

Sabudana/Sago Khichadi

Sabudana khichadi is synonymous with marathi food. This khichadi is mainly eaten when people are fasting. It is very easy to prepare but definitely requires planning.

Ingredients:

1 cup sabudana
1/3 cup roasted groundnuts (powdered)
2-3 green chillies
1 large potato boiled (cut in cubes)
1 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 tbsp ghee
salt, sugar to taste

Recipe:

• If you wish to have sabudana khichadi for breakfast, make sure you wash and drain sabudana on previous night. Never soak sabudana in water. Drain water completely.Next morning you'll have nice soft pearls of sabudana.
• To start with khichadi preparation, heat ghee/oil in kadhai. 
• When the oil heats, add cumin seeds and green chili (chopped).
• Next add cubed potatoes and fry for 2-3 min on low heat.
• In meantime, mix groundnut powder, salt and sugar with soaked sabudana.
• Add this mixture in kadhai. If you feel sabudana is dry, add splash of water.
• Cover the kadhai and cook khichadi for 5 min on low heat.
• Serve hot with some grated coconut and chopped coriander leaves garnish.

Note: In my mind sabudana khichadi means food for fasting. So I can never make sabudana khichadi in oil or I can't think about adding karipatta, onions or any such non-fasting food in this khichadi. But you can prepare sabudana khichadi like upma/poha by adding spices and vegetables.

Pink Dosa with Green Chutney

Few years back Loksatta used to publish series of articles on food. I had kept some paper cuttings of same.Now after all these years,these cuttings are helping me in planning for some delicious meals. I found an interesting breakfast receipe which is a bit different than usual dosa receipes. This is a "Pink Dosa" prepared with masoor dal. All you need is 1 cup masoor daal, 1/2 cup urad daal, less than 1/4 cup rice. Soak all ingredients together for 6-8 hours. Grind to smooth paste and let it ferment for 5-6 hrs. When you are preparing dosa add some flavourings like finely chopped onions, green chillies, corriander leaves, jeera/cumin seeds and ofcourse salt. With this batter prepare dosa like any normal dosa.

I served the dosa with green pudina chutney. This chutney was prepared by Sudha. Sudha is my son's caretaker and luckily she is good at cooking as well as in other household work.

For pudina chutney, you need 1 bunch of pudina leaves and 1/2 bunch of corriander leaves cleaned and pat dried.In a pan add 1tbsp oil. Fry pudina leaves, 1 medium size onion, 3-4 green chillies in the oil. In mixie pot add 4-5tbsp grated coconut, fried pudina leaves, onion, green chillies, 1tbsp tamarind pulp, salt to taste, 1tsp jeera/cumin seeds with little bit of water and grind till you have smooth chutney paste. You can serve this chutney with any dosa/dhirade/peetha or even apply on bread slices.

Sweet Idli

India is such a vast country both geographically and gastronomically. Sometimes you will be surprised to see some dishes which are eaten across two ends of the country with same love. Recently I had same experience while eating breakfast of Idlis. We are now so used to eating Idli-Sambhar and chutney, that we might not think about any other combination. In Orissa, people used to eat sweet Idlis for breakfast without any need for chutney or sambhar. These idlis are prepared in similar fashion like normal idlis.

All you need is to idli batter (2 cup rice + 1 cup urad dal soaked for 6-8 hrs and grounded to paste). Make sure the batter is fermentated for 6-8 hrs (or overnight). Add salt to taste. For the sweet filling, mix grated coconut and jaggery in equal proportion (adjust amount of jaggery depending on your sweet tooth). Now pour the idli batter in the idli moulds. You can add the filling on the batter or you can have layers like batter then filling and then again batter. Steam the idlies for 10-15 min.

You can eat these idlis as it is for breakfast.

Or if you want to serve some special sweet then, you can prepare sweet idlis in coin form and serve with chilled rabadi.

Nadia chakuli/ Coconut dosa

Before marriage I used to think dosa is mainly south indian breakfast. But different versions of dosas are available across  India, like Maharashtrian Dhirade or Oriya style peetha/chakuli. This dosa is prepared with coconut and rice. So don't keep batter for too long. The ingredients are very simple. Soak 2 cup rice for 5-6 hours. Separately soak 1/4 cup urad daal for same time. Grind rice and urad dal separately into smooth paste. Mix both tastes together. then add 1-1.5 cups of grated coconut and grind for couple of minutes. Keep it in fridge for later use or you can use it immediately. We generally have this dosa with potato fry. But sambhar or any chutney will also work as side dish.

Dal puri

This is one of my husband's favourite breakfast receipes. I tasted it first time after marriage. And when I prepared it for my mother and sister they loved it. The receipe itself is not that complicated. And you can always prepare the stuffing before hand. 

Ingredients for stuffing

1 cup chana daal

1 tsp turmeric powder

4 tbsp Dhane

4 tbsp Saunf

2-3 green chillies finely chopped 

1/2 tsp hing

1/2 tsp grated ginger

2 tbsp oil

salt to taste

• Start with boiling daal till it is very tender. When I boil daal, I use double water. I add turmeric and salt to daal when its boiling.
• Once daal is cooked properly, remove excess water if any.
• Grind daal with green chillies, ginger into smooth paste.
• In kadhai dry roast dhane and saunf. Grind into smooth powder.
• Next add oil in the kadhai. When oil heats up, add the daal mixture and fry for 5 min.
• Next add dhane-saunf powder and mix with daal mixture.
• Dry the mixture properly so that it is ready for stuffing.

When the stuffing is cooled, you can start with puri preparation.

These puris can be served with simple tomato ketchup. Some times my MIL prepares potato rassa/gravey as side dish. Will blog receipe for this sometime later. Till that time enjoy puris with tomato ketchup.

P.s. If you don't like deep fried puris, you can make parathas with this daal stuffing.

Ghuguni/ White chana in gravey

If you go on Bhubaneshwar- Puri highway, you have to try the small eatery places which serves typical Oriya food. One such dish we tried there was Ghuguni with puri for breakfast. Ghuguni is a delightful curry which yiu can eat with puri, paratha, idli, dosa; basically everything.

Today we had it for breakfast with paratha. So immediately I planned on sharing the receipe

• Boil one cup of white chana/peas with 1 tsp turmeric powder and salt to taste. If you like potato, then you can boil 1 big size potato with chana. You need to cook for atleast 3-4 whistles if using pressure cooker.
• Heat 2-3 tbsp of mustard oil. You can use any regular cooking oil if you don't have mustard oil.
• Add 1tsp sugar in the oil. Let it caramalize a bit.
• Next add 1/2 medium size chopped onion and fry till they turn golden brown.
• Add 1 tsp of red chilli powder, 1 tsp of ginger garlic paste and cook for couple of minutes.
• Chop up 1/2 medium size tomoto and add to the masala and cook for 2 more minutes.
• Next add the cooked chana and potato (cut in cubes).
• Add water and cook for 10 min on sim.
• When serving, add some chana curry in a bowl. Add some raw chopped onion, chopped green chillies, date-tamarind chutney and some sev.

Poha with sweet-hot twist

In Maharashtra, Poha is favorite dish for breakfast. Most of the dishes of poha I had were savoury (except may be Doodhpoha i.e. like cornflakes add milk and sugar to poha and eat). My mother used to add just a pinch of sugar to balance the flavours of the dish.
In Rourkela I discovered new kind of poha dish which is both sweet and hot. Its very simple to prepare. It required very few ingredients which are easily available at home. You'll need

1 1/2 cup poha
3-4 green chillies
1 small onion chopped
1tbls chopped ginger
3-4 tbls sugar
Salt to taste
1 tbs Cumin seed
3 tbls oil
1/3 cup chopped veg like green peas,beans,carrot

1. Start with washing poha properly. Drain all the water from it. Make sure that poha does not become too soft or the dish will look more like upma than poha
2. In a pan heat oil and then add cumin seeds. Once seeds start spluttering add chilly ,onion and ginger. Fry till onion becomes translucent.
3. Add vegetables and stir for some time. Add very little water and then cover the pan. In you are using beans or carrots then it will need 5-8 min for cooking. For fresh green peas 3-4 min is enough.
4. Once vegetables are cooked, add sugar,salt and mix well. You can adjust sugar according to your liking.
5. Add poha now, mix with veg well. Cover and cook for 3-4 min. You can sprinkle some water if required.
6. Once poha is cooked, take it off from heat. Add 1tsp desi ghee on poha and cover for 1/2 min. This gives nice taste to poha. Sprinkle some sev/namkin while serving if desire.

Perfect weekend breakfast: Onion Dosa with Daal chutany

After living in B'lore for so long, we like to have dosas for breakfast. Everyday it is slightly time consuming to prepare dosas even if batter is ready. So we generally make dosa over weekend. Dosa is very easy to make and you can have it for breakfast, dinner anytime. Only thing you need to do right is timing. If you want to have dosa for Saturday morning breakfast, then you've to soak rice and daal on Friday morning and grind same on Friday night.
So here's recipe for Onion Dosa with daal chutney

Ingredients:
Dosa batter
- 4 Cups of Rice.Generally thick grain rice is used, but you can use any type of rice.
- 1 cup of urad daal.
- Salt to taste
Toppings
- 1 large onion chopped
- 7-8 green chillies
- 1 small carrot grated. (Per B'lore dosa recipe, if you like).
For Daal Chutney
- 1 small cup of Chana daal
- 1 Cup curd
- 3-4 red chillies
- 2-3 green chillies
- 1 tbl spoon cumin seeds
- 1 tbl spoon paanch fodan
- salt to taste

Dosa receipe
1. Soak rice and daal separately for 8-10 hrs. Make sure you wash rice and daal very thoroughly till the washing water is almost clear.
2. After required soaking, first grind the daal till batter is very smooth. One simple taste to check that is in small bowlful of water drop small ball of batter. If it riser to water surface immediately, then batter is perfect.
3. Once daal is grinded, grind rice again into smooth paste.
4. Now mix daal and rice batter together. Add pinch of salt. Leave it overnight to ferment. It will take 7-8 hrs to rise.
5. Now when starting to prepare dosa, start heating non-stick tawa on high flame. Don't put oil initially as you'll not be able to spread batter properly.
6. For onion dosa, batter should not be very thin. Put 2 laddleful of batter on tawa and spread it. Immediately put chooped onion and chilli and pat it slightly over batter. Put 1tbl sp oil around dosa. Cook it for 3-4 min.After one side is browned, turn dosa to cook side with onions. Remove from tawa,once onions are slightly darkened.

Chutney
1. Add 2 tbl sp of oil in frying pan. Once oil is headed, add paanch fotan and red chillies and let it splutter. Add chana daal (thoroughly washed)and fry till its golden brown.
2. Soak fried daal for 15-20 min, then grind it roughly with some salt.
3. Now prepare tadka(heat oil, add some green chillies, cummin seeds)and pour it over grounded daal.
3. Later add curd to complete preparation.