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.

Grapes Muramba/ Grapes in Sugar syrup

My MIL has a sweet tooth. For dinner she alwyas likes to have something sweet to eat with roti. So over this weekend to impress her ;) I prepared this muramba or fruit cooked in sugar syrup. At my mother's place, we always used to have such preparations with different fruits like raw mango, ripe mango, banana, apple, basically any fruit. This was my first attempt at preparation and it turned out pretty good. Other than grapes, sugar and obviously water; all other ingredients are optional. I wanted to enhance grape flavour so I decided on using raisings and black currents which are dried form of grapes.

The receipe is very simple and you don't need lot of ingredients.

Ingredients

• 20-30 grapes
• 1 small bowl of sugar
• 10-15 sultanas/raisins and black currents (optional)
• 4-5 almonds (optional)
• 1tsp elaichi/cardomom powder
• water
• 1-2 tbsp lemon juice (optional)

Receipe

• Thoroughly wash grapes ,pat dry and then keep aside.
• In a heavy bottom pan add sugar and enough water to just cover the sugar. Keep the pan on low flame and let it simmer. Keep stirring in between.
• Once sugar syrup starts bubbling check the thickness of syrup at regular intervals. It should not be very watery. It should be almost thick as honey.
• While sugar syrup is getting ready, thinly slice almonds and clean raisins and black currents.
• When the syrup thickens add all the remaining ingredients, mix them well and cook for another couple of minutes. Then remove the pan from burner and let the mixture cool.
• Check after 10 min. or so to see if sugar crystals are getting formed. If yes, then add some water and reboil the mixture for another 3-4 min and then cool the mixture.
• For some this receipe might taste too sweet, so counter attacking it with sourness of lemon juice is good idea.

Date- Tamarind chutney

Eating bhelpuri is my weakpoint. And I don't get chance to indulge in eating bhelpuri in Bangalore because its not so good here. That is when I miss Mumbai so much. When my mother had come down to Bangalore once, she had kept stock of dat-tamarind sweet and sour chutney and mint-corriander-chilli hot chutney. So everyday we could eat homemade bhel.
This chutney is simple to make, its delicious and healthy too. All you need to do is take 2 parts of dates (without seeds, chopped), 1 part tamarind pulp (thick), some jaggery if you want sweetner chutney. Grind these ingredients with roasted jeera+ red chilli powder and salt per taste and you have a tasty chutney ready to use. This chutney easily stays for 2 weeks in fridge.