The 4-in-1 chutney.. A Doctor’s recipe for success :-)

Chutney a.k.a Pachadi has not always been my strength. But no one else in the family knew that. Cos’ I used to make just the coconut chutney with Idlis & Dosas. You cannot really go wrong with the coconut chutney and dad & mom are always happy with whatever you make. So, nobody suspected my ability to make chutneys until the day I made the famous Pesarattu (recipe provided by none other than Andhra ammayi – Deepthi Chandana). The recipe for pesarattu will come some other time ppl. Wait for it..

Now is the time for the Doctor’s prescription.

On a bright & sunny day, we started our road trip to Vaalparai from Bangalore. On the way, we stopped at my uncle’s place. That is where I discovered the 4-in-1 chutney. Not sure if Dr. Meenakshi (my aunt) would appreciate the name I have coined for her chutney. But anyways…

Meena chitti served us nice soft & fluffy idlis for breakfast. And along with Idlis, she served a horde of chutneys & sambar. When Kalyan tasted her chilli chutney, he went like “oohhhhh… that’s nice”, something which I never heard before!! So, there I trailed behind the Doc into her kitchen to cajole her to give me her secret recipe. It didn’t take long for me to succeed. The Doc who had always been asked for her expertise on health was surprised that someone appreciated her cooking & wanted to know the recipe. So from the Doctor avatar, she easily slipped into the role of a trainer. It was like geethopadesam, may be you can call it chutneyopadesam. She was the Krishna & I was the Arjuna :-D.. ok, ok.. I can hear you.. I think I am going out of control now.. Coming back to the recipe, here it goes.

Ingredients:

Pearl Onion a.k.a Sambar Onion – 10 (peeled)

Red Chillies (Dry) – 8-10 (depending on your spice quotient)

Garlic cloves – 4-5 (peeled)

Ripe Tomatoes – 2

Tamarind – 1 small piece

Rock salt a.k.a kal uppu – to taste

Oil – 1 tbsp

For seasoning:

Mustard – ½ tsp

Urad dhal – ½ tsp

Curry leaves

Oil

1.   Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pan & fry the onion till it becomes tender and the raw smell goes off. Remove the onions from heat & keep them separately. Repeat the same process for garlic

2.   In the same oil, fry the red chillies. Once the chillies are done (color of the chillies will change), remove them from heat & keep them separately.

3.   Add the tomatoes (full, not chopped) to the remaining oil. You can cover the pan with a lid for faster cooking. Once the tomatoes are done (skin would peel off the tomato), remove them from heat

4.   Add the tamarind & slightly roast it for a few seconds

5.   Remove the pan from heat & add the rock salt. Let the salt get heated slightly in the residual heat

6.   Now, grind all the ingredients together & season it with mustard, urad dhal & curry leaves. Voila, your chutney is now ready.

Now coming to the reason why I call it 4-in-1 chutney. If you change the proportion of the core ingredients (Onion/Tomatoes/Red Chillies/Garlic), you get 4 very different chutneys. For onion chutney, go heavy on the onions & easy on tomatoes, chillies & garlic. For tomato chutney - go with more tomatoes & easy on onions, chillies & garlic. Same goes for Garlic chutney & Red Chilli chutney.

Tip: You can add fresh coriander leaves to the chutney after seasoning for flavor. Also, if you find the chutney to be spicy, add some gingelly oil while eating.

Simple Rasam, not so simple I say...

Five years ago, when I became a Telugu kodalu (daughter-in-law), I did not fully understand the implications of being one. Food is a main factor which determines how good you are in a house-hold. There I became a kodalu sans any experience in Andhra cuisine.  All I had cooked until then was a variety of parattas – aloo/mutter/gobi & the like – thanks to Tripti Saraswat who was my roommate then.

The first 3 months of marriage, whenever I made Sambar, someone would ask me if it was a variant of pappu (Dhal). Whenever I made tomato pappu, it was seen as something else totally. I can’t blame them.. Seriously, if I eat anything now however I had cooked then, I would ask the same questions & pass on similar comments ;-)

So life was getting difficult with my cooking skills at an all-time low.. And one day terror came in the form of Rasam. Yes, you heard it right.. Rasam a.k.a Chaaru turned to be the scary demon which I couldn’t conquer.

During the initial months of my marriage, I tried to impress my mom-in-law by cooking a full thaali (Dhal, rasam, poriyal, chutney) everyday for lunch. The ordeal went for a week for both of us (me & my m-i-l). After one whole week, on a Saturday Kalyan entered the kitchen to help me with my cooking & made Rasam all by himself. When we had lunch, my mom-in-law said, “wow, finally I get to eat Rasam after one whole week!!”. I was dumbstruck!! Here, I was making rasam everyday to impress her & she says her son’s rasam is the actual Rasam.. My natural instincts kicked in & I started thinking, of course, she is my m-i-l. She may not like whatever I make.. Alas, how wrong I was… When I ate Kalyan’s rasam, I thought whatever I had made so far, didn’t stand a chance in front of this one.  So I took a resolution that day.. Never will I attempt to make Rasam in my life, since it always turned out tasting terrible in my hands…

Until………..

5 years later…

Abirami, my eldest sis (who is an expert in cooking by the way), showed me light at the end of the tunnel. It was a ray of hope in my rasam making horizon & guess what, it worked. When I made Rasam based on Abikka’s recipe, Kalyan said “wow, you make excellent Rasam” & it was not just a beginners luck. The taste still holds. Whenever I make Rasam these days, Kalyan says “It is good” which if you know Kalyan equals to “It is soooo awesome!!” J

So, here is my recipe for fool-proof Rasam, in case you are a dummy like I was. For all other people out there who can make a good Rasam already, please skip the section below J

Ingredients

½ litre water

2 Ripe tomatoes
Rasam Powder – 2 tsp
Coriander powder – ½ tsp
Pepper powder– ½ tsp
Jeera powder– ½ tsp
Pinch of turmeric powder
Salt – to taste
Coriander leaves – for garnish

For seasoning:

Oil – 2 tsp

Jeera – ½ tsp
Mustard – ½ tsp
Asafoetida powder - pinch
Curry leaves – 5-10 leaves, crushed
Garlic cloves – 3-4

1.  Boil the tomatoes in half-litre water until the tomatoes are cooked. If you are wondering how to check if the tomatoes are cooked, just look at the tomatoes. If the skin starts peeling off, then its cooked. Once the tomatoes are cooked, remove it from heat & let it cool a bit.

2. Mash the tomatoes in the water itself.  Add Rasam powder, Coriander powder, Pepper powder, Jeera powder, Turmeric & Salt to the water.

3. Heat oil in a small kadai and add mustard & jeera. Wait for the mustard to pop (else it will have a bitter taste). Add the asafoetida, curry leaves & crushed garlic. Wait till the raw garlic smell goes away (it would take about 10 seconds).

4. Add the seasoning to the boiled rasam mix & bring it to boil again. When Rasam starts boiling, switch off the stove & add the coriander leaves. Your rasam is now ready :)

Tip:  Close the Rasam pot with a lid, once you take it off the heat. This helps retains the flavor of the Rasam.

Caramel Pudding without Readymade Mix :)

I wanted to impress & pamper Kalyan today and wanted to boost his spirits, not the alcoholic ones :) So what better way to impress a man than through his stomach. There sitting in my balcony, I wondered what could make him fall in love with me all over again.

Eureka, I cracked it. Ofcourse, his favourite dessert - the Caramel Pudding. But alas I couldn't find my Weikfield readymade mix to make the caramel pudding. So, what else... I chanted 'Google aya namaha' & started the recipe finding mission.

Did you know that Caramel Flan is same as Creme Caramel / Caramel Pudding?? Anyway, google gave me 'n' no. of recipes most of which required 'condensed milk' or 'evaporated milk'. Since I didn't have either, I worked with what I had - which is Milk, Milk powder, Sugar, Eggs & Vanilla Essence.

So here is how I did it..

Ingredients:

For Pudding:

1/2 litre milk

4 tbsp milk powder

1.5 tsp Vanilla Essence

5 tbsp Sugar

3 Eggs

For Caramel topping:

2 tbsp Sugar

1 tsp butter

Mix milk, milk powder & sugar and bring it to boil. Constantly stir to avoid milk getting burnt in the bottom. After the milk mixture boils, simmer for 5-7 minutes until the mix thickens a bit. Let the mix cool down.

Whisk 3 egg whites separately till fluffy. Add the egg yolks & vanilla essence and whisk again. Fold this mixture into the cooled down milk mix.

Heat the mould which you are going to use for baking the caramel on stove. Put 2 tbsp Sugar & the butter. Sugar would brown & melt in a few minutes. Take it off the stove & spread the caramel nicely at the bottom. Allow the mould to cool down.

Pour the milk/egg mix into the mould & cover it with an aluminum foil. Bake the pudding in a water bath at 200 deg cel. for 15-20 mins. For water bath - Place the mould in another dish & pour water in the lower dish. The pudding gets cooked in boiling water.

Allow the custard to cool & refrigerate till serving. To serve, invert the custard mould onto a plate. If you use a non-stick mould, the custard comes clean without have to run a knife around the edges :)

The end result was just delicious. If you need proof, just drop-in. I'll be happy to bake for you :)

Road trip to Vaalparai

Ever since I saw the pictures of Vaalparai taken by one of my ex-colleagues - Gopi - who took the trip by his bike :O , I wanted to see the place through my own eyes, instead of some other camera lens.

Vaalparai silently sneaked into my 'high-priority' list of places which I wanted to see this year. But I did not want to visit the place by Bus/Taxi. Just like Gopi, I wanted to drive down & enjoy the pristine beauty. Now, my wish got fulfilled.

We took the road trip to Vaalparai in October 2011 in our Honda City. Vaalparai was worth every bit of effort. The town is a picturesque tea estate nestled on top of a hill in TamilNadu-Kerala border. It is kind of a valley & hence not so cold as Ooty/Kodai. But the beauty is just breathtaking. To reach vaalparai from Bangalore, we took the NH7 and first touched Salem.

After Salem, we stopped at my Uncle's place at Dharapuram & took the State Highway to Pollachi. This road has large no. of windmills spread on both sides of the road. TamilNadu generates highest wind power in India & the Coimbatore/Tiruppur districts apparently have a lot of windmills. It is definitely a sight worth watching, esp. if you are a offbeat traveller.

From Pollachi, to reach Vaalparai you have to cross 40 hair pin bends. Yes, you heard it right. Its 40 :) The journey takes 2-3 hours, longer if you are driving in the night since there are no lights on the road. But the road feels quite safe, so nothing to worry.

At Vaalparai, there are a no. of regular sight-seeing places. But Kalyan, Aparna & I hit the tea estate straight. We trekked for about 2 hours not getting tired of the tea plantation. We even took a small dip in ice cold water in a 'shimmering babbling brook'. It was so refreshing. If you love water, you should definitely try it!!

Other than tea estates, the places to see in & around Vaalparai are: Aliyar Dam, Sholayar Dam, Balaji temple at Karumalai, Monkey Falls & Vellamalai Tunnel. There are quite a few places to stay at Vaalparai - Lodges like Green Valley Hills/Woodhouse near the bus stand as well as individual tea estate bungalows like Stanmore & Glendale Bungalow.