Potato Box Curry (உருளைகிழங்கு கறி) - Do it yourself Video

The most flexible side dish to make, for eating with rice and rasam or roti's / flour tortilla's for a quick lunch (especially when you get 60 minutes for lunch, where you bike back from your department to apartment in 10 mins, make something, eat, clean dishes, drive back on time) is the potato box curry.

It goes with anything!

This video shows you in real time how to make this in under 10 minutes. If you are not picky about roasting the potato to a nice golden brown and getting them crispy 7 minutes should be plenty.




The only thing that is easier to do than this is making french style green beans or Okra using frozen cut vegetables. The taste isn't exactly super dee duper for those, but with some frozen coconut and south indian "gundu" milagai (round red chili) you can get that to be nice too.

Many a season's entire lunch menu was these quick curries on a rotation basis.

It is a treat the kids love. They eat the curry by itself like a snack!

Hope you have fun making this simple curry..



ps. The background noise shows you that sometimes 4 bathrooms in a house is not enough if you have two girls. Unless they come up with a potty that can have two girls go at the same time.. well forget that thought. It wouldn't work. Even then they will fight for the same sub potty. Girls!



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Sweets and Savouries to celebrate love..

Spent a good 4 hours in the kitchen today to make some Laddu and Mixture..

The video footage has too many improper comments deliberately uttered by Jr. and the little one to irritate me while making the video..

Don't know why they have this new found fascination with the "weenie" word. They say it just to see if I will get irritated or will scold them.. It is either that or Kusu (Fart). First I ignored them for a few minutes, then realized it was going to be very difficult to make a videoblog with the kids saying these two words three times/ sentence. So started using a remote control to turn the recording on and off.

They did not know I was still recording and finally they figured out that one as well and it all went downhill from there.

Tomorrow will be spent at home quietly savoring what was made today... and of course, editing the video with the kids watching..




Yes, the boondhi is going to soak in the sugar syrup overnight and will be made into laddu's in the morning!





Happy Valentines day everyone!




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Bread Bhajji (பிரெட் பஜ்ஜி) Do it Yourself

Ever wonder what to do with the few slices of bread that always seem to be left over in small batches?

You can take them and make bread bhajji (and Bread Upma with the crumbs, but that will be another video for another day).

Very simple.

Batter : 1 cup Besan, a little bit of hing (asafoedita), 1/2 spoon salt, 1/2 spoon chili powder, pinch of turmeric powder, just enough water to get it thick (real thick)

Slice bread after removing edges, soak in batter, fry!




Hope you have fun making Bread Bhajji.

The last bit where I show how to make bhoondi is the pre-requisite for making Laddoos! So if you got that part right, you can make Laddoos at home. (have successfully made Laddoos at home, if you can believe it).



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Rava Dosai - ரவா தோசை - A Do it yourself Video

The recipe is not new.

Also, San was nice enough to do the videotaping when I made this for tiffin this evening and was able to upload without having to do any editing.




It is not difficult at all and you can make 5-6 dosai's by mixing 1 cup rava, 1 cup rice flour and two cups water in under 35 minutes.

Hope you have fun making Rava Dosai!




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Theratti Paal (Milk Sweet) - தெரட்டி பால் Do it Yourself

Theratti paal, is very popular as a Deepavali milk sweet and is usually made on a large open vessel (Kadai style) where large quantities of milk are slowly stirred and condensed while simultenously adding sugar and ghee (clarified butter) to make a very small volume of this delicacy!

The recipe shown in this videoblog is a quick cheat way that my pittsburg Manni (SIL) taught me some 15 years ago. If I remember right, the original recipe she refined was from Mallika Badrinath who in my opinion should be given an honorary doctorate or Chef title by graduate students trying to satisfy the longing of their taste buds.





Very simple:

- get sweetened condensed milk (Nestle preferred over local brand names) one 14 oz can

- put in large glass bowl (get pyrex or corning lead free microwaveable glass). Do not do this in plastic. Have seen reports of high fat containing substances microwaved in plastic containers forming carcinogenic dioxins.

- soak some saffron in little water

- add 15-20 drops of lemon juice into condensed milk, stir thoroughly and microwave for 5 minutes under constant supervision. If the whole thing overflows, stir and put back in microwave

- then add 3-4 spoons of Ghee, add saffron, a few sprinkles of powdered cardamom for flavoring, stir vigorously , put back in microwave for 2-3 minutes and make sure you don't burn it.

Hope you enjoy making this sweet.

ps. The microwave time will be ~6-7 minutes total if you use only one can. For two cans it might be 11-12 minutes total.

pps. you have to try this a few times to figure out the final total time for a given microwave power and volume of condensed milk. The condensed milk is $2.19 a can. So you can do a few tries with single cans before graduating to volume production!


Just found that they spell it "thirattu paal" (we call it theratti paal!! go figure..)
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South Indian Crispies - aka Javarisi VadAm

If you have guests for dinner and you are still cooking, one thing you can do is to get some papads, or Javarisi vadam's (made from Sago or Sabudhana), pop them in the microwave and give them as an appetizer of sorts.

This is a videoblog of how to make Javarisi VadAm from scratch.

Ingredients (or proportions)

For 1 1/2 cup Sago, 7 cups water, 2 medium size Indian (or Thai) short Chili's, 1 spoon salt, 1/4 spoon of Asafoedita (aka Hing), one small lemon

Also required : Saran wrap or plastic sheets, some oil to smear on the sheet if you are not using Saran wrap.




You can have fun giving the kids squirrel/Crow watching duty while the Vadam's dry in the sun.

Hope you enjoy making and eating Vadams!


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Understanding the Besan Sugar Ghee Ternary Phase Diagram -aka Mysore Pak

Any South Indian Materials Engineer worth his salt (or sugar) will know that Mysore Pak is derived by going through many a tie line on the Besan-Sugar-Ghee ternary phase diagram, with many solid phases, liquid phases in equilibrium, non-equilibrium, etc. etc..

But you eventually get to that sweet spot after an hour or so of stirring the mix in various proportions!

For those who are not materials engineers, it might be a daunting task to get to this sweet over that one hour period.

To specially help those, the two videos below show you how to make the south Indian delicacy.

Take heart. If I can do this you can.







Couple of Notes:

1. Make sure you put some Ghee on the pan where you pour the mix finally. (My camcorder did not record that part)

2. If you are not used to touching hot objects, do not touch the pan or tong and try to lick off hot mysore pak. You will get burnt.

3. Indian stores sell pre made Ghee. Expensive, but can save you time.

Hope you have fun making and eating Mysore Pak.

Do post your experience, notes, suggestions in the comments.



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Mysore Pak - Do it Yourself Videoblog

From 9:45 to 10:54PM tonight, the Mysore Pak was made..and video'ed.

The footage is long and initial editing makes the video a good 17 odd minutes.

Have applied for a special Youtube account, but don't know if they will give me one.. you see they want to give it only if you intend to make money out of videos!

Will break it into two videos and post it tomorrow.

Whole house smells Mysore Pak and it does taste divine.



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