Hominy Grits And Daal Adai

Thanks to each and everyone of you for the words of support and wishes. My mom made the journey without any problem. The only negative thing was her flight was delayed by 2 hrs due to bad weather.
We made the mistake of not checking the flight’s status before leaving to the airport. My mother was taking the British Airways flight from Chennai via London and it was supposed to reach here at 7.30pm. We started around 6.15pm, but that day the traffic was unbelievable and we reached the airport only at 8.30 pm. I was worried that my mother would get panicked that we had not come. Only a handful people were there in the arrival hall and my mother was not there. Is this not enough to panick me? Then we saw the message board where they have the list of flights coming into the airport with their arrival time and status. We were so tensed that we could not locate my mom’s flight. Then after a couple of minutes we located it and confirmed that the flight had not yet arrived and was delayed by 2 hours. Then only I was able to breathe. By the time we reached home it was 1.00 am.
My son is already having a blast with her. When she was in India she used to come online daily and we used to have conversation via web camera. So he easily recognised her and yesterday night he slept with her only. It’s like he has totally forgotten me. He wants his grandma to do everything for him, from brushing his teeth, giving him a bath and what not!
I wanted to bake something for my mother, but she has brought us a lot of sweets and snacks from India. I think I’m gonna put on a couple of pounds easily.
For dinner yesterday I made adai using corn grits. I usually prepare adai using Idli rava, instead of rice. So I thought why not try it with grits, which has a similar texture. I used Quaker brand, quick grits, which cooks in five minutes and enriched with hominy.
Ingredients:
Quick Grits – 1 cup
Channa Daal – 1/2 cup
Toor Daal – 1/2 cup
Moong Daal – 1/2 cup
Urad Daal – 1 tablespoon
Green and Red chillies – as per taste
Ginger, grated – 1 tablespoon
Coconut, grated – 1/2 to 3/4 cup (preferably fresh)
Salt – as per taste
Coriander/curry leaves, finely chopped, for garnishing – optional
Procedure:
1. Lightly rinse the grits and soak it with 1.5 to 2 cups of water.
2. In a separate bowl add all the daals, rinse it and soak it in 3-4 cups of water. Also add the red chillies with the daal.
3. After 4 hours either using a blender or wet grinder first grind the daals (adding water little by little) along with the chillies, also add the green chillies, ginger and coconut.
4. Once it is grinded coarsely add the grits also and grind it for another couple of minutes. The batter should not be very smooth and also not very corase.
5. Transfer the batter to a bowl, add salt and coriander leaves.
6. Now prepare the adais as usual.
I got around 14 medium size adais for the above measurement. It was so delicious, especially with avial.
My Notes:
1. I usually use a combination of red chillies and green chillies in my cooking. The taste is definitely different and very good when compared to using either one.
2. Using fresh coconut and a lot of it really enhances the taste of adais.
3. Check this recipe for preparing adais using sweet corn.
This is my entry for Sangeeth’s Eat Healthy – Protein Rich, event.

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Tags: adai, channa daal, coconut, corn adai, ginger, green chillies, grits adai, hominy grits, moong daal, quick cooking grits, quick grits, red chillies, toor daal, urad daal
























February 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Hi,
First of all I would like to say that your recipes are awesome. I have a small question. I often prepare adai at home. But it takes too much oil. Though it is protein rich it is fatty too. So I wanted to know if Adai can be baked like Idli’s in steamer. If we can do that, what would be the proportion of each lentil to do that. Thank you and waiting for your response.
Hi Bhuvana, thank you for writing to me. You can prepare adai with very less oil too. My husband doesn’t like oily/spicy food either. First the batter has to be in the texture of rava, not very coarse and not very fine. I use a non stick pan, pour the batter, spread it and close it with a lid. Once the water starts condensing on the lid, remove it and flip the adai and cook the other side. You don’t need to close it with lid again. This method requires no oil at all, but it’s not going to be crispy. If little oil is ok, what you can do is after pouring the batter and spreading it, using a non stick spray (like PAM or any store brand) and spray it on top of the adai in a circular motion and cook it until you are able to lift the adai and do the same for the other side. These adais are little crispy than the first one.
If you want to steam it like idli, you can still do it with the regular adai batter, no need to change the lentil/rice ratio. I have done that too. I also prepare upma after making the idlis.