1 Soak urad daal in water for 3-4 hours. You can either soak the idli rava or not. My grandmother used to soak it in lukewarm water. I have tried both methods and have not found any difference in the idlis. After at least 3 hours drain the urad daal, reserving some of the water.

2 If using a wet grinder, switch it on, add 1/2 cup of the water and let the grinder run. Then slowly add the urad daal. Grind it atleast for 25-30 minutes until it’s nice and fluffy.

3 Add the idli rava to the urad daal batter while it’s still in the grinder and let the grinder run a couple of minutes more so that everything is combined well.

4 Transfer the batter to a bowl, add salt and the oil and mix it well. Use a big size bowl so that there is enough room for the batter to rise while it ferments. Ferment it for at least 12-15 hours and use it the next day.

1If using rice instead of idli rava, the measurement I follow is 2 cups of par boiled rice, 1 cup of raw rice and 3/4th-1 cup of urad daal. Soak the rice together. Soak the urad daal separately. First grind the urad daal as mentioned above and transfer it to the bowl. Then grind the rice to a coarse consistency. It should take only 5-8 minutes if grinding it in a wet grinder. Then mix both the batters, salt and oil and combine it well.

2 I also soak for adai whenever I’m going to grind for idlis. First I grind daal and rice for idlis, transfer the batter and in the same grinder grind for adai. So we have adai for dinner and idli/dosa for the next 2 days. So with extra 10 minutes of work 3-4 days’ dinner/breakfast is taken care off. Also less clean up, because you have to wash the grinder only once as against twice if you soak for adai and idlis on two separate days.

I had a dried red chili at home which is not at all spicy but gives only the color. I used that in addition to the spicy chillies to get the red color. So I did not use tomato. Grind everything together to a smooth paste. Usually I fry this chutney in little oil to get rid of the raw smell from onions. I didn’t do it this time because anyway I was going to steam it with the idlis.

Grind everything together adding little water as needed.

Grind everything together adding little water as needed.

2 Add washed/rinsed chana dal (kadalai paruppu), 1 cup of water, turmeric and little salt in a pressure cooker. Also add the ginger, if using. I always use ginger while cooking lentils and legumes to aid easy digestion. Leave it for only one whistle and remove the cooker from the stove to stop the cooking process. If you cook it for more than 1 whistle the daal will become mushy. After the opening the cooker drain the daal in a colander. No need to reserve the water.

3 Once you have the bulgur and channa daal ready, in a frying pan heat the oil.

4 Once the oil is hot add the mustard seeds and hing. After it splutters add the green chillies. I used one chili, split in half.

5 Now add the drained channa daal, little salt and fry for a minute. After that also include the prepared bulgur and combine it thoroughly. Leave it in the stove for another minute.

6 Switch off the stove and add the grated coconut and mix it well. Garnish it with chopped coriander.

2 I have a very small size pressure cooker, so I cooked the chana dal directly. Instead you can also add the daal and water in a vessel, place it in the cooker and leave it for a whistle.

2 Meanwhile in a big frying pan add the oil and heat it. Once it is hot enough add the mustard seeds. After it splutters add the peanuts (if using) and roast it. Then add the urad daal and channa daal and fry it until golden brown.

3 Add the chopped onions and slit green chili. Add little salt, so that the onion would cook faster.

4 Once the onions are cooked add the other vegetables, 1/2 cup (or more) water as required, salt and close the pan with a lid. Increase the heat and in about 10-15 minutes the vegetables would have cooked enough.

5 To the cooked vegetables mixture add the prepared bulgur and combine it well. Garnish it with cilantro and it’s ready to dig in.

2 This bulgur upma is good both hot or cold. I had some leftover which I kept it in the fridge. It tasted so good (or even better) the next day, even straight from the fridge.

3 Bulgur before soaking may look very less but after it absorbs the water and especially with so much vegetables it makes huge quantity. You can really feed an army. Try it when you are having a potluck or friends over. When I first measured 1 cup of bulgur, I thought it would not be enough for the 2 of us. Usually I use 1 and 3/4th cups of vermicilli or cracked wheat for preparing upma. So I measured another 3/4th cup of bulgur to prepare this upma. Gosh! that was so much for us. So I did not add the entire bulgur to the cooked vegetables. I reserved some for later. Luckily I got another idea to make use of the excess bulgur. That dish turned out very good too. Will post it later.

4 Next I want to cook pulav using bulgur. I’m sure it would taste equally good.

2 Put a tablespoon of the potato curry on it.

3 Add some more batter so that the curry is covered.

4 Steam the idlis. Remove the idlies from the plate and cut each idli into 4 pieces.

5 Once the idlis are ready, heat a little oil in a frying pan.

6 Place the idlis in the frying pan and close it with a lid leaving half an inch space.

7 Stir on slow heat or fire for 3 to 5 minutes till both the sides of the idlis are roasted. I also sprinkled some idli milagai podi and tossed it well to coat evenly.

2 Drain the dal in a colander and reserve the water. Blend together the daals and chilies with some of the reserved water until smooth.

3 Then add the soaked cracked wheat, coconut, ginger, tomato puree. Add water as needed to get a smooth batter.

4 Tranfer the batter to a bowl, add salt and mix well. The batter is ready to make the dosas. No need to ferment it.

5 Heat a tava. Sprinkle some water to check if the tava is hot enough. Take the batter in a ladle and pour it on the pan and spread it into a thin circle with the back of the ladle.

6 It takes about 2 minutes for the batter to cook. If you want it crisp you can wait for another minute or until you see a reddish thin crust in the middle. You could either use little oil to top the dosa or use a non stick spray like Pam and spray it lightly in a circular motion on top of the dosa. Using the non stick spray effectively requires some practice. You have to press the nozzle with very light pressure, otherwise there’s going to be an “oil rain” on the dosa. Since the batter is thin, unlike the regular adai batter this one cooks well even without oil. Flip it and cook the other side for another minute.

7 Turn it over once again and roll it just like shown in the picture or serve it as it is.

2The tomato puree in the batter is optional. I got this idea from another blogger Ashwini. I usually prepare this adai without tomato and that’s good too. But the tomato makes it little tangy and also gives a nice color to the dosa. You could use one small tomato chopped instead of the puree. If adding chopped tomatoes grind it together with the daals itself, otherwise it may not blend properly.

3 This dosa is good either soft or crispy. If you want it soft take it a minute early.

2 In the evening next day drain both the rice and the beans separately in a colander and reserve the water.

3 In a blender/Indian mixie first take a small portion of the rice, chillies and grated ginger and grind it until the chilies are finely ground. Then add the soaked beans, remaining rice, little water and grind it until you get a coarse batter.

4 Add water little by little as necessary while grinding the rice and beans because if too much water is added the ingredients will not be ground properly and evenly. If using coconut, it can either be blended together with the rice and beans or you can simply mix it after transferring the batter to a bowl.

5 Unlike dosa batter which is very smooth the batter for adai should have the texture of semolina/sooji.

6 Transfer the batter from the blender to a large bowl and add salt; mix thoroughly. Now you may also add the finely chopped onions, if using.

7 Heat a non stick tava or an iron griddle (preferred for adai).

8 Once the pan is hot enough take about 1/3rd cup of batter in a ladle and add it to the center of the tava and spread it thin using the back of the ladle. Add ghee/oil/ around the crepes and flip it to the other side. I spray the crepes with non stick cooking spray instead of using ghee/oil. Once it is cooked on the other side too it is ready to eat.

2 My mother found this brilliant idea of replacing coconuts with carrots in most of the dishes, especially if you are grinding some masala. Simply replace grated coconuts with grated carrots and increase the quantity of chilies and the dish tastes great. So I decided to use finely shredded carrots instead of coconut in this adai. The adai tasted great. But just make sure that you use 1 or 2 extra chillies otherwise it would be sweet.

2 Cook it in low-medium heat and leave it for 6 whistles. Switch of the stove and remove the cooker from the stove.

3 Meanwhile in a small frying pan heat the ghee, add the curry leaves and fry the cashew pieces (if using) until golden brown.

4 Once you are able to open the cooker add required amount of salt and pour the heated ghee and mix well.

5 Eat it hot with chutney, sambar or the traditional accompaniment Eggplant Gojju or Gothsu.

2 Traditionally rice and daal are cooked first. Then ghee is heated, to fry cumin, pepper, ginger and cashews, which is added to the cooked rice. You could do it either way.

3 Also whole peppercorns are used for pongal. In our house we don’t like biting full peppers, so I use black pepper powder.

2 Heat the oil in a frying pan.

3 Puree the beans with little water. I used Magic Bullet’s small jar. The beans should be blended thoroughly without any lumps.

4 Now mix the puree with the other ingredients. Add water little by little because the dough for poori should be firm, otherwise the pooris will absorb way too much oil.

5 By this time the oil should be hot enough.

6 Since I make pooris in a small frying pan, I divide the dough into 2 balls. Roll out each ball into a big thin circle and then cut out different shapes using small cookie cutters and fry them one by one.

7 If using a bigger pan for deep frying, you may choose to divide the dough into 6-8 medium size balls. Roll out each into a thin circle and then fry it one by one.

2 The first time I made the chickpeas poori, my blender was not working. So I had to mash it with my hands and potato masher. So it did have some tiny unmashed beans and the poori became a little red in those areas. Otherwise both the pooris were white in color. So you may notice small red spots in the first picture. But this did not stop my son from eating it! The second picture is the white beans poori.

3 1/4 cup of chickpeas has 3.5gms fiber and 3gms protein. 1/4 cup of white beans has 3gms fiber and 3.5gms protein. Also both the beans have considerable amount of Iron and little Calcium too. If I had prepared poori with 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour alone, my son would have got only 4gms fiber and 5gms protein. Now that I have added some beans he gets additional 6.5gms nutrition.

4 If there is a “Five and Below” store near your place look for the book Deceptively Delecious by Jessica Seinfeld. This one is also similar to the Sneaky Chef with lots of recipes to include healthy foods in kids’ meals. I got it for $5 in that store, the retail price of which is $20. Both the books have vegetarian and meat dishes, but I don’t mind it because it’s the methods which I’m interested and the photos are good and we can also get inspired to create our own sneaky recipes. Initially I thought of going to the copy place to make copies of necessary recipes from The Sneaky Chef and return the book to the library. But when I saw the price ($7.99 and plus free shipping if you are ordering something else, which I was going to anyway) I had to order it, because it’s way more cheaper than driving to the copy place, spending another 15-20 minutes there and money.)

2. If using a blender/mixie: Drain the rice and daal. Reserve the water. Add 1/4th of the rice, daal, coriander, chopped green chillies, ginger and grind it well. Once the cilantro and chillies are ground into a paste, add the remaining rice/daal and the reserved water as required. The batter should neither be very coarse nor very smooth. It should have the consistency of semolina/rava.

3. If using a wet grinder: Switch on the machine. Let it run with the stone. Now pour the 1/4-1/2 cup of the soaked water in the empty grinder, let it run for a minute. Now add 1/4th of the rice/daal and other ingredients and let the machine run for 5 minutes. Later add the remaining rice/daal and water as required. Transfer the batter to a bowl and mix the salt thoroughly.

4. Heat a non stick griddle. Once it’s hot add a ladleful of batter to the griddle and spread it using the back of the ladle. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes. Spray it with a non stick cooking spray and turn the crepes and let the other side cook for another 2-3 minutes. Enjoy it with plain yogurt, idli podi or
your favorite pickle.

2. We never eat spicy food, so I added only 3 chillies and it didn’t have the trace of the chillies at all. That’s why I have listed 4-5 chillies in the ingredients. We ate them with idli podi, which was a superb combination.

3. Soak the rice and daals in the morning before leaving for office, come home in the evening, grind the batter and have these delicious dosas for dinner. Or else you can soak it overnight, grind it in the morning and start your day with this healthy and filling breakfast.