EgglessCooking.com | Eggless Recipes | Eggless Baking » Festivals of India

A New Beginning!

Madhuram — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:47:00 +0000

The title must have made you curious right? Before I proceed to make the announcement I would like to wish all my Hindu readers a very Happy Pongal/Makara Sankranthi.

At this point I just want to tell what the news is, but I’m trying to build some suspense here. It’s going to be difficult though because the one thing I’m very bad at, is writing interestingly. I especially admire my friends Dee, DK, Srivalli and Sunshinemom for their style of writing. They can turn even a simple recipe post into something very special. Me on the other hand, I have an interesting news to share with all of you and I’m already struggling for words.

I don’t know if you all have noticed a pattern in this blog over the past couple of months? I know that some of you did, from the emails I have been receiving. Any guesses? It’s that it has been ages since I have posted any non-baking recipes in EgglessCooking.com. In the past 8 months I have posted only 2 non-baking recipes and the remaining were all egg free baking recipes. It did not happen just like that but I have been doing this on purpose. I felt that posting other cooking recipes might distract the attention of the visitors who come here looking for just eggless baking recipes. I didn’t want to dilute the essence of this blog by posting other recipes. So I started to post only egg free baking recipes here. I still was cooking a lot of interesting stuff and was taking pictures of it too. I don’t know for what though. At the back of my mind I had this idea of having another blog for all those recipes but things were not coming together. We started the Forum, I made a trip to India, came back and started taking the Wilton’s Cake Decorating courses and lot of other things were happening.

In the meanwhile I also started receiving mails from some of the regular followers of this blog telling that they were missing the vegetarian and vegan cooking recipes I used to post earlier. This made me thinking and with a lot of pressure from my husband I decided to do something about it. Just a quick digress, I’m still trying to find out if it is a good thing or a bad thing that your husband is very supportive of your blogging! I completely agree that this blog will not be what it is now without his hard work but sometimes it is too much to take.

Now back to where I left. Finally I did decide to start another food blog to feature other vegetarian and vegan non-baking recipes. So that’s my news. We have been working on this for a couple of weeks now and wanted to make it public on the 1st of January 2010 but then we were going back and forth and felt that everything was not perfect and wanted to improve a lot. Later we realized that improvisation is a never ending process so it is better to get it done when you still have some enthusiasm left for the new project. So we decided to go public today because it is believed by Tamilians around the world that the month of Thai (beginning today) is auspicious and it paves way for new and better opportunities.

So here we are to present you with www.VegCorner.com This blog will be veg*n friendly, meaning it will feature both vegetarian and vegan recipes. I have already posted few recipes to give you the feel of what one can expect in this blog. We extend a warm welcome to all of you. We hope you will like what you are about to see and will extend your support as always.

Golu Photos and Rice Flour Puttu

Madhuram — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:15:31 +0000

It seemed like Navarathri started just now and it’s already the 9th day, Saraswathi Pooja. Happy Pooja holidays everybody. We prepare a lot of sweets and sundals these holidays, but “puttu” is very important and our favorite too.

This puttu is different from what the Keralites prepare. It’s made with rice flour, grated coconut and jaggery. The process is also time consuming but worth every effort. Traditionally it’s prepared by soaking raw rice in water, draining it, spreading it on a cloth and powdering the rice, while the rice is still damp. But to make the process more simple store bought rice flour is used. This is especially prepared on a Friday and is distributed to everybody who visits our home to see the Golu. I’ve prepared it successfully a couple of times 3 years back, but now I have totally forgotten the procedure. Fortunately my mother is here and she prepared it this time. It came out very well and I wanted to record it before I forget it once again.

(Click on the image to see a bigger view)

Ingredients

Rice flour – 3 cups

Water, hot – as required

Salt – a pinch

Turmeric powder – 1/4 teaspoon

Jaggery, powdered – 2 and 1/4 cups

Coconut, grated, preferably fresh – 1 cup (or even less)

Cardamom powder – 1/2 teaspoon

Pachakarpooram – a pinch

Cashewnuts, broken into small pieces – 1/4 cup

Step-by-Step Procedure 1. Toast the rice flour in a dry skillet until hot.

2. Boil little water (around 1 cup) with salt and turmeric powder.

3. Sprinkle as much water as required in the toasted flour little by little. The correct consistency is, you should be able to form balls, but at the same time you should also be able to crumble it back into powdered form.

4. Steam this flour mixture for 20 minutes. My mother filled little water in a big frying pan, placed a small trivet in the bottom and used the vegetable steamer which came alongwith my electric rice cooker to steam the flour. Wet a cotton cloth and pour the prepared rice powder in it and cover by bringing the ends of the cloth over the flour and place it on the vegetable steamer and close the frying pan with a lid.

5. Once the flour is steamed, transfer this mixture to a big plate and spread it. If it has lumps sift it using a sieve.

6. Meanwhile in another vessel add the jaggery and water just enough to cover the jaggery and melt it.

7. Sieve the jaggery solution to get rid of any impurities.

8. Again pour it back in the vessel, add the coconut, cardamom powder and pachakarpooram and let this mixture boil.

9. When a drop of the jaggery syrup is dropped in cold water, you should be able to form it into a ball. When you reach this consistency switch of the stove and remove the vessel from the stove.

10. Now add this mixture little by little to the steamed flour and simultaneously mix the flour and jaggery syrup with the other hand using a spatula. I have a big wooden fork which is simply perfect for this job. Be careful because the syrup will be very hot and it will scald your skin if it drops.

11. In a dry skillet toast the cashew pieces and add it to the prepared Puttu.

My Notes 1. The above measurement gives a fairly big portion of Puttu. You can try it on a small scale with 1 cup of rice flour, 3/4 cup of powdered jaggery and 1/4 cup of grated coconut.

2. Cashewnuts can be toasted in ghee. Heat 1 tablespoon of ghee and fry the cashews in it and add it to the Puttu. This keeps well for a week.

This is my entry for the following events:
1. Vaishali’s Sweet Vegan.
2. Srivalli’s JFI-Festival Treats.

Happy Gokulashtami

Madhuram — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:52:56 +0000

Happy Krishna Jayanthi to all of you.

I will be back on Monday with an “Eggless Chocolate Cake” recipe. Have a great weekend