Yes, you read it right. I’m going to share my recipe for fortified poori. What does fortify mean? It means to add one or more ingredients to (a food) to increase its nutritional content. Those who have been following my posts for the past few days would know by this time that I have become a fan of The Sneaky Chef (which by the way is on sale on Amazon and I have ordered my copy yesterday). I’m finding ways to sneak healthy ingredients in my son’s diet.

I have been preparing beans and lentil chapathis for long time now. But until recently it did not occur to me to follow the same method with puri also. Actually the reason is, in the past 5 years I had made pooris only once because my husband is a diet freak and I’m addicted to puris. He doesn’t eat more than half a poori and I cannot limit my intake. Recently only I introduced poori to my son and guess whose gene he has inherited? Unfortunately mine! The book talks about adding white bean puree and chickpeas puree in some recipes. So I thought why not follow this in our poori recipe also.

Since I have decided to feed my son something deep fried in oil, I might as well make it a little more healthy by adding some protein and fiber rich beans. First I tried it with chickpeas and then with white beans (cannellini). Both came out very well and the pooris did not taste any different. The key here is the color of the beans. They both blend with the color of the whole wheat flour, so there is no change in the color of the pooris also, unlike the spinach pooris and tomato pooris. But I’m guessing here that kids might be interested in colorful pooris also. Usually my son finds out any different taste, but he couldn’t get it this time, he was as usual eating one poori after the other, asking for more.

I also make it a point to prepare pooris only twice a month and I make it only for him. I have a very very small frying pan, which my mother got from India. It holds very little oil, so I cannot make big pooris. I roll out the dough into one big circle and cut shapes using cookie cutters. If I use a big frying pan, I’ll be tempted to fry pooris for myself. It will also need more oil, than I would be frying some papads and vadams too, which I would end up eating all by myself. So this small pan is a
real savior.

This Saturday I borrowed 2 books from the library on baking cookies. The following macaroons recipe is based on Key Lime Coconut Macaroons, from Jill Snider’s Cookies book. That recipe caught my eye because it was eggless originally, when the macaroon recipes I’ve seen so far used egg whites and I had all the ingredients at home. Since I don’t like lime/lemon flavoring in cookies/cakes, I omitted it. The original recipe called for key lime juice, so I substituted it with milk. Then only I realized that how similar it was to the south indian “thengai-coconut burfi“. So to get that taste I decided to add some cashews and cardamom powder. I also ended up using lesser amount of coconut and all purpose flour, so the final batter was watery. Then I remembered how my grandmother used to add rava (semolina) while making the burfis, so I also added a couple tablespoons of it, to make the dough firm. Inspite of all these changes, the end product tasted very good.

Ingredients
Sweetened condensed milk – 1 cup
Milk – 1/4 cup
All purpose flour – 1/4 cup
Sweetened shredded coconut – 2.5 cups

Optional:
Semolina – 3 tablespoons
Cashew nuts, broken into pieces – 1/4 cup
Cardamom powder – 1 teaspoon

Procedure

(Click on the thumbnails for a bigger view)

1. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
2. In a large bowl, combine sweetened milk and milk, whisking until blended.

3. With a wooden spoon, stir in flour, mixing until thoroughly blended.
4. Stir in coconut, cashews and cardamom powder.
5. After combining all the ingredients, the batter was a little bit watery. So I test baked just 1 tablespoon and the cookie spread so much.

6. So I added 3 tablespoons of semolina (sooji/rava) to the batter and combined it well and now the batter was nice and firm. Again I test baked another tablespoon of the dough and the macaroon came out perfect.

7. Then I went ahead and dropped tablespoonfuls of dough about 1 inch apart and baked it in the oven until it was golden around the edges (which approximately took 15 minutes). I got 24 (plus 2 test bake) macaroons for the above measurement.

8. Cool for 10 minutes on the sheet. This point is very important. Don’t try to remove the macaroons from the sheet once it is out the oven because it will be very flimsy. Again don’t put it back in the oven to harden it. Just leave the macaroons on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes and it will harden by itself.

9. Then transfer to a rack and cool completely.

Yes, it’s just upma stuffed in green bell pepper (capsicum).  As simple as it sounds.  I saw this recipe in a tamil magazine.

Ingredients:
Any upma (semolina, vermicelli, cracked wheat)
Green Bell Pepper (depending upon the quantity of upma) 

Procedure:
1.  Wash the bell pepper and cut off the tops carefully, because you need it to close the pepper and cook.

2.  Now remove the seeds inside the pepper and those sticking to the stalk.

3.  Fill the upma inside the pepper and close it back with the top.

4.  Add some water in a frying pan and let it get hot.
5.  Now keep an idli plate inside and arrange the peppers on the plate, close the frying pan with a lid and let it cook for 8-10 minutes.

6.  Turn off the stove and let it cool completely before you cut it lengthwise and drizzle some chutney all over and serve.

My Notes:
1.  In the original recipe, the method mentioned for cooking the bell pepper was to add 2 tablespoons of oil in a pan, arrange the bell peppers in it and sprinkle some salt water on top of the peppers and to cook for 8-10 minutes.  But this did not work, the pan started to brown in the inside and the pepper was no where close to get cooked.  Then only I got this idea of steaming the pepper and it worked.  But don’t steam it too much, the pepper will become very flimsy and cutting will become a problem.

2.  Also add salt and chilies a little more than you always use for the regular upma, because the pepper does not have any flavoring.

This is my entry to:

Pooja’s VOW-JFI Bell Peppers, JFI originally started by Indira

Spicy Tasty’s Fortune Cooking Contest.

Mansi’s Monthly Mingle – Appetizers & Hors’Doeuvres.  Monthly Mingle originally started by Meeta.

Last Tuesday I prepared Priya’s Rava (semolina) Idly for dinner.  It’s so much easier than the traditional idli recipe which requires soaking of idli rice and urad daal, grinding them and then fermenting the batter.  No doubt that the traditional idlies are soft and tasty, but rava idly is a quick fix breakfast/dinner.  Even though I was born and raised in southern India, I have not tasted these earlier.  We all loved the taste.  It’s definitely going to be a regular in our house.  Thanks for the recipe Priya.  Your recipe rocks.

My Notes:
For the side dish I prepared coconut chutney.  Always in my chutney I also add half a carrot, grated and lot of coriander (cilantro) reducing the quantity of coconut.  As I have mentioned earlier in my Beet Greens Daal recipe, carrot is a very good substitute for coconut.  Instead of grinding grated coconut, cumin, chillies for the masala for any kootu (daal) recipe, you can simply replace it with carrots.

Earlier this week my friend Smitha, left a comment in my blog saying that she tried the oven baked zucchini fries and it came out very well.  Couple of weeks back she also mentioned that she tried the Easy Basundi for a party and it was a hit too.  When I posted a recipe for making Easy Baklavas another friend SS prepared baklava the traditional method and sent me a picture also, telling that it was inspired by me.  Last week another visitor A also mentioned that she tried the Zucchini Dal and Zucchini fries.  Thanks a lot buddies.

I’m mentioning all this because, even though I started this blog as a hobby to pursue my passion for baking/cooking, I feel very happy when I read each and every comment and exhilirated when somebody tells me that they tried the recipes in my blog and it came out well.  So I thought why not pass this happiness to other food bloggers too.  Even prior to starting my own blog, I have visited many blogs and have kept bookmarking interesting recipes but tried only a very few.  Call it laziness or lack of time.  Since I have a food blog now, I know how happy I would be if somebody tried my recipe and complimented it.  So I want to make a conscious effort to try at least one recipe every week from other blogs and hence this ode to the food blogging community.  There are so many food blogging sites which have great recipes!!!

I know what you all are thinking, this is very similar to MBP (Monthly Blog Patrol) created by Coffee of The Spice Cafe.  Yes it is, but I want to make it more current. Since we all know that there is a shortage of rice supply in the US, I thought why not try to go on a rice strike for atleast one meal every week.  Even now in my family we eat rice only for lunch and it’s a light meal in the evenings. But again being a south indian our light meals are limited to idli, dosa, pongal, arisi (rice) uppuma and it also has rice as the main ingredient.  I do make soups and salads regularly but considering the pressing issue of increase in the price of rice I wanted to do something more.  So I thought why not try one more non-rice main dish from other food blogs once a week (more than 1 meal would be great too) and post the final picture/pictures every Sunday.  This is my own way of thanking all the food bloggers for the wonderful recipes produced in their kitchens and reproduced in their virtual kitchen.

By cooking 4 non-rice main dishes a month we will not only limit our rice consumption but we will also be experimenting various other cuisines, food grains, and increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables which is healthy as well.  More than anything we can bring a smile in the face of our blogging friends more often.  I don’t want to call this an event, instead a tradition and name it Your Recipe Rocks (YRR). 

Anybody interested in joining me to start this small tradition?

P.S: Everything said I would like to add one final note.  This is neither a competition nor compulsory. I know how tedious food blogging can get, having to cook/bake something interesting regularly and taking pictures, participating in so many food events and other stuff.  So don’t stress yourself too much.  It’s ok if you are not able to cook something new every week.  Just consider what I have written and do it whenever you find time, and post it in your blog the following Sunday.

Dee, thank you very much for your time and support.

This week I tried Cham’s Idli Rava Kichidi.  Cham had prepared this kichidi and chutney for JFI: Garlic.  Instead of using idli rava I prepared the kichidi with regular rava (semolina), crushed tomatoes instead of fresh ones and added a handful of frozen peas while the water was boiling.  The kichidi tasted very good.  I added only one 1 garlic clove in the chutney to suit our palette.  My husband loved the flavor of garlic both in the kichidi and in the chutney.  

Thanks Cham for the wonderful recipe.   Looking forward for many tasty recipes from you.  Your Recipe Rocks