I use soy milk and tofu quite regularly, but soy beans not so much. I have tried using it but was put off by the smell. The only dish we liked was the roasted soy beans until we ate these dosas. I have wanted to incorporate it while grinding for dosa but was not sure of the measurement. Luckily I saw this recipe for soy beans dosa in Red Chillies’ blog. I soaked the rice, beans and urad daal immediately and couldn’t wait to taste them the next day.

I was in a huge surprise because the dosa was unbelievably soft and tasted great. I also prepared the potato side dish for the dosa which was delicious too. I was able to taste the soy beans very very lightly, but when you have it with a spicy side dish you can’t notice anything. This dosa batter is so versatile. I made idlis too and it was very soft and spongy. I also tried appams with the batter. These soy beans appams had a crispy exterior and soft interior.

Also you can spread the batter so thin, it’s like a tissue paper. You would have heard of Rumali (handkerchief) roti but this one is rumali dosa. So instead of preparing round dosas, I made it square to make it more appealing for my son. He loved it very much. Because each dosa uses very less batter you can really make a LOT of dosas. Also this can be a very good recipe to start dosas for small children because it’s that soft.

Thank you very much for this awesome recipe RC.

Last week I tried Pongal with brown rice and it came out very well, which made me think why not bisi bele bath with brown rice? Earlier I was very hesitant about using brown rice, wondering if we would like the taste or not. To my surprise both of us like it very much. I think this is one of the few things we both agree upon! Brown rice when cooked has a rubbery (is it even a word?) texture. Or simply it is not as soft as its white counterpart. You feel very full after eating a cup of rice, as against wanting more after eating white rice. I made zucchini raitha to go with the bisi bele bath. That’s easy to prepare too. You can find other facts about brown rice here.

Sometime back I purchased readymade brown rice which cooks just in 5 minutes in the microwave. I made Chinese fried rice and it tasted very good. It had a nice chewy texture and was also very filling. So I wanted to try the regular brown rice and got it from the grocery store last week. While at the store I compared both brown rice and white rice and found that both have same calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein. This really made me wonder what’s the difference then. I bought it anyway thinking that I’ll do the research later.

I found some interesting facts about brown rice. Below is the synopsis:

Now let me proceed to the Dosai recipe. The original recipe is from a Tamil magazine. I’ve changed it a little bit. These dosas/adai can be prepared immediately after grinding the batter. Fermentation is not necessary.

This is my entry to the following food blog events:
1. Aparna’s WBB – Grains in my breakfast. WBB created by Nandita.
2. Suganya’s JFI – Whole Grains. JFI created by Indira.
3. Siri’s Herb Mania – Coriander. Herb Mania created by Dee.
4. Sunshine Mom’s FIC – Green.

When I saw Broken Wheat Idlis in Anjali’s blog, I had to try it immediately because we all like cracked wheat very much.

These dosas are very easy to prepare. Just soak 1/2 cup of urad daal and grind it. At the end add 2 cups of cracked wheat also and grind it to combine well with the urad daal batter. The first time I made it, I also soaked the cracked wheat, just like soaking idli rava while preparing regular idlis. But it
became so sticky and stringy and I had tough time mixing it with the urad daal batter. But finally it all came together. At first I greased just one idli plate and poured the batter in the 4 moulds and steamed it a little longer than the rice idlis. Even though it was flat, the taste was very good. I think I should have prepared a nice thick batter.

So I ended up preparing the Broken Wheat Dosas she has mentioned, using the same batter and my vote is definitely for the dosas. I used the reddish/brownish color cracked wheat and the dosas had an amazing golden color. The speciality of this batter is, you can make nice crispy dosas as well as soft sponge like dosas. The cracked wheat we get here is not fine like regular rava (sooji), so I had to run it in the blender for a couple of minutes, to get a fine texture.

The second time I prepared the batter without soaking the cracked wheat, incorporated it to the urad daal batter directly and ran the wet grinder for a couple of minutes. This time also we loved the dosas. This is way healthy than our regular rice dosas and good for diabetics also.

Anjali, Your Recipe Rocks and this recipe is definitely a keeper.

I was on a short break and am back with an easy recipe for zucchini kootu. I learnt it from my mother-in- law.  Using rice rinsed water, this simple and tasty side dish can be prepared in no time.  I guess this is similar to the Eriseri which is prepared in Kerala, using plain water.  Usually when I use an electric rice cooker I wash the rice and soak it for 30 minutes and then cook it, to get a soft texture.  So whenever I use my electric rice cooker, I make this kootu with the rice soaked water, because I don’t want to use the regular pressure cooker also just to cook daal for sambar/kootu.  My mother-in-law prepares this kootu with cucumber.  I had only zucchini that day, so I tried it for the first time and it tasted so good.

A very tasty kootu is ready to be served with steaming hot white rice!

Inspired by Priya’s Rava Idli and Cham’s Cracked Wheat Idli, I came up with this idea of using grits to make instant idlis. Yet another time grits has proved to be versatile. The idlis came out very well and especially it tasted so good with sambar for side dish.

Ever since I came to know that beet greens were edible and prepared Beet Greens Daal, I have wanted to use it more often. Recently I prepared usili using beet greens and beets. Initially I thought of using beet greens alone, but once I cooked it, the quantity was very less, so proceeded using the beets also. I increased the quantity of chillies while grinding the daals, to offset the sweetness of the beets. This was the first time I was preparing beet usili and we all totally loved it.

Ingredients
Oil – 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds
Urad Daal – 1 teaspoon
Channa Daal – 1 teaspoon
Beet Greens – 1 Bunch
Beets, small – 5
Usili – as required (procedure to prepare usili in My Notes)

My Notes
Half a cup of daal is enough for a family of 3. But I soak 1 cup of daal and prepare the usal as always and use it 2 days. Prepare the usili as per the instructions. Use as much as required and freeze the rest in a ziploc bag. When you want to use it, empty the contents in a microwave safe vessel and either defrost it or cook for a minute and fresh usili is ready.

How to prepare Usili?

Ingredients:
Channa Daal – 1/2 cup
Toor Daal – 1/4 cup
Masoor Daal – 1/4 cup
Green Chillies – 1 (or as per your taste)
Red Chillies – 2 (or as per your taste)
Hing – 1 teaspoon

Procedure:
1. Soak the daals and chillies in water for atleast an hour. (I usually soak it the previous night itself before going to bed.)

2. Now grind the above, adding salt and hing.

3. Grease 2 idli plates and divide the mixture among the 8 moulds.

4. Steam it, as you would do for idlis, maybe couple more extra minutes. A knife/toothpick inserted should come out clean.

5. Once it is done, remove the daal idlis, cut them into small pieces, keep it in a plate, cover it with plastic wrap and keep it in freezer for 10 minutes. (Don’t forget that you have kept it in the freezer, then it will become rock hard)

6. After removing from the freezer, place the contents either in a blender or a food processor and powder it. The texture will be so good, if this method is followed. (Now you would understand why I have mentioned to keep it in the freezer. If it is ground as soon as it is steamed, it will have a lot of lumps)

7. This powder can either be used on the same day itself with vegetables of your choice (beans, carrots or a combo of both, in my case even beets) or it can be freezed for later use, so that you can have usili on a busy work day too.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

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.