Karuppatti Mittai

This is one of my favorites . I would Iove to see them arranged as rings at the shops. This sweet is very famous in south most part of tamilnadu. Whenever we go to my dad’s native place, we would pack a bunch of this brown colored Mittai.  I just love its juicy texture. I was searching  for its recipe and finally when I talked to my dad regarding  this sweet, He had given me some steps in making this one. I just followed the same and made them very perfect like the store bought ones.

Ingredients

• Karuppati/Palm Jaggery  - 300 grams
• Sugar – 100 grams
• Rice flour – 2 tbsp ( optional to adjust the batter consistency)
• Rice  - 1 cup
• Urad dhal – ¼ cup
• Cardamom – 2
• Sukku/ Dry ginger – bite sized
• Oil -  to deep fry

Cooking Steps

• Soak rice and urad dhal together in a large bowl for 3 hours at least.
• Grind it to a smooth paste and set aside.
• Add rice flour to this ground paste to adjust the consistency

• Powder the palm jaggery and sukku and cardamom seperately and mix them together.
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• To make the jaggery syrup, In a wide bowl add sugar and powdered palm jiggery and fill the water to cover this mixture.
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• Bring  it  to boil to get the single string consistency and switch off the stove.
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• Strain the impurities and set aside.  Keep the syrup little warm till the end of the process.

• Now take a wide bottomed frying pan and add oil upto ¾ inch.
• Place the batter in a squeeze bottle and slowly make a chain of rounds like the one shown here

• Deep fry on both the sides and drain the excess oil.
• Now put this fried mittai in the sweet syrup for 2 mins and remove the mittai from syrup and keep them in air tight container.

 My 2 cents

• you can use replace sugar with jaggery also. I just observed adding sugar makes the right consistency.
• Do not avoid sukku and cardamom. This will give a nice flavour and taste.
• Add the rice flour only to adjust consistency. If you add more rice flour, then the mittai will become dark easily.

Medhu Vadai Recipe

Medhuvada with ghee pongal is in my first list when i order any food at hotels. We used to prepare this medhu vada at home for every special occasion. I learnt this recipe from my mother-in-law. For my first pongal at my in-laws home, my co-sister and my MIL prepared this and I had a chance to prepare few by that time. Whenever I prepare batter for Idli, I will reserve few urad dhal batter and tried this out. This is how i tried to prepare medhu vada. When I plan to prepare with less oil, I will pour the batter in paniyaram kuli and make this one. I will post the same little later.

Ingredients

• Urad dhal - 1 cup
• Fennel seeds - 1 tsp
• Onion - 10 (shallots)
• Ginger - 1 inch sized
• Green chilli - 2
• Salt - 1/4 tsp
• Curry leaves - few
• Coriander leaves - few

Cooking steps

• Soak urad dhal for 1 hour atleast.

• cut onion, ginger and green chilli into small size.

• Grind to a coarse paste.
• Add fennel seeds, onion, green chilli, ginger, salt, curry leaves and coriander leavaes.
• To maintain the consistency adjust 2 tbsp of rice powder and mix well and keep the batter fluffy.

• In a frying pan, add enough oil and let the oil to be hot.
• Take a laddle, turn it back and grease with little oil.
• Take a lemon sized batter and put it on greased laddle and press it gently to form a circle shaped.
• Place a hole in the middle and Now the batter is ready to be a medhu vada.

 

• Bring the batter to your right hand and slowly place it in oil.
• Fry till it becomes golden brown.
• Flip to the other side and fry till golden brown.

• Drain excess oil and serve with chutney

My 2 cents

• You can add red chilli to substitute green chilli.
• Adding rice flour is purely optional. I just added to maintain the batter consistency.
• You can directly make the shapes using your hand itself. I used both the hands for frying and so i used a laddle.