Curd rice (hotel style)

Everyone loves curd rice. Curd has milk proteins and the essential bacterias to protect the human stomach affecting from bad bacterias.  When we started the solid food for my kid, we just started with curd at his 6 months. He loves curd in any form. Generally we make curd rice using curd, rice and a little milk only. When I was discussing with my friends during lunch, one of my friends suggested me to add butter. I tried it by adding butter and few things to temper and added to curd rice to make this hotel style curd rice. Here is the recipe

Ingredients

• Cooked rice - 1 cup
• Curd - 1 cup
• Milk - 1/2 cup
• Butter(melted) - 1 tbsp
• Carrot (grated) - 1 tbsp
• Cashews - 4 to 5
• Mustard seeds - Few to temper
• Curry leaves - Few to temper
• Hing - a pinch
• Green chilli - 1 (optional)
• Ginger - 1 Bite sized chopped finely

Cooking steps

• In a wide bowl, Add a cup of cooked rice (keep the rice little warm). 
• Add butter first and mix well with the rice. 
• Add curd to the rice and mix well to become mushy.
• The curd will become dry after sometime. So add the milk to the rice to maintain the creamy texture of curd rice. Keep this mixture aside.

• In a frying pan, Add a tsp of oil. 
• Once the oil is hot, add mustard seeds to sputter. 
• Add curry leaves, ginger, coriander leaves, cashews, green chilli, carrot, hing to the oil and fry for a minute.

• Add this mixture to the curd rice and mix well. 

• Garnish with coriander leaves and nuts.

My 2 cents

• You can add any nuts and fruits of your choice
• Adjust the salt for the curd rice.

Peas curry (creamy)

Peas curry is my favourite and this can go well with roti, paratha and also with plain rice. Peas is one of the healthiest foods. Its high in protein. My mom makes the one which is made of ground coconut paste. I just added curd and cashews to replace the coconut in her recipe. Here is the recipe

Ingredients

• Green Peas - 1/2 cup
• Onion - 1 (medium)
• Tomato - 1 (medium)
• Ginger garlic paste - 2 tsp
• Cashews - 8 to 10
• Cinnamon - 1 small stick
• Cardamom - 1
• Curd - 2 tbsp
• Kasoori methi(dried) - 1 tbsp
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Star anise - 1
• Oil - 3 tsp

Cooking steps

• Soak the peas for 6-7 hours or overnight and pressure cook it for 3 whistles. Drain water from peas and keep aside.
• 

• Slice onion and tomato and keep aside

• In a small bowl add cashews and mix with curd. Soak this mixture for 10 mins and grind it in mixer to a smooth paste.

• In a preheated tawa, add a tsp of oil and fry onions till its transparent. Add ginger garlic paste and tomatoes and  and fry till it turns mushy.Let the mixture cool down and grind it to a fine paste.

• In the same tawa, add Butter first and let it melt completely and add cardomom, cinnamon sticks and star anise to temper. 
• Add little onions and fry (This step is optional. I just added it to have the fried crunchy onion aroma in the final curry).

• Add the ground onion tomato paste and add them to the fried onions.

• Once the raw smell leaves out completely from the curry, simmer the stove and add the ground cashew paste to it and mix well.

• Add salt, garam masala and chilli powder to it and mix well and cook it.

• Add green peas and saute it and cook the curry till its done completely.

• Switch off the stove once its done completely and add kasoori methi to garnish.

My 2 cents

• Use a fresh curd to grind the cashews. 
• You can substitute milk for curd to get creamy sweet taste.
• I used the dry peas. you can use fresh peas or frozen peas also.
• Adding dried methi gives a great flavour.
• You can puree the tomato and directly add it to the fried onions. I just wanted to have more gravy so i ground the onions and tomato mixture. 

Egg kothu parotta

Egg kothu parotta is my favourite. I love making them at home. Whenever i find any leftover parottas, i will surely make this one and complete our dinner on that day. Quite simple and easy one to make. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

• Parotta - 3
• Eggs - 2
• Onion - 1 (Big sized)
• Salna or Kurma - 1 cup( non veg preferred)
• Salt - 1/4 tsp
• Pepper - 1/2 tsp
• Coriander leaves - to garnish

Cooking steps

• Slice onions uniformly and keep aside.

• Crush parotta and make them into small pieces.
• Mix the parotta with salna and keep aside.

• In a frying pan, add 1 tbsp of oil and add the sliced onions and fry till its transparent.

• Add eggs to the onions and add pepper and salt.
• Stir well the mixture and cook till the eggs are done. 

• Add the parotta to the egg mixture in the frying pan and stir for 2 mins and switch off stove.

• Add coriander leaves to garnish the kothu parotta

My 2 cents

• Add garam masala along with pepper, if you dont like to add salna. But  in original procedure, they will add salna.

Lilly's Delights - A one stop shop for all cooking recipes: Nutella Health Mix Cake / Nutella Satthu Maavu Cak...

Lilly's Delights - A one stop shop for all cooking recipes: Nutella Health Mix Cake / Nutella Satthu Maavu Cak...: Health mix is good for babies. I used to prepare cakes using all purpose flour and sometimes with wheat flour. This time I tried it wi...

Nutella Health Mix Cake / Nutella Satthu Maavu Cake

Health mix is good for babies. I used to prepare cakes using all purpose flour and sometimes with wheat flour. This time I tried it with sathu maavu especially for my kid. When my kid was 6 months old, my neighbour had prepared this sathu maavu for my kid and she insisted me to feed my kid with health mix porridge atleast twice in a week. I would prepare this in bulk and will store always. I planned to update the procedure to prepare sathu maavu a little later.Nowadays my kid was bored up with the same kind of porridge and he likes kinda of breads, biscuits and cakes etc. Nutella is the other thing which he likes the most. So I just tried this health mix combined with nutella and prepared this mini cup cakes and he likes it a lot.Here is the simple recipe.

Ingredients

• Health mix - 1 cup
• Nutella Hazelnut chocolate spread - 3 tbsp
• Curd - 1 tbsp
• Milk - 1 tbsp
• Butter or canola oil - 2 tbsp
• Baking powder - 1 tsp

Cooking steps

• Mix milk with nutella, curd and butter/oil well. In a wide pan, add heath mix powder and baking powder. 

• Slowly add nutella mixture to the health mix powder and mix well using hand whisk and bring to the cake mixture consistency.

• Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
• Fill in the mini cups with cake mixture and place it in the middle rack of oven and bake it for 25- 30 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted to the cake comes out clean.

• Keep the cakes outside and let it cool down for 10 mins.

• Healthy mini cup cakes are ready to be served now.

My 2 cents

• You can add half cup of maida and half cup of health mix too.
• Fill only half of the cup with the cake mixture. Otherwise the cakes will not raise.
• You can add few nuts also. I didnt use any nuts since the nutella tastes with hazelnut.
• You can replace nutella with choco powder and sugar also.
• I didnt add any flavour to it since I added cardamom while preparing the sathu maavu . You can add vanilla essence or any flavour also.

Set Parotta

Virudhunagar is a well known town in tamilnadu where our former chief minister Karmaveerar Kamarajar was born. Virudhunagar is also famous for its parotta. A lots of variety in making parottas in the cooking world. But their oil parotta is the hit over the town and set parotta is the one which everyone loves to have in the town. Whenever i go to my native town, i would love to have it. Few months back, we went to dindigul velu biriyani hotel in pallavaram,by that time I have seen this available in the menu and make and done a quick order of that and completed my dinner that day. Here is the easy recipe for this.

Ingredients

• Parotta - 3
• Mutton or chicken curry - 1 cup(curry should be little watery consistency)

Making steps

1. Crush the parotta and make very small pieces on it.
2. Add the curry and mix well.
3. Let the parotta soak for 15 mins in the curry and serve hot.

Chenna kunni/Sennang kunni karuvadu curry or Dried baby shrimps curry

Dried fish curry is one of my favourite dish that i can have with rice at anytime. My mom makes the best version of any dried fish curry. I m just getting trained on it. I would often try this sennang kunni in my home on sundays and my hubby loves my version very much. This will go well with even curd rice.

Ingredients

• Sennang kunni  - 1/2 cup
• Onion(shallots) - 8 to 10
• Tomato - 1 (medium)
• Green chilli - 1
• Drumstick - 1 (small)
• Brinjal - 2 (small)
• Tamarind - 1/2 of lemon size.
• Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
• Chilli powder - 1 tsp
• Cumin/jeera powder - 1/2 tsp
• Coriander powder - 1 tsp
• Oil - to temper (Gingelly oil preferred)
• Mustard seeds - to temper
• Curry leaves - few
• Coriander leaves - few

Cooking steps

• Soak sennang kunni in hot water for 15 mins to remove the stains and mud on it. Wash it well for 3 times and dry it and keep aside.
• Soak tamarind in water and extract a cup of tamarind juice.
• Cut onion, tomato, chilli, drumsticks and brinjal.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In a pan, pour a tsp of oil and shallow fry drumsticks and brinjal seperately (This step is optional only. I did it because the shallow fried vegetables will have a nice aroma on the curry).
  
• In the same pan, add a tsp of oil and temper with mustard seeds and curry leaves.
• Add onions and stir & cook till the onion becomes transparent. Then add tomato and cook till its mushy.
• Now add drumsticks and cook till its half done. Then add brinjal and cook till brinjal is half done.(brinjal will cooks faster in 2 minutes).
• Add the tamarind juice and then add chilli powder,turmeric powder, coriander powder and cumin powder.
  
• Mix the spices well with the cooked curry. The add sennang kunni to this and cook till the curry becomes thick.
  
• Garnish with coriander leaves and serve with rice. 
  

My 2 cents

• You can use the fresh sennang kunni fish also. But the dried verion adds more taste.
• You can even powder this sennang kunni. That tastes too good.
• Adding vegetables are purely optional.