Moong dal-Cabbage kootu - simple, elegant and delicious

I first ate this yummy cabbage kootu in a Tyagaraja Aradhana festival here in the US. If you are not familiar with classical South Indian music a.k.a Carnatic music, this is an annual celebration in honor of the great Saint Sri Tyagaraja who is one of the trinities of Carnatic music. Growing up, this genre of music surrounded us all the time especially in Mysore which hosts multiple musical events year round. If your music teacher had a lot of students, then a tiny aradhana celebration would sprout just within that community. As any typical Indian get together, these are marked by food at the end.

Cleveland hosts one of the biggest (outside India) Tyagaraja Aradhana every year around Spring. 2013 is their 36th celebration of this festival. Over the years it has grown in size, duration, artists it presents and the number of participants it attracts from all over. This festival is organized during the Spring break so the Cleveland university auditoriums and halls are available for the performances while students are out on vacation. If you are interested in Carnatic music and live anywhere closer to Cleveland, make a trip and your will have once a kind of experience. The entire city comes alive with buzzling artists, students, teachers and the entire 12 days is packed with music and dance.

We have gone to this festival every Spring for the past few years. DD is a music student and we all love to catch a few concerts atleast during the season. While the music and dance fills you up at one level, being mere mortals, the stomach still needs its fuel especially after all the unaccustomed exercise the body gets by running around from one venue to the other in the still nippy early spring. Since the schools are out, the eateries around the place wear a deserted look or close down completely for Easter so you hardly get food to eat outside, it is harder if you are a vegetarian :-). Among the couple of Indian joints, there is a Udipi restaurant but it is so crowded with people participating in the festivals that you should be prepared to wait for hours before being served. So after our first year experience, we started packing food from home and supplemented with an excellent Jimmy John's sandwich from the joint on the main street. But the second year, we also found out that the Aradhana committee serves food (donations welcome and encouraged to sustain the practice), they do a great job of serving food for fixed duration and thus reaching maximum number of people. Food on the starting Saturday is more elaborate as there are many more people that day than others and then it dwindles down in size. Also, you have to keep track of the venue of where the food is served :-). Amid all this confusion and running around for DD's practices, one of the days we found ourselves right in the middle of  what seemed to be a food line. It was past lunch time, we were famished as the tiny breakfast had long been digested, so we stood there and waited for our turn. Volunteers brought in trays of hot food and we were served steaming white rice and this cabbage kootu. It was a meal from heaven.

The kootu is very simple yet elegant and delicious. It is a combination of moong dal and cabbage, upgraded with a flavorful masala bringing in heat from the chilies and flavor of cumin. It is a notched up basic dal but the beauty of it is that it has proteins(moong dal) and nutrients (cabbage) in addition to being really tasty. For me, kootu always had black pepper but I make an exception in this case and accept the name as was given to me :-). I carried that taste home and made it a couple of times, though it was close enough my instinct told me that I didn't get it 100% right. Then the year after we had one of the music teachers stay with us and I made this kootu for her one of the days. This wonderful lady from Chennai watched me fry the green chilies and take it to the blender said that I should roast a spoon of Urad dal and add it along. There you had it, the missing ingredient :-). The kootu was delicious and just like I remembered from the Aradhana lunch. Roasted Urad dal and par toasted cumin give this kootu the flavor that makes it special. I also learnt from her that this is a traditional dish made often in Tamilian homes. You can switch cabbage with chopped spinach and it tastes yummy too.

So here is an everyday easy kootu with a musical background :-)

What do you need to make Cabbage kottu? 
3/4 cup soaked moong dal
2 cups shredded cabbage (you can increase this upto 3 cups as cabbage reduces on cooking)
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
a few curry leaves for flavor and garnish

To roast and grind:

2 Tblsp urad dal
3-4 green chilies (adjust to spice tolerance)
2 Tblsp grated coconut
3/4 Tsp cumin

How do you make Cabbage kootu? 

• Roast urad dal and green chilies until the dal turns pink and green chilies develop white spots on their skin. 
• Add cumin seeds, switch off and keep aside to cool. 
• When cool enough, grind into a smooth paste with coconut and 2 Tblsp water
• Wash and soak moong dal for 20 minutes.
• Bring moong dal to boil with 2 cups of water on medium heat. 

• Once the dal starts to boil, add shredded cabbage and curry leaves, cover partially and cook until the dal and cabbage are both soft. 
• Add the ground masala paste, salt, adjust consistency with water. 

• Let the kootu boil for 2-3 minutes. 
• Switch off and let the flavors get absorbed for 30 minutes or so before serving the warm kootu with rice and a drop of home made ghee. 

• This makes a very yummy side dish for rotis also. 

Notes: 

• Soaking moong dal before cooking helps reduce the cooking time but you can directly put it with water on heat if you haven't pre-planned. 
• I prefer to cook moong dal in an open vessel as I do not like the mushed up, pasty dal from pressure cooker. Choose pressure cooker if you want. 
• Do not roast cumin along with urad dal or green chilies, it makes them turn bitter. The heat from the pan is sufficient to bring out the roasted cumin flavor. 
• You can use half and half quantities of green and dry red chilies for a slightly different taste. 
  
  
  
  This protein rich, Moong dal kootu is off to the 61st edition of My Legume Love Affair hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen. This event started by Susan, The Well Seasoned cook currently maintained at Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen

Moong dal Dhokla - discovering non greasy snacks with a cuppa

I don't want to sound like a person who has waged a war against use of oil in cooking, because I am not. I do understand the need to consume oil so the body functions normally. I just like to cook being conscious of what goes into my food, that is all. Deep fried food is my personal weakness and I try to avoid making them very frequently. There was a time when I oil fried snacks on a regular basis, ate them and fed family and friends. I am surprised and glad that I have discovered other equally tempting, less harmful snacks to munch on. well, I will get off my soap box before you get bored/scared and go away from my blog :-)

The other day I was watching something on you-tube and you know how you get carried away sometimes following one link after another, I landed up with some Indian show that had this guy visiting different places in Gujarat and exploring local food. One Ahmadabad eatery showcased 50+ varieties of dhoklas. Traditional dhoklas deep fried, sauced up like the Manchurians, dipped in various sweet and savory sauces :-) and so on. It reminded me of Ganesh Darshan in Jayanagar famously known as Dosa corner with his umpteen varieties of dosas.

When I wrote my Dhokla post previously, I mentioned about a friend who actually soaked, ground dal and made the most moist, fluffy dhoklas. The instant, gram flour dhokla is very tasty and popular among my family and friends but I always wanted to try the real deal once. My inlaws have a psychological block about certain ingredients in the kitchen and besan is one of them, they fear that besan is not good for their system. I feel bad when they don't enjoy besan based dishes but it is deep rooted and I totally respect their opinion. Amma only makes moong dal pakoda or urad dal peruggarelu etc but not the regular besan dipped pakoda, bajji or bonda. So when I set out to do the dal soaked dhokla, I decided to try my hands with moong dal, this infact is a traditional Gujarati Dhokla recipe. I took some help from the great Gujju chef a.k.a Tarla Dalal and made it spicier to suit my taste.

These moong dal dhoklas turned out to be perfectly moist and fluffy just like the other one and since moong dal soaks quickly, there is not much wait time either. So this gets added to my list of 'frequently made snacks' especially for the Summer when in laws are going to be visiting :-).

What do you need to make moong dal dhokla?
Makes about 25 1X1X1 inch piece 
1 cup moong dal/hesaru bele
3-4 green chilies (adjust to taste)
1 inch piece of fresh ginger
1/2 Tsp sugar
1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup oil
1 Tblsp besan/gram flour
1/2 Tsp eno fruit salt
1/8 Tsp asafoetida
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)

Seasoning & garnish
1 Tsp oil
1 Tsp mustard seeds
3/4 Tsp white sesame seeds
1 Tsp grated coconut (optional)
1 green chili chopped fine (optional)
1 Tsp finely chopped cilantro
1 Tblsp lemon juice

How do you make moong dal dhokla? 

• Wash and soak moong dal in 3 cups of water for about 2 hours or until the dal plumps up completely.
• Wash and drain the moong dal. 
• Grind moong dal, green chilies, ginger into a smooth paste, add a Tblsp or so water if needed. Wet moong dal usually grinds easily without needing any additional water. 
• Take the ground dal into a bowl, add whisked yogurt, oil, salt and gram flour and mix lightly to incorporate. Consistency of the batter is similar to idli batter (dropping but not flowing)
• Add the eno fruit salt and immediately pour into a pressure cooker vessel or any deep plate that fits into the pressure cooker. 

• Cook without weight for 15 minutes on medium heat once steam starts coming out. 
• Let the steam subside, open the pressure cooker and keep the dhokla vessel/plate outside to cool. 
• Heat oil in a seasoning pan, add mustard seeds, give it 15 seconds head start, add sesame seeds and green chili pieces (if using) and let them crackle. 

• Switch off, add the lemon juice, spoon the seasoning all over the dhokla. 

• Garnish with grated coconut and cilantro. Cut into pieces and enjoy. 

Notes: 

See notes from here 

Yard long beans palya with moongdal - a simple homely side dish

Is there such a thing as blogger's block? How does one overcome it? I am trying to write my post for the last 2 days and it is not going anywhere. I have pictures in my draft but not happy with the way my words come together. I like to write about a recipe, the story behind it, who made it and why it is dear to me before I post it and I am struggling to put words to my expressions. Not sure if it is because I am exhausted  by the time I sit down to write or I am just bringing work home and not able to focus on the blog post, I sure hope this is a temporary thing...

So I will hold on to some of my special recipes until I can make a come back and will write about a very simple everyday palya - most common fare in any Kannadiga household. There are equivalents in all other Indian regional cuisine I am sure. Though common and simple, there are umpteen varieties of palyas, some are stir fried, some sauteed and some pressure cooked. Some of them are just put together with a simple seasoning or vaggarane while some are made with palyada pudi or spice powder. Palya is typically a dryer curry eaten as an accompaniment to either rice or roti  while the main entree is a saaru (rasam) or Huli (sambar). Nammamma puts a garnish of grated coconut in almost every palya and makes it delectable :-).

Palya made with a combination of moong dal & vegetable is one of my favorites as it combines proteins and vitamins into one dish. Yard long beans are tender beans that are used before the seeds plump up. These beans have tougher skill than the regular green beans and take a tad bit longer to cook. Tender yard long beans chopped up, cooked with moong dal and seasoned with coconut and a dash of lime will set you up for a fulfilling and healthy meal.

What do you need to make yard long beans palya? 
12-15 tender yard long beans (alasande kaayi)
1 cup moong dal/hesaru bele
1 Tblsp grated coconut
2 Tbslp finely chopped onion (optional)
1 Tsp lemon juice
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
For seasoning:
1 Tblsp oil
1 Tsp mustard
1 Tsp urad dal/uddina bele
1 Tsp chana dal/kadle bele
4-5 curry leaves
2 dry red chilies
1/4 Tsp asafortida

How do you make yard long beans palya? 

• Wash the moong dal and bring it to boil with 1 cup of water and salt.
• Wash, cut the ends of the yard long beans and chop them into small pieces.
• Add the chopped beans to the moong dal, reduce heat to low-medium and let cook and until moong dal is soft but holds shape. Will take about 8-10 minutes. 

• Heat oil in a pan, add the seasoning ingredients and let cook until mustard pops and the dals turn light pink. 
• Add the chopped onions (if using) and fry until it turns pink.
• Add the seasoning to the cooked moong dal & beans along with grated coconut and lemon juice. Mix well. 

• Serve warm with rice or roti, we had ours with the makki roti last week. 

Notes:

• You need to control the amount of water in the palya as it should stay dry. Start with 3/4 cup of water and add small quantities to help cook the moong dal. 
• Do not over cook moong dal as the texture and taste differs vastly when overdone. 
• Onions are optional and I make this palya with and without them, both taste good. 
• I usually use equal volumes of moong dal and chopped beans, you can increase or decrease to suit your preference. 

Poli Purnam Boorelu - Varalaxmi Vratam sweet

Hope everyone had a good weekend, we had a good one starting with the Varalaksmi festival on Friday. There has been some planning going into the pooja preparation and menu finalization for the past week or so, now that my in-laws are here with us, we have 2 additional brains for menu ideas :-). Amma said we had to make 9 varieties for the naivedya/naivedyam (offering to God after the pooje), so I kind of tried to pick atleast one each of everyone's favorite in addition to the traditional must-haves and we actually ended up with a wonderful spread of dishes and all of us including some friends who came in the evening enjoyed the food.

Food is such an integral part of any festival, right? I notice it is true without any barrier of region or religion. I guess, for me that is where my earliest food related memories are, any festival or get together at home, nammamma would be up early and in the kitchen preparing variety of dishes, there were days on which we kids were strictly forbidden from entering the kitchen and my uncle would be in charge of driving any stray kids away from the place, I even remember him writing 'No Entry' on the kitchen door to drive home the point :-). Some of the festivals, nammamma would prepare things ahead of time (Sankranthi ellu being one of them) but most times, she would cook the naivedya dishes only on the day of the festival after bathing. We prepared all of the naivedya dishes on Friday morning too and so the pooje started a little late and took us right into lunch time which was perfect. We were famished, food was good and we had a great time.

Here is a quick look at our naivedyam thali(s), I will try to get all of them into the blog as soon as I can. Though I took the pictures for every dish, I don't have enough of them especially for a stand alone blog post, so some of them will be featured only when I make it next time :-).

But today's post is dedicated to a traditional Andhra delicacy - poli purnam boorelu. The name is a mouthful, so let me break that out for the uninitiated. Poli~steamed, purnam~sweet stuffing. This is a sweet prepared in weddings and other auspicious occasions, the process is slightly laborious but the end result will simply mesmerize you with taste. Ingredients are simple, used every day in the kitchen. There is another very popular form of boorelu with the chana dal stuffing (my personal favorite only because I like jaggery based sweets more than those made with white sugar) which is simply called purnam boorelu but the poli purnam boorelu is equally delicious. 

The stuffing is made with moong dal, sugar and lot of cardamom(yes, use lots and freshly pounded for flavoring), the outer shell is made with a dosa like batter made with urad dal and rice. Stuffing is dunked in the batter and deep fried to a golden brown, crispy perfection. I am told that this is traditionally eaten by making a hole in the middle of a hot, crispy boorelu and adding a spoonful of ghee before popping it into the mouth. Although, we didn't go to that extreme indulgence, we completely enjoyed the sweet, cardamom flavored, protein packed boorelu.

What do you need to make Poli Purnam Boorelu? 
The proportions below make about 18-20 golf ball sized boorelu. 
Ingredients for stuffing:
1 cup moong dal/pesara pappu
3/4 cup sugar (adjust to taste if you like sweeter)
4-5 cardamom - peeled and seeds freshly pounded
Ingredients for covering: 
1/2 cup urad dal/uddi pappu/minapappu
1 cup rice
Other ingredients: 
Oil to deep fry

How do you make Poli Purnam Boorelu? 
Making the stuffing: 

• Soak moong dal in 3 times water for 2 hours.
• Wash and drain the moong dal, grind it with as little as possible water to a paste. 

• Put spoonfuls of the ground paste into idli moulds and steam it for 15 minutes until the dal is cooked. 

• Once the steamed cakes cool down, break them into pieces and run it through your mixer on pulse mode to further break them, add the sugar and blend it once with the dal. 

• This mixture will be slightly wet because of the added sugar, add the freshly pounded cardamom and working with your hands, knead the entire mixture for a couple of minutes until the consistency is good to make balls out of it.
• Make golf sized balls with this mixture and keep aside.

Making the covering:

• Soak the urad dal and rice together in water for 3 hours until they soften.
• Wash, drain the dal-rice mixture and grind it in the mixer into a batter. Add water while grinding but make sure you get a dosa consistency batter at the end. 
• This batter doesn't have to ferment and does not have to be overly smooth. Keep aside.

Boorelu assembly:

• Heat the oil for deep frying preferably in a wide pan. Check the readiness by dropping a small droplet of the batter in the oil, if it comes right up to the surface, oil is ready. 
• Take the prepared stuffing ball, dunk it in the batter, shake it to remove any extra batter and drop it carefully in the hot oil. Repeat for the remaining stuffing to just fill your frying pan.

• Leave the boorelu to cook untouched for a couple of minutes before slowly turning them over to cook on the other side. 

• When the boorelu reach a golden brown crust on all sides, take them out of the oil onto a paper napkin. 

Notes: 

• Do not soak moong dal for more than a couple of hours as it tends to become oily when fried. 
• Breaking the steamed moong dal idlis into fine powder along with sugar takes some hard work with your hands, make use of the mixer to pulse it down as much as possible before manually kneading it to make balls.
• The batter covering should be flowy but not watery, it should coat the stuffing well at the same time not becoming very thick, adjust the consistency as needed. 
• Use fresh pounded cardamom for best flavor burst.
• You can make dosas with any extra batter, i added a spoonful of fine sooji, salt and the dosas were delicious. 

Moolangi(radish) tovve - A dal recipe so comforting you will forget it has radish

Do any of you have experience carrying a (cooked) radish dish in lunch box to school/college/work? I did that once, had made mulangi(radish) huli at home and took it to work with rice. Honestly, I was amazed that until then I had not realized that a lunch box could stink, am glad I opened the lunch box when no one was around and immediately closed it. Came back home famished, heated up the dabba food and ate it licking my fingers :-). Nammamma though never carried any lunch boxes knew something about unleashing a radish dish from a closed vessel, how else do you explain the strange coincidence in all the years she made my lunch box, never once it had the radish huli or gojju.. Moms are really smart.

But, I do like radishes, I eat them both raw and cooked. Nammamma's typical moolangi dishes would be huli (Yumm, I have to blog about it soon), gojju and the huli tovve and I like all three of them. I had not seen red radishes until I traveled across the seven seas (well, just pacific ocean) and fell in love with those cute little bulbs in the farmer markets. They are not as spicy/pungent as the regular radishes and work extremely well in salads. I trim the ends and use them in huli/sambar for a fragrant side dish :-).

Tovve is a quintessential kannada dish you will find on the typical festival or wedding menu, though radish doesn't fare as a favorite on certain days, it does make a wonderful tovve that goes well with both rice and rotis. I like white radish for this recipe because for me tovve is as much about the yellow green color as it is the taste, feel free to use red radishes as substitutes and try this simple recipe for a delicious meal.

What do you need to make radish tovve? 
1 cup moong dal/hesaru bele
1 medium sized white radish - washed, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
1.5 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
2 green chilies - slit length wise
handful of fresh cilantro
1/2 Tsp turmeric
2 lemons/lime - juice extracted
3 cups of water

For vaggarane/seasoning:
1 Tsp cooking oil
1 Tsp mustard seeds/saasive
1 Tsp cumin/jeerige
1/2 Tsp asafoetida powder
3-4 curry leaves

How do you make radish tovve? 

• Wash the moong dal in 2 changes of water and bring it to boil in a vessel.
• Add the radish pieces and green chilies when the moong dal starts to boil and cook them for about 10 minutes on medium heat. 
• About 5 minutes after adding the radish pieces, add finely chopped cilantro and let it boil with the dal & vegetables. 
• When the dal & radish turn soft to touch but hold their shape well, add salt and turmeric, switch off the stove.
• Prepare seasoning - heat oil in a small pan, add asafoetida, mustard and cumin, wait for the mustard to pop and switch off the stove. 
• Add curry leaves into the hot seasoning and pour all of it into the tovve. 
• Add the lemon/lime juice and mix well.
• Serve hot or warm tovve with rice or rotis, we had ours with chapatis. 

Tips: 

• Be generous with lemon/lime juice in the tovve recipe.
• Adjust tovve consistency to be thick. 
• Make sure you do not cook the dal too long, it just has to be soft, you want to taste and feel the soft dal with every bite. 

Hesaru Bele Payasa (Moong dal kheer) for Maha Shivaratri

When we were kids, Shivaratri was a festival we looked forward to especially to the night long fun with friends in the name of Jagarane. One of my elementary school friends lived in a street that used to get very active during Shivaratri. Hearing her brag about it every time, I had convinced my parents to let me go there once. Lot of kids of different ages congregated in the evening and after dutifully saying some prayers, we all  split into different age groups and played games. The night started with very active games but as everyone became tired and sleepy, it mellowed down. There was a collective snack area with cucumber slices, puri/puffed rice, sweets, savories etc from different houses available to all of us. We ate, played and slept by 1 or 2am returning home after sun rise.

As kids, we were not keen on the Upavasa or fasting part of Shivaratri, at home nammamma kept fast the whole day breaking it by eating only a sample of prasada in the night after pooja.

Shivaratri is celebrated when India is already into Summer and as befits the Lord, the offerings are very simple unlike most other Indian festivals where food takes the center stage. Typical fare on Shivaratri day would consist of gojjavalakki (tamarind poha), payasa (kheer), kosambari (salad) and tambittu (sweet made with rice powder, jaggery). I made only hesaru bele (moong dal) payasa and kosambari (salad with cucumber) for the naivedya (offering to God) today.

Moong dal is known for its cooling effect on the body, boiled to tender in milk and mixed with jaggery, it is one of the easy to make and delicious sweets and happens to be my daughter's favorite. Kosambari is a very popular salad and can be made in many different variations. The kannadiga kosambaris usually have raw soaked lentils (either moong dal or chana dal) with either finely chopped cucumbers or grated carrots along with fresh grated coconuts and a seasoning to bring out the flavors.

What do you need to make Hesaru Bele Payasa? 
1 cup hesaru bele/moong dal
3 cups milk (I used whole milk)
1/2 cup water
1.5 cups of grated jaggery or brown sugar
1 small piece of cinnamon
1 Tsp cardamom powder

Seasoning: 
1 Tsp ghee/clarified butter
1 Tblsp raisins
1 Tblsp broken cashew nuts

How do you make Hesaru bele payasa? 

• Wash the dal in running water, bring it to boil in 1/2 cup water and 1 cup milk on medium heat.
• Boil the dal  along with the cinnamon piece until it is tender and just starts to open up.
• Add the remaining milk and jaggery, let the mixture boil for about 15-20 minutes until the milk thickens and a uniform consistency is formed.
• Add the cardamom powder and switch off. 

• Prepare seasoning - heat the ghee, add raisins and cashew pieces and fry till raisins plump up and cashew turns light brown. 
• Mix the seasoning in to the payasa, it should of pouring consistency.
• Serve hot or cold, it tastes great both ways. 

We had ours with the cucumber kosambari after the naivedya this evening. 

Here is a beautiful description of Shivaratri by Swamy Chinmayananda:  
“Have you observed nature? She specializes in destroying, but her destructions are always constructive destructions; the bud is destroyed when the flower blooms, the flower fades when the fruit emerges, the fruit decays when the seeds are scattered and the seeds decay when the plants sprout! The process of constructive destruction IS ‘SIVA’. Thus Sivarathri means the EGO is destroyed in the discovery of the Divine!


Sattvaa wishes every one a very Happy Maha Shivaratri