Punjabi Chole - vibrant colors, bold flavors, everything that reminds you of Punjab

Hope everyone had a great weekend and getting ready to the week day routine. Weather Gods seem to have developed an unusual love for Seattle folks and it has been warm, sunny, bright this entire weekend while the neighboring ever sunny California is flooded with rains, hails and storms. I am not sure if this is a good sign of things to come but the optimist in me tells me to be grateful in the present. Beautiful Pacific Northwest is waking up from hibernation to show its colors. We went to visit some blooming daffodils yesterday, miles & miles of happy, sunny, yellow colored blooms had lit up the valley and it was gorgeous. Had a great couple of hours walking around in the open air, sitting down next to rows of daffodils and ofcourse taking pictures. The early spring is doing its magic and flowers are blooming earlier than usual.

All those rows of yellow flowers brought me memories of my all time favorite 'Dilwale Duhaniya Le Jayenge' :-) and I had to cook something from my Punjabi menu to feel totally satisfied. So it was all about a Punjabi brunch in our South Indian kitchen today.

Garbanzo beans are hearty, healthy and very satisfying whether you put them in a curry or a salad or a hummus. There is something very earthy about these beans that brings instant gratification and cheer. We have a couple of Punjabi joints in our area which we frequent and one thing that stands out is how creatively they use this bean in different dishes. From curries like saag-chole (greens cooked with garbanzo) to chats like Ragda patties, these beans take on a very key role. While I love them, I prefer my dry green peas in chats, they seem lighter than garbanzo beans.

I come from a state longitudinally opposite to Punjab and have been there only a couple of times as a visitor. So all my knowledge about Punjabi food is acquired. When a recipe is not something I have grown up with, I use my deductive tasting abilities to try and break down as many recipes as I can get my hands on and decide which one I like. Some of the recipes call for cooking garbanzo beans with tea bags to get that authentic color while some swear by making a potli (small bag made of muslin cloth) of spices and immersing it in beans as they cook to infuse flavor. Some recipes claim to be authentic pindi chole while some claim they are the best combos for Bhatura (deep fried, leavened bread made using flour & yeast). For a South Indian like me, this is all confusing and when it gets too much, I just stay away from the propaganda and let my own brain & heart (and ofcourse tongue) tell me what to do :-).

But the quest to get an authentic recipe never leaves my side. Authentic is defined as 'homely' in my dictionary and I pester folks to part with recipes from their private kitchen. I had seen this recipe on one of the foodie groups I happen to be a member of, while I make chole at home with my own spices and also using store bought powder, what drew me to this recipe was the title of the post which said, "mom's jagat famous chana masala". Like most of you, I am a sucker for something that comes from a mom's kitchen. So I had book marked this recipe for trying out and did that a couple months back. The flavor of the spice powder turned out far superior to any store bought masala I had used and it dished out a very authentic looking and authentic tasting chole when I cooked with it. I am completely hooked to this home made powder now and have already made it twice.

The first time I made the spice powder, I had a very fine anardana (pomegranate) powder in my pantry which kind of semi dissolved on heating and further liquified in my blender jar. The spice powder though lumpy (and totally un-photogenic) was extremely tasty :-). I had followed the proportions in the original recipe and had enough masala for 4 uses. When it got over recently, I went to the store to buy a better quality anadana powder (coarser) which stood strong to the heat. All is well and I have not only a good looking spice powder but totally delicious which makes taking pictures a pleasurable activity :-).

I will show you how to make a much simpler, tangy, tomatoey chole another day which has lot more gravy and is perfect with pooris or rice. I roast spices fresh and grind it along with onions & tomatoes in that recipe. But today, it is all about Punjabi chole from a Punjabi mom, so enjoy this succulent, spicy chole with your favorite roti or naan.

What do you need to make chole masala? 
Recipe source: http://www.foodfellas4you.com/chana-masala/
1/2 cup dhania seeds
8-10 dry red chilies
2 Tsp cloves
5 bay leaves (medium sized)
10 black cardamom (Badi elaichi)
10 pieces of 1 inch cinnamon
5 green cardamom
1/4 cup cumin seeds
1 Tbsp black pepper corns
1 cup anardana (pomogranate) powder
1/2 cup kasoori methi (dry fenugreek leaves)

How do you make chole masala? 

• Heat a heavy bottom pan on medium heat and add the first 9 ingredients listed above. 
• Roast until fragrant (takes about 5-7 minutes) stirring frequently for even distribution of heat. 
• Once a heavy aroma of the spices fill the air, add anardana powder & kasoori methi, mix well and roast for 1 minute. 
• Switch off and let the spices cool down in the pan. 
• Once completely cool, grind to a fine powder, store in air tight jar until ready to use. 

What do you need to make chole? 

2 cups dry garbanzo beans or 2 can cooked garbanzo beans
1 Tsp kala namak or black salt
1 Tbsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 inch piece ginger - julienned
1 medium sized ripe tomato - chopped into chunks
2 Tbsp chole masala (adjust according to your spice tolerance)

1 Tbsp oil

pinch of asafoetida

pinch of turmeric powder

1/2 Tsp cumin
1/2 Tsp sugar 

1 Tbsp fresh cilantro - finely chopped

How do you make chole? 

• If using dry beans, soak them in plenty of water overnight. 
• Next morning, wash the soaked chole, cook it in pressure cooker along with 3 cups water, black salt and 1 tsp salt until soft. 

• If using canned garbanzo, rinse them thoroughly under running water until the preservatives and the liquid runs off. 
• Put the cleaned garbanzo in a bowl, add 1 Tsp salt and 1 tsp black salt, mix well and let it stand until you are ready to use (atleast 15 minutes marination is recommended)
• Heat oil in a heavy bottom pan (kadai), add asafoetida, turmeric powder and cumin seeds
• Once cumin starts to sizzle, add finely chopped onion and 1/2 Tsp salt. 
• Cook until onion turns translucent. 
• Add the tomato chunks and cook until it becomes a mush. 

• Add the chole masala and mix well. 

• Add the cooked garbanzo along with the water it is cooked in (if using canned, add a cup of water), mix everything together. 
• Taste test, add more masala powder or salt to taste and adjust the consistency to your liking with water. 
• Add chopped cilantro on top, sugar, cover and let it cook on low heat for atleast 30-40 minutes for the flavors to develop. If you have a slow cooker, take it out and use, you can dump the prepared chole in to it, switch it on low and let it come to a slow boil. 

• Open cooking works too if you are using a heavy bottom pan and stir it once every 15 minutes or so. 
• Serve hot chole with a wedge of lemon, sliced onions and oil roasted green chilies as a side dish to naan, roti or Batura. Perfect meal and a sure ticket to siesta :-)

Notes: 

• I use anardana powder as I don't easily get the dry seeds here. Buy the coarse variety since the fine powder becomes sticky on heat and spoils the powder (lesson learnt by mishap :-))
• Adding a bit of sugar brings a soft touch to the spices and enhances the taste, skip it if you like the spice flavors as they are. 
• I don't personally like the bay leaves flavor to overpower so have mentioned medium sized leaves, original recipe specifies big sized leaves
• The amount of ingredients makes about a cup & half of masala powder, store it in airtight container and use as needed. 

• You can make this chole with gravy or almost dry depending on your preference - adjust water
• If you make the drier version of chole, turn it into a yummy snack/chat by serving with a few roasted potatoes, chopped onions, tomatoes, topped with sev :-)

Saaru pudi(Rasam powder) & (Mysore) Saaru - a sought after recipe for a home made Rasam powder

Hope everyone started their New Year on a great note. My wishes to all of you. I am going to start this year's blogging with a recipe so common, so popular that it needs no introduction to anyone with even a tiny bit of exposure to Indian cuisine. It is special because it comes from my favoritest most favorite (before my grammar addict DD catches me on this) kitchen in the entire world. This is what I grew up on literally.

Before I start talking about anything else today, I want to unload something with you guys. It is a pet peeve of mine to see something called 'Mysore Rasam' because as far as I know, there is no such thing as Mysore Rasam. I was born and raised in Mysore and spent the first 20 years of my life in this beautiful city but have never heard another Mysorean say, "I made Mysore Rasam for lunch today" :-) simply because it doesn't exist. I think it was the MTR quick mixes of the world that coined the name to distinguish it from the neighboring Madras Rasam(is there a Madras Rasam BTW, any Chennaites?) and the name some how stuck. For one, we don't call it Rasam in Mysore, it is a 'saaru' and saaru tastes different from kitchen to kitchen within the boundary of Mysore depending on the individual tastes and preferences of each family, so generalizing something as Mysore Rasam is a gross understatement. Since the rest of the world has gotten used to this misnomer, I will indulge everyone with it albeit unwillingly. But for a hard core Mysorean, it will always remain 'Saaru'. Whew, now that I took it off my chest, I am back to my happy self and we can continue our talk in a much lighter vein for the rest of the post.

Since I started this blog 2 years back, I have had many requests for home made powders, while I do post them from time to time, there are some I still haven't brought to the blog. Saaru pudi is such a quintessential condiment in a South Indian home that each of us learn it by watching moms and grandmoms in the kitchen. Saaru fares regularly in our menu and I used to stock my pantry with MTR Mysore Rasam powder for a long time whenever my imported pudi from Nammamma's kitchen got over. Though I knew the ingredients that went in to making the pudi, I had never attempted it on my own until recently. One day when I was picking through my recipe books including the hand written one I have, a piece of paper fell down that had saarina pudi recipe. It is from some 6 years back when nammamma was here visiting us. Having hit the jackpot, I went to the kitchen and made it that day and then a week later and again 2 weeks later. This here is nammamma's saaru pudi and I don't find the need to buy MTR anymore :-)

Since I said saaru tastes different in different kitchens, let me also state that nammamma made one of the best saarus I have ever had though she didn't ever think so and has never been a big fan of her own saaru, she prefers Huli (which is known as sambar in Indian culinary dictionary). Basic definition of saaru is a spiced liquid with or without lentils in which vegetables are most notably absent except for tomatoes and in some special cases onions. The saaru usually has a much thinner consistency compared to a Huli/sambar and is served as either an appetizer or as the second course to be mixed with rice in a meal or more famously to dunk deep fried vadas in. While I was writing this post and thinking about the different varieties of saaru made at home, it occurred to me that a picture might be more useful to show you what I had in mind instead of writing sentences. So I applied a little bit of my professional skills to draw the below, it is hand drawn so pardon the 'unstraight' straight lines. Hope you guys enjoy the neat picture and if you didn't know, you just read a basic flow chart :-)

Making saaru pudi is an art, while you may get the list of ingredients and the proportions from a recipe, the major trick is in roasting those ingredients. Under roasted or over roasted spices turn a possible master piece into a failure very quickly. In Nammamma's kitchen, pudi making days were actually marked on the calendar, she would make sure there were no other events happening on that day, ingredients were purchased and kept ready, kids were at school (you don't want them either sneezing on you the whole time or tugging you at arm for snacks, so they had to be out) and she would also plan the breakfast & lunch for the day ahead so she can get it out of the way and clear the kitchen area. Once the daily cooking was done, the kitchen would get a round of cleaning, the gas stove with 2 burners would come down to the floor and she would sit there roasting all the spices. All this was essential since she made big batches of the powders and usually made 3 or more different spice powders on the same day and in quantities big enough to sustain the family for atleast a month and half before the cycle repeated.

Once the spices are roasted, you take them to the flour mill in the neighborhood. These mills were small rooms, low ceilinged and housed 2 or 3 huge machines that ran continuously and generated so much heat that standing inside that room was no less than an adventure sport. Nammamma would send one of us kids as messengers the previous evening to let the mill owner know we had a batch of powders to be ground so he could plan ahead. What planning, you ask? Here is the deal - the machine has a wide feeder on top from where the roasted lentils/spices would be fed and the ground powder would come out through a much narrower pipe - it was actually a stump that was extended longer with a stitched cloth, imagine a leg of trousers. We would keep a container at the end of it to collect the powder. Pretty ingenuous, huh? But the problem with this is the powder invariably gets attached to the inside of the cloth and if you didn't want multiple flavors mixed up in your powder, you had to invert that trousery thingy and make sure all attached powder got detached/dusted off :-) and would sneeze and cough laboriously in the process. And then the blander powders (like Menthya hittu - recipe coming up sometime soon for this favorite powder of mine) had to be ground first before you would start on the spicier powders. After a strong flavored powder was done, the cloth tied to the output tube would be flipped reverse and any powder sticking to the inside would be dusted off completely before starting the machine again. On top of all this, the machine was controlled by request to produce fine powder (as in saaru pudi) and coarse powder (as in Chutney pudi).

The powders would get home by evening and the next day would be a sort of celebration trying out the various powders. I made small quantities and used my mixer to grind the powder.

What do you need to make Saaru pudi (Rasam Powder)?
1 cup coriander seeds/dhania
2 cups broken red chilies - preferably a mixture of Byadigi & Guntur, see notes below.
1 cup picked curry leaves
1/4 cup black pepper/menasu
1/4 cup fenugreek seeds/menthya
1/4 cup cumin/jeerige
1 Tblsp mustard/saasive
1/2 Tsp ghee
2 Tsp oil
1/2 Tsp asafetida - I like to use the non powder form (SSP brand has good asafetida), if not available, use the powder
1/2 Tsp turmeric powder or a small piece of dried turmeric root if you can get it

How do you make Saaru pudi?

• Heat the skillet on medium heat until warm, add fenugreek seeds. Roast them by continuously stirring until they turn light pink. Keep them aside in a wide plate.
• Add cumin to the pan and fry until light brown. Take care not to smoke cumin. Keep aside.
• Add mustard and stir them to roast until they pop, keep aside.
• Add ghee to the pan followed by black pepper and roast them until fragrant and start to pop. Do not smoke the black pepper. Some black peppers do not pop, so watch while roasting and take them aside as soon as they become fragrant.
• Add oil to the pan, add the broken pieces of chilies (get your exhaust fan going and open a couple of windows to help air circulation) and roast by stirring continuously until chilies turn crisp. Take care not to blacken them. Keep aside.
• Add the curry leaves to the pan and roast until they are crisp. Keep aside.
• Add coriander seeds and roast them until they heat up and become warm completely, add turmeric powder and asafetida just before taking the seeds out of the pan and stir them to get coated.
• Let the roasted spices cool completely before grinding them to a very fine powder.
• Store in air tight containers. This will stay fresh for atleast 3-4 weeks when kept outside. If you are making large quantities, put it in the refrigerator for longer storage.

Once you have made saaru pudi, next logical step is to make the saaru or Rasam. So I combined both in this post. The saaru I have here is just one of the ways of preparing it and is delicious. You can skip tomatoes completely, use tamarind instead for a different variation. If you have had a taste of this heavenly broth and want to recreate it at home, remember a good saaru starts with a good pudi, add a pinch of jaggery (Mysore touch) and a spoon of milk (to get that beautiful hue, nammamma's wisdom), you are all set to go :-).

What do you need to make Tomato Saaru?
1/3 cup toor dal
2 medium tomatoes
3-4 curry leaves
2 Tsp saaru pudi
small piece of tamarind (adjust this based on the sourness of your tomatoes)
3/4 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/8 Tsp turmeric
1/2 Tsp jaggery
2-3 twigs of cilantro
1 Tsp shredded coconut
1 Tblsp milk
Seasoning:
1/2 Tsp ghee
1/2 Tsp mustard
1/2 Tsp cumin
pinch of asafetida

How do you make Tomato Saaru?

• Wash, pick and cook toor dal along with the curry leaves and 1 whole tomato and another 1/2 of it in pressure cooker until soft.
• Chop the remaining 1/2 tomato into small pieces and keep it aside for later use.
• After the first whistle, I simmer the heat down completely and let it cook for 15 minutes. This works perfectly for me. Depending on your stove, lentils quality and the pressure cooker itself, you may need to adjust this time. Idea is to cook until soft.
• Let pressure subside, take out the cooked tomatoes onto a plate and whisk the dal to form a homogeneous puree.
• Once the tomatoes cool down, remove the skin, take it into a blender jar along with salt, saaru pudi, grated coconut, tamarind and grind it into a smooth paste.
• Bring the mashed lentils to a boil with turmeric, jaggery and the ground paste along with chopped tomatoes.
• Once it starts to form bubbles, add finely chopped cilantro (use the cleaned stalks along with the leaves), milk and let it boil on medium heat.
• Heat ghee in a small seasoning pan (preferably iron/cast iron), add mustard and cumin. Once the mustard pops, add hing and pour the seasoning into the saaru.
• Serve delicious saaru with steaming white rice and a drop of ghee or drink it up as an appetizer.

Notes:
Saaru Pudi wisdom:

• Really important to remember while making this powder is to get good quality ingredients especially asafetida and roast them with love and patience. Nammamma has a technique of combining different ingredients while roasting as she knows the combinations that need the same roasting time but I go for an easier technique (to remember that is) and roast each of them separately until done. Follow the order I have above to keep dry & oil roasting separate.
• Use a heavy gauge skillet or cast iron pan to roast the ingredients as it helps distribute heat evenly and adds flavor.
• Thumb rule for mixing red chilies - Guntur variety gives heat and Byadigi variety gives the color. Adjust according to your preference. Amma's recipe calls for 1 cup coriander seeds to 2 cups broken red chilies.  

Saaru wisdom:

• Add 2 drops of oil to the pressure cooker so lentils cook well.
• Saaru should boil but not spill over for best taste, adjust the heat.  
• This saaru is not too sour, if your tomatoes have sourness, skip the tamarind.
• Adding a little bit of tomato pieces to the saaru enhances its texture. Same with cilantro stalks. If you have had this saaru in any Karnataka wedding, you will see that they use cilantro along with stalks liberally, so go for it.

This is a really special recipe for me because all my guests & friends that have tasted this saaru always like it. If you try this at home, I would love to hear back from you whether you liked it or otherwise. Enjoy!!

Spicy peanut powder - call it a powder or an instant chutney

It is one of those really long, never ending week days when you haven't had a proper lunch either and have spent a good amount of after work time in chauffeuring the kid from one activity to the other. By the time you reach home, the entire family has reached the peak of crankiness and you find the refrigerator is devoid any re-heatable items. Didn't you & dear spouse have a discussion on the umpteen left overs only the previous week and decided not to cook too much at one go and fill the refrigerator? I am sure many of you will empathize with what I am talking about.

Is there a go-to dinner item you guys prefer when you are tired, it is a week day and your stomach is growling by the time you reach home? We love godhi dosa on these ocassions, it is easy to whip up, nutritious and always turns out delicious. But like I said in my godhi dosa post, we have this combo thing going and have to have peanut chutney whenever godhi dosa is made. If I put a bowl of peanut chutney on the table, an extra dosa goes inside for DD :-). Being a mom, I can't pass on that opportunity to over feed my kid.  But since it is one of those "I am late, tired and hungry" days, roasting peanuts, letting them cool, grinding them into a chutney all seem extremely tedious. That is when this powder comes to the rescue. I can turn the powder into a mouthwatering chutney in 2 minutes, in fact BH gets it ready while I mix the godhi dosa batter and start making dosas, we have done this so many times, it is almost like clock work now. The cranky family that entered the house a few minutes ago return to their usual happy and civilized state as soon the hot, lacy dosas dipped in tangy, spicy peanut chutney hits the stomach and things are all cozy once again :-). I love these life saving, instant mixes.

I am quite a nut when it comes to nuts in my cooking. Nuts are my go to snacks when craving hits (and I can actually stay away from the ever appealing jar of deep fried Indian snacks :-)). Nuts though are not great protein sources, are very high up there as energy boosters and hence come in handy when the clock strikes 4pm. An Indian vegetarian diet is inherently loaded with legumes and nuts. Take any North Indian gravy for example, they will invariably have some cashew nuts or almonds to bring in creamy richness. South Indian kitchens stock up on powders made with many a nut or lentils. So needless to say I grew up with a number of pudi or powders in our very South Indian household. But surprisingly was never introduced to peanut powder until after my wedding.

Then again, peanut powder is not an Andhra original either, amma apparently learnt it from a Maharastrian neighbor when they lived in Nigeria :-), I am convinced that good food travels the World and stands the test of time. I have blogged about peanut chutney here. Today it is the turn of peanut podi or powder and how you can make an instant chutney with this powder. Now this powder is one of my pantry staples since it is so versatile and I use it in multiple different ways. I will talk about its other uses on other posts.

What do you need to make peanut powder? 

Makes 2 cups peanut powder

2 cups raw peanuts

6-8 dry red chilies(adjust to taste)

1 Tsp cumin seeds

1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)

How do you make peanut powder? 

• Take a heavy bottom, wide pan and heat it on medium heat. 
• Add the raw peanuts to the pan and stirring occasionally  roast the peanuts until they start to pop and develop some black spots on the skin. 
• Peanuts will become crisp and lose their raw smell. take them off the stove and keep aside to cool. The roasting process takes about 10-12 minutes on medium heat. 
• In the same pan, add the dry red chilies and fry for a minute (open the windows and/or switch on the exhaust to allow air to circulate), add cumin and roast for 30-45 seconds, switch off and take them onto a plate. 
• At this stage, you can either choose to de-skin the roasted peanuts or grind them as they are. I make it both ways depending on the 'mood of the day'. 

• If you plan to remove the skin of the peanuts, once cool, put them in a ziplock bag, close it and give a couple of hard rubs on the outside so the skin peels. Put them on a flat plate and gently blow through them to separate the nuts and the husk. Preferably do it in the backyard where you can sweep off the husk easily:-). 

• Making the powder - Take the ingredients to the mixer along with salt and make a powder, remember this is not a fine powder, you need to run your mixer on pulse a couple of times and then run it full speed once mixing the ingredients in between. If you run the motor for long, peanuts become an oily mass and your only choice is to make a chutney of the whole thing and consume it quickly. The powder can be stored up to 2 weeks at room temperature or longer inside the refrigerator. You can mix this powder with rice and use it with idli/dosa as an accompaniment.

• Making instant chutney from the powder - Take 4 Tblsp of the peanut powder, add 2-3 Tblsp of whisked yogurt to get the right consistency of your choice. Make a seasoning with a pinch of asafoetida, 1/2 Tsp mustard, 1/4 Tsp cumin seeds, couple of curry leaves and 1 or 2 pieces of broken dry red chili. Pour the sizzling seasoning on top, mix it well and enjoy with dosa, idli and such. 

Notes: 

• It is important to roast the peanuts well, under done peanuts leave a really bad after taste while over done or burnt peanuts are no good either. 
• Peanuts can be roasted in the microwave but you will need to watch the times closely depending on your microwave power. 
• You can use a combination of red chilies to get the desired color and heat (thumb rule - Byadagi chilies are milder but give a radiant color, Guntur chilies are spicier but lack the color).
• If you are pressed for time, you can make a quick fix powder using the store bought, dry roasted, salted peanuts. I personally like to roast raw peanuts at home. 
• Many times, I do not remove the skin of the roasted peanuts but grind them as they are. This is much more convenient since I just add red chilies and cumin seeds to the same pan a minute or two before switching off the stove. 
• Like anything else with nuts, things tend to go rancid after a long storage, while 2 weeks is a decent period, I don't recommend storing the powder for too long since it will also lose the flavor.

I am sending this to Priya's Cooking with seeds - Peanuts event.

Curry leaves powder

If there is one Indian kitchen aroma I love any time of the day, then it has to be curry leaves. A few curry leaves instantly elevates your dish to another plain. Growing up in India, curry plants were a backyard feature in almost every household. I remember nammamma's efforts to get a curry plant going every time we moved to a new house, it was part of her settling in process. She would have friends give her a young sapling and turn into a devoted mother, nurturing it and taking care of it as if it was her baby. Every morning, her routine included breaking a fresh coconut :-), inspect the curry leaves to make sure there were no bugs eating the precious leaves away, taking her rounds around the Tulsi plant (holy basil) before she started cooking. I used to watch her talk to her plants in the garden. Infact as kids we were urged to practice our music lessons every day and one of the side effects noted was that the plants grew healthier listening to good music. So you want good curry leaves in your backyard, take up some music lessons, if your curry plants seem droopy after you started the music lessons, it is time to stop them and play some recorded music (not yours :-)). The extent of tricks parents resort to, to make the young ones listen :)

She would not pick the leaves until the plant grew sturdy and even then it would be the oldest of the leaves from the bottom of the branch. The plant would get strained tea leaves as fertilizer and once a week treatment of either very thin buttermilk or water used to wash and clean the rice as part of the scheme to enhance the flavor of the leaves. We used to call it beauty treatment for the curry plant. Though I have not dug into the science behind the buttermilk and rice water, I do believe completely that it helped the plant. I gave up my 5 footer to a friend when we moved from the midwest, it was my pride and joy in the corner of the kitchen. I only have a really small sapling now and the cycle has begun again.

Curry plants are not the easiest of the plants to grow even if you had a green thumb but once it gets going needs very minimal maintenance. Sometimes these plants (or trees) survive generations of human beings. Akka mentioned recently their 2 generation old curry leaves tree finally gave in, I still can close my eyes and smell those leaves. The tree was so huge and tall that we would go to the second floor balcony to pick the leaves. These trees are symbols of childhood, part and parcel of your growing up and you only realize how much attached you were to a plant when you lose it.

Curry leaves are the star of this show called curry leaves powder. Though this powder can replace the regular chutney pudi at a conceptual level, in my house the flavor of curry leaves is what is showcased in this powder. So you will notice that the normal chutney pudi ingredients are either absent or show up in minute quantities. Nammamma always makes this powder with black pepper corns as it brings out the curry leaves flavor better than the red chilies. Also this is one of the powders that the young nursing mothers are allowed to eat and black pepper is considered more suitable for their palate than the red chilies. I do not use dry coconut or asafoetida in this recipe for the above mentioned reasons.

Not to be mistaken - this is not the curry powder that has become popular in non-Indian cuisines trying to bring Indian flavors. I am really not sure what that curry powder is as the ingredients seem to change from one brand to the next but it is used in flavoring gravies/curries and I would rather put it in the league with Garam masala or Vangibhath powder and such. This curry leaves powder is mainly mixed and eaten with steaming hot rice though there is no rule you can't use it in curries :-)

The key to a good flavored powder is to roast the ingredients on medium heat and with frequent stirring. I find a cast iron pan distributing heat evenly and if you don't have one, use any heavy gauge pans. Cast iron pans retain heat for a long time, so if you are a first time user, be careful handling the pan and also watch for roasting times as you switch ingredients.

What do you need to make curry leaves powder? 
2.5 cups packed curry leaves (fresh & tender)
1 Tblsp chana dal/kadle bele
1/4 cup urad dal/uddina bele
1 dry red chili (optional)
1 Tblsp black pepper corns
1 tsp oil - goes a long way
small piece of tamarind
1/2 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)

How do you make curry leaves powder? 

• Dry roast urad dal on low-medium heat stirring frequently to distribute heat for 5-6 minutes or until the dal turns light pink. Keep aside to cool.
• Dry roast chana dal on low-medium heat for 3-4 minutes or until the dal turns light pink. Keep aside to cool.
• Add pepper, chili and tamarind piece with 2 drops of oil and roast for 2 minutes. Keep aside to cool.
• Roast curry leaves on low heat with a couple drops of oil to coat the leaves until they crisp up. Take care not to burn or brown them. Takes 5-6 minutes in a hot cast iron pan on low-medium heat. The leaves should break crisply when you touch them.

• Let cool, make a coarse powder of the dals, pepper, chili & tamarind. 
• Add curry leaves in batches and grind into a semi coarse powder. 
• Seal the freshness in an air tight container and eat it mixed with steaming hot rice and a dash of ghee. 

Notes:

• Use tender and fresh leaves in this recipe for best taste. 
• The tamarind I get is usually very dry as it is packed for export which works very well in powder recipes. If you find your tamarind to be wet and sticky, roast it by itself  in a dry pan (no oil) for 2-3 minutes.
• An Indian style mixer/grinder works well for these powders but a coffee grinder works as well too for small quantities. 
• It is important to first grind all the ingredients into a coarse powder before adding the curry leaves to get the right texture. 
• If you grind the powder in batches, make sure you mix them all well before storing/using. 

Pappula podi - one powder, multiple uses

I have a lot to write about the recipes (yes, two of them), so I will cut short on my usual general rant.

Bitter gourd or haagala kayi is one of my favorite vegetables. We infact love this gourd in any conceivable avatar and I almost always bring home this vegetable from my vegetable shopping sprees. If you are a fan of this bitter melon, try this version of the stuffed gourd. You will find an equally delicious variation already posted here. The last one had a slightly wet onion masala in it while this is a dryer version with a delicious powder.

South Indian kitchens have an array of spice powders that serve any and all occasions from chutni pudi which a one spoon oil away from a delicious chutney to the various sambar, rasam, bhath powders which make any side dish or rice item worth every penny on it. Today's powder is a very simple recipe with few ingredients yet very flavorful and comes in handy in a variety of dishes. This consummate powder can enhance the taste of your curries and snacks.

So let us get to the powder first and then I will show you one of the delicious ways I use it. For lack of a better name, I call it Kadle pudi or pappula podi ~ a generic name for a powder made with dals.

What do you need to make the powder? 
2 cups kadle/fried gram also called chutney dal - See notes for additional description on this
4-5 dry red chilies (adjust to suit your taste)
2 Tblsp grated dry coconut (kobbari in Kannada)
1 Tsp cumin seeds
1/4 Tsp asafoetida powder
3/4 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)

How do you make the powder?
Heat a thick bottom pan on medium heat, put the kadle and the red chilies in it and fry for 2 minutes. Add grated dry coconut and fry for a minute. Switch off, add cumin seeds and let cool. Take all ingredients into the blender and grind it into a fine powder.

Transfer to an airtight container and use it as needed.

Notes: 

• Frying the dal makes it crispy, if you have sunshine make use of it and spread the dal in a single layer and sun dry until crispy. 
• Add cumin seeds after switching off the stove as it will burn otherwise, if you are sun drying the dal then toast the cumin in a pan for a minute and half.
• If you love garlic, add a clove to the above proportion - toast it for a minute until it loses the moisture and grind it with the dal. 

Now that we have the powder ready, here is one of the ways I use it in my curries, try this version of stuffed bitter gourd for a delicious meal. 

What do you need to make stuffed bitter gourd? 

5-6 small fresh, tender bitter gourds - use Indian bitter gourds (big Chinese bitter gourds tend to become soft and does not hold shape in this recipe)

1 cup of the dal powder (see above) or alternatively one cup of basan/gram flour

3/4 cup cup finely chopped onions
1/4 Tsp asafoetida powder

4 Tblsp cooking oil divided
1 Tsp mustard
2-4 curry leaves - roughly chopped

1 Tsp salt - adjust to taste and remember the dal powder has salt in it

How do you make stuffed bitter gourd? 

• Wash, pat dry bitter gourds and trim the ends.
• Lightly scrape the skin and save it.
• Make a vertical slit in the bitter gourd from top to bottom but ensure that the bitter gourd stays in one piece giving access for stuffing the masala. 
• With the help of the back of a spoon, scoop out the seeds from the bitter gourds. 
• Reserve one heaped Tblsp of the scrapped peels and one heaped Tblsp of tender seeds (see notes) for the masala. Remember the peels add to the bitterness and seeds give a crunchiness and bite. 
• Heat 2 Tblsp oil in a pan on medium heat, add asafoetida, mustard and curry leaves. Let mustard sizzle, add chopped onions and fry till it sweats and turns pink. 
• Add the reserved bitter gourd peels and seeds and fry on medium hear for 3-4 minutes until the peels soften. 
• Add the powder and adjust salt to taste. Mix everything together. If using plain gram flour/basan, continue to fry for 5 minutes until the raw smell of the flour is gone. If using the above prepared powder, fry for just a minute until everything is combined and switch off the stove. 

• Once the stuffing is cool enough to handle, scoop spoonfuls into the cut bitter gourds and stuff them well. Tie a thread horizontally around the stuffed bitter gourd to keep it from spilling. Reserve any left over stuffing. 

• Heat a wide heavy bottom pan, add the remaining 2 Tblsp of oil. 
• Now arrange the stuffed bitter gourds in a single layer in the pan with the slit side on top, cover the pan and cook for 6-8 minutes. The moisture collected drops on to the bitter gourd and helps it cook well.

• Uncover, turn the biter gourds over to the other side and cook for another 6-8 minutes 
• Uncover the pan and continue to turn and cook the bitter gourds until they are lightly browned from all sides. Add any remaining stuffing 2-3 minutes before switching off the pan and let it cook (adding earlier burns this semi-dry powder and spoils the taste of the dish)

• Remove the threads and enjoy the delicious stuffed bitter gourds with rice or rotis. 

Notes: 

• Choose bitter gourds that are slightly plump but tender, this makes it easier to stuff the stuffing.
• Use white colored, thin seeds for the masala, discard if the seeds are plump and red colored.
• Darker green bitter gourds are comparatively more bitter than the white variety.
• Gram flour in the stuffing is also very tasty if you just want to use it or you can use 1/2 cup each of gram flour and the powder. 
• Since the powder has red chilies and cumin, it is more flavorful. If you are using only gram flour add a Tsp of red chili powder. 
• This recipe does not have any bitterness at all, I have made it multiple times. If you are a hesitant entry into the bitter gourd world, reduce the amount of peels you use.

Chutni pudi - Instant side dish for any meal

Hope everyone had a great time this past week, we did. It was a very hectic but extremely enjoyable trip to the family wedding. Met all the family on my FIL's side, lot of the family on my MIL's side, my daughter got to meet lot of cousins and she upped her number of brothers (first & second cousins) by 3 and was in cloud nine :-). We felt happy to have made the trip. We didn't even have time to feel the jet lag and it is back to school, work and of course blogging today..

Since I was getting ready to be away for a week, I had not bought any new groceries for the past 2 weeks and had emptied my refrigerator of all the vegetables so I could start afresh. While coming back home to a clean fridge is a great idea, I had to grocery shop and start cooking almost immediately as we reached home. Made some pongal and rasam over the weekend and got my idli dough ready for the week. Since I didn't have the time to cut and cook vegetables, made a small quantity of fresh chantni pudi to go with the idlis as we all like to eat idlis with chutni pudi mixed in oil :-).

Chutni pudi is a very popular and versatile ready to eat powder that can be had with rice, idli, dosa, chapatis and even bread toast. It keeps well and stays fresh for a couple of weeks if preserved in an air tight container. Normally different house holds have different proportions of the dals and other ingredients and other variations, I have tailored my chutni pudi recipe to suit our tastes at home but I get lot of requests all the time from family & friends for some chutni pudi. This is how I make it.

What do you need to make Chutni pudi? 
1 cup chana dal/kadle bele
1/2 cup urad dal/uddina bele
1/2 cup grated dry coconut
6-8 red chilies (adjust to suit your spice tolerance)
1 cup of curry leaves (loosely filled cup)
1 small piece of tamarind
1 Tsp salt
1 Tsp sugar (optional)

For Vaggarane/tadka/seasoning:
1 Tsp cooking oil
1 Tsp mustard seeds
a generous pinch of asafoetida
2-3 curry leaves - chopped fine

How do you make Chutni pudi? 

• On medium heat dry roast chana dal, frequently stirring until the chana dal turns uniformly golden brown and gives out a nice roasted aroma, keep aside.
• Pour the urad dal and roast to get a similar color and aroma, keep aside.
• Roast dry coconut for a minute and keep aside.
• Roast red chilies for a minute or until you see small black spots forming on the skin, keep aside.
• Roast curry leaves with a drop of oil and tamarind until the leaves turn crisp and keep aside. 

• Let the ingredients cool down completely.
• Take all the above into your mixer/blender along with salt and sugar and grind to a homogenized rough powder. Ensure you do not make a smooth powder. 
• Heat oil in a small pan, add asafoetida and mustard, wait for mustard to crackle, switch off, add the chopped curry leaves and pour it over the ground chutni pudi. 

• Let cool, mix well and store in a jar. 
• We had fresh chutni pudi with idlis for dinner today. 

Variations: 

• Adjust the amount of curry leaves depending on your taste.
• Use byadagi chilies for a red colored chutni pudi and milder flavor, we are familiar with this color as it doesn't scare away little kids from trying a delicious side.
• Add a Tsp of brown sugar or jaggery instead of sugar or totally skip this.
• Seasoning the chutni pudi is optional, you can skip this step. 

Tips: 

• Roast all ingredients in medium low heat so that the dals get roasted completely and evenly.
• Curry leaves need to be roasted until they turn brittle to touch, pick tender leaves for maximum taste.