Tips, Local Adaptations etc
Topic started by ravi SUNdaram on Tue Aug 17 09:15:35 .
When you practice south indian cuisine in a foreign land, we adpat and try to find creative substituitions and try to fit new vegetables and products into indian/tamil cooking. some are fairly obvious. One look at zuchchini and you know it is a vegetable destined to be a koottu. Some are not. Let us try to collect such innovations in this thread
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Tue Aug 17 09:21:11
(Baturaa from frozen biscuit dough)
In US you get frozen dough in cylinders for making "biscuits". Pilsbury Grands is an example. The biscuit they talk about is shaped like a round bun and is flaky and they serve it in breakfast. You can take this biscuit dough, and roll it using a chappaththi pin like a thick puri and deep fry it in oil. It is very close to batura. It does not puff up into one large pillow, but it has numerous microspcopic air pockets like bread. This would be a home-made batura (not restaraunt made batura)
The original batura is made from a batter of maidaa, that is allowed to ferment. The biscuit dough is exactly that. Raised all purpose flour.
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Tue Aug 17 09:25:26
Seedless cucumber cooks like pudalangaay
We stumbled on to this just yesterday. A friend gave us a load of seedless cucumbers (I think they are known as kakkadi kaay in India). Since they appeared long and thin my wife said, 'hey let us try making a "pachchai vadhakkal" a la pudalangaay style'. It turned out great. Just cut this cucumber into thin rings and follow snakegourd recipe.
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Tue Aug 17 09:28:59
Broccoli makes great paruppu usily
Running out of ideas for paruppu usily (aka aRaichu kiLar or paruppu aRaichcha kaRi)? Try broccoli! frozen florets are fine. My mom would do it with cabbage too, dont know if that is common.
bb (@ ineh*) on: Tue Aug 17 10:25:48
broccoli for paruppu usily?? interesting!!
sarala (@ gil-*) on: Wed Aug 18 09:36:21
Mr ravi sundaram,
CAn you add some recipes for broccoli??
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Wed Aug 18 14:46:37
Pastry sheet for vegetable puff.
Make the stuffing like for masala dosai,
Get Pastry sheet from refregirated section for the grocery store. Pepperidge Farm brand is popular in U.S. Cut squares off, spoon a little stuffing, and fold into triangle. Bake. Comes out really well.
It might be already well known, but I am adding it here anyway. someday this page should become the
"newcomers guide to south indian cooking in U.S" :-)
Sarala: Will come back with more info on George Bush's favourite vegetable :-)
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Wed Aug 18 14:50:57
Baclava is easy to make!
Yes, you get philo sheet from the grocery store. (philo and pastry sheets are different. Philo sheets are very thin. ) Rest of the
recipe is essentially pouring Apricot nectar slowly onto a stack of philo sheets and layers of chopped nuts, saturating it.
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Wed Aug 18 14:56:33
Use frozen hashbrowns for quick potato curry
(another well known shortcut).
OreIda brand frozen potato hashbrowns (try potato + greenpepper + onion too) are essentially frozen diced potato. Start the microwave to thaw it and start oil in the vaanali. Throw in kaduku,
u.paruppu, and k.paruppu and perunggaayam. by the time
kaduku "explodes" :-) the microwave would have beeped. Xfet to vaanali, reduce heat add salt and red chilli powder (or sambar powder) cook for a while and you have the urgent potato curry.
ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.*) on: Thu Aug 19 13:57:53
Broccoli in south indian cooking
Pure South indian dishes using broccoli are paruppu usily, koottu and kari. The kari is done using a lot of kadugu and a few dried red chillies for kaaram. no powders. koottu is the standard one using coconut, cumin, blackpeppercorn ground up.
I use the mixed frozen vegetables that has broccoli in them in fried rice, pulav, noodles etc.
Thinking about it, chopped broccoli can be added to adai as a topping. Should try it someday. For adai I have used coconut, onions, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, finely chopped zuchchini, finely chopped eggplant as toppings before. Cauliflower bajji is very common. so broccoli bajji too does not sound unreasonable.
Keep a 10oz frozen packet in the freezer. That way when you make adai or bajji someday you can try one two test runs.