Wheat Chips (Cheese Nips) - கோதுமை சிப்ஸ் - Do it yourself Video

My mom used to make delicious sweet or spicy wheat chips when we were kids. It was a treat, especially when we were confined to be indoors during the rainy season!

One of my successful grad student experimental variations was to put small blocks of Amul cheese inside these chips.

The videos explain it all..

You use wheat flour, salt, hing (asafoedita)and chili powder for the spicy version.

Just wheat flour and sugar for the sweet version.

Wait for 40 minutes to an hour for the dough to stabilize before making flats out of them, slicing and frying.

Warning : If you are a newbie at deep frying, make sure the cheese is completely encapsulated by dough and all the air is pressed out.

Think of this as the Indian equivalent of Tortilla chips..

Hope you have fun making Wheat chips (கோதுமை சிப்ஸ்) after watching this video. Guaranteed hit with little kids who love crunchy stuff.

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Laddu and Mixture (பூந்தி லட்டு , மிச்சர்)- Do it yourself Videos

Here are the videos for making Boondhi Laddu and Mixture (see previous post).

Instructions:

Laddu : Make almost caramelized sugar syrup by starting with 2 cups sugar in 2 cups water and stirring in low medium heat. Put roasted cashews and cardamom in the syrup.
Make Boondhi and add it directly into the syrup after you are done frying.

To Make boondhi: Take 1 1/2 cups Besan, 1/2 cup rice flour, pinch of salt, scoop of unsalted butter, 1 cup water.. see video (part 2).

For the Mixture : Basic ingredients are Kaara Boondhi, ribbon pakoda, thenkuzhal, fine thenkuzhal, fried pottu kadalai (dalia), roasted cashews, roasted poha (aval pori), curry leaves, salt, some corn flakes if you desire, some groundnuts if you desire, grainy salt.

the first 4 are all made with 3 parts to 1 Besan to rice flour, 1/2 spoon of salt, 1/2 spoon chili powder, some hing (asafoedita), 3/4 to a cup of water depending on which one you are making. See video part 4.

The whole thing takes a good 2 hours (if you have at least one helper and are not trying to videotape the whole thing). Approximately 3 1/2 hours if you are doing it on your own.

You will need an extruder to make the various mixture ingredients. When I say you get it for 100 or 200 bucks, I meant Indian bucks.. ~ 4-5 USD. The local Indian stores sell it for $14.99 with the appropriate markup of course.

Hope you enjoy making Laddu (Ladoo) and Mixture.

ps. apologies for the typo in the title's ..typed it so fast that I did not notice the dot.. it should be லட்டு in the title and not ல்ட்டு...

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Bread Bhajji (பிரெட் பஜ்ஜி) Do it Yourself

Ever wonder what to do with the few slices of bread that always seem to be left over in small batches?

You can take them and make bread bhajji (and Bread Upma with the crumbs, but that will be another video for another day).

Very simple.

Batter : 1 cup Besan, a little bit of hing (asafoedita), 1/2 spoon salt, 1/2 spoon chili powder, pinch of turmeric powder, just enough water to get it thick (real thick)

Slice bread after removing edges, soak in batter, fry!

Hope you have fun making Bread Bhajji.

The last bit where I show how to make bhoondi is the pre-requisite for making Laddoos! So if you got that part right, you can make Laddoos at home. (have successfully made Laddoos at home, if you can believe it).

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Rava Dosai - ரவா தோசை - A Do it yourself Video

The recipe is not new.

Also, San was nice enough to do the videotaping when I made this for tiffin this evening and was able to upload without having to do any editing.

It is not difficult at all and you can make 5-6 dosai's by mixing 1 cup rava, 1 cup rice flour and two cups water in under 35 minutes.

Hope you have fun making Rava Dosai!

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Theratti Paal (Milk Sweet) - தெரட்டி பால் Do it Yourself

Theratti paal, is very popular as a Deepavali milk sweet and is usually made on a large open vessel (Kadai style) where large quantities of milk are slowly stirred and condensed while simultenously adding sugar and ghee (clarified butter) to make a very small volume of this delicacy!

The recipe shown in this videoblog is a quick cheat way that my pittsburg Manni (SIL) taught me some 15 years ago. If I remember right, the original recipe she refined was from Mallika Badrinath who in my opinion should be given an honorary doctorate or Chef title by graduate students trying to satisfy the longing of their taste buds.

Very simple:

- get sweetened condensed milk (Nestle preferred over local brand names) one 14 oz can

- put in large glass bowl (get pyrex or corning lead free microwaveable glass). Do not do this in plastic. Have seen reports of high fat containing substances microwaved in plastic containers forming carcinogenic dioxins.

- soak some saffron in little water

- add 15-20 drops of lemon juice into condensed milk, stir thoroughly and microwave for 5 minutes under constant supervision. If the whole thing overflows, stir and put back in microwave

- then add 3-4 spoons of Ghee, add saffron, a few sprinkles of powdered cardamom for flavoring, stir vigorously , put back in microwave for 2-3 minutes and make sure you don't burn it.

Hope you enjoy making this sweet.

ps. The microwave time will be ~6-7 minutes total if you use only one can. For two cans it might be 11-12 minutes total.

pps. you have to try this a few times to figure out the final total time for a given microwave power and volume of condensed milk. The condensed milk is $2.19 a can. So you can do a few tries with single cans before graduating to volume production!

Just found that they spell it "thirattu paal" (we call it theratti paal!! go figure..)
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