Mini tiffin - a South Indian breakfast platter and the recipe for Mysore bonda

BM #74 Week 3 Day 1
Theme : Thalis
Dish : Mysore bonda

Buffets, thalis, quick meals, mini tiffins - any meal where an assortment of dishes is served on one platter is something that I can never resist. The last time we were in the husband's hometown, we went to a small restaurant where I tried out the breakfast tiffin thali. With small portions of pongal, vadai, kesari, sambar, chutney, puri masal and dosa served in a visually and gastronomically appealing manner, this is one breakfast that has been fondly talked about and remembered very often.  In fact, every time I've felt even slightly hungry, I've wished that there was some place here that served this kind of thali.  Making a large number of dishes when I don't have company is usually not my style of cooking, but  this time, I decided to make an exception.

In the platter are an Onion Dosa, mini idlis soaked in sambar, rava kichdi, rava kesari, mysore bonda and coconut chutney.

Some of these recipes have been shared on the blog before and I have included links to older posts with the recipes.
Today, I will be sharing the recipe for Mysore bonda - a deep fried snack that, though a little time consuming, is not very difficult to make.

What you need :
Urad dal - 1 cup, soaked in plenty of water for an hour and drained
Curry leaves - a few, chopped
Green chillies - 3, minced
Black peppercorns - 7 or 8, coarsely crushed
Coconut sliced into tiny bits - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil - for deep frying

Grind the drained urad dal, adding as little water as possible, in a grinder (recommended) or a blender (second best option). When well ground, the batter will be light and fluffy, floating when a bit of it is added to water.
Remove this batter into a container and add all the other ingredients except salt. (*)
Heat oil in a pan for deep frying. When the oil is hot, add salt to the batter, mix it well and drop small balls of batter to the oil. Fry on a medium flame until well browned on all sides. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain off excess oil using a paper towel.
Serve hot with coconut chutney.

* Salt, when added to the batter, makes it watery and difficult to shape. So, add it at the very end, just before you start frying, and mix it in well.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#74.

Vella dosai - whole wheat and jaggery pancakes

Kerala Iyers are Tamil brahmins who migrated out of Tamilnadu some time in the early 13th century and settled down in different parts of Kerala. Kerala Iyer cuisine is an amalgamation of the cuisine of both states and so is the language. The Tamil spoken by Kerala Iyers is so heavily interspersed with Malayalam that it is often jokingly referred to as Talayalam.
There are quite a few dishes that are unique to Kerala Iyer cuisine. In our fast paced world where traditional snacks are being replaced by two minute noodles and out-of-a-packet and into-your-mouth pasta, many of our indigenous snacks are forgotten about. Over the next three days, I will be sharing the recipes of three such evening snacks that used to be (and probably still are in some households) made in Kerala Iyer households. This is a part of Blogging Marathon #29 where the theme I have chosen is Course wise meals from a State - the course here being evening snack/tiffin and the state being Kerala - more specifically, Kerala Iyer cuisine.
Vella dosai is something that can be made in almost no time at all, as long as you have wheat flour and jaggery in hand. It does take a little practice to be able to flip the dosa over without tearing it, but even if it does tear, it tastes really good. Rich and iron and protein, this makes for a filling and nutritious after school snack for children.

What you need:
Jagggery - 3/4 cup
Whole wheat flour - 1 cup
Water - 3/4 cup
Cardamom powder - a pinch (optional)

In a microwave safe bowl, heat the jaggery and water on high power for 30 seconds. Remove, stir well and keep aside for 5-10 minutes. Stir again until jaggery dissolves completely in the water. Add the wheat flour and mix to get a smooth batter. The batter should be of pouring consistency. Add some more water/flour if needed to get the consistency right. Mix in the cardamom powder.
Grease a skillet with ghee and heat it. Pour a ladleful of the batter on the hot skillet and spread into a thick circle. Cook on a medium flame until the bottom turns brown. Flip over and cook the other side until brown spots start to appear on it.
Serve hot with a blob of butter.

Note :
Jaggery tends to burn fast. So take care and ensure that you cook on a low flame.
Jaggery tends to be sticky. You might find it difficult to turn the dosa over and might find it sticking to the pan or the spatula you are using to turn it over. A good quality non-stick pan will take care of this. If not, grease your pan really well and flip the dosa over only when the under side is well browned.
If you want your dosa to be really sweet, add 1 cup of jaggery.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#29

Chana/chickpeas dosa

I had grand plans for the second day of the blogging marathon under the theme cooking with chickpeas. I had decided even before I started this marathon that each day I would post something I had not tried making before. So, today's post was supposed to be something from another cuisine for which I needed white kabula chana/garbanzo beans. However, fate had other plans. Yesterday in the afternoon  Bal Thackeray passed away. Within 30 minutes, the always busy city, came to a grinding halt. All shops were shut down, autos and taxis went off the road and the roads themselves wore a deserted look. This, to me, meant - no way of procuring kabuli chana. I had to make do with what I had on hand - black chickpeas- and thus, resorted to making something that is all too familiar in our household - the humble dosa, this time, using chickpeas.
 
What you need:
Kala chana/black chickpeas - 1 cup
Parboiled rice - 1 cup
Red chillies - 3 or 4
Ginger - 1 large piece
Onion - 1
Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Water - for grinding

Soak chickpeas and rice in plenty of water for 6-8 hours.
In a blender, take all the other ingredients and grind coarsely. Add the soaked chicpeas, rice and enough water to grind into a batter of pourable consistency.
Heat a dosa tawa/griddle. Pour a ladleful of the batter and spread into a thin circle.
Drizzle with oil on top. When the bottom starts to brown, flip over and cook for a minute.

Serve hot with chutney/sambar.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other marathoners doing BM#22.
This goes to Kalpana who is guest hosting Priya's event - Fast & Quick Healthy dishes.

Paneer masala dosa

Several years back, my parents and I went to a roof top restaurant which had advertised a "Dosa Mela" that featured more than a 100 varieties of dosa. The thought of the humble batter which we only turned into a ghee roast or uttappam or masala dosa, being churned out in a 100 variants was intriguing. Only when we went in did we realist that more than 50 varieties were non vegetarian and the ones that were vegetarian didn't look or sound very appetizing. Needless to say, we stuck to our regular masala dosa and ghee roast.
Today, on the last day of the blogging marathon, I decided to get out of my routine and whip up a different masala as the stuffing for the dosa.

What you need:
For the masala:
Onion - 1, chopped fine
Carrot - 1, grated
Paneer - 1 cup, grated
Garam masala - 1 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Oil - 1 tbsp
Ajwain seeds/omam - 1 tsp
Jeera/Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Kasuri methi - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste

Heat oil in a pan. Add the jeera and ajwain. After a few seconds, add the onions and saute until translucent. Add in the grated carrots, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, garam masala, and salt. Stir well. Sprinkle a little water over it and cook over a low flame until done. Add the grated paneer and kasuri methi. Stir well and heat for a few minutes. Switch off heat and set aside.

To make paneer masala dosa:

Pour a ladleful of dosa batter on to a hot dosa pan. Spread into a thin circle. Drizzle some oil over it.

When the under side starts to brown, flip over and cook for a few seconds. Flip over again and spread some masala over half of the dosa.

Fold the other half over this.

Serve hot with chutney and sambar.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#14

Mysore masala dosa

Paper thin, crisp dosas with hot potato masala and a spicy red chutney for filling......that doesn't even begin to describe the explosion of taste that you experience when you bite into the Mysore Masala dosa.

What you need:
For the batter:
Idli rice - 4 cups
Whole urad dal - 1 cup
Fenugreek seeds/methi - 1 tbsp, heaped
Salt to taste

Soak the rice and dal separately. Add the methi to the urad dal while soaking. Most people add methi to the rice, but I find that it gets ground better if it is soaked with the dal, as dal is ground for a longer time. After an hour of soaking, refrigerate the dal until you are ready to grind. This makes the urad dal batter very creamy. The rice has to be soaked for atleast 8-10 hours.
Grind the urad dal along with the cold water until it turns soft and creamy. This takes roughly 25-30 minutes.Add the soaked rice to this. Add water only if necessary. Add salt and grind well.....another 15-20 minutes.
Let this ferment overnight.

For the red chutney:(Recipe from Ramya's Mane Adige)

Urad dal - 2 tsp
Chana dal - 2 tsp
Red chilli - 4 (adjust to taste)
Coconut - 1/4 cup
Salt - to taste
Heat a teaspoon of oil. Fry the dals and red chillies till reddish brown. Once it cools, grind it along with the coconut and salt to a smooth paste, adding as little water as possible.

For the masala:

Potato - 3, medium sized, cooked, peeled and mashed well
Onion - 2, chopped fine
Green chilli - 2, minced
Ginger - a one inch piece, julienned
Curry leaves - few, chopped fine
Corrinader leaves - to garnish
Urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Chana dal - 1/2 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
Oil - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

Heat oil. Add chana dal, urad dal and mustard seeds. When the seeds pop, add green chillies, curry leaves,ginger and onions. Fry well on low flame till the onions start to brown. Add the mashed potatoes,turmeric powder and salt. Stir well and mix in a cup of water. Let this boil until the mixture thickens and all the moisture is absorbed. Switch off heat. Garnish with corriander leaves and squeeze some lemon juice over this. Mix well.

To make dosa:
Spread batter in a thin circle on a tava. Drizzle some oil over it. This dosa is cooked only on one side...do not turn it over.

When the bottom starts to turn brown, spread some red chutney over half of the dosa and put some masala over it.

Fold the other half over this and serve hot off the tava with coconut chutney and sambar.

Do check out what my fellow marathoners are up to.

Thoppi dosa/Cap dosa/Cone dosa

Very often when we make variations in the shape or the colour of a dish that is normally served, children show an interest in eating it. This dosa is one such variation. Have you noticed how, in some restaurants, hot, crispy dosas are brought to the table, shaped like a cone? As a child, the cone used to remind me of a cap, and I have always called it thoppi(cap) dosa. Yesterday, I tried replicating the shape at home, and found that it is quite easy to do.

What you need:
Dosa batter
A non stick dosa griddle
Two wooden spatulas

How to make it:
Pour a ladle of batter on the hot griddle. Spread it into a thin circle. Let this cook on low heat until well browned and crisp. Do not turn over.

Holding down the dosa with one spatula, use the other one to make a cut from the center of the dosa to one end.

Fold this as shown in the pic below.

Now roll the other side over this to form a cone. Place the crisp cone on a plate and serve it hot with chutney/sambar/molaga podi.

Do take a look at my fellow marathoners' kitchens....Srivalli,
Azeema, Bhagi, Champa, Gayathri Anand, Gayathri Kumar, Harini, Kamalika, Meena, Mina, Padma,  Pavani,PJ, Priya Mahadevan, Priya Suresh, Priya Vasu, Rujuta, Santosh, Saraswathi, Savitha, Shanavi, Smitha, Sowmya, Suma, Usha, Veena

Aval dosa (Rice flakes dosa)

What do you do when you've picked up a pack of rice flakes from the store and then, while putting away the groceries, you notice another pack that's somehow gotten lost amidst all the things in the kitchen and has been unnoticed until then???
Well, what I did is try out this recipe. It certainly has not made a dent in my rice flakes stash, but hey, the dosas turned out to be really nice, hole-y and soft. If, like me, you are under the impression that you need to use urad dal to get soft dosas, try this out and you'll definitely change your mind about that.
What you need:
Raw rice - 3 cups
Rice flakes - 1 cup (I used matta rice flakes - the reddish brown Kerala rice flakes)
Sour curd - 1 cup
Salt

Soak rice in plenty of water for 6-8 hours. Soak rice flakes in the curd for 3-4 hours. Grind both together. Add salt and let it ferment. This gets fermented much faster than normal dosa batter does.
Heat a dosa tawa. Pour a ladleful of batter. Spread it a little thick (the thickness should be somewhere between that of a regular dosa and an uttappam). Drizzle some oil over it. Turn over and cook both sides.
Serve hot with chutney/sambar.

Recipe source : Mallika Badrinath's Tiffin Varieties.
This is my entry to Valli's Rice Mela.

Chakka adai

Growing up, the meals we had during summer always revolved around chakka (jackfruit), muringakka (drumstick) and mangoes. If there was muringakka sambar one day, the next day it was muringakka molagoottal, then chakkakkuru (jackfruit seed) thoran, chakka molagushyam, chakka this, muringakka that....so much so that my brother and I used to silently wish that those trees would somehow miraculously stop bearing any more fruit.
It's true that you don't realise the value of something when you have it in abundance. Now whenever I visit my parents I come back laden with the very same things that I once said I couldn't take any more of.......
Chakka adai is something I didn't dislike as a child, but neither was I overly enamoured by it. A recent visit to my parents' made me rediscover this dish and yeah, I did bring back some ripe jackfruit so that I could make this at home.

What you need:
Raw rice - 1 cup
Jackfruit - 6 slices (is that what it is called??? or is it just pieces???)
Salt - a pinch
Jaggery - a small piece (optional)

Wash and soak rice in plenty of water for 2 hours.
Drain and then grind along with all the other ingredients to a smooth batter of pourable consistency.
Heat a dosa pan. Pour a ladle of batter...spread it into a circle....pour a few drops of oil/ghee on it and cook for a minute/until the bottom turns golden brown. Flip over and cook for a minute.

Serve hot.
This dosa does not need any accompaniment...tastes great hot off the stove.

Note:

• The jackfruit should be really, really ripe.
• Increase, decrease or totally do away with the jaggery depending on the sweetness of the jackfruit.