Love letter - my favorite hostel snack

Like all hostels, the one I lived in when I went to college was not known for the food it served. In fact, there were some dishes that were downright unpalatable. However, given the fact that we were young and almost always ready to eat, we polished off pretty much everything that was served in the mess hall, no matter how it tasted. One of the things that I really looked forward to is a snack that the chechis in the mess made in the evening. Popularly known as "love letter", possibly due to the fact that it has something sweet rolled into it, I am not sure if this dish has a different name.

What you need:
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Water
Salt - a pinch
Mix the ingredients to a smooth batter of pourable consistency.

For the filling:
Grated fresh coconut - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 2 tbsp
Cardamom powder - a pinch
Mix the ingredients together in a small bowl.

To make:
Heat a dosa tawa. Pour a ladleful of the batter and spread it into a circle. When you see bubbles beginning to appear, flip over and cook until there are brown spots on both sides. Place some filling inside and roll tightly.
Serve hot.

Do check out what my fellow marathoners have cooked today for BM# 84.

Luchi - deep fried delight

It's time for another Blogging Marathon and this time, the theme I have chosen is Bengali cuisine. Nothing is as quintessentially Bengali as the puffed white puris made of maida - known as luchi.

What you need:
Maida/All purpose flour - 2 cups
Oil - 2 tbsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Water - enough to knead into a soft, pliable dough
Oil - for deep frying the luchis

Take the flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil to it and mix well. Now add salt and then water, little by little, and knead well until the dough becomes soft and pliable.
Keep covered for at least 30 minutes.
Pinch out small balls of the dough. Take a few teaspoons of oil in a shallow plate. Roll the balls of dough in this oil and then roll out into thick, small circles.
Deep fry in hot oil, pressing down with a slotted spoon, to ensure that it puffs up well. Turn over once.
Drain off excess oil and remove on to your serving bowl.
Serve hot with any curry of your choice.
I served this with aloo dum, which is the subject of tomorrow's post.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other marathoners doing BM#22.

Badusha

For the last few years, I have been toying with the idea of making badusha for Diwali, but have been a little scared of venturing into trying my hand at such a traditional sweet since I think that the making of all traditional Indian sweets requires quite a bit of practice and patience. This year, armed with Mallika Badrinath's "200 traditional sweets", I set about making badushas. The first few that I fried crumbled and melted into the oil, turning the clear oil into an opaque white liquid.....and strengthening my belief that sweets like this one should be made only by experts at sweet shops like Adayar Ananda Bhavan or Grand Sweets. Luckily, the thought of all the effort that had gone into kneading the dough and the cost of ingredients involved made me persist. Some quick fixes later, I fried the next batch of badushas, which turned out quite well.....nice and brown on the outside, flaky and melt-in-the-mouth on the inside.

What you need:
Vanaspati/dalda - 5 tbsp(level)
Cooking soda - 2 pinches
Maida - 1.5 cups
Oil - for deep frying

For the sugar syrup
Sugar - 1 cup, heaped
Water - 1/2 cup
Heat sugar and water together until it reaches one string consistency. Switch off heat and keep aside.
One string consistency - The syrup reaches this consistency a few minutes after all the sugar has dissolved. To test if it has reached this stage, take a drop of the syrup on your index finger. Touch it with your thumb and slowly move the two fingers apart. If you a see a single string stretching between the two fingers, it is time for you to switch off the heat. If not, you need to heat the syrup some more.
To make badusha:



Take the vanaspati in a broad vessel. Add the soda to it and rub with your palm until it becomes white and frothy. This takes 10-15 minutes. A better alternative is to use an electric beater. This is what I did, and it took close to 5 minutes of beating on low speed.
Now mix in the maida with your fingers until the dough becomes crumbly. Sprinkle a little bit of water and knead into a soft, pliable dough. Keep this covered under a wet cloth for 15 minutes.
Divide the dough into lemon sized balls, flatten it slightly between your palms, make a depression in the center and deep fry in hot oil until well browned on both sides. The entire cooking process must be done on a low-medium flame as we need to ensure that the inside is well cooked. If the flame is high, the outside will brown, but the inside will remain uncooked. Turn over once or twice to ensure even browning.
Drain excess oil and put the fried badushas into the sugar syrup. Keep it immersed in the sugar syrup until the next few badushas you fry are ready to be put into the syrup. Remove onto a flat plate. Decorate with chopped nuts/cherries.
This keeps well for upto a week.

Lessons learned:
While this is not exactly an easy sweet to make, it is not very difficult either, if you have the measurements right. The first mistake I made is adding too much dalda. I added 5 heaped tablespoons, plus some more, where the recipe called for only 5 levelled tbsps.
Excess dalda is what made my badushas dissolve in the oil. I had to add quite a bit more of maida to it to ensure that my badushas did not crumble as soon as they came into contact with hot oil. I have not measured how much more maida I added, but in case you make the same mistake, keep adding maida until the dough does not leave your hand feeling sticky and oily.
I also learned that oil, whether it is clear or opaque, serves the purpose equally well. I fried the rest of the badushas in the oil into which the first few had crumbled and dissolved, and it did not take anything away from the end product.

Updated this year (2012) with new pictures. The collage shows the step-by-step pictures of the process of making badushas. This year, I have decorated the badushas with cherries and colourful sprinkles. 

Mangalore bonda - Golibaje

The first time I had mangalore bondas is at Matsya, a restaurant in T.Nagar, Chennai. These small, light and fluffy deep fried balls of flour disappeared almost as soon as they arrived at our table and since then, I have never missed a chance to order these when I visit that restaurant.
Blogging Marathon 6 gave me a chance to try my hand at making this snack at home. The recipe is from Ramya's Mane Adige. Thank you, Ramya, for helping me recreate a restaurant favourite at home.

What you need:
Maida - 1 cup, heaped
Curd - 1/2 cup
Salt - to taste
Green chillies - 2, minced
Corriander - a little, finely chopped
Ginger - a small piece, julienned
Cooking soda - 1/4 tsp
Oil - for deep frying

Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Don't add all the curd at one go. Add it little by little and keep mixing until you get a dough that is of dropping consistency. I added a few more teaspoons of curd in addition to the half cup listed above to get the right consistency. The batter will be sticky. So dip your hands in some water and pinch out small gooseberry sized balls of dough and gently slide them into hot oil. Deep fry until brown on both sides.
Enjoy with coconut chutney or ketchup.

What I think of the dish:
This is an easy snack to whip up and it tastes really, really good. These can be quite addictive and it is difficult to stop eating them once you get started. The bondas turned out to be very light and crisp and were not too oily despite being deep fried.
Do take a look at what my fellow marathoners are up to.
This goes to Champa who is hosting Kids' Delight -Mini bites, an event started by Srivalli.

Poli - a sweet treat

Poli or Boli as I call it, is something that I have always associated with waking up early, kneading mounds of flour relentlessly, rolling out the dough, the air filling up with the fragrance of ghee, and the thin, soft polis disappearing almost as soon as they appear on the table. Until now, I have only been personally accountable for the disappearance of the polis. I have never wanted to venture into areas that I hitherto thought were reserved for more experienced(read mothers, aunts....) people. Never one to prepare traditional sweets for festivals, I've not really had a reason to try my hand at making this. So, what exactly made me decide to try this out??? I don't really know - maybe a whim, a fancy or a desire to prove to myself that I can do it.
What you need:

For the outer covering:
All purpose flour - 1 cup
Gingely Oil - LOTS (I didn't really measure the exact amount)
Salt - a pinch
Yellow food colour or a tiny bit of turmeric powder

Mix all the ingredients together and knead into a smooth, pliable dough adding as much water as needed. The dough should be loose and elastic.. Don't stint on the oil if you want tasty, soft polis. Cover and let it rest for 3-4 hours.

For the filling:
1 cup channa dal
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cardamom powder

Pressure cook the dal with enough water. Drain all the water and grind it to a smooth paste along with the sugar. Take this mixture in a kadai, add cardamom powder and heat,stirring continuously, until all the moisture is absorbed.

To make poli:

Take a banana leaf or a small plastic sheet. Oil it.

Take a lemon sized ball of dough. Pat it with your finger tips (apply some oil on your fingers too so that the dough doesn't stick to it) into a circle. Keep a bit of filling inside, close it iand then pat again into a large, thin circle.

Heat a tawa. Turn the poli onto the tawa. Spread some ghee over it and cook till the underside has golden brown spots. Turn over and cook for a minute.

Serve with a dollop of ghee on top.

Notes :
Instead of patting the polis into a circle, you can roll them out with a rolling pin. If you choose to do that, use less oil. Make a dough that is the consistency of chapati dough and then roll out into circles.

Poli is traditionally made for Avani Avittam which falls on the same day as Rakshabandhan. So Iam sending this to Priti who is hosting Festive Foods-Rakhi-Thread of Love.
It also goes to Easycraft's What's Your Favourite Colour Event.