Tofu & Guacamole

Another quick snack which my kids love it and Thank you to my friend Deepali for sharing this recipe for us. Shallow fry the tofu cubes, and keep them aside. 

When ready, apply the guacamole on top and serve kids fresh. I hope your kids and you love it too!!!!

Cheese and Crackers (kids Special)

This was a quick snack which I give my kids when they are hungry. The crackers and cheese are ready made from market. I cut the cheese square slices I get according to the cracker slices. Bingo your snack is ready and kids love it !!! try it out 

Kobbari Annam/Coconut Rice

This is one of the simple rice item to do. My recommendation for this item, it goes very good with any of gravy curries or Perugu Pachadi (Yogurt pickle) or with Sambar or Pulusu kind of liquid.

Ingredients

Grated Coconut ( you can use fresh if you have or use Frozen one also)

Chana Dal (add good amount of this, if you like crunchy in between)

Urad dal - 1/2 tbsp

Mustard seeds - 1 tsp

Cumin - 1 tsp

Asafoetida 

Salt to taste

Green Chillies  - 5 or 6 cut lengthwise

Red Chillies 

Coriander (optional, for garnish only)

Basmati rice cooked (grains should be seperate, one way to do it is, add a litttle oil in the rice cooker )

Curry leaves (optional, but adds good taste)

Oil

Method of preparation

Take a very little oil (a spoon or two) and fry the coconut (until it is slightly brown or until the raw smell goes away, whichever is faster). Spread the cooked rice in a wide bowl and add the grated and fried coconut to it. Now for the popu(talimpu, poNi, tadka), add some oil to a tadka bowl. Once oil is hot, add mustard seeds, cumin seeds, asafoetidam lengthwise slit green chillies, Chana dal, urad dal, curry leaves, red chillies to it. Once Chana dal is little fried, add salt to here and turn off flame/heat. Add the tadka to the above coconut and rice mixture and mix all ingredients thoroughly. Your coconut rice is ready and garnish with coriander before serving. 

Hope you like it !!!!

Note: Add fried cashews, peanuts if interested.

Healthy Salt biscuits (Salt Biscuits made with wheat flour)

I used the healthy in the title because instead of regular old maida, I used wheat flour for this recipe. I got this recipe from my aunt and made it instantly the next day. Turns out, kids love it as a time pass snack.

Ingredients
Wheat Flour (Roti flour)
Red chilli powder
Salt to taste
Warm oil
Water to mix it to dough
Sesame seeds (Can avoid if you have nut allergies)
ajwain seeds (very little)
Cumin seeds (very little)

Method of preparation
Mix the wheat flour along with red chilli powder, salt, sesame seeds, ajwain, cumin. Now add warm oil slowly and mix it up. Add water to above and make it like a dough. Keep it aside for few minutes and then flatten it out with a rolling pin or belan. Cut into diagonal pieces with either pizza cutter or a knife and fry them in a hot oil for a minutes or until it turns a little brown. Drain and store them in an air tight container. Your snack is ready whenever you want.

Note: If the flattened out dough is thin then the snack will turn out crispy.

Black beans Rice

This is just an awesome food, made it minutes and should say instantly. This rice goes well as itself or with the veggie kabobs or any dry/wet curries. Thank you Deepali for sharing this recipe with me. This rice is loved by the kids of our community. So I hope you like it too:

Ingredients
Black beans - 1 tin (I used the tin ones, but you can use fresh too)
Cooked rice (I prefer Basmati rice for this)
Red Onions - 1 or 2 chopped length wise (depends on your love of onions
Salt to taste
Jeera - Cumin seeds - 1/2 tea spoon
Oil - 1 table spoon or less, according to your taste

Method of preparation
 This easy and fast rice recipe is as follows: Take a pan which can fit the quantity of rice. Now add oil to it. Add jeera and then red onions after the oil is hot. once the red onions are roasted nicely, add the cooked rice, salt. Now add the black beans and turn off the stove. Since black beans are already cooked, they do not need to be on stove for long time. mix up the rice and beans properly. Garnish with cilantro if desired and serve. Enjoy!!

Paramannam (Chakkara Pongali) - Instant recipe

This is the recipe which I find easy to do whenever I want to eat or to put naivedyam (prasad) to god and I do not have time to do the long procedure of paramannam (also called chakkara pongali).Instead of cooking rice in milk as the traditional method says, I use cooked rice(which will be ready most of the times).

Ingredients
Cooked Rice - 1 cup
Milk - 1/3 cup
Jaggery - big chunk may be lemon size twice or more
Neyyi/Ghee/Clarified butter (1 table spoon )
Cardammom powder (optional and little bit)
Saffron (optional and little bit soaked in milk)
Dry fruits - like cashews, golden raisins or pipstachios, roasted in ghee/clarified butter

Method of preparation
Take a small pan, add ghee and roast the dry fruits in it. keep them aside, so that we can add them at the end of the recipe. Take a small kadai, and add the ghee to it - almost 1 table spoon (you can use less also). Add cooked rice to it and the milk. Mix the rice mixture until the milk is soaked in a little bit and careful not to make the rice/milk stick to bottom. Once the milk consistency is thick or absorbed by rice, add the jaggery to it. At this stage, keep stirring as the jaggery melts with the heat and gets mixed up with the rice nicely. Add the rest of the stuff like, saffron milk, cardammom powder, dry fruits. Turn off the heat and can serve hot. or you can cool it down and serve cold.

NOTE:
(1) If you are serving cold, then I would recommend adding more milk to above.
(2) If you like the Paramannam to be little liquid, I would suggest adding more milk to it than recommended above. I like the paramannam to be a little dry, same as the rice, so I use less milk.
(3) Some persons like the paramannam to have little moong dal in it too . If you wish to have it, soak the moong dal in hot water for a minute and cook it in microwave. Add the same when you add rice and voila!!!

Veggie Kabobs (BBQ)

Remembering hot grilled kabobs on a winter day. This post was supposed to go during summer. but I got a little lazy but what better time it is than a chilled day and remembering about hot grilled healthy stuff.

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Now today the day is really going to be hot and humid and I felt that, today is the day this should be published. well simple to make and a healthy option too, especially for picky eaters also. This can be your main dish, side dish or just a snack too. So try it out when you get time. and be creative :). Thank you to my friend Sharmila, who make it at our home, Yumm.....

As you all might have observed that any BBQ or grilling takes hours of soaking veggies in the sauce/syrup. Well unlike that, this will take just few minutes. 

Ingredients

Green Pepper

Red pepper

Red onions

Zucchini

Paneer (make sure you get the firm paneer, otherwise they break easily while we slide). I will post the brand and the name of the paneer I used later. 

Yogurt

Shan Kabob Masala 

Method of preparation

Mix the yogurt with the kabob masala. Adjust the spices accordingly, you can add more red chilli powder, salt etc as you needed. Now chop the veggies almost same size, cubes/rectangles, so that when we grill them, everything is evenly cooked. Soak the veggies in the yogurt mixture and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes. You can leave it for some more time inside, or take them out and keep it.

Now take the skewers and arrange it according to you taste. Put it on the grill and turn it slowly when one side is done. Your veggie kabobs are ready to be yumm yumm in your tumm tumm :). 

Some more visual feast. Enjoy !!!!

Putnalu Kobbari Podi/Chickpea and Coconut Powder

Ingredients
Putnalu (Chickpea) - 1 cup
Dry coconut - 1 cup
Red chilli powder/Red chillies (Please add this according to your spicy taste or the amout of spiciness in the red chillies/powder)
Cumin powder/roasted cumin seeds - 1 table spoon
Garlic - 3-6 pods (depends on how much you love garlic)
Salt to taste

Method of preparation
Grind the putnalu, coconut, red chillies, cumin, garlic and salt in a blender. Grind it coarsely and you can use it various tiffins. If you like it soft and not crunchy, grind it for a couple more seconds and there you have it.

Enjoy!!!

Boondi Laddoo

Ingredients
Chickpea flour - 2 cups
Sugar - 4 cups (or adjust to your sweetness level)
Oil/ Ghee for deep frying
Dry fruits (like cashews, golden raisins, almonds) - upto your tastes

Method of preparation
Mix the senagapindi (chickpea flour) with water and mix it continuously for 5 minutes atleast. This process is to ensure that no lumps are formed.

On the stove, add  sugar and add very little water until the sugar is dissolved.

Set aside the mixed batter (no lumps aside for 5 minutes).

On another stove, heat up the oil/ghee. I used oil.

In a boondi jhalni, slowly pour one laddle of batter and spread, so that the boondi drops fall in the hot oil.

Make sure the boondi turns a little golden and it is crunchy. You can test it, by taking one in hand and try to squish it.

Drain the boondi in a paper.

Now add half of the paakam (sugar syrup) along with the dry fruits. let the sugar syrup sit on the stove (turned on) for some more time until sting syrup is made. Once the syrup is ready then add it to the boondi mixture.

Mix all the boondi nicely and start making round laddoos with it.

Once the laddoos are ready, store it in a air tight container.

Tamarind Pulihora with Tamarind Paste

Well, did anybody want to have pulihora but got tired of the long procedure especially for making tamarind pulihora. Well this should give you a boost to make more tamarind pulihora and sweetly in less than 5 minutes ...... can't believe, read on the recipe:

Ingredients
Cooked Rice
Tamarind Paste
Oil
Green Chillies
Red chillies
Chana dal
Mustard seeds
Asafoetida (hing)
Turmeric
Peanuts (can avoid if you have any allergies)
Salt to taste

Method of preparation
Spread the cooked rice in a wide pan/dish. This helps rice to cool down in hurry and also to mix the rice nicely without falling out of dish. Now take a small pan and start preparing the Popu(Tadka). Add oil and let it heat. ( I used Olive Oil but if you want better taste, try it out with peanut oil). Add mustard seeds, and let it splutter. Once they are ready, add little Jeera, asafoetida, chana dal and both chillies. Add peanuts, turmeric to above. Once the peanuts are nicely roasted along with the chillies, add Salt to it and the tamarind paste. Cook for almost less than a minute and turn off. Let the pan be on the stove for one more minute (after turning off, the heat of the oil is sufficiant to cook the tamarind at this point).

 Now  add the tamarind to the spread out rice. Mix the rice and mixture nicely with hand so that all the rice grains are covered with the mixture.

 Your tamarind rice is ready to serve or eat. You can add some coriander leaves, fried cashews to make it look nice :). enjoy!!!.

Palli Kaaram Podi (Peanut spicy powder)

Ingredients
Roasted peanuts
Jeera - 1 tea spoon
Red chillies
Tamarind - lemon size
Garlic - 4- pods
Salt to taste

Method of preparation
Roast the Jeera and red chillies little bit and grind them along with some part of the peanuts. Roast the remaining peanuts along with salt, until they crunchy (not too soft). Your peanut spicy powder is ready to use along with idli's or dosa's or just like that. Add a little bit of oil or ghee while using to add some nice taste.