Kalakand

This is another recipe from Hema (Cousin). I tried it yesterday at lalitha puja at my co-sister home and it came out well. Except for the quantity was small... I am happy that it all got finished. So here goes the recipe I did and mostly from Hema.

Ingredients
Milk - 1/2 gallon (for making Channa/Paneer)
Milk - 1/2 gallon [I used half and half for making my life easy. Use less milk if you are using half and half or thick milk(from my experience). If you are using regular milk, then use 1/2 gallon].
Sugar - Equal amount as paneer made from step 1.
Cardamom powder - 1/2 spoon or depends on your choice


Method of preparation
1) First step is to prepare channa or paneer. To do that,  take a deep vessel and bring the milk to boil. Add little lemon/vinegar for milk to break. Do not turn off heat, but keep stirring for few more seconds. This will make the fat content of milk and water to seperate out.  Drain the water and squeeze the extra water. I strained it using a thin strainer and made it stay for few more minutes and that let the excess water also out.

2) Now take the milk (or half and half) and put it on the stove, let the milk become half in quantity. Keep stirring at very regular intervals because you do not want to have the milk stick to bottom.

3) Once the milk is thick enough or reduced to half, add the paneer made in step 1 to it. Now keep mixing and stirring until it is kind of solid or thick enough for making it as a pieces. Make sure you have the stove on high heat and stir rigorously to avoid the lumps falling on you.

4) Once the milk is almost ready , now add the sugar to it and mix it. This will be again a couple more minutes of mixing and once it is closely ready, turn off heat, add little rose water (optional) and cardamom powder to it. spread it in a dish and after few minutes, cut it into shapes you like. You can also make it into round shapes as laddoo and serve them in cup cake wrapper (Suggested by Hema).

Hope you try the recipe and enjoy the delicious taste....

(will post pics when I make next time, as I could not take some this time)

Happy Sankranthi

Happy Sankrathi to all the viewers of this Blog....

My first ever Bommala koluvu at my home. 

Happy New Year 2012

Many more wishes for a new, joyous and happy new year. This is the first time I made the cake with frosting/decoration. Decoration was simple and light from my side. I have added whipped cream and had melted little chocolate to write "Happy New Year: and the lines in between. Cherries and chocolate chips made the rest of the decoration. Hope you all have a wonderful new year. 

Mysore Pak

My husband loves the Mysore Pak which my MIL does. He used to always praise it a lot. Frankly the first time I tried out of frustration, it turned out hard like rock. But eventually I tried to learn from her on how to do them and the second attempt it was much much better and it even tasted like the Mysore pak which she does (better than the sweet shop version). She told me some tricks and tips which might help do it. Thank you to my MIL for this great recipe. I took pictures while she was making it and I tried to follow them when I forgot.

Ingredients

Besan - 1 cup

Sugar - 1 and 1/2 cup

Ghee - 2 cups (you might not use it that much, but better to get extra)

Method of preparation

Take besan and add a little ghee to it (around 1-2 spoons). Mix it up with hand as much as you can.

Take a bowl with high edges and add sugar to it. Add very little water (2-3 spoons,may be little more). Mix it with spatula (in between) until the sugar dissolves. ( This will take approximately 1 minute)

Once the sugar dissolves and is ready, you will see bubbles forming in the sugar syrup.

This is the stage you should add the Besan to it. If they form small rounds also, please do not worry about it. Just keep stirring and the besan and sugar syrup will mix like a paste. (This should take less than a minute)

At this point, add hot ghee to it. Little by little and keep stirring.

The mixture will rise up in the heating bowl. Add Ghee slowly little by little and keep stirring.

keep stirring continuously. Once the mixture starts leaving the ghee.Stop adding ghee and transfer everything into a greased plate or cake pan.

 After a minute or two, make the markings for the shapes with knife(or butter knife).

After the mysore pak is cooled down, remove the pieces and store them in a air tight container. You can also serve them immediately while they are warm too. The warm pieces melt in mouth like butter/cream. Enjoy !!

Note:A visual picture will help out make a good mysore pak.

(1) Make sure the besan is of good quality, otherwise mysore pak taste will not be good. I am not sure of how to test the besan quality but will post any help which I know soon.

(2) You can also add vegetable oil instead of Ghee in this. Taste might differ a little.

(3) Ghee should be warm/hot in the whole prcess. So you will be having two stoves on, one for ghee and other for the sugar syrup.

(4) Stirring continuously is the trick to make a good mysore pak. Also you need to know the exact timing on when to add the ingredients.

Coming up: Rava laddoo recipe from my counsin's aunt. This recipe will have the sugar syrup usage and consistency of sugar syrup and its testing on the level of it. The sugar syrup consistency made is really useful to make any kind of laddoo.

Spring onion Cheese Dosa

Bored of doing same old regular dosas or masala dosa, I tried this new one for my kids. For my surprise they loved it so much that they ate for two days as their lunch in the weekend. 

All you need to have for making this dosa is, dosa batter, shredded cheese, spring onions chopped. Make the dosa as usual and then add cheese and spring onions to it. Once you have one side cooked, it is upto you to turn the dosa to other side and cook it. If you want the color and taste of cheese like below (brown), then I would suggest turn it other side too. It tastes good, even if you did just like regular dosa.

Try this out and let me know if you like it......

Tricolor Capsicum Rice

Ingredients
Capsicum (Green, Orange/yellow, Red) - 1 of green color, and 1/2 of other colors.
Red onions - 1 chopped lengthwise
Biryani masala - 1 spoon
Cashews - fried , a fistful (Optional)
Rice - Uncooked 2 cups
Bay leaves - 2 no.
Cinnamon sticks - 2 small
Oil - 3-4 spoons

Method of preparation
1) Take a kadai and add oil to it. Fry the cashews and keep aside.
2) Add bay leaves and Cinnamon sticks. Now add the red onions and fry. Add capsicum to the above also.
3) Add biryani masala and salt to it.Stir up the ingredients.
4) Add rice to it. If you are adding cooked rice, then let the capsicum cook completely before adding rice. If you are planning to add raw rice, then transfer the mixture to the rice cooker and add enough water, until rice is cooked. You can enjoy either way. Your yummy tri-capsicum rice is reay.