Spinach Adai (Rice & Lentil Crepe)

Spinach is a beautiful thing. 

And I'm not even talking about all the wonderful health benefits of this supreme super food. You all should know it by now. If not, Google it today and educate yourself. 

I'm talking about how often the beauty and versatility of Spinach is undervalued. One of the great things about Spinach is that it does not have a very distinct flavor or taste. Which means, it can be easily blended with other foods. And this could be anything from smoothies to soups to lasagnas or to baby food. 

Forget food, there is even a recipe for a glowing and anti aging face mask made with spinach puree. Nature has all the answers - we just need to match those up with our questions. 

I've kind of started making a lot of spinach blended food at home. That recently included parathas, rice, sauces for pasta, and now of course this beautiful and nutritious adai. 

This adai uses rice and two types of daals - channa and toor daal. 

Here are the ingredients -
Rice - 1 cup
Toor Daal (Split Pigeon Pea)- 1/3 cup
Channa Daal (Yellow Split Pea)- 1/3 cup
Fresh Spinach - 1 bunch cleaned thoroughly
Cumin Seeds - 1 tsp
Red Chillies - 3-4
Coriander Seeds - 1 tsp
Black Pepper - 1/2 tsp
Fresh Coconut - chopped or grated 1/4 cup

For tadka:
Oil - 1 tsp
Mustard Seeds - 1 tsp
Channa Daal - 1/2 tsp
Curry Leaves - a few

Wash and soak the rice and daal together for about 2-3 hours.

Pick the spinach leaves off the stems and wash the leaves thoroughly.

In a pan, heat up about 1/2 tsp of oil. When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, red chillies and black pepper. Fry for a few seconds and add the fresh spinach in there. Cook for just a min or two until the spinach kind of wilts and shrinks. Don't overcook the spinach - let's try and keep some vitamins in here.

Here's the soaked rice and daal. The daal will be soft to touch now.

Move the cooked spinach and soaked rice/daal to a blender. Add the 1/4 cup of coconut. You can use grated frozen coconut or can use the fresh one as well. For a change, I had fresh coconut chopped up at home. So,in here they go. If you don't mind spicy food and got no kids complaining about it - go ahead and throw in a couple of green chillies in here. Add salt to taste.

Grind together to a beautiful green batter.

Do a tadka of mustard seeds, curry leaves and 1 tsp channa daal and add to the batter. Mix well.

Use a ladle full of batter and make a thin dosa like crepe. Usually adais are done really thick and they become very heavy to eat. Somehow I like to make them thin - just make sure your batter is smooth enough so you can draw it out thin.

Serve 'em hot.
Coconut Chutney makes a good side accompaniment for this adai. You could also make sambar if you'd like or avial which goes really well with all types of adais.

How can your kids say no to spinach this way? Make use of it! You can also add some grated carrots or finely chopped onions to the batter for a more wholesome adai. Be creative - make it all uniquely yours.

Can we have dinner now? My crispy adais are waiting..

Enjoy. Peace Out!

Spicy Chettinad Cauliflower Masala for Dosas

So the story goes like this. A few days ago, a few of my friends visited me for a weekend from the bay area. During our 2 months of planning for 2 days of fun, one of the gals asked me if I make chettinad masala for dosas. And my reply was - not really but we sure can try. And that is how this recipe here was born. I quickly googled and the little I saw, all chettinad masala recipes had ginger, garlic and spicy chillies. Ok, that's a good start. 

And at this point, I have to take a detour from this story to another one. One from a few years back..actually many years. Our family friends of decades are Chettiars and we used to visit them at least once or twice a month. They made the best dosas and idlis ever. They had a cook in their house who showed me how she makes those super paper thin dosas. She basically would make the dosa and then scrape off all the excess batter from the top of the dosa. The only thing left on the griddle would be what's sticking to it. And when it just peels off beautifully from the well seasoned 'dosa kallu', it would be a super crisp paper thin dosa. And then that dosa would be served along with a couple of awesome chutneys and a cauliflower based masala. You'll see where this leads to. 

So, this dish below here may not even be authentic Chettinad cuisine. But, excuse my enthusiasm to call it just that. But, whatever the name might be, this is a keeper recipe for me. Jumping back to the original story, I made this the weekend my friends were here and it was a runaway hit. I've made it a couple of times again since then and the most toughest part is to keep my hands off it. Literally, I find myself picking it with my finger and licking it while I'm making dosas for the family. Its like a 'can't resist' thing going on here. 

Start off with getting  your basic ingredients in place.

1 cup of chopped onions

1 cup of chopped tomatoes

About 8-10 single pieces of garlic peeled but not chopped

1-2 tsp of chopped fresh ginger

1-2 chopped green chillies

A few curry leaves

Chop up some cauliflower into tiny pieces. Just cut them into thin slices and turn the slices around and chop further into little bits. 

In a pan, add 2 tsp of cooking oil. When hot, add 1 tsp of mustard seeds and let it splutter. Then add 1 tsp of cumin seeds. And then add about 3-4 pieces of dried red chillies. 

Now, add all the good stuff in - curry leaves, green chillies, ginger and garlic. Saute for a couple of mins until the garlic starts to brown up.

Then, add the onions and cook for a few mins until they turn translucent. 

Then. add the chopped tomatoes. 

Then, add the chopped cauliflower bits in here and mix well. 

Time for some seasonings. Add all of these below - 

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/4 tsp red chilli powder (heaped if you like it spicy!)

1/4 tsp coriander powder

1/4 tsp rasam powder (heaped..and this time its a must)

About 1/2 tsp sambar powder

Mix all the flavors well and let this cook for a few mins. When the masala starts to turn soft, pick up a masher and start showing your strength.

Once you mash it up nicely, add a couple of tsps of oil again and let it cook for about 5 mins.

Let it cook until you don't see individual pieces of anything in there. No separate tomatoes or cauliflowers. They will all be kind of mashed up together now. And you're done! You can add some chopped cilantro at the end. I wanted to but did not have fresh leaves at home, so just skipped that.

Now, how about some spicy masala - all kicked up and ready to go.

Spread them on your dosa while on the tawa. Fold and serve hot dosas with Spicy chettinad cauliflower masala.

Give me this every day of the year and I can eat it without complaining.

Thank you GG for asking me about this. I now have a new favorite masala!

Just for my sake, please make this in your kitchen today or sometime soon. And I too can then just imagine you standing there and finger-licking this! 

Enjoy. Peace out.

Printable Recipe here

Cauliflower-Peas Masala Roast - Dosa Variety!

It was just one of those nights when my mind and body and heart and soul - all got together and demanded to be fed only one thing - Dosa. But, the first one on the list - my mind - told me that I needed to get in a little more veggies to my meal. And the second on the list - my body - was lazy to make a chutney and a sambar with veggies or side dish to go along with the dosa. And the third one and the fourth one on the list just wanted hot and tasty food. Poor me - how can I please all of these?

And right at that minute - this idea from my dad came to the rescue. I think he was cooking this up when my mom was visiting us here. Actually I think he had left over cauliflower-peas masala and just mashed it up and added it to his dosa. Yeah..I still can't believe he was cooking food for himself. Conceptually my dad's cooking  ideas are great, but practically my mom says that whenever he cooks (which you can probably count using your fingertips) there's got to be 2 people and 2 hrs to clean up later! But, he does loves good tasty food - I inherited if genetically, you could say.

And so to make a regular dosa night at home a little bit more interesting, I decided to do this. I loved the taste of these dosas and the added benefit is that you really don't need a side dish to go along with this. But, the fact I still made chutney can be ignored. Its my 'Food OCD' I guess, I have to have chutney for dosas. No chutney. No fun!

You'll need onions, tomatoes, cauliflowers, peas, carrots (optional), some fresh chopped ginger and green chillies. For spices, I just used a spoon of sambar powder and 1 spoon of Idli molaga podi (Gun Powder) - loved that flavor on the cauliflower masala!

In a wide pan, add about 1 tsp of oil. When the oil is hot, add 1 tsp of cumin seeds. Then, add in the chopped ginger and green chillies. Fry till they brown.

Then, add the onions and saute till they turn translucent.

And then add the chopped tomatoes to the onions and saute for a couple of mins.

Now add roughly but finely cut cauliflower pieces in here. About 1-1 1/2  cups of cut cauliflower.

Then add about 3/4 cup of green peas. If you are using frozen peas like me, just microwave the peas for about 3-4 mins in some water, then drain the water out and then add the peas in here. This heating up removes the raw smell of peas and also partially cooks it well.

Now, I had some grated carrots and so added that too. They do add a lot of taste and flavor - but its optional to add this.

This is where the story gets spicier - I mean, like really. Add salt to taste and also add your favorite spices. I added 1 heaped tsp of my super flavorful sambar powder and also 1 tsp of idli Molaga podi! And nothing else. I think this just provides a wholesome flavor any dish requires!

And add 1 tsp of ghee. This just opens up the whole palette of flavors and mixes it up so much that you can literally smell it all! Trust me. The smell will hit your nose - just take it in with a smile. And like Gandhi says - 'show your other nostril too!'

Now, cover the pan up and let it cook for a little while while the flavors get to know each other well.

After a few mins, go back in there and show who you are and what your power is. Sorry no more Gandhigiri.

Pick a masher and mash it up well. Break up the peas and blend it well with the rest of the stuff in there.

Can you see its all mashed up?

Make a thin dosa on the tawa and while the bottom is getting done and beginning to brown up -

add a thin layer of the masala on top of the dosa and spread it around all over.

Fold em up - and serve it out hot from the tawa!

One other look - you could just serve it open faced like this! Looks good to me.

As you can see, this does not have a big lump of masala in the center like masala dosa. There's the taste of masala in every bite of the dosa and it still is a pretty light dosa.

Enjoy. Peace Out!

Carrot Dosa

If its one of those weekdays and you have no idea what to make for dinner, you want to just scrape the left overs in your fridge but you already did that yesterday! (No - did not happen in our house yesterday! LOL!), this is probably a quick recipe to follow.

I like to make simple but different types of dosas like this one here - these are easy to make - and a serving of vegetable goes along with it in disguise. Moms - you can understand that!

So, here is our dosa of the day - Carrot Dosa.

Little bit of pre work needed here is that you have to soak rice for at least a couple of hrs before preparing the batter. Take about 2 cups of regular rice - I used our everyday basmati rice. Soak in hot water for 2-3 hrs. You can add toor daal to this if you want - then that would make carrot adai, which is another great option!

Grate a couple of carrots. Chop up 1-2 green chillies. And you need the rest of the ingredients here - some red chillies, jeera, coriander seeds, a little bit of black peppers, some chopped ginger.

 

Move the soaked rice to a blender and blend to a coarse consistency. 

 

Now add all the other ingredients to the coarse rice batter. Blend together well.

 

Blend well into a smooth batter.

 

Look at that color! Almost looks like carrot kheer - but definitely does not taste like kheer!

 

Now, just make dosas out of this batter immediately. You can make them like regular dosas.

 

Serve hot immediately with plain ol' coconut chutney and sambar. Or with just molaga podi. Or with Sugar..or with whatever you like.

 

How easy and nice is that? A bit of advice though - eat this hot. Do not let this cool and then eat - they kind of become tough when its cold, because its just rice batter.

 

Enjoy. Peace Out!