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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Survival of the Cooker - Part 2

Thenga Podi (Coconut powder):

I'm going to follow the same template as yesterday's post of Molaga podi for this post, as most of the ingredients and procedure are the same.


Disclaimer: Follow the links if you aren't sure what these ingredients are. I have linked them to bigbasket.com from where I buy my groceries. I have no other association with them.

3/4th tumbler of Thuvaramparuppu (Toor dhal)
1/4th tumbler of Vellai uLundhu (white urad dhal)
About 10 MoLaga Red Chillies (Any variety that you prefer. Add more if you like it to be extra spicy) 
About a Rs.5 coin sized piece of Perungaayam (Asafoetida/Hing), if you are using the solid kind. If you are using the powder, add about a tablespoon full. More if you like the smell of it.
About 1/2 a coconut (medium sized one)
About a tablespoon of oil (any oil that you prefer - I used refined sunflower oil)
Salt - As necessary
1 tumbler = approximately 150gm of Paruppu (Dhal). Not sure though. 



Take all the ingredients mentioned above, except the thenga (coconut) and fry it in a pan on medium flame with any oil that you prefer (I used refined sunflower oil) until both the paruppu turn golden yellow. Make sure to keep Sautéing it to avoid burning it. The chilli would also have started emitting its odour by now. Once done frying, keep this mix aside to cool down.

Scrape the thenga fully and fry the scrapes on a dry pan until it loses its raw smell and becomes dry. 
Keep Sautéing it on the pan without any oil to avoid burning it. You will know if it is done from the change in texture. It should've come to a state where one strand(for the lack of a better term) doesn't stick to the other. This indicates that it is cooked. Remove the pan away from the fire.

Now, take the previous mix of Red chillies, Thuvaram Paruppu, VeLLai ULundhu and asafoetida, after making sure that it has cooled down sufficiently for your mixer, grind it Rock-salt as necessary. (Rock salt lends a better taste than free-flowing powdered salt).

Last step is to add the thenga that has been cooling down all this while to the already ground powder and grind them all together. 
Almost the same procedure as that of MoLaga podi but instead of kadali paruppu, we use thuvaram paruppu. And instead of eLLu, we add the thenga.
Allow it to cool down and store it in an air-tight container. The measurements mentioned here will make the powder last for about a week for a single person, if used everyday. 



This can be mixed with rice, used as a side-dish for Idly, Dosai, Thayir saadham (Curd rice) etc.

Enjoy. :)

Next post - Dhaniya podi.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Survival of the cooker

The display name project 365 of twitter has been keeping me busy and I had started ignoring this blog. Today, though, I have some interesting news. As of today, I'm officially a cooker. No no.. Not the pressure kind. The cooking kind. I mean, I have learnt to cook a few basic recipes that would help me NOT JUST survive, but help me retain sesnsation of my taste buds. 

Yes, I have not just learnt to cook/make the Tambrahm essentials of Molagapodi, Thenga podi and Dhaniya podi, but have also made my first prototype test and I'm pleased to announce that it has been a grand success.

This post is part 1 of the series where I shall describe the procedure to what all I have made.

First up

Molaga Podi (Chilli/Gunpowder):

Disclaimer: Follow the links if you aren't sure what these ingredients are. I have linked them to bigbasket.com from where I buy my groceries. I have no other association with them.

3/4th tumbler of Kadalai paruppu (Gram dhal)
1/4th tumbler of Vellai uLundhu (white urad dhal)
About 10 MoLaga Red Chillies (Any variety that you prefer. Add more if you like it to be extra spicy) 
About a Rs.5 coin sized piece of Perungaayam (Asafoetida/Hing), if you are using the solid kind. If you are using the powder, add about a tablespoon full. More if you like the smell of it.
1/4th tumbler of eLLu (Til)
About a tablespoon of oil (any oil that you prefer - I used refined sunflower oil)
About a two-thumbs sized piece of vellam (jaggery) for a tinge of sweetness. Avoid it if you don't like sweetness. Personally, I feel this is what makes it taste brilliant. I have a sweet tooth, you see.
Salt - As necessary

I hadn't measured it in terms of weight. My Mom hates doing that. Everything is measured only by the eye. "You'll know how much is enough when you see it" is what she says and I seem to follow her.

Okay, I've put up the image of the tumbler below if you still need measurements. 



Note that my hands are huge. Bigger than a typical guy's. So, keep that in mind. :P

1 tumbler = approximately 150gm of Paruppu (Dhal). Not sure though.


Take all the ingredients mentioned above, except the eLLu and fry it in a pan on medium flame with any oil that you prefer (I used refined sunflower oil) until both the paruppu turn golden yellow. Make sure to keep Sautéing it to avoid burning it. The chilli would also have started emitting its odour by now. Once done frying, keep this mix aside to cool down.

Now, take the eLLu that is remaining and Sauté it on a pan without any oil. This has to be done dry. The eLLu will start to burst like pop corn. Be careful not to get burnt by the bursting grains. The raw smell would have disappeared by now and the colour would've also turned to golden-yellow. This indicates that it is cooked. Remove the pan away from the fire.

Now, take the previous mix of Red chillies, Kadalai Paruppu, VeLLai ULundhu and asafoetida, after making sure that it has cooled down sufficiently for your mixer, grind it along with a lemon-sized piece of tamarind and Rock-salt as necessary. (Rock salt lends a better taste than free-flowing powdered salt).

Last step is to add the eLLu that has been cooling down all this while to the already ground powder and grind them all together.

That's it. It's done. That was simple, wasn't it?

Allow it to cool down and store it in an air-tight container. The measurements mentioned here will make the powder last for about a week for a single person, if used everyday. 

This can be mixed with rice, used as a side-dish for Idly, Dosai, Thayir saadham (Curd rice) etc.

Enjoy. :)

Let me know if you try this out and how it turned out to be. And if you have any tips/tricks in survival skills, leave it in the comments.

I will follow-up with posts on the recipes of Thenga podi and Dhaniya podi soon.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Indha Avinasi oru visuvaasi - MMKR Dialogue compilation

After +Mirnalini Venkatraman posted some dialogue reference to a dialogue from Thilli Mullu on twitter, I had asked her what she meant and got blasted for not getting the reference. This +Ashokha Varshini gave me the imposition to write for such a grave ignorance. Then, @_curses tweeted another dialogue from MMKR which also I didn't seem to "get". Just like Avinasi, I am also one visuvaasi so, as an alternative to writing imposition, I decided to download a watch both Michael Madana Kama Rajan and Thillu Mullu again and live tweet both movies' dialogues and I did. This blog post is to compile all those tweets into a single source for future reference as suggested by +bala kumaran So, here goes:




































Thanks to all of you who had tweeted, for making this as comprehensive as possible. Please @reply tweet to me or post here in the comments, some of the dialogues that we (everyone tagged in the tweets above) may have missed.

Next post: #ThilluMullu based :)

Monday, January 7, 2013

Thank you, Knowledgeable Chennai Crowd

The idea of visiting the town of charm - Chennai originated with a friend moving there in April last year. I had been there on May but that was the worst time of the year to visit a place like that. Everyone knows the 3 seasons of Chennai - Hot, Hotter and Hottest! And May is falls in middle of the hottest months of the year.
Anyway, this blog is not about my earlier visit, so I'll stop there.
I will not talk about how I despise Chennai Summers, either. This being the winter, I expected it to be bearable, if not pleasant, but to my surprise it was actually VERY pleasant.

'Twas the Season to be jolly. Yeah. The Christmas season had arrived and it had been over a month since another friend had moved to Chennai. That was an incentive for me to visit the city. Thanks to twitter, I now know a lot more people from Chennai than from my own town. So, took the opportunity of the year-end-shutdown at office to visit all of them.

Boy, was that a great decision! I may not have partied for the New year's. I may not have drunk. I may not have traveled, but what could be better than meeting some awesome people! As an icing on the cake, I got to go to the ARR live-in-concert.

Was that brilliant or what! My first ever concert. Rain-drenched. Soaking-wet. The crowd had not moved an inch. I, being what's known as "Enthu pattani", went to the venue at 2PM for the 6PM concert to put towel and hold seats for my friends (you know who you are, #giuTreat). Rained all through until the concert began, but I got to hear the songs being performed even before it did. All the artists were there rehearsing back stage with the mics ON. :D
The man's called AR RahGod for no silly reason. We were literally drenched by "Isai Puyal" (Musical cyclone). Whatte Man!
Except for a few screw-ups by Hariharan and  the ads for Jaya TV serials in between the songs, I had the time of my life at the concert.

I made sure I met as many twitter folks as possible over multiple tweet-ups. First one was a small one in a posh tea kadai called Pascucci and the second one was over dinner at a restaurant called Kailash Parbat. Both nice places. Was blown away by the crowd that was waiting outside Kailash Parbat when we exited. Didn't think the food was THAT great. The ambiance was good, though.

Stood in the queue for 5 hours to get to see the deity at the Singa-Perumal koil on Vaikunta Ekadasi day.

Wasted money in watching The Hobbit. Before you outrage, I Haven't watched LoTR series, so...

After the itching wait, finally got to watch Sivaji 3D in Dolby ATMOS at Sathyam Cinemas. I owe an apology to everyone who turned up that day for I had all their tickets and ended up being terribly late. Sorry. Really.

You! Yes, you! Go watch it. If you haven't watched it yet or even if you have, book a ticket to Chennai and watch it in ATMOS. Mind-blowing it is. And it is a completely different movie in 3D.

Watched NKPK - One hilarious movie this one is. Watch it if you already haven't.

Went to the Vandalur Zoo. Whatte place! Spent one entire day there and if you love animals, this is a must-see. One suggestion - Don't take the golf cart. Take the cycle or walk, if you want to see all animals leisurely.

Met some long-time-no-see friends, but only briefly - Most of them being busy. Looks like only I was completely vetti this time of the year. :P Anyway, I could use this as an excuse for going again. Chennai is just 6 hours away from Bangalore.

If only Chennai had Bangalore's weather, I'll gladly move. Whatte town. What warmth. What people! Love the place, although I have no deep connection to it.

And did I mention my romance with trains? Chennai's sub-urban trains - oh my love!

With that came the time to pack-up and get back to the grind. What a way to end a year and start another one. Thank you Chennai. Thanks to all the people who made it to the tweet-ups and to the ones I met. Yuvaar the bestest!

Here's wishing you 2013 to be the best year so far, in your lives. Take care. Be good. Until next time... :)

Monday, December 31, 2012

2012 - Retrospect

1. Traveled by an International flight for the first time
2. Visited a foreign county for the first time
3. Saw roads of the middle east for the first time
4. Saw snow for the first time
5. Bought my first basketball shoes and converse shoes
6. Discovered nutella and chocolate flakes
7. Ate my first cup-cake (have had muffins before)
8. Got promoted
9. Made some amazing friends, mostly through Twitter
10.Followed many people, un-followed a few
11. Met a lot of Twitter folks in person
12. Attended my first real live concert
13. Discovered food street and CTR thanks to the new friend I made - Apoorva
14. Have bowled more than any other year - Thanks to another new friend, Vinay
15. Discovered the joy of oor suthifying pointlessly with a friend
16. Watched more plays/movies/shows this year than any other
17. Moved to a better house
18. Met some lovely folks in Madras
19. Been the Busiest and the laziest at work, this year
20. In one sentence - Awesome food, awesome company and an awesome time has been had.

Some things I wish to do in 2013:
1. Read more. One book every fortnight challenge of Aska has been taken up
2. Learn and work on new stuff
3. Travel more
4. Last but not definitely the keystone for doing the rest - Make more money.

Here's wishing you a very happy new year.

I'd like to hear your story. Comment away.