Boondi Ladoo

   

  Tamil new years is observed around the 13th-14th of April every year, it is based on the Tamil Calendar.  The Tamil calendar is based on the classical Hindu solar calendar also used in Assam, Bengal, Kerala, Manipur, Nepal, Orissa, Rajasthan and Punjab. I could easily say that my most favorite festival is the Tamil New Years, simply because it is not a religious function and there are no restrictions on the menu. Meaning cook and eat, no elaborate pooja has to be performed before digging into the food! The menu for this festival includes: something sweet (ofcourse!!!), something bitter, something sour and something spicy/salty. Giving one an explosion of flavors! Workout your tongue people...

  This year for New Years I decided to post  Boondi Ladoo. I love Boondi Ladoo very much. Problem: I started remembering the occasions my mom would make Boondi Ladoo and started craving them. I learnt that without the Boondi Ladle I had to depend on the store brought Ladoos.Call me a Ladoo snob, but the ones available at our Indian store don't seem to satisfy my cravings. Lucky for me, I have a LGA (Local Guardian Aunty), who has all the kitchen tools  and gadgets one could ever imagine needed for Indian cooking. She lent it to me,  I could say leased infinitely, because I still have not returned it to her ! Aunty next time I meet you I'll make you a lot of ladoos to make up for it :D. 

Ingredients:

For the syrup:

Sugar - 1.5 cups

Water - 3/4th cup

Food colouring - Kesar colour, a pinch

Elaichi powder - 1/4th tsp

Nutmeg powder -  1/4th tsp

Clove powder - 1/4th tsp

For the Boondi:

Besan - 1 cup, divided in 2 batches

Rice flour - 1 tsp, divided in 2 batches

Oil - for frying the boondi

For tempering:

Ghee - 1 tbsp

Raisins

Cashews

Cloves (Optional , if you added the clove powder to the syrup you can skip this)

Sugar candy - You can even add this. I didn't have any on hand so did not add.

To make the syrup: 

• Soak Sugar and water for a few minutes. Boil the mixture till you get 1 string consistency. Approximately 215F- 235F on a candy thermometer.  
• Add the kesar colour, elaichi powder, nutmeg powder, and clove powder( if adding)

To make the Boondi:

• Heat the oil in a kadai.
• Take half the besan & rice flour. Mix together.
• Make a batter adding water. The batter should not be too thick. It should be a bit thin.( It should be thinner than dosa batter). If the batter soaks too much it drinks up more oil and your ladoo will be more oily.
• Over the Kadai hold the Boondi ladle. If you dont have a boondi ladle you can use a wide, slotted ladle. Pour about 1/4th cup of the batter and tap the ladle so that small balls fall into the hot oil. Just tap. DO not rub the surface of the ladle with a spoon or your hands. This will cause the boondi to be flat and not round.
• Take out the boondi from the kadai when it is almost 80% cooked. If it cooks 100% the boondi will get crisp and you will not be able to make balls out of it.
• Put the boondi into the syrup. Continue to make boondis till you run out of the batter.
• In the side, heat up some ghee and roast the raisns, cashew and cloves( If adding)
• Add the raisin & nut mixture to the boondi-syrup mixture.
• Gently mix. Cover it and set aside for 2-3 hours. Then make ladoos out of the soaked Boondis by squeezing between you plams.
• If the syrup is too hard and you are not able to make balls or if the balls don't hold up, sprinkle hot water and proceed. The ladoos may seem to be a bit wet in that case, but it will dry up and hold together well.

Pattani Piratal/ Spiced Peas Curry

This post is dedicated to one of my best friends, who is almost family to me - Pavithra. She was introduced to me by another family friend and used to live in the same community as I do. Her husband(Big V) was pretty easy going and her son(Small V, looks exactly like his dad! Sorry Pavithra... I had to mention it. ) was the cutest and most adorable 9 month old I had ever met, and who eventually became best friends with my husband and I.We all connected and got along very well. We used to be over at each other's place constantly for dinners, lunches, or even just simply just hanging out. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end... It was true in our case. She moved back to India with her family :(. Fortunately for me the story doesn't end there. She and her family are moving back to the US, though not the same area as us...still something is better than nothing! We can meet up for holidays, etc. YAY! I am so psyched. (I think I am even more excited than even her!!!!!!!)

Pavithra & I

She is a fantastic cook and has re-introduced me to certain dishes which in the past I have hated, but now I love to bits. One such dish was Appam. I am not a big fan of any dish with obvious coconut in it. Pavithra made appam with this pattani piratal. O.M.G!!!! The piratal was so good that I even liked the appam, and now it is a regular feature in our dinner table. She loves cooking so much, that Small V gets very inspired. He used to "cook" for us using his toy kitchen, his specials were avacado sambar and cabbage and  capsicum rasam! I can go on and on about Small V for days so let me stop with this. Do watch out this space for more Pavithra specials!

Future Sanjeev Kapoor making his signature dishes: Avacado Sambar & Cabbage Rasam!

This dish is a Chettinadu special and is a bit spicy & takes a bit of oil. So reserve this dish for one of those days when you want to indulge.


Ingredients:
Peas - 2 cups, fresh or frozen but thawed
Onion - 2 medium sized, finely chopped
Tomatoes - 4 medium sized, finely chopped
Oil - 5 tbsp , sounds like a lot but do not try to cut it as it is needed in this dish.
Curry leaves- few
Cilantro - finely chopped

The color combination is so bright!

For the Masala:
Coconut - 3 tbsp
Ginger - 1" piece
Garlic - 5 cloves
Fennel seeds - 1 tsp
Cinammon - 1/2" piece
Cloves - 4-5
Green chillies - 1-2 optional
Dhaniya - 1.5 tsp
Chilly Powder - 2.5 tsp(lesser if you wish)
Turmeric - 1 tsp

• Process all the ingredients listed for the masala, into a fine paste. Try to avoid adding too much water while grinding.
• In a kadai heat some oil. Add the onions and sautee with a dash of salt, till it becomes translucent. The salt helps in cooking the onions faster.
• To the onions, add the tomatoes, peas, and the ground masala, and salt required for the dish.

• At about half way through add the curry leaves.
• The mixture will start coming together into a tight ball eventually. The tomatoes will "dissolve" and the water from the mixture will go and the mixture will start becoming a ball.
• Once done turn off heat and garnish with cilantro.
• This dish goes with chappatis, rice,dosa,idiyappam, and my current favorite appam!

That one is for you Pavithra!

I got this wonderful recipe for appams from here.

Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

Hey! Hope you remember me still! I know have not blogged in over a month.My bad :(. With the winter being very weird (One day it is like a nice spring day, another day it is freezing cold), I wasn't feeling too great. I am back to normal now and hopefully back to regular blogging :). 

I get very excited for birthday's and anniversaries as I can come up with a cake to make for celebrating. I make other big plans, but based on my history of sucking at planning events, I make sure I engage in cake making for these celebrations! For my husband's first birthday, after we got married, I had planned to make a huge cake and have friends over. Then came the anti-climax - we were snowed in a week before D-Day. We couldn't even remove the car out of our apartment complex. So a day before his birthday, I sent him to the grocery store and made him buy the ingredients for his own birthday cake! You see, we are very engaged together in all activities :P. It was a yummy chocolate truffle cake reward for a grocery trip well done and for being the b'day baby.

The endless possibilities makes picking a cake I want to make very hard and it becomes a research project before I settle on one and keep it a secret. So, Mohan plays the guess the cake game for me. He tries to observe the products I am looking up online, or at the store. What books I am refering to and which pages have a lot of bookmarks. I go on tangents during my research, so he cannot really get much out of snooping around :P.

For year two I made Madhuri's Pineapple Pastry Cake. I wanted to finish making the cake and keep it in my friend's fridge so hubby wont see it. I managed to keep it a secret till the eve of his birthday. The husband decided to take off from work earlier than usual randomly, and the party started early with good friends of ours coming over! I was still frosting the cake in the side and was in shock!! So much for my secret cake plans and so much for random unplanned surprizes!

For my Hubby's birthday this year, I managed to keep it a secret till the cake cutting! (Almost!). Mohan and his friend dug into the cake and other agents of inebriation. They loved the cake very much. It had white "chocolate" in it. Thanks to being married to me, I don't even show my husband the light of white chocolate. I love dark chocolate and believe that white "chocolate" is not even chocolate! That being said, I was very surprised with the outcome of this cake. I enjoyed it inspite of it having white "chocolate". This cake was very fun to make, but it was a very lengthy process and I made it over a day. It was so worth it. Every bite was a peek into heaven. So let me not keep you in suspense and show you how I made it!

Recipe source: America's test kitchen TV show

For the Flourless Chocolate Cake Layer:

7 oz Bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 tbsp Butter, Unsalted and cut into pieces

4 Eggs, separated

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1/3rd cup Brown Sugar, packed

• Preheat oven to 325 F. Prepare a spring form pan with butter.
• Over a double boiler, melt the butter and chocolate. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.
• Whisk in the egg yolks, one by one to the chocolate mixture
• Add the vanilla extract and whisk it.
• In the bowl of a standing mixer or a mixing bowl, add the egg whites and salt. Using the whisk attachment , beat on medium speed until frothy.(takes about 30 seconds)
• Add the half brown sugar to the egg whites and beat until incorporated. Add the rest of the brown sugar and continue to beat at high speed until stiff peaks form.
• Take about 1/3rd of the egg white mixture and whisk it into the chocolate mixture.
• Add the rest of the egg white mixture and gently fold it in, ensuring you do not deflate it too much.
• Pour into the greased pan and bake for 13- 18 minutes. The sides should be firm, but the center should be soft but cooked. It took me 15 minutes.
• Transfer the cake to a wire rack to cook down completely. Do not take the cake out of the pan.

For the Middle layer:

2 tbsp Dutch processed cocoa

5 tbsp Hot water

7 oz Bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups Heavy Cream

1 tbsp sugar

1/8th tsp salt

• Whisk together cocoa powder and hot water and set aside to cool
• Melt the chocolate over a double boiler whisk until smooth. Take off heat and set aside to cool
• In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachement, whip the cream until forthy for 20 seconds.
• Add sugar and salt and beat on medium until it starts to thicken.
• Beat on high speed until the cream holds soft peaks.
• Add the cocoa mixture and 1/3 rd of the whipped cream and whisk it in till incorporated.
• Take the rest of the whipped cream mixture and fold it in gently with a spatula. Until no streaks remain.
• Pour the entire mixture into the springform pan over the cooled cake
• Smooth the top with an offset spatula. Tap the pan on the counter gently to remove any large air bubbles.
• Using a damp tissue wipe the side of the pan to clean the drips.
• Set it in the refrigerator for atleast 15 minutes.

For the top layer:

3/4 tsp Gelatin, powdered ( I used vegetarian gelatin)

1 tbsp Water

6 oz White Chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups of heavy cream

• In a small bowl sprinkle the gelatin over the water. Set aside for atleast 5 minutes for it to soften.
• Place the chocolate in a medium bowl.
• In a medium saucepan heat 1/2 cup cream until it boils. Add the gelatin misture and whisk it until it dissolves.
• Pour over the chocolate and let it stand for a minute. Whisk the mixture until smooth
• In the bowl of you standing mixer add the cream and using whisk attachment beat on low speed till it thickens a bit.
• Increase to high and whip till it forms soft peaks.
• Whisk in about 1/3rd of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture and fold in the rest of the whipped cream gently with a rubber spatula.
• Pour the mixture on top of the second layer. Level it with an offset spatula.
• Tap the pan very gently to remove any air bubbles.
• Set in the fridge for atleast 3 hours. If you want to cover with a plastic wrap ensure the wrap wont touch the surface of the cake.
• Run a knife in the side of the pan to loosen the mousse. Remove the cake pan from the spring form.
• Decorate with chocolate curls. Well, mine look like grated chocolate rather than curls :P
• Enjoy yourself!!!

I am usually a white chocolate hater, but this recipe was really good. The gelatin ensured that the white chocolate din't set hard and the cream reduced the sweetness of the white chocolate. It was very subtle. Don't tell me I didn't warn you,  This is a very rich cake so even a cake crazy person such as myself could not eat a full slice in one sitting. (Shocking isn't it???)