Red Pumpkin Adai

Source:

Mrs. Saraswathi


Ingredients:

Par Boiled Rice - 1 cup

Finely Chopped Red Pumpkin - 1 cup

Red Chillies - 4 to 5

Salt - 1 tsp

Asafoetida - 1/4 tsp

Curry Leaves - Few


Method:

1.  Wash rice and soak it for at least 2 hours with enough water.

2.  Wash, peel skin, and finely chop the red pumpkin.

3.  In a mixer, grind together red chillies, salt, asafoetida, curry leaves, chopped pumpkin, and soaked rice to a coarse batter adding the soaked water as necessary.  This should be a thick batter.  Do not add too much water and dilute it.

4.  In a hot tawa, pour this batter into adais by pouring the batter in the center and spreading it with a ladle spirally.  Cover and cook for a minute until the adai leaves on the sides and then flip over and cook until done as soft adais or crisp adais as per your preference.  Serve hot with coconut chutney or a pickle of your choice.  Ideally, tomato thokku or onion thokku would be the best accompaniment.


Notes:

One cup of par boiled rice (or idli rice) can be replaced with equal quantities of raw rice and par boiled rice.  Also, millets like samai, varagu, kuthiraivaali, or thinai can also be used instead of the raw rice.

Palm sized adais can also be made for easy bites.

Nuts Millets Laddoo

Source:

Mrs. Lakshmi Nathan


Ingredients:

Millets (Varagu/Saamai/Thinai/Kuthiraivaali) - 1 cup

Mixed Nuts (Cashew, Badam, Pista, Walnuts, Peanuts) - 1 cup

Powdered Sugar - 1 cup

Ghee - 1 to 2 tbsp


Method: 

1.  Wash millets thoroughly and strain all of the excess water.

2.  Dry fry the wet millet in a iron kadai on medium flame for around 5 to 10 minutes until it dries up completely and puffs and pops up like pori.

3.  Dry roast the desired nuts separately in a pan and allow to cool.

4.  In a mixer, powder the puffed up millets.  Keep separately.

5.  Again in the same mixer, powder the roasted nuts.

6.  Mix this nut powder to the millet powder and also the powdered sugar and warm ghee.  Mix well with your fingertips until well combined.

7.  Run little by little in a mixer jar this mixture until the ghee oozes out and makes the mixture slightly wet and greasy and until all the powder mix is used up.  Transfer to a plate or a large bowl.

8.  Take around a tablespoonful of this mixture in your hand and press slightly to make laddoos.

Here goes the healthy, nutritious, and yummy nuts millet laddoos.  Store these laddoos in an airtight container.  The shelf life for these laddoos would be around 10 days but I have never had these last till then.  They vanish off faster.  An apt treat for your kids snack box.


Notes:

Use can replace sugar with jaggery or palm sugar (karupatti) or powdered panam kalkandu.

Kodo Millet (Varagu) Cookies

Source:

Mrs. Karpagam Swaminathan (HBG)


Ingredients:

Kodo Millet (varagu) Flour - 3/4 cup

Wheat Flour - 3/4 cup

Powdered Sugar - 1/2 cup

Butter (salted) - 1/2 cup (melted and at room temperature)

Pineapple Essence - 1 tsp

Cooking Soda - 1 pinch

Milk - 3 tbsp


Method:

1.  Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.

2.  Sieve together the millet flour, wheat flour, and cooking soda.

3.  Whisk together the melted butter and powdered sugar and beat well until combined.

4.  Add the dry ingredients to this and make a dough using milk as needed.  Use milk according to the dough consistency.

5.  Roll the dough with a rolling pin to 1 inch thickness.

6.  Cut with cookie cutters of desired shape.

7.  Arrange on the baking tray.

8.  Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes at 180 degrees.

9.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

10.  Store in an airtight container and use as needed.

These are healthy and delicious cookies to munch.