Murugan Idly Tomato Chutney

Anybody who goes via Madurai Railway Junction wouldn't have missed tasting Murugan Idlies. The hygiene packing and the quality of food was too good. And one of the delicious chutney served with it is Tomato chutney.

Accidentally I discovered :) the recipe of it while cooking. You need mixie for it. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Full Big Onion - 1
Tomatoes - Two
Curry Leaves - 5-10 leaf
Red chillies - 5 (reduce 1 or 2 if you don't want that to be hot)
Ginger - little (if you like)
Moong Dal (paasi paruppu) - Two spoons
Oil - One spoons
Tamarind - one almond size.

Now Heat the tawa in the stove. Pour the oil. Once it is heated, put Moong dal, Chillies, Curry leaves and fry until it becomes brown. Chop the onions and put it in the tawa. Add cut tomatoes, ginger, tamarind, less than one teaspoon of salt and fry for some time. Cool it for 5 minutes and grind it in mixie/blender. Garnish with lin seeds(kaduku), asofetida (perungayam) and serve.
Yummy Murugan Idly shop chutney is ready.

Alternatively you can use Urid Dal (uzhundam paruppu) instead of moong dal. That will give you a different taste.

Rasam

Normally guys have one standard formula for cooking. Top any dish with Onions.

Onions in rasam. NO! NO!

Here is the recipe for healthy soup.

Take one golf ball size of Tamarind and soak it in a bowl of water for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes just dissolve all the tamarind juices to the bowl, trash the seed and chakkai. (?). Alternativey use one laddle of Tamarind paste available in jars.

If you like Garlic, mince 4 or 5 garlic or take one tablespoon of Garlic paste.

Heat the pot, garnish it with oil, mustard, jeera and curry leaves. Crush one juicy tomato to the garnished stuff. Add some salt, a pinch of turmeric and leave the pot for some time until the tomato gets cooked. (it may take 2-3 minutes), then pour the tamarind juice on top of it.

If you have rasam powder, you can add one tablespoon to it though it's not a must.

And boil for 10 minutes. Sprinkle one tablespoon of pepper powder to the boiling rasam. When the rasam is fully boiled it starts to bubble and raise. Turn off the stove and add some minced coriander leaves to it.

Rasam is ready. You can eat it with Rice or drink it in a glass. Helps you come out that of hangover caused since your gulped those beer cans, whiskies and vodkas.

Types of Rasams.
Everything has the same recipe. There are just few variations here and there. Understand whether it's lemon or tomato or tamarind juice, everything you add is for the sour taste. Judge yourself how much you need, mix and match those. You will love it.

Lemon Rasam
The same rasam recipe. You can use the Lemon juice instead of Tomato or the Tamarind Juice.

Tomato Rasam
Here the proportions are different. Use more than one tomato and reduce the quanity of Tamarind juice.

Pepper Rasam
Gotcha! You guys are smart. Yes! I can hear you.
Add one more spoon of pepper than needed. If you guys love garlic, add 5 to 8 pieces of garlic. Garlic is another spice which makes it hot when added with pepper.

Chutney

Chutney
Without Mixie jars the quickest chutney you can make is the Tomato one. Here’s the recipe.

Tomato chutney
Ingredients:
4 or 5 juicy tomatoes.
1 teaspoon of mustard
1 teaspoon of urid seeds (optional)
Curry leaves or Curry powder
Minced Coriander leaves
One sliced onion.
One tablespoon oil
One teaspoon Turmeric powder
One tablespoon Chilly powder

Heat the tawa and once it is hot enough garnish it with oil, mustard, urid seed and curry leaves. Add the sliced onions. Crush the tomato like a paste and pour it to the tawa. Add turmeric, chilly powder, cup of water and boil for few minutes until the paste get thicker and it’s ready to eat with dosa or idli or readymade parathha.

Garlic – Tomato Chutney
Mix the ready made Garlic paste available in bottle to the above tomato chutney and spice it up.

Garlic Chutney
Heat the tawa and once it is hot enough garnish it with oil, mustard, urid seed and curry leaves. Add a ladle of water to the garlic paste, a teaspoon of turmeric, a tablespoon of Chilly powder and required salt and boil it for few minutes.

Variety Dosas

Thinking of varieties of dosa, it’s an endless list. Uthappam, Tomato, Masala, Ghee, Vegetable, Cheese what not. I see you are drooling now.

O.K. I will tell how to make them just like that. The first step is to prepare the DOSA batter. http://dishesfordesis.blogspot.com/2005/08/dosa.html.

Dosa batters normally ferment day by day and on each fermentation you can dish out a new variety. For the OO techies, think of your Plain dosa as a base class, inherit it and add some attributes and you get variety of dosa. Oops!

Ghee Dosa
Use Ghee instead of oil for making dosa.

Cheese Dosa
Buy the shredded Cheese and sprinkle on top of dosa before you take it from the pan.

Masala Dosa:
Take one Aloo and one onion. Cut potato, add some salt and boil it in microwave for 5-10 minutes. Cut onion into slices. Heat the tawa with one teaspoon of oil. Now garnish with mustard, curry leaves (karuveppilai) and asoefetida(perungayam). Add the onion slices. Fry for few minutes and add the boiled potato, one pinch of turmeric, one tablespoon of chilly powder and cook for another 5 minutes. [You can also use any choice of peas (like pattani, Sundal) or beans (motchai, lima) along with this masala. Boil the peas and add it to the masala.] Before removing it from the stove, add some minced coriander leaves. Masala is ready.

Now you prepare the dosa and before you take out the dosa from the pan add one scoop of aloo masala you prepared, spread it over dosa. Leave for seconds and fold the dosa and remove it from pan. Yummy Masala dosa ready.

Vegetable Dosa
You can use anything from shredded carrot, cabbage, beetroot. If they are deeply shredded you don’t need to boil them otherwise cook them in microwave for 5 minutes and add it to the dosa batter and start making dosas. Simple.

Uthappam:
If you add Onion to dosa then it is Uthappam. You can either mix the onion slices onto the batter or sprinkle on top of dosa when it is getting baked. If you mix onion slices into sour batter (after fermentation of two days) and prepare dosa you will be really floored. For people don’t like sour batter they can use directly by sprinkling on the dosa and have it.

Tomato Dosa:
Slice the tomato into pieces, mix it to the batter and go making dosa!

Rava Dosa:
When the dosa batter is not enough or take little of it and mix it with a cup of Rava, tablespoon of Jeera, Curry leaves, sliced onions and leave for 30 minutes. If the batter is watery it will be better. If it’s more watery you really need to master when you take the dosa out of the pan.

Mangalore Neer Dosa
If you have only rice flour, you can prepare this. It doesn’t matter how many cups of rice flour you mix. Based on your needs, mix it with n cups of rice flour with water. Make sure the batter you make is watery. Add salt and 2 table spoons of Jeera. Leave it for hour and start preparing dosa.

Wheat/Ragi Dosa
You can prepare this either with Wheat flour or Ragi flour. It doesn’t matter how many cups of flour you mix. Based on your needs, mix it with n cups of flour with water. Make sure the batter you make is watery. Add salt and 2 table spoons of Jeera. Leave it for hour and start preparing dosa. You can eat this with Sugar also.

Appam
If you have only rice flour, you can prepare this. It doesn’t matter how many cups of rice flour you mix. Based on your needs, mix it with n cups of rice flour with water. Add some shredded coconut or coconut milk into it. Leave it for 8 hours. And start preparing. If you like sweet, add some jaggery and banana slices. Mouth watering sweet is ready.

Dosa

Dosa is a favourite of everyone’s dish. With all those table top grinders weighing less than 5 kg, newly weds and Mrs.GreenCardholders carry it on their visit to India.

Others still find it difficult to miss their favourite item and found solace in weekend buffets in Udupi’s or Woodlands. The ready made packets can give you two dosa which is not enough. They are not great taste too. Don’t worry. Here is the ready made recipe.

Go to any Indian stores and pick up that “Urid flour” (around 500 gms, will come for atleast two months) and “Rice flour”. Most of the rice flour is packed in transparent bags. Make sure the one you pick are fine one. Those details will be on the cover.

The formula for preparing dosa batter is 1 cup of Urid (flour) with 4 cups of Rice (flour).

Take a big bowl and put 1 cup of urid. [How big should be the cup? To start with use 50 gms or the smallest glass cup you have.] Mix it with water and 1 tablespoon of salt and beat it using Egg beater. Leave it for an hour.

Then add 4 cups of rice flour with sufficient water and one tablespoon of salt. Beat it using egg beater. Beat it until all that is mixed up well and fine.

Is it ready to make? Nope. You should be patient enough to wait for a day to prepare DOSA. Leave the bowl covered in a warm place for 8 hours. Not in the freezer, dude. It needs heat to get fermented. You will see that batter ferments and becomes more in volume. Now it’s ready to make.

Heat your Dosa pan in the stove for 1 minute. Add one teaspoon of your favourite oil to the pan and spread all over the pan. Take one Ladle (karandi) of batter, pour it and spread on the pan. Add a teaspoon of oil around the dosa. Leave it for a minute. Use the Turner (dosai karandi) and flip the dosa. Otherwise you can fold it and take out.

Dosa is ready. You can prepare more than 20 dosas with this batter.

(read on chutneys)