Panagam

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BM #112 : Week 2, Day 2
Theme : Summer Coolers

Panagam is a traditional drink made during Sri Rama Navami. It falls in the month of March, which also marks the beginning of hot weather in India. This is a perfect summer cooler for the weather there.

We are all big fans of panagam, but somehow we don’t prepare it at home often enough. One reason is the amount of jaggery that goes into this drink. To make a sweet panagam, you do need to add a good amount of jaggery. The recipe is very simple with very few ingredients. I don’t use jaggery or dry ginger powder on a regular basis, but these are my pantry staples. These stay good for a long time, so if you buy it once, it’s going to be there for a longtime. I used bottled lemon juice concentrate for this, fresh lemon juice is more preferable though. Fresh ginger juice can also be used instead of dry ginger powder. The recipe is more of a guide, you can always adjust the ingredients to suit your taste buds.

Read on for the recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups water
  • 4 tablespoons powdered jaggery or adjust per taste
  • 1 teaspoon dry ginger powder
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • A pinch of ground cardamom or two cardamom pods lightly crushed

Method:

  1. In a big bowl, add the water and powdered jaggery. Mix well with a spoon. I get jaggery powder and it’s free of impurities, so I don’t have to filter it out. You will have to filter if the jaggery you are using has some impurities.
  2. Add the ginger powder , cardamom and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. Taste test and add the remaining one teaspoon if needed.
  3. Refrigerate until the time of serving.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this Week

Sending this post to Srivalli’s Kids delight event , hosted by Usha this month. The theme is Kid friendly Summer Coolers.

Sunrise Mocktail

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BM #112 : Week 2, Day 1
Theme : Summer Coolers

I hope you are all doing fine, staying safe in your homes. We are doing good, staying put at home. We haven’t stepped out for over 6 weeks now, managing with online grocery shopping. Earlier in April it was extremely difficult to get groceries delivered, but thankfully that situation has now changed and there are a lot of delivery slots available.

We do all our shopping in Costco now mainly because theirs has been the most hassle free delivery with groceries. But the disadvantage of shopping there is that there are very few choices when it comes to vegetables. For a vegetarian, limiting yourself to spinach, mushrooms, beans and peppers for two months is a little too much. Still in this situation, I am glad for whatever I get now.

I am decently stocked up with milk and pantry items but veggies are low now. The point of mentioning all that was I am low in almost everything I needed to make today’s recipe. I didn’t have grenadine or lemon slices or mint leaves or cherries but I was grateful to have orange juice and grape cider. My son loves apple cider from Costco and since there were out of stock with apple cider, I had asked the delivery guys to pick up grape cider. Can’t say that was a good swap. Anyway it came handy when making this drink and we all like it in this form better than having it plain. So read on for this beautiful looking drink that you can prep with just two ingredients.

Ingredients:

  • Orange juice
  • Grape cider
  • Ice cubes

Method:

  1. Fill a glass with ice cubes. Carefully add grape cider till it’s 1/3rd full. Top it carefully with orange juice. Enjoy!

Note: if using a syrup like strawberry or grenadine, you have to start with the juice and then add the syrup.

* Without the ice cubes, the colors will mingle and you will just get a red color juice.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this Week

Sending this post to Srivalli’s Kids delight event , hosted by Usha this month. The theme is Kid friendly Summer Coolers.

Imli Aloo

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BM #110 : Week 4, Day 3
Theme : A to Z theme – Curries

I had planned to make Ivy gourd curry for the alphabet‘I’ in this A-Z theme. But I forgot to buy the vegetable and my google search for an alternate dish took me to this Imli aloo recipe from Priya’s space. She had served the tangy potatoes with Horse gram curry. So that’s how I got the recipe for yesterday’s post :-).

Coming to the recipe here, it has cooked potatoes sautéed with the usual masalas, you can change according to your preference. Basically it’s a combination of salt, spice and tangy flavors because of the tamarind. Earlier when I used to squeeze tamarind pulp the traditional way, I used to always end up with multiple small cuts in my hand. It took me awhile to understand that tamarind was the culprit and once I realized that, I switched to the paste version and haven’t had any problems since then. Lemon also does the same thing to me sometimes, if I squeeze too much lemon, the next day it would be like someone nicked my knuckles with a teeny tiny blade.

Anyway, here is the recipe for tangy potatoes. These pair very well with rice and a gravy. Rice and yogurt with potatoes in the side is an excellent combination, my younger brother survived on that diet for the first 20 years of his life (don’t ask me how though, he was a picky eater and we just let him be!)

Ingredients:

  • 3 big potatoes, cooked
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon jeera seeds
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1 teaspoon coriander powder
  • 2 teaspoons tamarind Paste
  • Salt as needed

Method:

  1. Wash and Cook potatoes. I pressure cook them in Instant Pot for 1 minute in Manual Mode. Let the pressure release naturally and let the potatoes cool down. Once cool, peel the skin and dice it. Set aside.
  2. Heat oil in a pan, add mustard seeds to it. Once it finishes popping, add jeera seeds and let it crackle. Add the masalas now to the oil, and the tamarind paste too. Mix everything well and tip in the potatoes. Mix carefully so that the masalas coat the potatoes evenly.
  3. Turn the heat down and let it cook for 4-5 minutes. Carefully turn the potatoes over without breaking it and let it cook for another couple of minutes. Take off the heat and serve with rice and yogurt or a curry of your choice.

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Horse-gram Curry

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BM #110 : Week 4, Day 2
Theme : A to Z theme – Curries

For today’s post, for the alphabet H, I had initially planned on Hare Matar ka Nimona. Then I came across this recipe for Horse gram masala at Priya’s place and I decided to prepare it. I have some horse gram that needs to be used up and this was perfect for it. There are made some modifications I made to Priya’s recipe, it’s more of Kerala style now.

The base recipe is very simple, it has three steps to it. First is soaking and cooking the horse gram. Priya suggests cooking with a good pinch of baking soda and that’s what I did. Second step is to make a coconut paste. That’s where the differences start. I decided to stick with the regular masala I prepare, which has coconut, dried red chilies and jeera. Now the third and final step is to prepare a tadka with mustard seeds and onions and to cook everything together. An optional way to make the curry thick is to purée half of the cooked (and cooled) horse gram and add it to to the curry or run an immersion blender couple of times.

This curry pairs well with rice and roti. It would be great with puttu or aapam also. Read on for the recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup horsegram , soaked overnight
  • A pinch of baking soda
  • 1/2 cup shredded coconut
  • 4 dried red chilies
  • 1 teaspoon jeera seeds
  • 4-5 almonds/cashews, optional
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 2 dried red chilies
  • A sprig of curry leaves
  • 1 small red onion, chopped finely
  • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1 tomato, roughly chopped, optional
  • Salt as needed

Method:

  1. Check the horse gram for stones and once you have removed it all, wash and soak the beans overnight. The next day morning, pressure cook along with water it’s soaked and a good pinch of baking soda until the beans is cooked. I used the Beans setting in Instant Pot for 30 minutes. I also used the delay timer for 8 hours at night so that the beans was cooked by next morning. Reserve about 3/4 cup of the beans and set it aside to cool down.
  2. Grind shredded coconut along with 4 dried red chilies , jeera and almonds/cashews(if using) in a blender. Add about 1/4 cup water to make a smooth paste.
  3. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds, dried red chilies and curry leaves. Once mustard seeds pop, add the chopped onions and sauté till it turns brown. Add the coconut paste, cooked horse gram along with the water it’s cooked, turmeric powder, chili powder and salt as needed. Mix well.
  4. Make a smooth paste of the reserved 3/4 cups horse gram and add it to the curry. Add water to bring it to a pouring consistency. You can add more water (or less) to suit the consistency you prefer.
  5. Taste test and adjust seasonings. Once the curry comes to a boil, let it cook for about 4-5 minutes and then turn off the heat. Serve with rice or roti.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this Week.