Macaroni & Cheese!

Kids love Macaroni & Cheese for dinner. You will never buy those blue boxes again once you try out this easy recipe. Mac & Cheese is so easy to make from scratch, and it will be done in less than 20 minutes. (I didn't mean to sound like Rachel Ray. hehehehe...)Whenever we have something very spicy for our dinner, this is what I make for my daughter who cannot tolerate spicy food. Serve this with some steamed vegetables to make it a complete dinner.

For 2 servings, you will need,
Butter - 2 tbsp
All purpose flour - 1 1/2 tbsp
Milk - 1 cup
Elbow shaped pasta - 3/4 cup
Salt - to taste
Cheddar cheese - 1 cup, grated
Optional seasonings - pepper powder, mustard powder

Boil pasta according to package directions. While it is cooking you can start preparing the sauce.

Heat up a heavy bottomed saucepan and add butter. When it starts to melt, add flour and stir with a wire whisk. Stir continuously and cook the flour for a couple of minutes until the raw smell disappear. Keep on whisking and gradually add hot milk. Whisk until it comes to a boil. You can add cold milk directly to this and cook, but if you add hot milk, it will come to a boil quickly. Cook until the sauce thickens, and turn off the stove. Add chesse to this hot sauce and stir until it melts. Season with salt(and pepper and mustard if you are using them).


By this time, pasta will be ready. Drain it well and add it to the sauce. Mix well and serve hot. You can add shredded chicken or steamed vegetables to this. But my daughter likes it plain, so this is how I make it. I serve the vegetables on the side.

Not a perfect entry, but this is what I have for the JFI-Milk event hosted by dear Vineela.

Can you guess what these are?

Thank you all for participating. Here are the answers. :) Many of you have guessed the second one right, but was the first one a little hard? Had I given a clue, I know you all would have guesssed it right. This is fun!!

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Scroll down for answers!

Methi/Fenugreek Dal

Even if you haven’t planted anything yet for LG's green blog project, you can still participate. Here's how: Take some good soil in a container. You may use any container that can hold some soil; it doesn’t have to be deep. Wet the soil. Take a handful of methi seeds and sprinkle it over the soil. Sprinkle more soil to cover the seeds. Spray water twice a day to keep the soil moist. Do this for 2 weeks and you will have methi leaves ready by that time. You may get more leaves if you wait longer. But hey, we don’t have time. The green blog project entries are due by next month (I don’t know the exact date).

Fenugreek/Methi leaves in 2 weeks!!

I followed Indira’s recipe for methi dal with a slight diffence. I used lemon juice instead of tamarind, and I didn’t use pressure cooker to cook dal.
I cooked about ½ a cup of toor dal with about a cup of methi leaves, chopped onion and tomatoes, garlic, green chillies and turmeric. When it was done, I seasoned with mustard seeds, curry leaves, cumin seeds, and whole red chillies. Thank you for this wonderful recipe Indira! It tasted delicious.

Happy Independence Day!!

Radish pachadi(Recipe courtesy: Salt&Pepper)

I don’t claim that raita or pachadi is a dish of my region, Kerala. Raita is all over India in different forms. According to Wiki, raita is a South Asian condiment based on yogurt. Vegetables cooked or uncooked and other seasonings are added to the yogurt to make delicious raitas. Tomatoes, onions, cilantro, green chillies, and cucumber are the common vegetables used in raita. I assume pachadi and raita are the same. In Kerala, we sometimes add ground coconut too. Pineapple pachadi and Mango pachadi are my all time favorites. Back home, a must have accompaniment for biriyani is a raita made of tomatoes, red onion, and green chillies. We call it kachumber. So easy to whip up and it is really lip smacking. Raita is usually served cold. I think the purpose of raita served with many Indian dishes, especially rice dishes, is to cool off the spiciness of our food.

Here is a wonderful array of raita recipes posted by fellow food bloggers:
Indosungod's Zucchini Pachadi
Annita's Green Banana Pachadi
Inji's Cucumber Pachadi(We can call it kichadi too??)
Vindu's Beerakaya Pottu Pachadi(No yogurt in this? How come? I thought all pachadis are yogurt based)
Sarah's Pineapple Pachadi
Vkn's Mango Pachadi
Paati's Carrot Pachadi
.......and there are many, many more!

I am all confused now....pachadi, kichadi, raita, chutney are all same? Is raita a hindi word? How about pachadi and kichadi? I wish I had enough time to do a detailed research on this. It's close to midnight, and I only have less than an hour to take this to Indira's Independence Day Food Parade. Happy Independence Day everybody!! I am off to bed with this pachadi kichadi confusion.... See you all tomorrow at the parade.

Waffle Dosa & Mint-Onion Chutney

A waffle iron is not a necessary item in an Indian kitchen. But I bought it when my daughter developed a love for waffles and started buying the frozen waffles from the grocery stores. It is very easy to make a healthier version of waffles at home. You can make your own waffle mix using all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. You can also add berries or other fruits or vegetables such as grated carrots etc. to the batter to make it more nutritious. I have tried dosa batter too, and it came out good.

Waffle dosa

Dosa batter – 1 cup
For crispy waffle dosas, add 1 tsp cooking oil to the batter and mix.
Turn on the waffle iron. When it is ready for the waffles, pour dosa batter and close the lid. Cook according to your waffle iron’s usage instructions. Waffle dosas take longer to cook than regular waffles. So even when the waffle iron shows the ready indicator light on, you still have to wait a couple of minutes more. Once it is ready, remove dosas from the waffle iron using a fork. Serve hot with chutney, or with any accompaniments that you serve for regular Dosas.

Mint-Onion Chutney

Urad dal – 1 tsp
Onion – 1, chopped
Green chillies – 2
Mint leaves – 1 cup, chopped
Cilantro – 1 cup, chopped
Lemon juice – to taste
Salt – to taste

Heat oil in a pan and add urad dal. When they change color, add onion and green chillies. Cook for 3-4 minutes until the onion is translucent. Transfer to a bowl. Add cilantro and mint leaves to the pan, and cook until they are wilted. Transfer to the bowl. In a grinder, grind all ingredients together without adding any water. Add salt and lemon juice to taste.

I would like to send this waffle dosa & mint onion chutney for Nandita's weekend breakfast blogging at Saffron Trail.
The mint leaves are right from my small container garden! So, I guess that makes it eligible for LG's green blog project too. :)

Moong Bean(Cherupayar) Curry with Coconut Milk

Whole moong beans– 1/2 cup
Salt – to taste
Coconut – 3/4 cup, I used dried grated coconut.
Green chillies – 2 or more
Cumin seeds – ¼ tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Shallots or small onion - about 1 tbsp chopped
Oil – 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp
Curry leaves – a few
Whole red chillies – 2

Cook moong beans with salt and just enough water until moong beans are soft but not mushy. Grind coconut with green chillies, cumin seeds, turmeric powder and shallots, and extract the juice using a sieve. This should yield about a cup of very thick coconut milk. Use one-cup water for grinding. Add extracted coconut juice to the cooked moong beans and bring it to a boil. Simmer for 2 minutes and turn off the flame. Tadka – mustard seeds, curry leaves, and whole red chillies. Serve hot with rice.

Chembappam/Sweet Egg Fritters

Like my entry for JFI-dal, this also was a quick fix endeavor at the last moment. My grandma used to make this as an after school snack for kids. I googled for ChEmbappam to no avail. Maybe this is known in other names too. I saw a similar recipe called Pongappam in a magazine. This is a very very simple recipe. You can also make this using leftover pazhampori batter. Just add more flour and sooji to thicken it up.

You will need:
All purpose flour/maida – 1 cup
Egg – 2
Salt – ¼ tsp
Cardamom – 2
Semolina/sooji – 1 tbsp
Baking soda – ¼ tsp
Oil for deep frying

Sift flour, sooji, and baking powder together. Beat egg with sugar and salt in a bowl. Add cardamom powder. Add the flour blend and mix it with a spoon until all the flour is wet. The batter should have a dropping consistency. Heat oil in a frying pan. Using your hands, drop small balls of batter to the hot oil. Do this until the pan is full, but not overcrowded. Fry until golden brown. Serve hot.

This is my entry for JFI-Flour at Santhi's Kitchen.