Beans carrot stir fry/thuvaram

Beans Carrots stir fry/thuvaram

The combination of diced beans, diced carrots, cooked toor dal and coconut small onion paste makes a colourful side dish for Sambar, rasam and for all South Indian meals.This is an easy recipe that could work best for a busy weekday mornings for your lunch boxes because there is no much preparation after chopping the veggies. You don't need to cook seperate toor dal for this recipe, just add a tbsp of cooked dal from your already cooked dal for sambar. You can also leave it and just finish it with the coconut paste. As usual, I prefer to cook the vegetables with little water and then sauted with the other ingredients. We follow this method for poriyal, thuvaram and other varieties for many years and the taste is also unique. So if you trust me, do try this method, then you can feel the difference in the resulting dish.

Tomato Onion Sabji

Tomato Onion sabji for roti

I absolutely like this tomato onion sabji for rotis. It's basically a tomato onion thokku. The main difference between this sabji and thokku is that it is made with fresh onions and tomatoes and it is chunkier than thokku. This is the sabji I have been making for years. I love the combination of onions and tomatoes with red chilly powder, coriander powder, curry leaves and green chillies. With this tomato sabji as a base you can prepare a quick tomato upma, tomato idiyappam and a homemade spread for bread slices.

Sauteing the tomatoes on low flame will give you the best results. It takes too long, especially depending on the water content in the tomatoes. Red ripe tomatoes will always give me perfect  sabji every time. To speed up the process I have ground few tomatoes and then sauted with the onions. For this sabji the chilly powder and coriander powder combination tastes perfect, but you can customize any flavours you want.

Plantain fry

Plantain/Raw banana/Vazhaikai varuval/fry

Plantain is ideal for fries and roasts because of its texture and it requires very little preparation work to make them delicious. This raw banana fry is easy to prepare and has bright bold flavours. I have applied the same small onions, garlic and jeera paste to countless dishes and for plantain also its pairing was perfect. This plantain fry has so much flavour and taste, plus it's filled with fiber and anti-inflammatory ingredients. Just follow the instructions below and prepare this plantain fry for your kids then you can see a smile on their faces. You can also pack them for  their lunch boxes for lemon rice, tamarind rice and curd rice. They won't say no for this plantain fry and of course it is healthy too.