VIRUNDHOMBAL

A healthy diabetic friendly kichadi recipe made with wheat rava. You can start your breakfast with a cup of this healthy kichadi as it includes carrot, green peas and beans which blend together beautifully with wheat rava. A handful of fresh green peas gives a slightly sweet taste for the kichadi.  There are two main varieties of wheat rava - medium coarse and fine coarse. Fine coarse wheat rava is my favourite for kichadi and upma dishes. Medium coarse wheat rava is perfect for sweet pongal and payasam. Both types require more time to cook when compared to regular white rava. Fine coarse wheat rava doesn't need to be roasted for this kichadi. To cook 1 cup fine coarse wheat rava you will need 3 cups of water. After preparing the kichadi you should let it stand for 15 minutes, covered and undisturbed for a perfect fluffy texture. And once you find how to cook wheat rava perfectly, you will be making it regularly for your breakfast.  Check out my other tiffin recipes here Idli Black

Pearl millet is a perfect tiffin for relaxed weekends at home. It is a better way to introduce millet-based dishes for your kids for weekend breakfast.  I like the mild flavour in the pearl millet especially in the dosas. You can smell the mild flavour while cooking the dosas. Pearl millet is called kambu in Tamil and bajra in Hindi is a gluten free whole grain. Due to its numerous health benefits, we have to include in our diet monthly twice or thrice. Kambu flour is mostly used for making instant dosas, and roti. This is a fermented dosa batter recipe and I have used whole pearl millets, rice, black urid dal and fenugreek. I soak the pearl millets along with the rice for 4 hours. Soaking the pearl millets for a longer time helps to blend them better and have perfect soft fluffy texture. You can replace black urid dal with white urid dal. This pearl millet dosa is similar to our mulu ulundhu dosa. This dosa tastes good with small onions chutney, onion garlic onion chutney and ellu pod

Idli upma are quite popular in Tirunelveli and I like them very much, especially with a cup of filter coffee. As much as I like to experiment with new dishes, I also like to create a new dish with the leftovers. But this is our grandma's idli upma recipe with leftover idlies. This idli upma is straight forward. We first crumble the leftover idlies with little gingely  oil. During any occasions, if you have a lot of store bought leftover idlies or if your idlies are hard my grandma recommends dipping the idlies in water for a second and then we have to crumble the idlies to get the soft texture. We always Iike to add chopped small onions for idli upma and it's super delicious to taste the crispy curry leaf and the chunky onions in the upma. But if you can't get small onions, use regular onions. To spice up the upma we use both red chilli and green chilli.  Check out my other tiffin recipes here Idli Black urid dal Dosa Aapam - Aapam without yeast  Ragi flour Upma Arisi Upma

Mint leaves coconut chutney - a simple chutney made with mint leaves, coconut, garlic cloves, green chillies, urid dal and tamarind. This mint leaves chutney is a regular dish in hotels for tiffin varieties. Though I make this regularly for rava dosa and dosa, the colour of the chutney will change a little bit. Recently when I spoke to Chef Revathi Shanmugam mam through a phone call, I asked her how to prepare hotel style mint leaves chutney.  She clearly explained the recipe and clarified my few doubts. Today I tried this chutney, and it turned out well and tasted similar to the hotel style mint leaves chutney. Now I am confident to post this popular mint leaves coconut chutney.  Let's see some few tips for this chutney For this chutney you can add 2 to 3 cloves of garlic or a small piece of ginger.  Always use fresh mint leaves. Wash the mint leaves well and drain the water completely. Do not overcook or saute the mint leaves for a long time.It will reduce the colour and taste.