VIRUNDHOMBAL

Every day we prepare two varieties of vegetable side dishes for our lunch. Among those two varieties there must be a poriyal dish and the other one is kootu, aviyal or varuval. Varieties of poriyal  dishes are countless with our seasonal vegetables. As I said in my poriyal or thuvaram dishes, we add the ground coconut mixture prepared with coconut, small onions, garlic cloves and red chilly or green chilly. This unique coconut paste is often used in our poriyal or thuvaram dishes. Some prefer to add grated coconut or desiccated coconut powder for poriyal dishes. I actually don't like poriyal dishes made without any flavours. For me, poriyal must have a mix of flavours with perfect textures. We usually precook the vegetables in a vessel (except for keerai poriyal) and then we saute it with the tempering ingredients and finished with our coconut mixture. If you find it difficult to precook the vegetables, you can prepare as you like. But actually pre cooking the ...

Mint leaves coconut chutney paired with rava dosa is one my favourite combination. In many restaurants I have tasted this chutney and after a few practices I found, how to retain the beautiful pale green colour in it. Because after grinding the chutney with coriander leaves and mint leaves the colour will change to a dull green colour. The secret is just a teaspoon of chana dal and we have to saute the coriander leaves, mint leaves and green chillies just for a minute. Try to use fresh coriander leaves and mint leaves and do not add a bunch of leaves for grinding. Just 10 to 15 mint leaves and a few coriander leaves is enough for a cup of grated coconut. Now let's see how to prepare this chutney.

Potato chips - yummy homemade chips recipe for your kids. Many different kinds of potato chips are available in stores with different flavours and shapes. But homemade products are always safe for us. Do you agree? Tell your kids why homemade snacks are better than store bought snacks.

Potato masala dosas are those dosas that nobody can say no to it. You can easily prepare this masala dosas by simple techniques. For potato masala dosa we will first see about how to prepare the masal. Potatoes are the main ingredient for the masala. Plus, we have to add onions, green chillies, ginger and other tempering ingredients. The potatoes must be cooked well to get a smooth masala. Next we are going to see about the dosa batter. The simple method is to prepare with the regular idli dosa batter. The batter should be light and you must prepare the dosa as thin as possible. I strongly suggest to use iron dosa pan for preparing dosas. There are many new non stick dosa pans are available, but I have not tested with them. I suggest to cook the dosas on low to medium low heat. When dosas are cooked for a few seconds, gently scrape the thick layer with a spatula to get thin dosas. After a few practice, you will find your perfect timing and temperature to scrape it.  We will see h...

In our motherland there are so many varieties of greens. Different varieties of greens such as murungai keerai, ponnangani keerai, manathakkali keerai, agathi keerai are nature's gift for us because there are so many health benefits in each and every greens. Cooking greens properly is very important for digestion. Particularly, for agathi keerai poriyal, we have to cook the leaves well because the leaves are thick and  it takes more time to cook when compared to other greens.

Sambar vada - easy and tasty  homemade sambar vada with simple cooking methods. For this Diwali, we prepared a lot of medhu vada and sambar for morning breakfast. In the evening, my husband came into the kitchen and quickly prepared a tasty sambar vada for us with the leftover sambar and vadas within 15 minutes. Everyone was so happy with the tasty sambar vada and we were not able to stop at just one vada.  Before that, I haven't prepared sambar vada. After a week, I prepared this sambar vada and it came out really well.

Cauliflower fry is a favorite evening snack for my son Siva. This cauliflower fry is a deep fried snack, which many of us will order as a starter in restaurants. This cauliflower fry is an easy dish to prepare, but it requires some little attention to get perfect results. The ready made mix for snacks are slowly entering in many of our kitchens for cooking easily without much effort. But it's not healthy as it includes artificial colour, preservatives and monosodium glutamate. Actually, preparing homemade snacks is very easy and healthy too.