Archive for December, 2007

Corn Curry

Dec 27

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | No Comments





Ingredients:
Boiled Corn- 400 ml
Onions- 2- chopped fine
Coconut milk- from 1/2 coconut or reconstitute from powder
Oil- 3 tbsp
Salt to taste

Grind together:
Coriander seeds- 1 tsp
Green chillies-5 small
Cloves-3
Cinnamon- 1 inch piece
Khus Khus- 3 tsps
Garlic- 6 pods

Method:

Heat oil in a pan, add onions. After some time, add the ground masala paste. Fry on low flame till the raw smell disappears and then add corn and the coconut milk. Add salt and boil for some time. Remove from fire and serve with rotis or parathas.

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Tiffin – Vegetable Adai

Dec 25

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | No Comments

Veg Adai with Onion chutney


Ingredients:
Raw rice- 180 ml
Channa dal- 30 ml
Urad dal- 30ml
Toor dal-30 ml
Onion- 1 large- chopped fine
Carrot- 1- grated
Cabbage- chopped fine- 100 ml
Coriander leaves- chopped fine- 2 tbsp
Curry leaves- 10- chopped fine
Grated coconut- 2 tbsp
Green chillies-3- chopped fine
Red chillies (round)- 6 (If long chillies are used, adjust number suitably)
A pinch of hing powder (optional)
Grated ginger- 2 tsp
Salt to taste
Oil for cooking

Method:


veggies batter
Veggies Batter

Wash rice and dals and soak together with red chillies for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Drain and grind to a coarse batter- not too coarse. Add the rest of the ingredients (except oil) and mix together. Let it stand for 15 minutes. Add a little water if required. Heat a heavy tava. When it is hot, pour half a spoon of oil and spread well. Sprinkle a little water. This helps spread the oil. Pour a ladleful of batter and spread like dosa. Apply a little oil along the periphery of the adai. Make a couple of holes on the surface of the adai with the spoon and apply half a spoon on the adai and holes to improve the cooking. You can optionally cover the adai with a lid for a minute. When the edges turn brown, turn the adai over and cook the other side.

stir fried onions
chutney


Onion Chutney:
Ingredients:
2 large onions- chop into long slices
4 red chillies (round)
1 tbsp urad dal
Tamarind- the size of a small gooseberry
Jaggery- 1 tsp
Salt to taste
Oil for cooking

Method:

Heat 2 tsps of oil in a kadai. Add urad dal and red chillies and fry over medium flame. When the dal turns light brown, add the chopped onion and fry for 2 minutes over medium flame. Remove from fire, cool and grind with tamarind, salt and jaggery. Serve with adai.

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Chop Suey

Dec 22

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | No Comments


Ingredients:

Noodles- 300 gm
Onion- 2 medium
French Beans- 6
Carrot- one
Capsicum- 1 small
Cabbage- chopped- 150 ml
Spring onion- half a cup
Baby corn- chopped into juliennes- 1/3 cup
Corn Flour- 1 tbsp
Soy sauce- 2 tsp
Tomato Sauce- 60 ml
Pepper powder 1/2 tsp
Salt to taste
Aji no moto- 1/4 tsp
Oil- 4 tbsp

Method:

Cook noodles in plenty of boiling water to which salt and a tsp of oil has been added. Do not cook too soft. Drain and wash in cold water to prevent further cooking. Drain. Dry out one third of the noodles on a kitchen towel. Deep fry the dried out noodles till crisp and golden in colour and set aside.
Heat a spoon of oil in a pan and fry the rest of the noodles with a dash of salt till they change colour a little. Transfer to a serving plate.
Chop all vegetables into juliennes. Heat two tbsp oil in a pan and saute all the vegetables for a few minutes. Add the sauces, salt, pepper, aji no moto and the cornflour mixed in 1.5 cups of water. Simmer till thick and remove from fire.
Pour the gravy over the noodles on the serving plate. Top with fried noodles and serve.

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Raw Banana Gravy

Dec 9

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | 1 Comment



Ingredients:
Raw Banana Cubed: 1 Cup (250 ml)
Onion Chopped: Half a cup
Tomato Chopped: 2/3 cup
A handful each of Mint and Coriander leaves
2 green chillies
1 inch ginger root
Half tsp each of Chilli powder and Garam masala powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp mustard
1/4 tsp cummin seed
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp lime juice
2 tsp Coconut milk powder
salt
Oil

Method:

Heat some oil and deep fry the banana pieces till slightly brown and set aside. Take some of the same oil and saute tomato, onion, ginger, chillies and the green leaves for a couple minutes and grind into a paste. Heat two tsp of oil, add mustard, jeera and after they crackle, add the ground paste and saute for a few minutes. Then add turmeric powder, chilli powder, garam masala powder, salt and sugar. After a while add the fried pieces. When everything has blended mix the coconut milk. If needed, add a little water to bring it to gravy consistency. Remove from fire and add the lime juice. Mix well and serve with plain rice or any fried rice or jeera rice.

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Quick Sambhar

Dec 4

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | No Comments


Ingredients:

1 Large onion- chopped
2 medium tomatoes- chopped
2 green chillies slit
Half inch of ginger root- chopped
Aa few curry leaves
Mustard- half tsp
Urad dal- half tsp
channa dal- Half tsp
1 red chilli
A pinch of asafoetida powder
A pinch of turmeric powder
Green gram dal- 60 ml
salt to taste

Heat a tsp of oil in a pressure pan, add mustard, urad dal, channa dal in that order followed by red chilly, green chillies, curry leaves, ginger and onion. Saute for two minutes, add tomato, asafoetida powder, washed dal and turmeric powder. Saute for a minute and then add 300 ml water and salt. Cook with weight for 3 or 4 whistles. After pressure reduces, mash well and adjust salt if needed. This is a lovely filling soup and makes also a good accompaniment for pongal, idli, dosais etc.

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Karthigai Pori Urundai

Dec 1

Posted by ambu in Food, Recipes | No Comments


Ingredients:
Nel Pori- 2 cups (500 ml)
Fried gram- 2 Tbsps
Roasted Groundnut- 1 Tbsp
Roasted Coconut pieces: 1 Tbsp
Jaggery (powdered)- 125 ml
Cardamom powder- half a tsp

Mix all ingredients except Jaggery and cardamom powder well and keep aside. Add just enough water to cover the jaggery in a thick pan and heat until it froths and forms single string consistency syrup. Add cardamom powder. Mix well and pour into the ingredient mixture. Mix well with a spatula and when a little cool, make balls. If the syrup is too sticky, use a little rice flour to dab on your hands to avoid the stickiness. This is traditionally made with Nel pori and Aval pori for Karthigai.

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Tamil and Devanagari Fonts in Mac OS X

Dec 1

Posted by vasu in Mac, Tech | 20 Comments

Macintosh provides unicode fonts and keyboards for many Indian Languages since the introduction of Tiger. The language support is built into the operating system itself. The indian languages Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marati, Bengali etc. are supported. Textedit, Keynote, Pages, Mail, Filemaker pro and many other software support these unicode fonts. It is possible now to send email in tamil or hindi or sanskrit using the email clients Mail and Entourage. Thunderbid also supports this scheme.

The operating system comes with a Tamil unicode font Inaimathi and supports two keyboard options, namely Anjal (almost phonetic) and Tamil99.
To activate the support for Tamil Language,follow the following procedures.

Step 1. Open System Preferences

Step2. Click the International Option in personal section

Step 3 Click on edit List under Languages Menu

Step 4: Tick the desired language and click ok to go back to International menu

Step 5

Click on Input Menu and choose the Anjal and Tamil99 input Method

Step 6. Close sytem Preference menu.

To use the Tamil keyboard and font in textedit first open the text edit application and then click on the american flag icon on the upper right corner in the menu bar and choose Anjal from the drop down Menu. (optionally the keyboard also can be chosen to get a virtual keyboard.

The American flag will turn into

Now start typing the following key sequence

agara muthala ezuthellAm aathi pagavan muthtrRE ulagu

this will appear on the textedit
அகர முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதி பகவன் முதற்றே உலகு (the font is Inaimathi a unicode font).

To switch back to english click at the same anjal symbol (on top right corner) and select US. Thus by clicking on the US symbol one can type in various languages in the same document

Devanagari-qwerty can be chosen in the same manner to type in sanskrit. The Devanagari keyboard layout is as under (pdf here):

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