Tips For Making Best Spices Powder

Make your spices powder and garam masala at home.  Little effort will bring great reward as you will be consuming fresh homemade, unadulterated spices with authentic wonderful flavor.

• Before making powder of whole spices clean them and dry under the sun to remove the moisture from them.

• Roast the coriander seeds for few minutes before grinding to powder. Grinding the dry crisp coriander seeds to fine powder is easy.

• Cumin seeds should always be roasted to light brown color before grinding.

• Red chilies should be cleaned of all seeds and stalks before grinding.

• If red chili powder is being made in rainy weather then they should be roasted before grinding.

• For each 100gm. of whole chilies, cumin seeds, coriander 1 tea spoon of salt should be added while grinding to ensure fine grinding.

• Never roast anything especially if they have essential oils (Like spices and nuts) to the exact shade you want, always roast a shade lighter. Because, the heat along with essential oil in them, will cause them to cook while cooling also, thus making them a shade darker than the color to which they have been roasted.

• Green and black cardamom should be roasted with the cover.

• Before roasting the cardamoms pound them slightly to just crack / split the cover so that during roasting the cover does not burst.

• Never roast the spices on high flame because they will burn and all essential oil which gives them the flavor and medicinal values will evaporate.

• Do not roast the spices like clove/ star aniseed/ cinnamon/ cardamoms for too long even on low flame, because it will cause evaporation of most of the essential oil in them rendering them less useful  and the flavor will become very less after roasting for long time.

Matar Pulav( Rice with Green Peas)

Matar Pulav

Peas have such lovely green color and sweet taste and when cooked with rice the whole appearance and of rice becomes too tempting to resist.  It is a very simple dish to cook but amazing in taste. In Northern India it is a preferred dish of rice in winters as lots of fresh green peas are available in winters. Innovation in the kitchen is every mothers forte, who has to pack the lunch box for the school going children.I used to get my reward when my children used to come grinning happily from school with every grain of the packed food polished off. Matar pulav is very convenient to keep in lunch box with pickle /chutney.

                         

Preparation Time: 10min.

Cooking Time:  30min.

Servings: Makes three large servings.

Ingredients required for Matar Pulav:

• 150gm. Rice
•  250gm. Fresh peas removed from pea pods

Peas

• 1 Tea spoon Cumin seeds Jeera (cumin seeds)
• 1-2 Bay leaves

Condiments for Matar Pulav

• 4-5 Black Pepper pods
•  1 Black cardamon
• 1/2Inch Cinnamon stick
• 3-4 Cloves
• 1/2 Tea spoon Salt (Or to taste)
• 5ml. Ghee/ cooking oil
• Water

Directions for Making Matar Pulav

• Wash rice and soak it in 150ml. water.
• Take soaked rice and cook it in a pan with large amount of water till the rice grain are almost done.
• Drain all water and if the grains are sticking to each other pour water to remove excess starch and allow all water to drain off.

Boiled rice

• Take ghee/ oil in wok and heat on high flame.

Oil being heated in wok

• When ghee/oil is hot add jeera and bay leaves,cinnamon,cloves,pepper.

Bay leaves,cloves,Black cumin,Pepper cinnamon added to hot oil

• When the seedssplutters before it starts getting dark brown add peas and stir for 2min.

Peas added when the cloves and other seeds splutter

Peas mixed with in oil and spices

• Lower the flame and add drained boiled rice. 

Boile rice added to oil, spices and peas

• Add salt,turmeric powder,red chili powder.

Turmeric,Red chili powder,salt added to rice and matar

• Mix nicely and gently.

All spices mixed with rice and matar

• Cover and cook for 5 min. on low flame, with occasional stirring.

Rice and matar with spices being cooked on low flame

• Hot Matar pulav with beautiful yellow and green color is ready to be served.

Delicious Matar Pulav ready to be served

Matar Pulav

 Matar pulav goes best with curd/raita, pickle/chutney. Dal or any gravy is not really required as it is a complete dish by itself. 

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/mango-pickle-north-indian-style.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/tangy-mango-pickle-maharashra-style.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/spicy-mixed-vegetable-pickle-less-oily.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/hariyali-chutney-raw-mango-chutney.html

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2011/10/green-coriander-and-mint-chutney.html

   Tips:

• While boiling rice in pan take excess water which can be drained once the rice is cooked.
• Take thick bottom pan to boil rice.
• Do not over cook peas. They will loose color,flavor and taste.
• If you are uncomfortable in boiling rice in pan pressure cook and then wash in flowing water to remove excess starch so that the grains of rice do not stick to each other.

Suggested Variations:

• A quicker version:-
             Quick fix way of making this pulav is add peas, jeera, cinnamon,cloves,bay leaves,turmeric,red chili powder salt ghee/ oil, water to soaked rice and cook in the pressure cooker. Pulav will be ready in 5 min.
• If fresh peas (matar) are not available preserved green peas can be used.
• While boiling rice few pieces of lemon grass can be added.It gives wonderful flavor to the rice.
• Few drops of lemon juice can be added and mixed to the Pulav just before removing from gas. It will change the color of pulav to lemony yellow color.

Plain Puri (Puffed Fried Bread )

Puris with Sukka Kala Chana

Puri are fried bread made of mainly whole wheat flour. Different variation of puri are made by adding spices and vegetables to the wheat flour before making it to dough. Plain puri are made of wheat flour dough with out mixing any other thing to the flour. What ever type of puri it may be, hot puffed puri are so luring that it becomes difficult to resist. It is a delightful scene to see my children to poke a hole in the middle of puffed hot puri to let the steam out and eat.

Preparation Time:  5-10min.

Cooking Time: 20min.

Servings:  20 - 25 Puri can be made from the material given below.

Ingredients Required To make Puri:

• 250gm. Whole Wheat Flour.
• 10-15 ml. cooking oil.
• 1/2Teaspoon salt
• 100-150ml. Water to make dough.
• 200 ml. Cooking oil for frying.

Directions To Make Dough:

• Take wheat flour in a bowl and add 5 ml. of oil, and salt to it.
• Mix with your fingers.
• Add another 5 ml. of oil and mix nicely.
• The flour oil mixture should resemble bread crumbs.
• If required then add another 5ml.oil.
• The requirement of oil changes with the quality of wheat flour.
• Do not add too much oil; otherwise the puris will become too oily.
• Add water in little amounts and mix and knead.
• The dough should be soft but firm.

Dough for Puri

Directions To Make Puri:

• Put 200ml. oil in a wok and keep the wok on gas, with the gas on high flame.
• Make small balls from the dough.

Dough ball for Puri

• Oil the rolling board and rolling pin with few drops of oil.

Rolled Puri

• Keep the ball of dough in the center of rolling board and roll it to 8-10 cm. diameter round puri.
• When the oil is smoking hot reduce the flame.
• To the hot oil put the rolled puri from the side of the wok.
• Fry it from both sides to golden color by turning it once or twice.

Puri being fried

Puffed fried Puri

• Plain puri is really to be served with any vegetable.

Hubby dear enjoying Puri with Sukka Chana

My personal preference is eating this puri with Aloo ki sabji (Dry potato vegetable) /Sukka kala chana

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2011/10/sukka-kala-chana-gravy-less-black-gram.html

      and mango pickle.

http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/tangy-mango-pickle-maharashra-style.html, http://jyotsna-pant.blogspot.com/2012/06/mango-pickle-north-indian-style.html

Tips

• Add water in little amounts while making dough as requirement of water changes with different type of wheat flour.
• Take care while putting rolled puri for frying, it should be put slowly from side otherwise hot oil may spill causing burns.
• For those who are not too adept at rolling, you can roll few puris and keep them separated on an oiled plate and then start frying them one by one.
• The oil should be very hot while frying otherwise puri will not puff.
• Maintain the temperature of oil by reducing/ increasing the flame.
• Puris can be kept in a closed container for a day and eaten by warming in microwave or on flat iron plate(Tawa) over gas.

Suggested Variations:

• Add  one coarsely ground red chili to the flour before kneading it adds color and taste to the puri.
• Cumin seeds / roasted cumin seed powder can be added to the flour before kneading.
• Add 2 tea spoonful of Ajwain ( caraway seeds) to make ajwain puri.