Idlis

Its been a week or so, I blogged! Its all in mood and motivation! If you are not in mood or if some force is not motivating you, you don't feel like doing anything for that matter. That's what happened to me! I dont depend on my mood, if I feel like doing something I am sure that I will do it, no matter I have mood or not! But if something does not motivate me I don't do it. So something did not motivate me or inspire me to blog and suddenly now I felt like blogging! So here I am! The motivation is, my husband is coming home tomorrow and I was thinking of doing something and thought I can soak again for Idlis so here I go......! I am going share my mom's one of the best recipes, that's Idlis! Anybody can do idlis but to get that soft, "mallige" idlis is what makes difference. I know from my experience that, what ever you do, even the simple recipes might turn out disaster, if details are not given importance! So here goes the Idli recipe, if done carefully, will turn out to be a very soft "mallige" idlis. Well hot idlis with chutney,saagu and a cup of filter coffee........WOW! Try it right now and enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 Cups Idli Rava(Can get in Indian stores)
1 cup Urad Dal
Salt to taste

Method:

Soak urad dal over night and grind into smooth paste adding little water. And put it into a big bowl. Wash Idli Rava with plenty of water and drain all the water and add that to the grounded urad dal batter and mix it thoroughly. Make sure that idli rava and urad dal batter are mixed thoroughly and immediately close a lid tightly and allow to ferment. It might take anywhere from 6-8 hours and sometimes 10 hours, depending on the weather, in summer its faster, than in winter.

Once its fermented, you can see that its raised, add salt and put it in the refrigerator until you make idlis, else it will turn sour, if it is left outside, once fermented.

Now make either Potato-Onion Saagu or coconut chutney or both of them, depending on time and depending on how hungry is your hubby and kids, if they are waiting just make chutney else make saagu, that goes great with idlis.

When you are once ready with saagu or chutney take the idli stand, if you dont have, you can get it in the Indian stores here, Patel brothers. Spray some oil or grease with little water and put idli batter, my suggestion here is, don't put the batter full, leave some space since when it is steamed it needs space to cook. You need to grease with oil or water so that the idlis dont get stuck to the stand and comes off easily after steamed.

Put the Idli container in the cooker and steam for 7-9 mins, dont put the weight on. And once its done, leave 3-4 mins and serve hot idlis with Saagu or Chutney or both and enjoy!

And after eating idlis have some filter coffee! Its very simple to make. All you need is a Indian coffee filter and coffee powder.

Boil water in a kettle, once its boiled, put the coffee powder(Brue, not the instant coffee powder, you get the Brue coffee powder with 40% chicory in it, in patel Brothers or any Indian grocery store), put some 5 Tbsp and put the boiling water and press it hard.

The more you press it the thick dicotion you get it, and makes whole lot difference in taste.

When once you get the dicotion, boil some milk and add the dicotion and add some sugar, if you desire and blend well. And sip the hot Indian coffee and enjoy!