Health for life

Usually ill make sprouts at home mostly with green moong and very rarely with chickpeas, these both are my favourite legumes for sprouts. Few days back, i prepared sprouts with a kg of green moongs, obviously most of my next posts will definitely have moong sprouts in it. Sorry guys i cant help you all here coz i seriously want to send my entries to my own event Healthy Diet - Cooking with Sprouts guest hosted by Roshni. If you guys would have prepared anything with sprouts,dont forget to send your entries to Roshni. Sprouts are quite rich in proteins and definitely have many healthy nutritional values.

You can make sprouts with any legumes but somehow i feel comfortable with both moongdal and chickpeas. Coming to todays post, its a healthy kurma i prepared few days back with sprouted green moong,they turned out extremely delicious and goes awesome along with rice and rotis. We had this kurma for our lunch and had the same kurma for our dinner with chappathis. If you have sprouts at home give a try to this kurma,am sure you will love it. For this week of blogging marathon, am catching up with some food events as misc theme and obviously am sending this healthy dish to my event.Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#27.



For Dumplings:
3cups Sprouted green moongdal
1/2tsp Grated ginger
2nos Green chillies (chopped)
Salt
Few coriander leaves (chopped)

Grind the sprouted green moongdal as bit coarse paste.

Fnally add the chopped coriander leaves,grated ginger and salt, mix everything well..

Make small lemon sized balls from the grounded paste and steam cook them for 10-15minutes in an idly cooker..

For Kurma:
10-15nos Steamed sprouted moongdal dumplings
1no Onion (chopped)
1no Tomato (chopped)
3nos Green Chillies (slit opened)
1/2tsp Garam masala powder
1tbsp Coriander powder
1/4tsp Turmeric powder
2nos Bayleaves
1tsp Ginger garlic paste
1tbsp Kasuri methi
Salt
Oil

To Grind:
1tsp Peppercorns
1tsp Cumin seeds
1tsp Fennel seeds
1/4cup Grated coconut
1/2cup Yogurt
1tbsp Poppy seeds

 Grind all the ingredients from the list to grind as fine paste and keep aside...

Heat enough oil in a kadai, add the bay leaves and fry until they turns brown.

Add immediately the chopped onions, chopped tomatoes,slit opened green chillies, ginger-garlic paste and saute everything well until the raw smells goes away.

Cook everything in simmer for few minutes with coriander powder,garam masala powder,turmeric powder,grounded paste with lid closed.

Finally add enough water to the kadai and cook in medium flame for few minutes.

Once the kurma turns thickens,drop gently the steamed balls, kasuri methi,cook for few more minutes.

Put off the stove.

Serve hot with rotis and rice..

Bored of making dals or gravies with over cooked mushy dals, dont worry you can make interesting evening snacks with them. One of my creation, dunno i can say so but somehow i created this damn cute crispy fingers with overcooked mushy yellow moongdal with cooked,grounded soyachunks. Trust me both makes a wonderful crispy,healthy as well as an interesting, shallow fried evening snacks. Kids will definitely love this also this fingers are vegetarian version of the famous chicken fingers.

With simple ingredients and with less efforts, these healthy nutritious fingers gets ready in a jiffy if you have some cooked dals at home. You can mix and match the veggies in case if you want to add them in this vegetarian fingers, i simply used some sauteed finely chopped carrots,capsicum and sweet corn to make this kids friendly snacks more interesting. This is my second day of this weeks blogging marathon, where i chosed an interesting theme Get it rolled and these cute fingers suits pectly for this weeks theme na .Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#30.Sending this crispy fingers to my own event CWS-Yellow moongdal hosted by Manju and  to Gurus Giveaway - Kids Special.

Foxtail millet is one of the forgotten grains cooked earlier in some part of Tamilnadu and this is called as Thinai in tamil, its offered to Lord Muruga as prasadam. Millet flour mixed with honey is often offered to this god. There is a wonderful story behind this offerings and its a custom to give this millet flour mixed with honey as prasadhams to the devotees.

As i told earlier most of our dinner goes for almost oil-less rotis, but sometime i manage to make some stuffed parathas with our favourite aloo stuffing. Here we start again three days of blogging marathon, so this weeks theme is gonna be cooking with moongdal. Obviously next two days recipes are going to be foods prepared either with whole green gram or with split yellow moongdal. For the first day of blogging marathon, i went for this delicious and super filling potato and whole green gram stuffed paratha.

I prepared the stuffing with cooked potatoes and cooked green grams which i spiced simply with onions,greenchillies,garam masala powder and chaat masala. This paratha doesnt even need any side dish to enjoy,the stuffing itself will replace the side dishes usually we make for rotis. Check out the other marathoners running this 21st edition of blogging marathon here.


2cups Whole wheat flour
1/2cup Warm water
1tbsp Oil
Salt

For stuffing:
2nos Potatoes (cooked & mashed)
1/2cup Whole greengram (cooked & mashed)
1nos Onion (chopped)
2nos Green chillies(chopped)
1tsp Garam masala powder
1/2tsp Chaat masala
Salt

Take the wheat flour,oil and salt together in a bowl,add the warm water and knead everything as a stiff and smooth dough,keep aside for half an hour..

Take the cooked potatoes,cooked greengram,chopped green chillies,garam masala powder,chaat masala and salt, mix everything well and keep aside.

Saute the chopped onions with enough oil and add it to the already prepared potato-greengram mixture,mix well.

Make medium sized balls from the dough, flatten them as small circles with the rolling pin, drop enough aloo-greengram masala and cover the masala by sealing the edges of the flatten dough.

Dust with flour and roll them gently as parathas.

Heat a tawa, drop this flattened paratha over the hot tawa, drizzle few drops of oil and cook until they get well cooked..

Serve hot..

We dont get varieties of greens as like India here, but eventhough we manage to add greens atleast twice or once a week in our menu. My recent trip to Indian grocery was simply awesome, i picked super fresh amaranth leaves from there which is quite rare here,eventhough we get this green quite often. But the vendor brought these super fresh greens from a newly arrived cargo parcel, immediately i picked a huge bunch of this green happily.

Back home, i prepared those super fresh greens as a quick stir fry with yellow moongdal along with usual spices to enjoy the freshness of amaranth leaves. This stir fry makes me nostalgic, i still remember my grandma used to cook super fresh greens which she plucked few minutes before from her backyard as simple stir fry with lentils like toor dal,channadal and moongdal. She never stopped feeding us with her super fresh greens eventhough i dont like them that much when i was young. Seriously i miss our Indian greens here and am craving for some gongura now which is quite a hard task for us to get here.Sending to Srivallis Side dish Mela.


1small bunch Amaranth leaves (cleaned & chopped)
4tbsp Yellow moongdal
1no Onion(big & chopped)
2nos Green chillies(slit opened)
1tsp Mustard seeds+urad dal
1nos Dry red chillies
3tbsp Grated coconut
Salt
Oil

Soak the yellow moongdal for half an hour.

Heat enough oil,let splutters the mustard seeds, urad dal and fry the dry red chilly.

Add now the chopped onions,slit opened green chillies,curry leaves,cook until the onions turns transculent.

Add the soaked moongdal,cook for few minutes in simmer along with salt.

Finally add the chopped amaranth leaves, sauté for few minutes in medium.Dont overcook the greens.

Now add the grated coconut to the cooked greens and put off the stove.

Serve warm as side dish.

2cups Green moongdal sprouts
1no Onion (chopped)
2nos Green chillies (chopped)
1tsp Ginger (chopped)
Few Curry leaves
2nos Garlic cloves (crushed)
1/2tsp Fennel seed powder
Salt
Oil for deepfrying

Grind the sprouted moongdal as coarse paste without water, if its too hard to grind,just sprinkle some water.

Add the chopped onions, chopped green chillies, chopped ginger pieces,crushed garlic cloves, curryleaves, fennel seed powder and salt, mix everything well.

Meanwhile heat the oil for deep frying, take a small ball from the grounded sprouted moongdal mixture, flat them in your palms and gently drop them in hot oil.

Fry them until they get well cooked, strain the excess of oil with a paper towel..

Serve hot with spicy coconut chutney.