How to make Almond Flour | Homemade Almond Flour

Almond Flour is used mostly in baking or in our Indian Sweets.  As almond flour is so expensive in stores, why only they know.  So how about we make our own almond flour?  It’s one of most simple thing to do or make and hardly takes anytime plus what’s better than fresh, home made almond flour what you say?



If you make almond flour at home you can save up to 60-70% of your money, how cool is that?  So next time before you pickup that almond flour pack think about the savings you can do.    Now there are two ways we can make almond flour, one with blanched almonds and another one with plain almonds ie with skin.   So if you ask what’s the difference between both then here it is, almond flour made of blanched almonds are white in colour which is mostly used in baking, sweets.  And flour made with almonds with skin might have this light bitter taste, dark colour due to skin but actually the skin has so many nutrients value that we should try to use almonds with skin if possible. 
Before we see how to make the flour let’s check out how to blanch and sliver almonds.  I had few of my reader asking how to sliver almonds from long now, and I know one particular person going to very happy to see the procedure.  It’s again as easy as boiling water, yah. 


   
How to Blanch Almonds

1. Measure almonds you want to blanch, here am using 1/2 cup of almonds.
2. Bring water (around 2 cups) to good boil in a pan. 
3. Place almond in a wide bowl and pour boiling water carefully, water should be just above almonds level.  Let it sit for 30 minutes if you are blanching 1/2 to 1 cup of almonds. 



4. Strain the almonds and run over tap water to stop them from cooking, and pat dry almonds using tissue or kitchen towel.



5. Now you will be able to remove the skin easily.  Once almond are cool enough to touch either peel of a small section using nails and then peel rest of almond peel.  Or press almonds between thumb and forefinger, the skin will come off easily.   Yes it’s that easy. 



Work through all the almonds like this, you can do this while watching tv too. Pat dry the almonds again and store in fridge in a air tight container or zip lock bag if using later.



Just slice the blanched almonds to almond slivers.   Do the same for storing as above.  It stays good for 3-4 weeks in fridge and for couple of months in freezer. 

   

How to make Almond Flour/Almond Powder

Now that our blanch almonds are ready we can make the flour.  You can use mixer, coffee grinder or blender, what ever you are using make sure it’s clean and dry.  If you are using more then 1 cup of almonds then do in batches.  For each batch do not use more then 1 cup of almonds.  Just remember blanched or plain the almonds has to be in room temperature.

~ Place blanched almonds (am using 1/2 cup of almonds here) and pulse for 3 to 4 times and each time not more than 10 seconds if you are using mixer.   In case of coffee grinder or blender you can pulse 3 to 4 times for upto 30 seconds.  If we pulse it for long time then almonds will start releasing too much oil and you will get almond butter instead of flour.  Here am showing you guys the process of making almond flour from both plain and blanched almonds.  For plain almonds, just put it in jar we don’t have to roast or do anything. 


If the mixer is getting hot then rest for a while and allow it to cool down and pulse again.   Now sieve the flour, the pieces can’t make through the sifter put it back in the mixer or blender again and pulse for 3-4 times and sieve again. 



Now if you see any more tiny pieces left in sifter don’t pulse it.  That’s our almond meal, you can use it for any gravy or in your baking.  I simply added mine with wheat flour and made roti.  


Here our almond flour is ready to use.



Storage:
If you are using later again put it in zip lock back or container and keep in fridge, stays good for 3-4 weeks in fridge and for couple of months in freezer.   Use as required for baking or dessert. 


Have a nice day ~~

Murukku Sandwich & Sandwich Chutney Recipes

 

Yes, that’s right it’s indeed Muruku Sandwich.   Are you thinking what’s on earth is that, well it’s nothing but vegetable layer between two mini muruku pieces to make sandwich.  It apparently famous in Chennai, I gain knowledge about these sandwiches from my sister.  I liked the idea so thought of sharing with you all, hope you like it too. 

We all know about green chutney and most of us use same for sandwich too but then my dear sister told me about this sandwich chutney which made in a little different way than green chutney.  This recipe is from street vendors whom sell bread sandwich on road side.  In this chutney one ingredient used is cucumber peel, after peeling all the cucumber for sandwiches they use peel/skin to make chutney, interesting right?  I asked my sister 10 times is she sure this the way it’s done and she assured me this is the recipe indeed.  

Sandwich Chutney Recipe

Ingredients:

Cilantro - 12 sprigs

Mint Leaves - 2 springs

Cucumber Skin/Peel -1/2 cup or of 1 cucumber

Roasted Gram Dal/Dalia - 1/2 tbsp

Garlic Pod - 1

Green Chillies - 2

Lemon Juice - 1/2 tbsp

Rock Salt/Kala Namak - 1/4 tsp  [Or chat masala]

Salt - To Taste

Method:

1.  Grab all the ingredients, make sure to wash well cucumber before you peel it.  [ I missed out lemon here]

2.  Grind all the ingredients in a mixer or blender and add 1 tbsp of water only if required.  

Adjust salt n chilli if required and our sandwich chutney is ready. You will get light green colour chutney, I used little extra of mint and got the dark colour! Consume this chutney same day and do not try to store.

Let’s move on and make the sandwich now.

 

For Murukku Sandwich

There is no measurement here as we have to use the ingredients to our taste and requirement.

Mini Murukku - 12 pieces or as required

Tomato Pieces - Few

Cucumber Pieces - Few

Onion Pieces - Few

Boiled Potato Pieces - Few [optional]

Sandwich Chutney or Green Chutney - To spread

Cheese - For Topping

Thin Sev - For garnishing [optional]

Method:

Normally these sandwiches are made from mini murukku smaller than what you see in the picture since I don’t have those super mini one’s I am using these.

~ Cut all the vegetables in tiny pieces, use boiled potato if you wish.  You can also use any other vegetable of your choice. 

To arrange the sandwich apply chutney on muruku pieces, keep one cucumber piece, onion pieces followed by tomato and cover it up with another muruku piece. 

Our muruku sandwich is ready, how simple is that?  In shop it comes as pair of 9 sandwich here I made of 6, you can make as many as you like.

Sprinkle cheese to make it Cheese Muruku Sandwich, in shops it serves with lot of cheese topping.  No wonder kids loves this!

Or instead of cheese you can sprinkle little of thin sev, you can make it as open sandwich too for that don’t cover the sandwich top with muruku piece. 

Use toothpick to make these yummy sandwich as party appetizers, what you say?

Kids love this and so adult.  A very quick snack to make and please your kid, family or guest. 

Have a nice day ~~

Spring Onion Paratha | Scallion Flatbread

Do you believe challenges makes us more strong, wise? It doesn’t matter what kind of challenges we have to face and how we resolve, it only help us to grow as a person.  Talking about challenges, we do face the same in our kitchen don’t we? Remember my Spring Onion and Peas Soup that I made to finish off the scallion bunches I had along with my few more trials.  In between thanks to the people whom tried that soup and wrote back to saying they loved it (oh ya am showing off). Coming back to my story, just finish that batch and DH got me another 2 bunches of spring onion!!  I did try/experiment new dishes and one of them was these spring onion parathas.  I was just thinking what to do with scallion before they wilt and got the idea of making paratha.

Few of you asked me how to make square paratha, though I have mention before in  my plain paratha post how to do it but here the pictorial description of how to make square paratha for you.   Well I didn’t get the perfect square shape this time thanks to the clicking (that’s our scapegoat for blaming today) but normally I do make decent squares.  There was a time I used to make only triangle parathas cause that’s what my mother use to do I don’t remember I ever saw her making square parathas.  But my MIL likes only square ones and she asks me to make it that way, now I make normally square one’s as I personally find making perfect square is much easy then making a perfect triangle, how complicated a paratha can get!  Anyways the bottom line is I am so glad that I did experiment and made these parata, it turn out to be so soft, delicious with mild flavour of spring onion, if you want strong flavour then you can add little more of chopped spring onion.

Ingredients: [Makes 8-9 Parathas]
Wheat Flour - 2 cups
Spring Onion/Scallion - 1 bunch [ only green part] or 3/4 Cup chopped
Green Chillies - 2
Carom Seeds/Ajwain - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil/Ghee - 1 tbsp + for brushing paratha
Water - To knead

Method:
1.  Wash and finely chop spring onion  and green chillies.
2. In a wide bowl or plate place flour, spring onion, green chillies, carom seeds, salt and 1 tbsp of oil.  Mix everything well and rub between palm to get sand like texture.  Make a well in the center add water in small quantity and make a smooth, pitiable dough, cover with a wet cloth and keep aside for 20 minutes.

2. Divide the dough into equal portion of 8-9 balls.  Take one piece at a time and roll into thin circle like we do for roti.

3.  Apply little oil all over and sprinkle little flour.  Fold top part one third of roti and then bottom part one third, so we made 2 folds here.  Apply little over on the folded part.

4. Now fold right side followed by left side, and here we did another 2 folds.  So in total we folded it 4 times.  After each fold apply oil and sprinkle little flour to take flaky parathas.

5. Dust in flour as required and roll into 8-9 inches of square.  Meanwhile heat  a pan/tawa or griller and place this rolled paratha and cook on medium heat until you see it starts to change colour and little bubbles starts to form, flip it apply oil or ghee all over the paratha.  Now flip again to another side and apply ghee or oil.  Cook until both sides are golden brown, flip in intervals to prevent burning. 


Have with any curry or raita, I made black chickpeas curry. 

Have a nice day ~~

Broccoli & Carrot Poriyal | Thoran | Stir Fry

From last one year plus broccoli has been so regular at home thanks to vegetable shopping at done  mostly in supermarkets! Most of the time I make Broccoli Soup or Stir Fry or some time I venture into another recipes provided I have the mood.  This is a very simple, quick and delicious recipe which can be done in just 10 minutes including chopping if you are using a chopper.  I didn’t add coconut as I was short of it but it tasted delicious, am sure coconut will add wonderful flavour to the dish.   Try this combination to make your broccoli stir fry more interesting. 


Ingredients:
Broccoli - 1 head
Carrot - 2
Green Chillies - 2
Oil - 2 tsp
Asafoetida/Hing - a pinch
Cumin Seeds - 1/2 tsp
Mustard Seeds - 1/2 tsp
Dry Red Chilli - 1
Curry Leaves - 1 Sprig
Turmeric Powder - 1/4 tsp
Red Chilli Powder - 1/2 tsp
Grated Coconut - 3 tbsp [ I didn’t use]
Salt - to Taste

Method:
1. Wash and finely chop broccoli or you can grate it too, I used my chopper which does  very fine chopping.  Wash, peel and finely chop carrot, green chillies.

2. In a pan or wok heat oil, add asafoetida, cumin and mustard seeds and allow to splutter.  Add curry leaves and dry red chilli and sauté for 30 seconds, add carrot and fry for a minute.

3. Add broccoli and give a good stir let it sauté for a minute too.  Now add turmeric, chilli powder, salt mix well,  cover the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes on medium flame.

5. Add grated coconut (if using) and mix well cook for a minute or until everything is cooked but still crunchy.

It hardly takes 5 minutes to cook as broccoli and carrot are finely chopped.  Goes well with plain rice or with dal/sambar, rasam rice.

I had it with rice and mochakottai kulambu, a yummy meal.

Have a nice day ~~

Vegetable Fried Rice Recipe | Indo Chinese Recipes

Veg Fried Rice or fried rice has to be the most famous Indo-Chinese recipe, most of us like Chinese food and specially fried rice, don’t we? I made fried rice so many times but never really got a chance to post it, this time I made it along with Corn and Capsicum Soup and clicked the picture so I can post the recipe on readers demand. As most of the recipes one can find umpteen way of doing vegetable fried rice specially Indian way, and here is my version.

Sambar Vada| Vadai

I don’t make sambar vada much it’s one of those once in blue moon things in our plcae though my DH loves sambar vada & it’s one of few South Indian dishes that he will eat happily.  I made this yesterday for group of friends (whom eventually didn’t turn up except one kind soul, God Bless her).  I made these sambar vada for one of them whom love South Indian food, since she couldn’t make it I thought let’s give her a virtual treat, so gals enjoy.

These sambar vada came out perfect soft, moist and delicious I shared these with my neighbour whom loved it and she thought these are from restaurant.

 

Ingredients:

For Vadas - makes 12 medium size vadas

Whole Urad Dal/Black gram - 1 Cup [ use the whole white ones]

Peppercorn - 3

Green Chillies - 2

Ginger - 1” pieces [chopped]

Onion - 1/2 small [ chopped]

Salt - to taste

Cooking Soda - a pinch

Oil - To deep fry

Water - 2-3 tbsp + for soaking

Method:

1. Wash and soak urad dal for 5-6 hours or over night.  Wash soaked dal, added in grinder/mixer along with chopped onion, green chillies, pepper corn and grind to smooth paste.  Add water only if required each time 1 tbsp. [I added around 3 tbsp water]

2. Transfer the batter to a wide bowl and mix well batter with hand for 2 minutes until it becomes soft and fluffy. You can do a small test to know if the batter is ready, in a bowl of water drop a small amount of batter if it’s floats on top then it’s ready to use, if the batter sinks on base then you have to mix the batter more.  Now add salt and soda and mix well again.

3. Heat oil in a wok, drop small piece of batter in oil if the batter immediately comes on top then the oil is too hot, off the flame and let oil cool down a bit.  Once we put little batter it should go down in oil and then slowly float on top, that’s the right temperature.

4. Make vada on your palm or use a plastic sheet/zip lock bag.  Dip hand on a bowl of water and wipe the plastic sheet with the same hand, take small lemon size batter and place on plastic sheet spread it making a small round, use finger to make a small hole in the center. 

5. Carefully lift the sheet and transfer the vada on another hand then slowly slit it to oil, be careful not to get burn.  I have many times put my fingers on hot oil

6. Fry each side until nice golden brown and fry each time 3-4 pieces so it doesn’t stick together [deep hand in water each time shaping vada and grease the sheet with water each time too].  Once fried take out vada  from oil and place on a kitchen tissue lined bowl, allow it to cool.

For Sambar

Ingredients:

Toor Dal - 3/4 Cup

Vegetables - 3/4 Cup [I used Carrot, beans]

Tamarind - 1 Small Lemon Size

Onion - 1 Large

Tomato - 1 medium

Green Chillies - 3

Garlic Pods - 2 crushed

Sambar Powder - 2 tsp

Turmeric Powder - 1/2 tsp

Mustard Seeds - 1/4 tsp

Cumin Seeds - 1/4 tsp

Curry Leaves - 1 Sprig

Salt - To taste

Oil - 1 tbsp

Cilantro - 1 tbsp [chopped]

Jaggery - 1 tsp [optional]

Water -

Method:

1. Wash and soak dal for 1 hour, this is optional and pressure cook dal for 3 whistles with enough water and turmeric powder.  Once cooker release pressure mash the dal well and keep aside. 

~ You can pressure cook the veggies too. 

2. Soak tamarind in 3/4 cup warm water for 15-20mins and extract juice from it, keep aside.

3. Slice onion, tomato, slit chillies and crush garlic.  Chop veggie like carrot, beans or any other of your choice.

4. In a pan/wok heat oil add mustard and cumin seeds and allow it to crack, add garlic and sauté until light brown.  Now add curry leaves onion and green chilli, fry until onion become transparent.  If using raw vegetable add it now to fry with onion. 

5.  Add tomato, sambar powder and cook until tomato mashes.   [Sprinkle little water if using raw veggies]

6. If using boiled veggies add it now along with tamarind juice and bring it to good boil, simmer for 2 minutes.  Add mashed dal, salt and 2 cups of water and bring it to boil again and simmer for 5-7 minutes on medium flame.

Garnish with cilantro.  You can add jaggery to get sweet taste like restaurant style taste, I didn’t add.

For Assembly:

1.   Soak vadas in warm water for 5 minutes, remove it from water and squeeze between palm to remove excess water, do it gently to retain the shape. 

2. In a serving bowl pour sambar and arrange the vadas, now pour sambar on top of vada and keep it for 5-7 minutes for the vadas to soak sambar.

3. Before serving add more sambar, garnish with chopped cilantro and serve hot/warm.

Notes:

~ You can serve the sambar vada with chopped onion, I don’t like that much. 

~ If you don’t soak the vada in warm water then you have to soak the vada in sambar for long time.

~ Beating/mixing the batter is very important to get soft vadas so don’t skip that.

Have a nice day ~~

Marmer Cake

I like simple tea time cakes which has to be easy and quick to prepare and delicious to eat, not to mention little less guilt since we don’t have any icing and goes well with tea/coffee.  Today is my sister in law birthday and nothing better occasion to post this simple and delicious cake recipe.  Happy Birthday didi.

This cake turned out much better than I expected soft, moist and  yum.  Of all the cakes I have baked so far this one is one of the best tea cake, it’s so simple to make keeper recipe for sure, looks pretty too right? Though am not much fan of chocolate cake but the cocoa effect in this is just so perfect.  You have to try this to know what am talking here, I done the baking part in late evening so do excuse the stepwise picture quality I can now see how bad it is

Ingredients:

Butter - 150g

Powder Sugar - 150g

Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp

Eggs - 3

Plain Flour - 150g

Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp

Baking Soda - 1/4 tsp

Cocoa Powder - 2 tbsp

Hot Water - 2 tbsp

Method:

1. Sift flour, baking powder, soda and set aside.  Dissolve cocoa powder with hot water in a wide bowl and keep aside, used a wide bowl here so later we can mix the flour batter directly to the cocoa mix.

2. Meanwhile Preheat the oven to 180C/356F and grease a 6” pan or a loaf tin.  I used loaf tin here.

3. In a bowl beat butter, sugar until smooth.  Add one egg at a time and mix well to combine everything together.  Now add vanilla essence and flour in batches and whisk well to combine. [Do you see how fluffy the batter is?]

4. Divide the batter in equal portion and combine one portion with cocoa mix and whisk well.  

5. Now add 1tbsp of white batter on the pan followed by 1tbsp of cocoa batter, continue doing it until you run out of batter. Create a marble motif with a toothpick or knife, I used a knife here.  Don’t over it to and be gentle, swirls looks beautiful don’t you think?

[While you add the batter and if doesn’t spread don’t panic, it will spread or you can gently tap the pan/tin] 

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, cool on a wire rack and cut in pieces.

This lasted me more than a week refrigerated, till the end cake was soft and moist.  And this cake taste better next day. 

Have a nice day ~~