Recipe: Tomato Khorma

Ingredients:

• Onion - 1 big
• Tomato - 2 big
• Gree Chillies - 3
• Ginger/Garlic paste - 1 tsp
• Chilli powder - 1 tsp
• Turmeric - 1 pinch
• Grated Coconut - 1 cup
• Split Bengal gram - 2 tbsp
• Aniseed (Sompf) - 1 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Seasoning: Mustard seeds, Cinnamon, Clove
• Curry leaves, Coriander
  

Directions:

- Cut tomato, onion, and chillies
- Boil these in two cups of water, with ginger/garlic paste, turmeric, and salt.
- Once they soften, mash them fine.
- Add Chilli powder, check for salt and boil it again.
- Grind coconut, bengal gram and saumph and add it to the stew.
- Season mustard, cinnamon, clove and curry leaves in a teaspoon of oil and add it to the boiling stew.
- Garnish with coriander and now it is ready to serve!

Recipe: Peanut Chutney

Ingredients:

• Peanut - 2 cup
• Red Chillies - 4
• Garlic - 1 clove
• Grated Coconut - 1 cup
• Salt to taste
• Tamarind - small ball
• Mustard seed, urad dal for seasoning.
  

Directions:

- Fry the Peanuts dry, and remove the skin
- Fry the red chillies in 1 tsp oil
- Grind coconut, chillies, tamarind, salt.
- Then add peanut and grind
- Add some water to grind the mixture to a nice consistency
- Season with mustard seeds, urad dal, fried in oil

Recipe: Idli

Ingredients:

• (Ravi) Idli rice - 8 cups
• Whole Urad dal - 2 cup
• Fenugreek - 1 tsp

Directions:

- Soak Uraddal with Fenugreek
- Grind Rice seperately to a coarse consistency
- Grind Uraddal fine with about 2 cups water atleast for 30 mins

Suggestions:
- Add a cup of cooked rice while grinding rice, it will help the batter ferment fast.
- Soak in the morning, grind at night, and let it ferment atleast overnight.
- The consistency to grind the mixture to is a matter of experience.

Recipe: Chicken Curry

Ingredients:

• Chicken - 1/2 lb
• Onion - 1 big
• Tomato - 1 big
• Ginger/Garlic paste - 2 tsp
• Yogurt - 1/2 cup
• Chilli powder - 1.5 tsp
• Coriander powder - 1.5 tsp
• Turmeric - 1 pinch
• Garam masala - 1 tsp
• Pepper - whole - 1 tsp
• Fennel -
  
• Cloves - 2-3
• Cinnamon - 1 stick
  
• Salt to taste
• Curry leaves
• Coriander
  

Directions:
- Grind pepper, and fennel nicely
- Add tomato and onion to this and make a puree
- Pressure cook the chicken, yogurt, turmeric, salt, ginger/garlic paste, and the above puree for about two whistles
- Let is sit still to cool
- Sautee Cloves, Cinnamon and Curry leaves with 1 tablespoon oil in a deep frying pan.
- Now add the cooked chicken, and keep stirring.
- Once it thickens add some coriander
- It is ready to serve now

Suggestions: If you want thicker gravy, you can increase the proportion of onion and tomato.
Goes very well as a side dish for roti, naan etc.

Recipe: Chicken Biryani by Vignesh

Last year on our vacation to San Diego, one of our friends surprised us with an awesome chicken biryani. We were all so impressed, we've been bugging him for the recipe. OK, now it is online for all of you to go impress your friends with :-)

Ingredients:

• Briyani Rice - 1 Kg
• Chicken / Mutton - 1 Kg
• Oil - approx 250ml
• Yogurt - approx 150 to 200ml
• Green Chillies - 30 to 35 (Depends on the size of chillies)
• Red Chilli powder - 1 tsp
• Mint - 25 gms
• Corinder - 25gms + 25gms (final)
• Ginger - 100gms
• Garlic - 75gms
• Spices - Use either Garam Masala powder (2 tsp) or use indiviudal ones...
• Onion - 250gms
• Tomato - 250 gms
• Lime - 1

Directions:

- Soak Rice in water when u start cooking - add one/two lime juice in water to soak the rice.

- Heat the oil, add the garam masala/spices

- Then add the cut onions (cut onion in length wise, not into small pieces), keep seasoning onion in the pan for some time until it gets cooked.

- Add the Ginger & Garlic paste. Season this paste until the smell wears off.

- Add finely chopped Mint and coriender leaves and season it well.

- Add Green Chillis (without chopping) + Tomatos - dont season tomatos, immediatly add chicken after adding tomato. - mix for some time in high temperature.

- Add Yogrt + Red Chilli powder. Mix well. Add Salt to taste

- Keep in Medium heat - Cook chicken for 20 mins to 30 mins.

- Take a break, get coffee, vote for American Idol or something.

- Meanwhile heat water until it boils, then add the rice. Please dont cook the rice in this water. This is just to remove the starch from rice, so once you see the bubbles coming up after adding rice in boiling water, just remove it and drain the starch.
- Keep it aside until the chicken gets cooked.

===> Back again..

- Just check up on the taste of gravy, (you can add some more salt / chilli powder, if you need. After adding let it cook it for some more time)

- After Chicken is cooked, you can see the gravy in that.. Add the half cooked rice in that, mix well. Close it with tight lid or aluminium foil, keep it in preheated Oven/Microwave for 20 to 30 mins.

Thats it.. Ready to serve!!