Few quick cooking Tits n Bits:

There are certain tips each of us would be following to make our day’s work easier or quicker. I just thought of listing down few here. I shall keep updating this post whenever I find a new one.

1. Varutharacha Thenga (Fried coconut ground to a paste):

I use this for many curries like sambar, kadala curry or any other Varutharacha curry. Instead of frying and grinding at that moment I fry one or two whole shredded coconuts at a time, grind it to a liquid form and store it in the freezer. I know that its always better to have things fresh, but this helps us when we are in a hurry. Also I’ve never felt any compromise on the taste.

 

The best part is to store this in an ice tray so that its again easy for you when u use them. It’s quite difficult to break the frozen block into pieces when we need only a small piece out of it. Storing in a covered ice tray solves that as well.

2. Coriander Chilly Powder:

I ve never made this myself as I still have around ½ kg of the mix prepared by my mother-in-law which I packed from home. I got the recipe from her and here it goes.  


I am using this in a number of recipes and you can replace 1 tbsp of this powder with 3/4 tbsp of coriander powder + 1/4 tbsp of chilli powder + 1/4 tbsp of garam masala or can add these while frying coconut and grind together. Most of the recipes with this masala calls for fried and ground coconut too.

Ingredients:

Coriander Seeds        --   1 kg

Red Chilly                   --   ¼ kg

Cinnamon Sticks        --   2 – 3 big sticks

Cloves                         --   10 – 15

Preparation:

Dry roast the red chillies until they just change their colour. Keep them aside. Dry roast the coriander seeds, cinnamon and cloves until the coriander seeds start turning dark. The indicator is the roasted smell.  Make sure that you do not roast them until dark brown. The masala will turn brown if u over roast the chilly and coriander.

Mix them and grind to a smooth powder. Store in an air tight container for 5 -6 months or more.

I ll definitely have to make this one day and I shall update the pics then.

3. Storing curry leaves:

We get a packet of curry leaves which has around 25 – 30 springs. I always used to dump the last few springs of curry leaves every time I get them because they get spoiled. I did try storing it different ways – clean and dry and keep in an air tight container, clean and freeze them etc. But none was completely successful. Yeah I should admit other ways of storing is much better than keeping them in the cover itself.

Finally my aunt gave me the idea to microwave them and then store in an airtight container. But you have to be careful while doing this. Steps are as follows.

a.      Clean and dry the leaves. Make sure that they are completely dry.

b.      Spread them in a plate and microwave this for 25 sec (Mine is a 1200 watts microwave). When done, they will have some amount of water content beneath each leaves. Wipe it with kitchen towel and let it dry completely.

c.       Once they are completely dry, store them in an air tight container. No need to keep them in fridge.

  

They become a kind of dried leaves but believe me; they give the taste and aroma of fresh leaves. Also make sure that they are completely dried before storing as the water content will help the growth of fungi.
A new tip I found was to keep the leaves on a kitchen tissue while you microwave it. The towel absorbs most of the moisture and hence its easy to completely get the water content off the leaves.