Back with a Bang!..No wait…another recipe.

Oh I know, its been ages since I blogged. It wasn’t ‘coz I wasn’t cooking! Au contraire, I even cooked my first ever Pongal (The Tamil harvest festival) day meal for my in-laws complete with two types of Pongal, gothsu, vada, vazhakkai podimaas, and rasam!Did I just hear a “Hallelujah!”, sistah?

I am back to blogging at the behest of some friends (you know who you are 🙂 )and encouragement (read nagging!) from hubby dear. Life had been hectic last year with some unfortunate things going on for me…so I decided to take a “sabbatical” from my virtual kitchen.  But here I am, back to writing about some of my adventures (and misadventures) in the exotic world of food. What better way to restart this journey than with one of my all-time favorite dishes-appalapoo kootu (mini dried lentil chips deep fried and simmered in lentil sauce). As most of y’all might have guessed (or known) by now, me and the Mister (!) don’t exactly meet eye to eye on lots of dishes (like many other things) and this ranks in the top 10. That’s ‘coz he likes his appalams crispy while I like them in any form!

I make this dish whenever I miss my mom. Whenever I had a rough day at school or wasn’t feeling up to it, it was like she somehow sensed it without me having to tell her. That evening a piping hot appalapoo kootu used to await on the table to lift up my mood! Mothers, I tell ya!! This dish is made using mini appalams and that’s why the name appalapoo (mini appalam).

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - The most amazing comfort food ever -Appalapoo Kootu

Appalapoo  – 8-10 nos (if using appalam, 3-4 would be sufficient)

saunf (fennel seeds) – 1.5 tsp

onion, small, finely chopped – 1/2 no

garlic, medium – 2 pods (optional)

toor daal-1/2 cup

turmeric-1/4 tsp

salt-as per taste

Water – 1.5 cups

Oil- for frying

For the tadka:

Mustard seeds-1 tbsp

red chillies, dried-2

hing-1/4 tsp

curry leaves-7-8 nos

Oil-2 tsps

Pressure cook the toor dal with garlic and turmeric in 1 cup water. Mash and keep aside. Fry the appalams/appalapoo in oil. In case of appalams, crush them to get bite-size pieces.Crush the fennel seeds using a mortar and pestle to bring out the oils.

Heat oil in a pan, add the mustard seeds, hing, saunf and onions. Add the curry leaves and red cillies as well. Saute till the onions turn translucent. Now add the toor daal along with salt followed by the appalapoo. Add 1/2 cup water and bring to a boil. Serve hot with rice and rasam or some spicy tamarind-based curry. N hear yourself say “Ha..life’s good!”.

On an aside, I baked this cake for some friends and they assumed it was store bought. I hate blowing my own trumpet (yeah right!) but just couldn’t resist it this time!

Our friends couldn't see the back of the cake..now you know why they refused to believe!

It was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting based on Ina Garten’s recipe.