The Utter Simplicity of Vazhakkai Poriyal

Hola Cats!


We are (for the most part) what we know. And what I knew growing up was that good South Indian food was best left to the masters. Ordering south Indian thalis at restaurants and gorging my heart out when invited to the homes of South Indians.

 Like many Bangloreans,  I am the hugest fan of idli, dosa,sambar,rasam,poriyals,and kosambari. I am not well versed in the plethora of twists and tricks that summersault and perform acrobatics from state to state or for that matter region of state to region. I am barely know the difference between Mysore Masala Dosa and uh, regular masala dosa. I do know that some parts of Karnataka use more jaggery in their vegetables and sambars than say Tamilnadu.  Some of you are probably just shaking your heads right now and saying, shut up Rheea, you are making a mess of things.

See, I grew up in a household with a Bengali father and Manglorean mother and lots of NRI seasoning thrown in for good measure. Not to mention we had a Bihari cook for many years growing up in Bangalore. The result was something I'd like to call 'generic Indian food'. Meaning garam masala, onions and ginger-garlic paste as the go-to base for literally everything.

Despite this, I loved south Indian food when I ate it from other tiffin boxes, homes and udipi hotels. In fact my go-to lunch is the standard south Indian thali minus the curd.

But I was too frightened to try to make basic poriyals and sambars at home. I mean considering some of the things didn't have onions or ginger garlic paste all mashed into one thing- how could I make it taste good? My upbringing had taught me that making tasty Indian food meant garam masala time!

When trying to create South Indian dishes, I am like that White friend you bring to India  who immediately starts wearing a bindi and bangles.  It's endearing but a little off, you know?

Anyway, I had no idea what to do with raw bananas, but today at the market I picked two up determined to make 'that thing I've seen on thalis'. Turns out one of the names for it is a tamil household recipe, Vazhakkai Poriyal. I might not be able to pronounce, but hell, I'll make it.

Optimism

The best thing about many many south Indian vegetables and sambars is that they are default vegan. There is usually no milk or curd in them and if you don't add any ghee with your rice, TADAH- 100% vegan yo!

So thanks to Youtube, I managed quite well. I figured out how to conquer the raw banana.

For those of you who are in my predicament, I present Rheea'a Vazhakkai Poriyal. Notice how I put my name in front of the name and basically ignored generations of South Indians groaning ' No Rheea, that's really not your recipe at all'. Go ahead and apply my cooking colonisation to the most relevant global reality of your choice.

What You Need

2 peeled raw bananas
1/2 cup grated fresh coconut
1 teaspoon Hing (Asafoetida)
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
2 teaspoon turmeric
10-12 curry leaves
2 tablespoons Urad Daal (White Lentil)
2 tablespoons oil
Salt to taste
4-5 red dried red chilies
2 teaspoons jaggery powder (optional and possibly blasphemous)

How to Make

Peel your raw bananas with the help of a knife. You want to get to the whitish inside, but be careful not to peel too much off or you'll be left with too little of the banana meat. Cut them into small cubes.

Dump them into a pot and cover them with water and your turmeric. Let it boil for about 5 minutes.

Just boiling them bananas (with turmeric)

Meanwhile get pan on the stove. Add oil and let it warm for a few seconds. Add urad daal, mustard seeds and hing (asafoetida) and stir for 15 seconds. Add curry leaves, red chilies and coconut now and stir for a minute till it gets nice and crispy (but not too crispy, lower the fire if it's burning).

Now add salt to the mix. Drain your boiling turmeric raw banana pieces and add to the pan. Stir together well and fry for another 3 minutes or so.

I did it! I did it!

And you're done! So simple, so delicious. This is best had with white rice and sambar. If you want to make sambar you can youtube or be risky and look up my Coconut Sambar HERE.

Ok, I can already hear murmurs of people who want to add their few cents- how some of you would never consider using jaggery or would have added another spice. Or maybe you want to help us learn with alternate names/recipes and history of these foods. Please add your advice/corrections/history/anecdotes in the comments!

Till next time, keep it kind!

Tea Time Vegan (Vanilla Coconut Cake with Walnut + Strawberry Jam Filling)

Hello Kangaroos!

It's been a while but no fear, I am back to my baking experiments. I had to angle my phone to get pretty pictures, because truth be told this baby wasn't the prettiest. But what it lacks in looks it makes up in taste.

We have a fluffy vanilla coconut cake here with a walnut and strawberry jam filling. I also topped of the cake with blended dried berries that I had, but you can just use some jam.

This is a sweet indulgence and can make your friends happy and willing to forgive you for small transgressions of the past. Although I haven't tested that theory out yet, I am willing to put it out there.

Kind of sloppy. Kind of spectacular 

So let's get to it!

What You Need

for the cake

2 cups flour
1 cup castor sugar
1 1/2 cups soya mylk (or any plant based mylk)
1/4th cup vegetable oil
1 cup dried (or fresh) grated coconut
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons flaxseed powder (optional)

for the walnut-strawberry jam filling

3/4th cup walnuts (ground up)
1 cup strawberry jam ( or any other berry jam)
a splash of water

for the topping

5 tablespoons of  berry jam with a tiny splash of water (use jams with real berries in it not just flavoured)



How To Make

In a bowl combine sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, and vinegar. Add soya mylk and flaxseed powder and stir well. Now add your flour, baking soda+powder, Stir it up. Add coconut. Your mixture should be thick but pourable. Prepare a round baking tin and grease it well. Pour batter in.

All ready to be baked

Pre-heat oven to 180c and bake the cake for 25-30 min. Let the cake cool for at least 30 minutes or it will break.


While your cake is baking start on the filling. Grind up your walnuts. Add this to your jam. Add a splash of water and warm it up in the microwave for 30 seconds so you can stir it together with ease. It won't look amazing but it will taste good.

walnut strawberry jam filling 

Now when your cake is cooled ( please let it COOL completely) go ahead and slice the cake into two parts. It's ok if it gets a little sloppy. Smear the walnut-jam filling and sandwich the two parts together. Top off with jam and spread well. You can add fresh cut strawberries to decorate too or sprinkles. Do whatever makes your heart happy.

Slice them babies up and share.

YUM

Till next time, keep it kind, keep it real.

Vegan Hearty Bites ( And a Spectacular 2018 to All You Pups)

Happy 2018 water bugs! 

I just realised that this would be my first 2018 post (17 days into the new year) I am late, but it's never too late to read a good vegan recipe. One that's healthy (ish) to boot!

This year, I've pledged to write about veganism from multiple perspectives and try to further my goal of being more inclusive when it comes discussing how all of us can work together to acknowledge this huge ethical crises, particularly when it comes to factory farming in the meat, dairy, and egg industry. So stay tuned for content on that in the coming months.

But for right now, we're going to talk about these amazing hearty bites I just made. There ain't no refined sugar in these babies. No flour either. Just oats and semolina (or rava as we call it in India).

These are sweetened with jaggery and have only 2 tablespoons of oil, which you could omit to make them super-super healthy but they might be a little too dry if you ask me. These are GREAT for breakfast on the go. Good with tea, coffee, juice whatever! Also, these are really really fast to make.

Here's What You Need

2 cups oats
3/4th cup semolina (rava)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup jaggery powder (or adjust to you preferred level of sweetness)
1 and half teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons cinnamon powder
1/4th cup cacao nibs (or be naughty and add broken pieces of vegan dark chocolate instead)
2 tablespoons flaxseed powder (just grind up your flaxseeds if you don't have powder)
3/4th cup soya mylk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup walnuts crushed
1/2 cup crushed or sliced almonds
1 and half teaspoon baking powder




How to Make

In a large bowl add your oil, soya mylk , vanilla,  salt and jaggery and stir. Now add your oats, semolina, walnuts, almonds, cacao nibs, cinnamon, and baking powder.

Get your hands dirty and mix it all up. It should be squishy but mouldable. If it's not wet enough to mould add some more soya mylk till you get the right consistency. Now make small balls ( i got about 20 ).

All of the good stuff about to be mixed

That's the right consistency 

Pre-heat oven to 180c. On a baking tray (preferably lined with baking paper) add your balls and flatted with your hands or a spoon. Pop them in the oven for 10 minutes. That's it!

Let them cool and share with everybody. Even with your not-so-friendly neighbour.

That was super quick, eh? Well, you all have a spectacular year and don't forget to keep checking back for solid recipes and chitter-chatter over here at Messy Cooking Always Vegan.

Rustic Walnut Current Millet Bread (All Vegan, Folks)

Hello Hippos!

Gosh my kitchen was overflowing with millets. I kept buying packets of foxtail millet thinking I was out only to realise I had 2 huge packets at home. Sigh. So I had to use up them millets pronto. I wanted a nice dense, rustic, nutty bread that had just a hint of sweetness. This is perfect for breakfast with some olive oil or even coconut oil drizzled on it hot and toasted. Mmmm. It's also amazing plain.

This happens to be super healthy because of the millets, low sugar, and the flax and chia seeds!

This recipe can be easily made gluten free by omitting the flour I used by using just millets (although it will be super dense) or adding almond flour in place of the regular flour.

Here's what you need


1.5 cup foxtail millets
1/2 cup flour (or almond flour for gluten free)
3 tablespoons chia seeds
4 tablespoons ground flaxseeds
3 teaspoons bakers yeast
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons jaggery powder
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup walnuts (yes lots of nuts, it's amazing)
1/2 cup dried currents (or cranberry or a mix of both)
3/4th cup warm water



How to make

In a blender powder your foxtail millet and chia seeds into a fine powder. If you don't have flax seed powder then grind the flax seeds along with the millets and chia seeds.  Add the ground up millets, flax seeds, and chia seeds in the bowl. Add salt, jaggery, walnuts, and currents.

The millets ground up into a flour

Dry ingredients 

Warm up some water. It can't be too hot or it will kill the yeast. It should be a tad warmer than lukewarm. You should be able to deep your fingers in comfortably.

Now add the warm water to the dry mix. Add oil and start to mix. It will be a wet lumpy mixture. Set the bowl somewhere warm for 5 to 10 minutes.

Nice and gooey

Next, on a board sprinkled with 1/4th cup flour start to knead the bread dough. After about 5 minutes it should become sticky but cohesive. Keep massaging the dough with a little dry flour for another 5 to 10 minutes.

In a greased loaf pan add in the bread dough. Set aside somewhere warm for 30 minutes.

let this set for 30 min and then into the oven!

Preheat your oven to 200c. Put the loaded pan in for 25-30 minutes.

Let it cool for 10 minutes. It will be a thick dense bread that is overflowing with nuts in every bite.

Will be great warmed/toasted with some coconut oil and will be a lovely-ass accompaniment to salad. Enjoy your bread. Enjoy your life.

YUM

Keep it kind and get ready for a kick ass 2018!  See you soon.

Holiday Rosemary Raisin Date Crackers (Vegan Obvs)

Hi-hi Dolphins!

It's the most wonderful time of the year. I demand you read this blog with THIS song in the background.

Lots of holiday cooking going around on FB and my brother who is visiting from the U.S brought me a pack of Trader Joes Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies which are to die for. It reminded me of some of the sweet-savory crackers that are a staple on holiday cracker-cheese plates this time of the year. In my pre-vegan days living in the U.S, I used to LOVE variations of raisin/rosemary/herb crackers that would go with blue cheese. I saw some imported crackers like these in Nature's Basket in Bangalore but they cost half my rent. So of course I decided to make my own.

These crackers are delicious because they have a savoury herb taste with bursts of date and raisin sweetness. Combine it with hummus or cashew cheese and you might spontaneously combust. For real. My version uses whole wheat flour, regular flour, and almond flour (just almonds ground up fine in the blender). So let's make these crackers!


What You Need

1/2 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole almonds blended into flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 and half teaspoons salt
6-8 deseeded dates
1/2 cup raisins (you can add more too if you want)
1/2 cup soya mylk or water (depending on getting the right rollable dough)
2.5 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons dried rosemary

Almond flour, dates, rosemary, raisins. Yum yum.

How to Make

Grind up your almonds into a flour in the blender

In a bowl add your flour, whole wheat flour, and almond flour.  Now add the baking powder, salt, and rosemary and blend the dry mix with your hands.

Chop up your dates into bits. Add the chopped dates and raisins to the mix as well. Now add your oil. Get ready to get your hands dirty. Pour water/soyamylk into the batter and start to knead. Keep adding water/mylk until you have a nice dough that can be rolled. The dough will be thick and uneven because of the dates/raisins- that's fine. Chill.

That's the dough we're talking about, lovers. 

Now roll out parts of your dough as thin as you can. It won't get too thin because it's got so many goodies in it. Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes  or simply cut into cracker- like squares. Repeat will all the remaining dough. This should get you about 30-35 small crackers depending on your thickness.

All ready to be popped into that oven

Add your crackers in batches depending on the size of your oven.  Bake for 20-23 minutes  at 185c.

Take out and let cool. Enjoy with a quick cashew cheese which involves blending 1/4th cup cashews with one tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional), salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Or dip them in hummus, or have them with jam. Or just alone with some black tea.

I spy the giant gingerbread man

Let the holidays start! Keep it kind.

Zero Sugar Vegan Samoa Cookies ( And How My Mother and BF Wasted My Time)

Ola Pups!

Today I was inspired to try out a old favorite, the Girl Scout Samoa Cookie. This version has semolina mixed with flour and has zero refined sugar. I could have made them with sugar but my mother and boyfriend were super whiny about basically nothing when I said I was going to bake cookies at 4:30 in the afternoon. The discussion went like this:

Me: I am going to bake cookies
Mother: No! no more baking you make a mess 
BF: No one is going to eat them they are very unhealthy
Me: Shut up and and let me bake
Mother: What's the point of being vegan it's all high-fat crap
Me: Veganism isn't about health, it's about ETHICS
Boyfriend: Don't bake cookies
Me: I am, I'll make them with no sugar
Mother and BF: Fine
*30 min later when offered the cookies*
mother and BF: Man these are good! 
Mother: I am eating another one

Basically they wasted 10 minutes of my life for no real reason.

So anyway, let me not waste anymore of yours.

Here's what you need

For the cookies:

1 cup semolina (Rave)
1 cup Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
1tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup grated jagerry
5 tablespoons jaggery syrup (or just use 1/2-3/4th cup of dry grated jaggery or just syrup)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2  cup almond mylk (or any plant based mylk like soya or coconut)

For the Coconut topping

1 cup dried coconut
2 tablespoons almond/coconut mylk
3 tablespoons shredded jaggery

For the chocolate drizzle

6-8 squares of Amul dark chocolate (or any other vegan dark chocolate)
3 -4 teaspoons water


How to Make

In a bowl combine mylk, jaggery, salt and vanilla. Stir in semolina, flour, baking powder and soda, flax seed powder and then combined with your hands until you have a nice dough. It should be slightly wet but should be able to be rolled out. Add some more flour/semolina to make it drier. If it's too wet or add more plant based mylk if it's too dry.

Wet stuff about to be creamed. Coconut oil, jaggery syrup, dry jaggery, vanilla, and almond mylk

Dry mix to be added to wet mix. Flour, semolina, flax seed powder, salt

Now put your dough in the freezer for 10 min.

In the meanwhile in another bowl combine dried coconut with a little bit of coconut/soya/almond mylk and add the grated jaggery. Set aside.

Pop out the dough from freezer. Roll out and use a cookie cutter to cut out whatever shape you'd like. The dough should be enough for 20 small cookies.

Simple Circles 

Now put each cut out cookies on a baking tray and top with the shredded coconut mixture.
Put the tray in a pre-heated oven at 180c for 10-12 min per batch.

Adding the coconut mixture

While cookies are baking pop your chocolate and teaspoons of water in a microwave for a minute and half. Stir it up till you get a nice smooth mixture. Add this mix into a icing cone or make your own with a ziplock bag. Snip the end and keep it ready. When your cookies are baked drizzle stripes of the melted chocolate on the cookies. Let them stand for about 5 min.

Serve them. Most likely people will want a second one. If you don't have random time-wasting arguments at home and are inclined to use sugar instead of jaggery, go for it. Whole heartedly.

Looking good, eh?

Till next time!

Happy Ending 

Vegan Berry Streusel Muffins (Hello Coffee Break)

hello muffin!

Howdy Hippos!

As promised I am back to blogging after finishing my novel. I had lots of good news in my fiction writer life in the past couple of weeks. I just signed with with my dream literary agent, Stacy Testa, from a very respected literary agency, Writers House New York. And while I am on top of the world, I still have a lot of edits to handle with her before she shops my novel around. So I won't be popping these recipe puppies out by the dozen, but I do promise to give you some choice treats twice a month at the very least. Deal? (I just heard a chorus of DEAL right back at me).

Today I wanted to recreate that perfect coffee muffin with that iconic streusel on top. Turns out it's super easy. I took my inspiration from this post. Except mine had no reason to be oil-free and I also wanted to mix in flour with the oats for a more cakey-feel.

Too pretty to eat

So the first thing we'll do is make the vegan streusel. That's the crumbly bits  you add on top of the batter to recreate that coffee-cake bliss.

Vegan Streusel 

3/4th cup almonds blended/ground into flour
2 heaping teaspoons of ground cinnamon powder
3 tablespoons maple syrup (you could use jaggery syrup too)

These babies will be blended (almonds and cinnamon powder)

That's it! So all you do is add 3/4th cup of almonds and cinnamon in your blender and blend it into almond flour. Put it in a bowl, add the syrup and mix. You'll get a nice lumpy streusel. Set aside.



For the Blueberry Muffins

1 and quarter cups flour
1/2 cup oats
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
1/4th cup vegetable oil
1/4th cup soya mylk
3/4th to 1  cup brown sugar ( 3/4th if you don't like it too sweet)
1 teaspoons cinnamon powder
1 and half teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar
1.5 tablespoon ground flaxseed powder
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (or strawberries or any mix of berries)

Note: You could use 1/4th cup apple sauce (just deseed, peel and blend an apple) instead of the flax seed powder. We use flaxseed powder or applesauce as a binder.

That's how your batter should-kinda look

How to Make

In a bowl add oil, brown sugar, flaxseed powder (or apple sauce),  soya mylk, vanilla, and cinnamon and mix. Add flour, oats, baking soda and powder and mix into a thick batter. It shouldn't be too dry, if it is add a few spoons of water or soya mylk. Now add your berries and mix it up again.

In a lined muffin tray add one heaping tablespoon of batter per muffin lining.  You should have enough batter for 6 medium sized muffins. Once you've done that get your streusel out. Now heap the mixture on top of each muffin.

Adding that magical streusal

Right before you pop'em in the oven

Bake at 180c for 20 minutes.

Enjoy these delights with a glass of iced or steaming hot black coffee.

Have a spectacular week. Keep it real!