Za Recipes

SOY GRANULES STUFFED BUNS

Ever since I saw Usha’s oats pav bread, I really got hooked on to her recipe. This is the second time I made them and I tried to add stuffing to the buns instead of having of them as pav. Thanks a lot Usha for this amazing bread. The stuffing I have used here is a side dish I made that day for our lunch. I stuffed the leftovers in the buns and voila..a tasty evening snack to go with tea. I am not posting the recipe for the bread since it is not my recipe. The only change I made in her recipe was that I used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, still the texture of the bread was not so dense compared to regular whole wheat bread. For the oats pav recipe, please click here:

www.veginspirations.blogspot.com/2009/06/oat-pav-bread.html

INGREDIENTS FOR THE STUFFING:

1. Soya nuggets or granules around 1 cup.
2. Onions, large-1.
3. Ginger-garlic paste- 1 teaspoon.
4. Chili powder.
5. Fennel seeds-1 teaspoon.
6. Garam masala (optional, tastes good even without garam masala).
7. Salt, as per taste.

METHOD:

For the bread, mix the dough and let it rise for an hour. Take a cup of soy nuggets and put them in boiling water for 2 minutes until the nuggets are puffed up. Let the, sit for 5 minutes, then rinse them well, drain them, and cut into very fine pieces or they can be minced well using a blender. Take care not to make them into a paste, just one or two pulses in the blender will be fine. Chop the onions into small pieces. Heat a pan and add 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the fennel seeds and let them fry for a few seconds, then add the onions and sauté for a few minutes until the onions are caramelized. Add a teaspoon of ginger-garlic paste and sauté for a minute. Then add a tablespoon of chili powder, garam masala, and required salt and fry for everything for a minute on a low flame. Add around 3 tablespoons of water and add the soy granules and cook them closed on low flame around 5-8 minutes until they turn dry. Turn off the heat, add cilantro and let it cool.

After an hour, take the dough, make small balls of dough and flatten it very slightly in the palm. Add 1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons of stuffing in the middle of the flattened dough and fold the dough gently over the stuffing. Smooth the edges into a ball and make similar balls from the rest of the dough. Arrange them on a baking sheet sprayed with nonstick cooking oil. They can be arranged closely or apart. Bake them at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Remove the buns from the oven, let it cool, and enjoy.

This Rice is the queen of pongal.The idea of making this pongal on the first day of Thai month, was to make a sweet first out of the newly harvested rice. Now time has changed. Agriculture is no more the main occupation of many. But we continue to celebrate the function with some raw rice we get in the store.To our future generations we should try to explain the importance of this function to the farmer and the agriculturists
In those days pongal was kept outside the house in the open for sun God. Now in our system of living we can’t do that and we have ended up in making pongal in the pressure cooker in our kitchen. Till today, I have managed to make pongal on the pongal day in the pongal panai in the dining room keeping the gas stove down .But in this method there is a risk of pongal getting burnt if we are not careful. So I advice the younger generation to make it in the cooker itself which is a safe and sure method
Ingredients
Raw rice-1 cup
Grated jaggerry-1 cup
Broken green gram-handful (pasiparuppu)
Ghee 3 table spoons
Cashews-10
Raisins-handful
Powdered cardamom-1 teaspoon
Procedure
Wash the rice and pasiparuppu and cook in the pressure cooker with 3 cups of water in medium fire for 10 minutes. Meantime dissolve the jaggerry in a cup of water in the stove. Strain it using a stainless steel strainer .Keep it back in the stove and bring the mixture to a boil for 2 minutes. After the pressure goes open the cooker. Smash the rice nicely with a flat ladle. Slowly pour the jaggerry water into the cooker mixing well .Switch on the stove now and in low fire mix everything nicely. Switch off the stove in 2 minutes. Remember the pongal will solidify once it cools. If you want you can add little milk also instead of water while cooking rice.
In a small frying pan, in a tablespoon of ghee fry the cashews after breaking it into small pieces in low fire. Add this also into the cooker. Fry the raisins also and along with that ghee add everything into the pongal. Add the cardamom powder and a tablespoon of ghee and mix well. Your pongal is ready .While serving you can use the remaining 1 tablespoon of ghee