Myriad Musings

Urad Daal, Vigno Mungo has superhuman (should I say superplant?) properties attributed to it - Good for bones, Good for diabetes, Anti inflammatory, Improves digestion, strength and vigour etc...  It is one of the two daals allowed during Shraddam.  Unsurprising, since it originated here in the Indian subcontinent.  (I am so proud that mango is Magnifera Indica, sounds like magnificent Indian ;) Idli, Dosa, Adai and every tadka here in the south uses Urad daal, but in the dehusked and sometimes split form.  Medhu Vadai is the epitome of urad daal cooking, deep fried, donut shaped savoury snack.  I suck at making it. The batter itself is an art, urad daal soaked for optimal time and ground to an airy paste with salt added just at the right time so that it doesn't release too much water before we start frying. The shape is even more complicated, I never get the donut shape and I simply abandon it in favour of the north Indian dahi-vada shape - an ellipsoid....

I found the perfect cookie recipe at Annie's eats .  I used Nattuchakkarai or the south Indian organic brown sugar and repeated her recipe with very little changes here.  Result?  Perfection!  I dare say, even Annie might agree, nattuchakkarai takes her excellent recipe up a notch with its fudgy gooeyness.  Also it has some chunkier bits amidst the powdery stuff and the chunky stuff hangs on to its shape stubbornly through mixing, even with a hand mixer and baking, finally giving up the ghost when you bite into the cookie. Delicious.  And to top it all, I made it with chapathi flour (whole wheat) not maida. I used a combination of ghee (i had forgotten to switch off the gas when I was melting ghee for my son's breakfast and ended up browning it up a tad too much) and melted butter.  The butter ghee mix was truly at room temperature and I did not have any issues with the dough some of the other commentators had talked about. I felt the size of the do...