Seepu Seedai

The Chettinad cuisine is one of South India's best known cuisines and this mouth watering cuisine has carved a niche for itself not only in Tamil Nadu but elsewhere in India and even abroad. Apart from standard and traditional food items, Chettinad cuisine is renowned for its unusual snacks and munchy items that are lip-smacking good. Some of the popular Chettinad dishes are Kandarappam, Ukkarai, Pal Paniyaram, Thenkuzhal, Karupatti Paniyaram, Kavanarisi, and Seepu Seedai to name just a few.

These are some dishes which has been an all time favourite for many people, from young to old. My grandfather who has lost almost all his teeth still likes to eat them. We give him by making it to a coarse powder in an ammi or mixie. We had mostly lived in north india, so people coming to visit us from our native place usually bring these snacks item. And almost in a jiffy it is finished.

I would like to post the recipes of some of these dishes which I make at home. Already I have posted a few of them. Today I am posting the recipe of the authentic Seepu Seedai. It is usually fried in edible coconut oil, which adds to its superb taste. It is made with rice flour, roasted gram flour. It gets it name "Seepu Seedai" because of it design. Seepu means comb in tamil. It got its design from Comb those days and hence the name. Nowadays they have designed some instruments like to achhu, kattai etc to do it easily. When I was young, we used to go to our native place - chettinadu for every summer vacation. During these days of our stay there, my grandmother, athai etc used to take our (children) help for preparing many snacks, vathal etc. Seepu Seedai always used to one of the items and we all children used to be very happy in helping them for preparing it, for 2 reasons. One because it was very interesting to do it and the next one because we will soon get our favourite snack.


Seepu Seedai

Ingredients
Raw Rice Flour - 4 cup
Urad dal Flour - 3/4 cup
Roasted Gram Flour - 3/4 cup
Diluted Coconut Milk - 2 1/2 cup
Ghee - 4 tsp
Salt to taste

Method
Basic Raw Rice Flour
Soak raw rice in water for about 2 to 3 hours. Drain the water from the rice and spread it on a clean white cloth in shade (not in sun). Let it dry for about 1 hr. Grind in a mixer. In South India we have special flour mills in many places to make wet rice flour. But then I mostly grind it in the mixer. Sieve the flour through a fine siever. Dry roast it in a low fire till it the raw smell of the rice is gone and it becomes like "sand", you should be able to draw line with it.

This is the basic rice flour for many snacks. You can prepare this rice flour before hand and keep it stored in an airtight box.

Seepu seedai
1) Mix rice flour, urad dhal flour, & ghee. Take milk from coconut by adding warm water to the same. Take about 2 ½ cups of milk, if it is not sufficient, you can add some boiling water. Boil this milk with salt, add to flour mixture & knead well . The should be soft.

2) Press in the seepu seedai achu into a long strip.
                         or
Since I didn't have a here I adopted the old fashioned way of making it with a comb. For this use a new, clean comb. Spread the dough like we do for chapatis, cookies etc in a clean greased plastic sheet. About 2 mm thick not very thin. Press it lightly with the comb, so that the lines of the comb get formed on it.

3) Cut into pieces of even length. Form it in the shape of rings using your finger. Fry for about 10 – 15 in hot oil (but not very hot) till it is done (i.e till the sound of the oil has stopped or is very little). Remove to kitchen tissue, cool & store.

Submitting this post to the JFI - Festival Treat Event guest hosted by Srivalli of Cooking 4 All Seasons. JFI was initially started by Indira Of Mahanandi

and
To the event Festive Food : Diwali hosted by Priti of Indian Khana

Uppu Seedai - Oval Shaped

Seedai is a special South Indian Savory. Seedai is a small ball shaped snack made with rice flour and deep fried in oil. It is made for many different occasions like Krishnajayanti, Diwali etc. And is available in many shops in Tamilnadu. It is normally ball shaped but the ones we make are a little oval shaped. And my elders often say the size of seedai often matters the taste.

There are different methods to make seedai. This one is our traditional way, easy and tasty way of making seedai and needs less ingredients.

Uppu Seedai
Ingredients
Boiled Rice - 4 cups
Roasted Gram Flour - 1 1/4 cup
Coconut Milk - 2 cups
Butter/Ghee - 1 t.sp
Salt to taste (about 4 t.sp)
Method
Soak the rice for 1 to 2 hrs. Drain of the water & grind it in the grinder.. While grinding use the coconut milk first instead of water. And then later on add water if required.  Grind it to a smooth & fine paste. Remove it from the grinder and add sieved roasted gram flour to it. Add warm melted butter/ghee & salt to the mixture.Knead it to form a soft dough. There is quite bit of water in the dough at this stage. So spread out the dough in a clean, thick cotton cloth and keep it covered for sometime till the cloth sucks in the water from the dough. The resulting dough should be a smooth dough without much of water.

Now relax a little bit. If you have children or if your hubby dear is at home, you can take their help a little bit. :). Take a tiny portion of the dough and roll it into small balls with your palm & finger. Then slightly press it to get oval shaped seedai. Place all the seedais on a clean cloth or maybe some thick paper. As far as possible do not put them one above other.

Now you are ready for frying. Heat oil in a pan. The oil should be at the right heat not too hot. Fry the seedais in small batches till they are slight pink. When the sound of the frying stops remove them. Do not over fry them.

Crispy & Tasty seedais are ready. Keep them in a air-tight box.

Note :
It may happen that you Diwali in your kitchen while making seedais. So please keep a lid ready near you. Stand a little far away from the oil. If it starts spluttering close it with the lid, put of the stove. I think it happens because of trapped water molecules in the dough. That is why try to remove them as far as possible before making the dough into seedais.
Though this is a safe method since I have used coconut milk instead of grated coconut, but still being careful is always better.

This is post is going to the JFI - Festival Treat Event guest hosted by Srivalli of Cooking 4 All Seasons. JFI was initially started by Indira Of Mahanandi

and
To the event Festive Food : Diwali hosted by Priti of Indian Khana

Kalkandu Vadai (Sweet Vadai)

Happy Navrathiri Wishes To All Of You

Kalkandu Vadai is a very famous Chettinadu vadai. This is a sweet vadai instead of the usual salt vadai. Tastes Great. In my native place whenever we want to do some group pooja or if it is an auspicious day like diwali, thiru karthikai like that then we prepare this kalkandu vadai.
It used to be originally made with kalkandu (Sugar Candy in English & Misri in Hindi) and hence the name Kalkandu Vadai. Nowadays it is replaced with normal sugar.

Kalkandu Vadai
Ingredients

Urad Dal - 3/4 cup
Raw Rice - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 3/4 cup
Or Kalkandu - 1/4 kg
Oil for frying

Method 
Wash & soak the urad dhal – rice mixture. After about 30 minutes, drain the water and spread the mixture on a clean cloth/towel. So that the cloth sucks the water. If using Kalkandu keep it ready in powdered form. 

Grind the dhal as fine as possible, using the sugar or powdered kalkandu. Avoid water as far as possible. 

Make small vadais (like medhu vada) & deep fry initially on medium & then low fire. The vadais puff up very well, so do not fry more than 3-4 at a time. As usual like for our usual vadas the oil should not be very hot. The vadai tends be little more brown than the usual medhu vada, so don't worry.

The Kalkandu Vadai remains good for 2,3 days.

This is my 1st entry for the event JFI- Festivals guest hosted by Srivalli of Cooking 4 all seasons. JFI was founded by Indira of Mahanandi.

 And to the Navratri Festive Food event hosted by Lakshmi of Taste of Mysore.

Kavuni Arisi Payasam

Kavuni Arisi or Karuppu (Black) Rice is very famous in Tamil Nadu. It is very rich in Vitamin B. As far as I know this rice is available in TamilNadu, Pondicherry, Singapore and Malaysia. In Germany also it is available in the Indian Shops. Here I am posting a recipe of a Payasam made from this rice. This is a recipe from my mother. There is a blogspot in her name Visalakshi's Classic Chettinad Kitchen and the chettinad special recipes are in Tamil there.

Kavuni Arisi Payasam

Ingredients

Kavuni Arisi - 1 cup
Sugar - 1 cup
Almonds - 5
Cashew nuts - 5
Grated Coconut - 2 t.sp
Milk - 1 Glass

Method
Grind the Kavuni Arisi and Almonds to a coarse mixture. Boil 2 glasses of water and then put in the rice mixture.  Once the rice is cooked add the sugar. And then the milk. Let the payasam boil for some time and then add Cashewnuts fried in little ghee. In the add grated coconut and serve.

This post is going to the event Festive Food Event - Onam hosted by Priyanka.