Dal payasam anyone??

My parents-in-law were very upset to know that Pras and I wont be visiting them for Onam. Hence, my mother-in-law quickly got down to making some dal payasam for us. I thought that it would be a very tedious task but she made it look very simple. Yet, I think I shall take the shortcut of using coconut milk from a tetra pak rather than extract it myself ;)

Here goes the recipe[this will also help as a reminder for me]
Ingredients
1. Coconut milk extracted from one coconut - don't mix the first and second pressing
2. yellow mung dal - 1 cup boiled
3. Jaggery - 250gms
4. ghee - 1 tbsp
5. cashew nuts - a few for garnishing
6. elaichi - a few for garnishing

Method:
1. Boil the jaggery in a little water
2. Pour the second pressing coconut milk and jaggery into the dal and allow it to boil for a while.
3. Fry cashewnuts and elaichi in ghee.
4. Add the first pressing coconut milk, ghee, elaichi and cashewnuts. Do not let it boil.

For extracting coconut milk, boil a little water. Grate a coconut. Add a tiny bit of hot water to the coconut and squeeze the coconut bit by bit, extracting the coconut milk. This is the first pressing.
Add a little more water to the squeezed, grated coconut and squeeze again to get the second pressing coconut milk.

0

Tomato cheese rice

The other day I wanted to make pizzas. Unfortunately, after I had prepared the toppings, I found that the base was bad. So, I used my intuition and made the following

Ingredients:
One large onion - sliced
Two large tomatoes - sliced/chopped
Garlic paste - 1 teaspoon
Red chilli powder - 1 teaspoon
Cheese - 3 cubes grated
Oil - 3/4 tablespoon
Salt to taste
Rice - 1 cup
Water - 2 cups

Method:
Heat oil in a pan. Once oil is hot, put in the sliced onions. Once the onions start turning brown, put in the garlic paste. Put in red chilli powder and fry for a minute. Then add the tomatoes and the salt. Once tomatoes are cooked and soggy, turn off heat and leave to cool. Grind this into a paste.

Put this paste in a cooker alongwith the rice, cheese and water. Pressure cook till rice is done.
Tasty and yummy tomato cheese rice is ready :)

2