Plain Dosa

Ingredients
Urad Dal - 1 cup
Rice - 2 cups
Methi Seeds (fenu greek seeds) - 1 tbsp
Poha - 1/4 cup

Procedure
Take all the above ingredients in a bowl. Clean/Wash well with clean water. Add sufficient water (a little above the total ingredients) to this bowl and set aside for 4 hours. Remove the excess water from the bowl. Put all the above in Grinder/Mixture jar and grind well. Add water to make a fluid paste. Ferment this batter overnight. Next day morning add salt to this batter and beat well to make it ready. Take non-stick frying pan and heat it for a minute. Take the batter and prepare round and thin dosas. Put some oil at the edges and in the middle of the dosa. This makes it crispy. And your plain dosa is ready.

Author's Note
Coconut chutney and Idli chutney goes very well with this dish. It's a good morning time breakfast and any time snack.

A variation to Dosa is to prepare Uttapa, using the same batter.

Plain Bonda

Ingredients
Urad Dal - 1 cup
Idli Rawa or Rice - 2 cups
Poha - 1/4 cup
Green Chillies - 2 Nos
Onion - 1 (Big)
Jeera (Cumin seeds) - 1 tbsp
Baking powder - 1 tbsp
Salt to taste

Procedure
Prepare the batter as described in the idli section. Take 1/2 cup Idli battar and add 1/2 cup Maida to it. Add to this 2 finely chopped Green Chillies, one big finely chopped Onion, 3 tbsp of heated oil, 1 tbsp of cumin seeds, salt to taste and 1 tbsp of baking powder. Mix all the above ingredients and leave for 5 min. Heat the oil in deep frying pane. Take a handful of the batter in your comfortable working hand and slowly release in the heated deep frying pane to form small balls. Fry on medium flame till golder brown and crispy. And your delicious bonda's are ready.

Author's Note
There are very good for evening snacks and should be served hot for optimum pleasure. Lal Mirchi ki chutney (Red chillies chutney) goes very well with this. Procedure for making this chutney - Take 1/2 cup finely chopped onions, 1 tbsp Red chilli powder, Salt to taste, heated oil 2 tbsp. Mix all these ingredients very well and your Red Chilli Chutney is ready to be served with Plain Bondas.

Idli

Ingredients
Udad Dal - 1 cup
Idli Rawa or Rice - 2 cups
Poha - 1/4 cup
Salt to taste

Procedure
If using Rice - Soak udad dal and rice together in a bowl, add sufficient amount of water. Soak for around 3-4 hours. After this wash them well and add Poha to this with water. Leave this for a couple of minutes. Remove the excess water. In a Grinder/Mixture jar take the above ingredients and grind well for smooth paste. Add water is required during grinding.

If using Idli Rawa - Soak udad dal in a bowl for 3-4 hours. Add Poha to this and leave it for a couple of minutes. Remove all the excess water from this. In a Grinder/Mixture jar take the above ingredients and grind well till hard and smooth paste and put this aside. Wash the idli rawa and hard squeeze the water from this. Add this to the already prepared hard and smooth paste of udad dal. Mix well.

Now we need to ferment this overnight (Good fermentation means the paste has to swell good). Next day morning add salt and some water to the paste. In the idli container put a little oil so that the idli's don't stick to the container. Put the idli paste on the idli container and heat this for around 15 min. And your idli's are ready to serve.

Author's Note
Idli Chutney, Coconut Chutney, Ground Chutney can be used as side dish along with Idli.
A small variation to the normal/plain Idli would be to make Masala Idli. Prepare the batter as explained above and allow it to ferment overnight. Follow the below steps -
In a frying pan, take 3 tbsp oil, add 1 tbsp of Jeera (cumin seeds), 1/2 tbsp of Chana dal, 1/4 tbsp Rai (mustard seeds), 1/4 cup coarsely chopped onions, 5 or 6 nos. of Green Chillies chopped, 2 small carrots grated and salt to taste. Fry these for around 5 min.
Allow this to cool for some time and then add it into the batter. Mix well and using Idli maker/container prepare the delicios Masala Idli's.

Methi Puri

Ingredients
Wheat Flour (Atta) - 1 cup
Fenu greek (Methi) - 1/2 cup (finely chopped)
Green Chillies - 3 or 4 (depending upon how spicy you want)
Jeera (cumin seeds) - 1 tbsp
Garlic - 6 or 7 flakes
Curd - 3 tbsp
Sugar - 1/2 tbsp
Salt to taste
Garam Masala - 1/2 tbsp
Coriander Powder - 1/2 tbsp

Procedure
In a Grinder/Mixture jar take Green Chillies, Garlic and Cumin seeds and grind well to make a paste. Add all the remaining above ingredients in a bowl. Add to this the paste prepared and make a dough, add water if required (make sure the dough is thick enough to make the puri). Make the puri's from this dough.

In a deep frying pan, heat the oil. Fry the above prepared puri's in this oil and your Masala Puri is ready to serve.

Author's Note
This dish is very simple to prepare. The most important part of the dish to making the dough properly. You can have these puri's with either tomato ketchup
or with curd (salted or sweet).

Masala Puri

Ingredients
Wheat Flour (Atta) - 1 cup
Red Chilli Powder - 1 tbsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tbsp
Garam Masala - 1/2 tbsp
Coriander Powder - 1/2 tbsp
Sugar - 1/2 tbsp
Jeera (cumin sees) - 1 tbsp
Salt to taste
Oil to fry
Butter - 1/4 cup

Procedure
In a bowl add all the above ingredients and prepare a dough for making the puri (make sure the dough is thick enough to make puri). Make the puri's from this dough. In a deep frying pan, heat the oil. Fry the above prepared puri's in this oil and your Masala Puri is ready to serve.

Author's Note
This dish is very simple to prepare. The most important part of the dish to making the dough properly. You can have Potato curry with these puri's. Adding butter while preparing the dough gives Puri a nice taste.

Vegetable Cutlet

Ingredients
Boiled Potatoes - 2 or 3 (big)
White Bread - 8 slices
Green Chillies - 3 or 4 (depending upon how spicy you want)
Jeera (cumin seeds) - 1 tbsp
Ginger-Garlic paste - 1/2 tbsp
Oil to fry
Salt to taste

Procedure
In a bowl take some water and dip 4 Bread slices. Squeeze the water from the bread immediately and keep seperate. Put remaining 4 slices in Grinder/Mixture jar and grind for a min. Now in a bowl take smashed potatoes, dipped bread slices, Jeera (cumin seeds), Green Chillies (finely chopped), Ginger-Garlic paste, salt and mix well. In a deep frying pan put oil and heat in low flame. Make small triangular shaped tikki's with the above mixture. Dip this in the grinded bread on both the sides. Now deep fry this in the heated oil (remember to keep the flame low). And your Veg Cutlet is ready to savor.

Author's Note
This dish goes very well with Tomato Ketchup. For the health conscious, instead of deep frying we can shallow fry in a shallow frying non-stick pan. Heat the
frying pan and put 1 tbsp of oil. Then put the above prepared tikki's on the pan and shallow fry.

Mixed Chutney

Ingredients
Dudhi - 6 pieces
Tomato - 2 Nos
Brinjal - 3 Nos
Green Chillies - 5 or 6 (depending upon how spicy you want)
Garlic Flakes - 6 or 7
Jeera (Cumin seeds) - 1/4 tbsp
Tamarind
Turmeric - 1/4 tbsp
Salt to taste

Procedure
In a frying pane add 1 tbsp of oil and heat for a couple of minutes. Add the Dudhi pieces, Brinjal and Tomato to this pane and fry till soft. Then add the Green Chillies, Turmeric, Cumin seeds and fry for a minute or two.

In a the Grinder/Mixture jar add all the above ingredients, Salt to taste, Garlic Flakes. Grind well till smooth paste.

In a frying pane take 1 tbsp and heat for a minute. Put couple of red chillies (dry), cumin seeds, mustard seeds, curry leaves, a pinch of aestofida (hing) and the above paste. And your South Indian Cucumber Chutney is ready to serve.

Author's Note
All season chutney goes well with Chappattis.