Paakam vundalu

Again this is another recipe which I learnt from my sister's-in-law friend. Pretty much similar to the one which I prepared earlier - Paakam pappu but the taste is bit different due to the slight variation.

Ingredients:

Peanuts – 2 cups

Roasted chana daal / Putnala pappu – ½ cup

Sesame seeds  / Till – ½ cup

Jaggery – 1 cup heaped

Water – ½ cup

Method –

Roast the sesame seeds until they leave the nice aroma and keep them aside.

Roast and skin the peanuts and keep them aside.

Now mix the above with roasted chana daal (Pappulu)

Melt the jaggery by adding water under low flame and filter it.

Bring the jaggery water to boil until it forms the ball consistency.

As I mentioned before, to do the candy test, place a cup of water and add few drops of boiled jaggery syrup into the cold water.

Take the dropped jaggery syrup into your hand and try to make a ball. If it retains its shape, then it is the perfect consistency. If the ball falls off, then boil the syrup for few more minutes.

As soon as the syrup reaches the consistency, turn off the heat and add the peanuts, roasted chana daal and sesame seeds.

Mix everything and make balls even when the syrup is still warm.

Tip: to avoid the excess hotness, dip your hand in cold water once in a while.

Paakam pappu / Peanut sweet

My all time favourite snack. In fact, I love any sweet that is made up of jaggery. The roasted peanuts are soaked in the jaggery syrup and form them into balls. The combination of peanuts and jaggery in any form is excellent.

Ingredients:

Roasted and skinned peanuts - 3 cups

Jaggery Powdered - 3 cups

Grated coconut - 1/4 cup

Water - 3/4th cup

Makes about 40-50 balls

Method:

Before making the recipe, one must have a small plate with cold water to test jaggery syrup readiness.

In a big, thick-bottomed vessel or even in a non-stick pan, add water and jaggery.

Keep in low flame until the jaggery melts completely. Then, increase the flame to medium-high. Jaggery water begins to concentrate. When it starts foaming as shown below, it reached the consistency we want for this recipe. This whole process takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

To test, add few drops of jaggery syrup to the cold water. When pushed with fingers, if the syrup can be rolled to a round and keeps share without melting in spite of tilting the plate to different directions, it is done and the syrup is ready.

Actually, by the time I washed my hands and clicked my camera, the soft ball has been melted a bit.

Constantly stirring, add the peanuts. In 1 minute, the peanuts starts to soak in to the syrup and comes together in to dry mass. Turn off the heat.

If you want to make them into squares, grease a tray and pour the mixture. If you want to make them balls, allow the mixture to cool down a bit.

Take a spoonful of mixture into hands and press gently into round shape and quickly roll them in grated coconut. Keep a bowl of cold water on the side. Dip your hands in-between laddu making to keep hands unsticky and cool.

Tip:
If you didn't get the desired consistency and unable to make balls, spread the mixture in a tray and keep it in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours and then cut into squares.

Gongura / Sorrel chutney with peanuts

There are lots of chutney in Indian cuisine, few are served with tiffins like idly, dosa, upma and few are best served with rice. One among them is this sorrel chutney with a hint of tamarind, red chili and peanuts.

Gongura comes in two varieties, green stemmed leaf and red stemmed. The red stemmed variety is more sour than the green stemmed variety. Gongura is popular in the state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a summer crop and the hotter the place, the more sour the leaf gets. Andhra Pradesh produces the best quality.

Fresh green stemmed sorrel leaves

Ingredients:

Gongura / Sorrel leaves– 3 cups

Tamarind - 1/4 of lemon size

Roasted peanuts – ¼ cup

Dry red chilies – 6-8

Onion - chopped into big chunks

Salt

Heat a kadai with one tbsp oil. Roast the red chili and onion for a minute or so. Remove from the pan and keep them aside.

To the same pan, add washed sorrel leaves and tamarind, Stir and close the lid. Stir occasionally and cook until it is soft. If required sprinkle little water. Allow it to cool.

Grind the roasted Red chilies and peanuts along with salt coarsely in a blender. Now add the boiled gongura / sorrel and tamarind mixture and the onions and pulse it again. If required add little bit water. Please note that this chutney should not be watery.

Gongura chutney with peanuts

A nice companion for hot rice with a dallop of ghee.

 

Peanut chutney - 2

This is another variety of the peanut chutney with dry chili and onion. This chutney is a good companion with plain rice or pongal or sangati.

Ingredients:
Roasted and de-skinned peanuts – 1 cup
Onion medium – 1 diced
Dry red chili – 8
Roasted Sesame seeds – 1 tbsp
Tamarind – ½ of the lemon size
Grated jaggery – 1 tsp.

Peanut chutney

Method:

Dry roast the sesame seeds and keep them aside.

Add 1/2 tsp of oil into the same pan and when it is hot enough, fry red chilies until black dots found, keep them aside.

Fry the onion chunks until transparent and keep them aside. 

Allow them to cool.

Roasted Red chili, Onion, Peanuts, Sesame seeds and jaggery

Grind peanuts with all the ingredients except onion. Make sure that the chutney should be bit coarsely done. Add the onion at the end and pulse again for few seconds, so that the onion will get mixed well and still retain the crunchy texture.

You can serve this as it is or do the seasoning and serve

This chutney goes well with any tiffin varieties or hot rice with Ghee or even with chapathi.

Neyyi pongal with peanut chutney

Masala Pallilu. Spiced roasted peanuts

This is another oil free snack with rich nutrients. This is a famous street food in India, especially at the beaches and parks. I have roasted the peanuts in oven, to get the nice brown colour evenly. Best way to skin the peanuts is, allow them to cool completely. Place them in a flat plate or even spread them on a news paper. Now gently roll the rolling pin over them for couple of times and then rub them with hands. You can also rub them using any flat bottomed objects like a plastic cup or a steel tumbler. Slowly blow the skin away. I know this is the another hassle. Best way to do this is to place a news paper in the kithen sink and gently blow the skin. once the job is done, wrap it up and chuck it in the bin.

Ingredients:
Roasted skinned peanuts – ½ cup
Finely chopped onion – ¼ cup
Aamchur powder – ¼ tsp
Corriander powder – ¼ tsp
Chilli powder – ½ tsp
Lemon juice – 1 tsp
Fresh coriander chopped - 1 tsp
Salt
Mix all the ingredients and serve immediately .

Chenigginjala podi / Spicy Peanut powder

This is a must have spicy powder in all houses at Rayalaseema that can be served along with upma, dosa, uthappam, idly. Even at some houses, they eat chapathi or rice with this powder by adding ghee.

Peanuts – 1 cup
Till / Sesame seeds – 2 tbsp
Jaggery – ½ tsp
Garlic – 3-4 pods
Salt
Red Chilli – 6-8 (adjust as per your taste)
Tamarind – a small piece

Red chili,Jaggery,garlic,peanuts and sesame seeds

Method:

Roast peanuts until the skin turns brown and allow them to cool. Remove the skin and keep them aside. In the same pan roast dry red chili until the black marks forms. Keep them aside. Roast sesame seeds as well. Allow all the roasted ingredients to cool down completely and grind them into powder by adding garlic, salt, jagerry and tamarind.

A nice substitute for pickles.

Boiled peanuts

Peanut as most of us do not know came from a legume family (and not in the nut family) just like a bean or pea. The nuts originate from the stems, but are pushed into the ground by the plant at an early stage, and it is underground that they mature. These can be eaten as raw when they are fresh or dry. Also can be eaten in different forms like boiled, roasted, powder form or butter form.

Fresh peanuts. I call them as edible corals. Aren't they ?

Let us see few of their benefits:-

Whole peanuts contains high amount of protein, which makes it a preferred diet of those people engaged in body-building and those people who are weak and underweight. The raw peanut butter with crushed skin contains much higher amounts of nutrient than refined "nut-only" butter.

Peanut is a good source of Coenzyme Q10 which protects the heart during the period of lack of oxygen example high altitudes and clogged arteries.

Peanuts contain high concentrations of antioxidant polyphenols, primarily a compound called p-coumaric acid. Roasting peanuts increases its p-coumaric acid levels, boosting it overall antioxidant content by as much as 22%. Roasted peanuts rival the antioxidant content of blackberries and strawberries, and are far richer in antioxidants than apples, carrots or beets.

Unsalted peanuts are good for your arteries. One quarter cup of peanuts contains as much monunsaturated fat as a tablespoon of olive oil. Monounsaturated fats have been shown to lower blood cholesterol.

Peanuts' high niacin content helps in the recovery of cell damage provides protection against Alzheimer's disease and age-related cognitive problem.

Peanut contain vitamin E, a powerful antioxidant that is shown to significantly reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

Peanut contain iron which is essential for the correct functioning of red blood cells.

Peanut is rich in calcium which helps promotes healthy bones.

Peanut has higher bioflavonoid resveratrol content than grapes. This bioflavonoid is believed to improve blood flow in the brain by as much as 30%, thus greatly reducing the risk of stroke. Study showed that by adding even small amounts of peanut products to the diet can reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol by 14%.

Peanuts' fiber content helps lower the risk of colon cancer, an ounce of peanuts contains 2 grams of fiber.

To boil the peanuts, first soak the fresh peanuts in water for about 30 minutes or so and wash them thoroughly. Add some salt (about 1 tsp for 4 cups of peanuts) and boil them. If you are pressure cooking them , then use less water and if not use more water. Pressure cook them until one whistle or if you are cooking normally, then cook until they are just done. The doneness can be checked by opening one peanut shell and press the peanut between your fingures. If it is soft enough to split, then it is done. Do not over cook them.

Boiled peanuts with garam garam chai

Peanut chutney

This is the most common chutney variety in South Indian kitchen. Can be served with idly, dosa, upma or even rice or roti.

Ingredients:
Peanuts – 1 cup

Green chillis – 8
Tomato – 1 – Cut into big chunks (optional)
Tamarind – half of the lemon size
Onion – 1 cut into big chunks.

Method:

Roast the peanuts either in a pan or in Microwave or oven. If you roast them in pan you can see black dots. But if you do it in oven or microwave, you won’t see the black spots. Only way is to remember the timing to roast 1 cup. I normally microwave (mine is 900 watts) for 3 min. Stirring them in between, so that the centre ones move to the corners and vice versa and will get roasted evenly.

Heat a pan with one spoon of oil and when it is hot, add onion, green chilies, tomato pieces, tamarind and salt. Sprinkle some water and cover it with lid for 5 minutes. Stir in between and remove from fire when every thing looks translucent. Allow it to cool.

When every thing is cool, grind every thing together except onion. Add onion at the end and just pulse it for few seconds.

Peanuts – you can grind them with skin or with out skin. For me it doesn’t matter in the daily rush. Those who have enough time and patience can remove the skin and grind.

Season the chutney with mustard, Urad daal, Red chilli and curry leaves
 

Seasoning for Peanut chutney

 

Peanut chutney

Masala peanuts - 1

This is one of the easy peasy snacks which needs less effort and nil oil. My mom call this as pachi kaaram chenagginjalu as we mix the peanuts with raw spices, still they taste like fried masala peanuts. This is mainly due to the technique used to prepare the recipe. 

Ingredients:

Rice - 2 tblsp

Chili powder - 1 tsp

Turmeric - 1/2 tsp

Salt - 1/2 - 3/4th tsp

Peanuts - 1 cup

Method:

Soak rice for 30 minutes. Drain it and grind the rice along with salt, chili powder and turmeric into coarse paste using stone mortar. This coarse rice paste gives the extra crunchiness

Grounded Rice with chili powder, salt and turmeric

Roast the peanuts until they are done and while they are still hot, immediately pour them into mortar and mix them well with the masala paste. Now transfer them back into hot pan, separate them and allow them to get dry completely by spreading them on a wide plate. If necessary reheat the pan for a minute or two and dry them completely.

Roasted peanuts mixing along with raw spices

You can preserve them for 2 – 3 weeks in air tight container.

Peanuts with pachi kaaram (Raw spices)

Note: If you don't have mortar or any other grinding tool, just mix the spices with rice floor and 1 or 2 spoons of water