Egg with Black Pepper (Miriyala Podi)

Ingredients:

Hard boiled eggs – 4
Pepper corns – 1 tsp
Dry coconut - about 2 inches
Salt
Ghee – 1 tsp (don’t skip it)
Oil – 1 tsp

Method:

Hard boil the eggs. Deshell and keep them aside.

Pour water just to immerse the eggs

Boil them until you find cracks as shown

Grind pepper, coconut with little salt into powder in a blender.

Heat a pan with ghee and oil. Do not over heat it. Drop the boiled eggs and toss them every now and then until you see the gold spots. Careful when doing this as the boiled eggs tend to blast.

Eggs fried in Ghee and Oil

Sprinkle the pepper powder and remove from the fire.

Egg with Black Pepper Powder

Menthi Pappu (Daal with Fenugreek seeds)

Onion, Chili,Coriander seeds, Fenugreek, Cumin, Mustard 

This is a very handy recipe with out much ingredients. My mom used to prepare this on the day when we come back from our holidays and there won’t be any vegetables at home including green chili and tomato.

Ingredients:
Toor Dal (Lentil / kandi pappu) – ½ cup
Water – 1 cup
Red chillies – 6 (Roasted and coarsely ground)

Fenugreek seeds – 1 ½ tsp

Coriander seeds – 1 tsp (Roasted and coarsely ground)

Cumin seeds – 1 tsp

Onion – 1

Turmeric – ¼ tsp
Oil – 1 tbsp
Ghee – 1 tbsp (Optional)

Method:

Heat the pressure cooker with oil and ghee together. When it becomes hot add Onion pieces, Fenugreek seeds and fry for a minute. Add the ground chilis, coriander and Cumin seeds and saute for a minute. You will smell the nice aroma of fenugreek seeds.

Add the daal, turmeric and roast for 2 more minutes. Pour water and drop tamarind and close the lid. Pressure cook it for 3 whistles and turn off the heat.

Allow the pressure to come down and then remove the lid. Add salt, about half teaspoon or as per your taste, and mash the cooked ingredients gently with a wood masher or wooden spatula.

That’s all done. No tadka required for this as we have already done this in the beginning. Isn’t it easy…

My husband loves the combination of Menthi pappu and Egg with miriyala podi.

Steamed rice with Menthi Pappu and Egg withMiriyala podi

Panchamrutham

Banana, Curd, Milk, Honey and Ghee

Pancha means five and amrutham means nectar. It is a sweet concoction prepared using five ingredients and is made especially for abhishekams. Abhishekam is the process of bathing the deity. According to Siva Agamas (pooja rules) abhishekam is considered as one part of the shodashopachara pooja. Conducting abhishekam (Ritual bathing) with panchamrutham is believed to bring wealth and prosperity.

We do panchamrutham when we perform Sathya Narayana Swamy vratham especially the newly married couple and also during Gruha pravesham (House Warming). When I was a child, I love the divine taste of this panchamrutham. I will never miss the invitations for Sathya Narayana Vratham. Though, not having enough patience to sit for such long hours with folded legs and listen to all the chants and the stories, I force my self to sit and wait for the arutha gadiya which is eating time for Panchamrutham.

There are lots of variations. Few people do mix sugar, grapes, dates, Thulsi along with the below ingredients. But we follow the below procedure.

Ingredients:

1 Cup – Milk
1 Cup – Yogurt
½ Cup – Honey
1 Ripe banana
1 tbsp - Ghee

Roughly mash the banana with hands and mix all the other ingredients one after the other.

                                                                Panchamrutham

Note: Measures of ingredients for Panchamrutham are never exact