Bagalabath (Rice and Vermicelli)

Few things are more boring than curd rice. Bagalabath is a tastier form of curd rice.
Bagalabath (with rice) :-
ingredients :
Rice (preferably short grain pudding rice) - 1 cup
milk - 2 cups
Yogurt - as required
A knob of butter and salt as required.
Fried Cashew nuts, pomegranate, green grapes, finely chopped raw mango and chopped coriander leaves for garnishing.
chopped green chillis, grated ginger, mustard, urid dhal, hing and curry leaves for seasoning.


Pressure cook 1 cup of rice with 2 cups of milk. Allow the cooked rice to cool then add curd in small potions and butter. Then comes the seasoning and garnishing as mentioned above. It should be noted that 1 cup of rice when cooked with milk and mixed with curd could yield a huge quantity, much more than what would be expected when plain rice is mixed with curd.

Vermicelli Bagalabath:-
A cup of vermicelli is to be fried in a pan with little oil until it turns golden brown. Then a cup of water and a cup of milk and until the vermicelli sticks turn tender. (Note not to overcook, as that would crush the sticks while mixing). Seasoning and garnishing as mentioned above.

Paruppusili

We had invited our friend and his family for dinner last weekend. They are from Northern part of India, and have a keen interest on TN cuisine, so I made authentic south style food for them. Posting few recipes of which I clicked pics. These are very common down south, yet delecable ones.

Ingredients :-
Snakegourd - 500 gm
salt - 2 tsp
Toor dhal - 1/2 cup
channa dhal- 1/2 cup
red chillis- 2 or 3
for seasoning - mustard, urid dhal (whole or broken), hing and curry leaves.


Method :-
Soak Toor and channa dhal for 2 hours in warm water and then coarsely grind them adding a spoon of salt and 2-3 chillis. Keep the mixture aside.
Boil some water in a pan and cook the chopped snakegourd. Remember that about an ounce of water would do for cooking the said quantity of the vegetable. Once the veggie is cooked, add a spoon of salt, mix well and keep it aside.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a skillet, add mustard, let them splutter then add urid hing and curry leaves. Saute them. Now add the lentils mixture, simmer and cook until the mixture turns brown. Keep stirring as the mixture tends to stick to the pan. You may add oil generously to speeden the process, else it takes about 20 minutes. Once you could sense the aroma of nicely fried dhal, add the cooked vegetable and mix well (making sure not to break the veggie into very small unidentifiable pieces!!).
This paruppusili is a common item in the platter of marriages or any such functions in Tamil Nadu.
ps:Other than snakegourd vegetables like Green Beans, Runner Beans or Mangetout (Avarakkai in Tamil), Carrot or Banana Flower could be used.