Oats and Moong Dosa

Every once in a while, I like to try new things. Sometimes, it is an experiment driven by curiosity. At others, it is driven by need. This one was purely the former. I wanted to keep my standard dosa recipe proportions, but wanted to switch the ingredients. However, while it started off that way, the end result was driven by need. 

I wanted to use moong dal and oats. So I soaked dal and rolled oats. However, I think I used a little extra water to grind the batter. I added my secret ingredient to help bring the texture of my batter back to normal.

The result was a light, yet filling breakfast idea, with the flax seeds giving the dosa a nice texture.

1/2 cup Green Gram Dal (Moong Dal)

1 cup Rolled Oats

1 tbsp Flax Seeds, ground

Salt to taste

Soak the Green Gram Dal and rolled oats for at least 4 hours. Grind to a batter using water. Add the flax seeds towards the end. Add salt.

Heat a tawa and smear a little oil on it. Pour a ladleful of the batter on the tawa and quickly spread it around in a circular motion.

Add a few drops of oil around the dosa. Carefully remove the dosa from the pan after a couple of minutes and flip it around so the other side is cooked too.

Repeat with the remaining batter. I got 12 dosas from this batter.

Serve with any chutney or chutney podi of your choice.

This is the first time I'm trying to blog from my phone. Let's hope it works. If it does, I may just be able to blog more often.

Oats Doddak

 

I once blogged about how I could never understand people who ate the same stuff for breakfast every day. Rain or shine. That post was about a mango and melon smoothie. That was about 9-10 months ago. Since then oat and fruit smoothies have become a staple for breakfast. Even baby A loves the smoothies for breakfast. But sometimes he craves something savoury. I made this for him one morning and then ate the stuff for lunch. (If you are making this for children, omit the chillies or use a small portion of deseeded chillies.)

 

The use of oats in this doddak is a healthy twist in the tale. Oats keeps hunger pangs away longer thanks to its lower GI and is also full of fibre.

 

Ingredients:

1 cup Oats, roasted and powdered

1 tbsp Semolina

1/4 cup Coconut, scraped

1/4 cup Coriander, chopped

2 Green chillies, chopped

1" piece Ginger, chopped

Salt to taste

Oil for frying

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Cumin Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Prepare the tempering in a small kadhai and transfer the contents to a mixing bowl. Add the remaining ingredients except the oil and mix well using a little water. (Do not add too much water. The batter should not be watery.)

Pour the dough onto a hot griddle and spread it a little. Pour a few drops of oil on all sides. Make a slit in the centre using the spatula and pour a few drops into this slit.

Turn over and allow the other side to crispen as well. Serve with pitti chitni and toop or with plain butter.

Mango Melon Smoothie

I know a lot of people who start their day with a bowl of oatmeal porridge. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I've always craved some sort of a breakfast routine and am very envious of those who manage to stick to one. My parents, for example, will start six out of seven days in a week with a bowl of oatmeal. Outwardly, I make fun of them and ask them whether they never tire of it. But secretly, I wish I could be like them. Amma doesn't miss out on the poha, upma, idli, dosa, bread routine at all. She puts them on the dinner table instead of the breakfast table.

For the past few weeks, I have managed to eat oatmeal every morning. I usually mix some curd and left over veggies/dal and eat it. Some days, I blend it with some cumin powder, salt and curd into a salty lassi of sorts. On days when I have fruit on hand and am in the mood for something sweet (which isn't often that early in the morning!), I turn it up into something like this.

1/4 cup Quick Cooking Oats
1/2 cup Water
1 tsp Sugar (optional)
1/4 cup Mango cubes
1/4 cup Melon cubes
1/2 cup Milk

Cook the oats with the water for 3-4 minutes and allow to cool. Blend this along with the other ingredients in a liqiuidizer. Add more milk if you like your smoothie a little thinner.

Pour into a glass and enjoy your breakfast. I can guarantee that something like this will keep you satisfied until lunch time and that you're quite likely to not reach out for something else in between.

Oats Upma

Every month, Coffee usually sends us on a trip around the blogosphere. It reminds me of school and the projects we completed while there. She gives us a task and we come back and present it in class (read blog). Sometimes she goes on leave and we have substitute teachers. This month's substitute class teacher is Pavani and she sent us all to bring back a one pot meal.

I'm probably the biggest upma lover around and can make upma with just about everything. Nandita's Oats for Dinner is something I've been making even before I discovered the doctor or her blog, but it fitted in perfectly with the theme this month. Plus, the two pictures look so similar that you could easily interchange them and not really get to know. There are a few changes and my recipe is here:

Ingredients:

1 cup Roasted Oats

1 Onion, chopped

1 cup Mixed vegetables, chopped and cooked (I used carrots, beans, cauliflower and peas)

1 tbsp Oil

1/2 tsp Urad Dal

1/2 tsp Chana Dal

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

½ tsp Chilli Flakes

¼ tsp Turmeric Powder

1 tsp Green Chilli paste

1 tsp Ginger Paste

Salt to taste

Coriander Leaves for garnish

Heat the oil in a kadhai. Add the urad and chana dals. When the urad dal begins to brown a little, add the mustard and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves, onions, ginger and chilli pastes and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the chilli and turmeric powders and fry for a minute more. Add the mixed vegetables and the oats and fry the entire mixture for 1-2 minutes. Add 2 cups of boiling hot water and salt to this. Mix well, cover and cook for 5-7 minutes on a low flame.

I'm a one dish meal queen in any case and this blog is full of these time saving meals. I will bookmark this round up as I have Meeta's Mingle One-Dish Dinners and Mallugirl’s Express Cooking challenge. They're any working girl's real best friends.

Oatmeal Coffee Cake

Ever since I discovered Ann Pillsbury's Baking Book some 20 years ago, coffee cakes have fascinated me. For a long time, I thought coffee cakes were cakes flavoured with coffee. Over the years, we have more and more information at our disposal. According to Wikipedia:

The term coffee cake can refer to either of the following:

A cake, often sponge cake, which is made with coffee or has a coffee flavour.
A cake served with coffee or eaten at breakfast. Under this definition, a coffee cake does not necessarily contain coffee. Coffee cakes are typically flavored with cinnamon, nuts, and fruits.

Now, I know better.

All this while I was thinking of making something spicy like a cutlet or tikka with oats. While browsing for breakfast recipes that used oats in some form (other than porridge) I came across this site. It is called Recipe Goldmine and rightly so. I found an interesting coffee cake recipe and modified it to come up with my entry for the Weekend Breakfast Blogging # 13 hosted by Madhuli of My Foodcourt.

The recipe called for brown sugar and I didn't have any in the house and didn't replace it with anything. So, the cake is not too sweet. Works for me as I can then pour maple syrup over it and enjoy my little treat.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Oatmeal

5/8 cup Hot water

5/8 cup Flour

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1/2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 cup Butter, melted

1 egg

1 tsp Vanilla

Toasted Walnuts for garnish

Cover the oatmeal with hot water and allow it to set for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix together dry ingredients. Add butter, egg, vanilla extract and mix well. Add oatmeal and mix. Pour into a greased and floured pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. The batter is a little more gooey than normal cake batter. The oats must be working its magic.

After about 15 minutes of baking, arrange the toasted walnuts on the cake and continue baking.

Enjoy a slice of this cake along with breakfast on a leisurely weekend morning and discover sheer bliss.