Maavadu Recipe

Ingredients:

Maavadu/baby mango/raw mango - 1/2kg
Salt (rock salt) - 1cup
Red chillies (powdered) - 2tbsp
Fenugreek powder - 1tsp

Method to prepare Maavadu recipe

1.Select small tender mangoes from the market and water them in water. Then wipe it with clean cloth. Let it dry for some hours.

2.Take porcelain jar (jaadi) and add two handful of maavadu. Next add one handful of rock salt. Again add two handful of maavadu followed by salt. Like this add all the maavadu and once done, tie the neck of the jar with clean cloth and close the bowl. Keep some weight on top of it and keep in a dry place.

3. Let it be like this for two days and do not open. On third day, open the jar and mix it upside down. At this point, you can see the salt starts to dissolve and make sure that all the maavadu gets the spray of salt water.

4. Again close the lid and keep it in dry place. Repeat the same for the next 5 days until you find the salt dissolves completely. Also the size of the mango reduced to 2/3 of its original size. It shrinks fully.

5. On day 7 or 8, add the powdered red chillies and fenugreek powder and mix well thoroughly.  Keep it in dry place.

6. After 10 days you can transfer it to a clean dry bottle and store it in the refrigerator.

It will stay for more than an year when handled with dry spoon.

Cookingly yours,
ram

Karamani Karuvadam Recipe

An open terrace is always place of fun. Be it a place of cricket, a mini garden, fly kites, evening chats, moonlight dinner and so on. Apart from all these, there is one useful purpose it can be utilised in summer. Yes, you guessed correct!!! its for vadam drying. During my childhood, in summer time, my mother prepares vadam. I go along with her and help to keep small small vadams..Always i get inspired from her and today I prepared karamani karuvadam in the same open terrace and below is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Black karamani (cowpeas) - 1 cup
Dried red chillies - 10 (as per your wish)
Salt to taste
Curry leaves - few
Hing powder - a pinch

Method to prepare Karamani Karuvadam:

1. Wash and soak karamani and soak in water overnight for about 8-9 hours. Next morning, grind it to a fine paste along with red chillies, hing powder, salt and curry leaves.

2. Make sure the batter should be thick enough as like vadai batter. Do not add too much water while grinding.

3. Take a clean plastic dry sheet and make small small balls of the karuvadam batter. (nowadays readily available in shops as vadam sheet.). Keep it in the open terrace or in the place where you get surplus sun light.

4. On second day you can just flip the vadams so that if it needs to get dried on the other side as well. Keep it dry for whole day in sunlight. It will take 2-3 days to get dried completely.

5. After second day you can transfer to big bowl or plate for keeping it dried. Once dried completely, store it in a air-tight container. It can be stored for an year also if handled with dry hands.

This karuvadam can be roasted in oil and can be added in kootu, sambhar, poricha kuzhambu and even as vathakuzhambu. It is a best supplementary when we dont have vegetables. I like this very much when added to keerai kootu or simply in vathakuzhambu.

Cookingly Yours,
Ram