Kuzhi Paniyaram

This is a famous and tasty tiffin item found in chettiar breakfast. This can be made both salty and sweet. Children love the sweet ones. When I write this I remember my childhood days .We used to go to our huge ancestral house in chettinad for our school holidays. All my cousins also will be there for the holidays. We will be altogether 20 to 25 grandchildren. My grandma will plan to make this paniyaram.The servant will be sitting in the verandah of the kitchen and will be going on making this paniyaram. As it will be like an egg we will take 2 or 3 in our hands and will be going on playing in the court yard eating the sweet ones and the salty ones alternately. Nice old memories.

Ingredients for grinding
Idly rice-1 cup
Raw rice-1 cup
Urud dhal-1/4 cup
Fenugreek seed-1 table spoon

Soak all the four together for 2 to 3 hours and grind nicely .Mix it with very little salt and ferment for 8 hours.




Masala paniyaram

Ingredients
Small onions finely chopped-1/2 cup
Green chilies finely chopped- 3
Curry leaves chopped -1 table spoon
Grated coconut- 2 table spoons
Mustard seed-1/2 teaspoon
Urudh dhal-1/2 teaspoon

Procedure
Keep the kadai in the stove. Pour 1 table spoon oil add the mustard seed and curry leaf. Wait till the mustard seed crack. Now add the chopped onions fry for a minute .Then add the green chilies and the grated coconut. Fry for another two minutes. Finally add the fried items and little more salt into the batter and mix well.
If you are not using a non stick kuzhi paniyaram vessel take the vessel and apply some oil
in all the holes and keep for half an hour. After that keep the kadai in the stove in low heat pour ½ teaspoon oil in all the holes. When the oil gets heated pour the batter to the 3/4th level .After 2 minutes close the kadai for a minute. Don’t keep the stove in high flame. Pour few drops of oil on top. When you feel it is cooked underneath turn it upside down with a long needle like thing or with the stick provided. Allow the other side also to cook well.
This kuzhi paniyaram tastes excellent with Thakkali thuvayal which I will come to later.



Sweet paniyaram

Ingredients
Jaggery or palm sugar (karupatti) - 1 cup
Cardamom-1 teaspoon powdered
Keep the powdered jaggery along with ½ a cup of water in the stove. Add the cardamom powder also. Allow it to boil for 5 minutes. The jaggery should melt and boil for 2 to 3 minutes. Add this to the batter and make paniyarams in the same way as masala paniyaram.

Those who can’t find time to grind the batter separately for this, can try out the masala paniyaram using idly batter. It will also be excellent.