TAKING BUTTER

Taking butter out of the cream collected used to be a work of the past. But today it can be easily taken with the kitchen appliance we use everyday.i.e out of the mixer grinder.

METHOD

Keep collecting the cream of milk and curd which gets accumulated on the top of it and refrigerate it . Collect it to a minimum of half kg . Pour it in a mixer and whip it for 5 minutes. Add  1 glass of chilled water. Whip again for 5 minutes. Fresh butter will be collected and the water will remain down. Keep in refrigerator for 10 min. Now collect the butter carefully and store, or boil it to get ghee. The remaining watery part can be used as tasty buttermilk by grinding ginger and curry leaves along with the butter milk to make masala buttermilk.Add salt.

RASAM POWDER

Rasam is  one of the supplementary dishes of tamilnadu's lunch menu. Some rasam are an all time favourite for many of the people..

INGREDIENT

Pepper 50 gms
Cumin seeds 100 gms
Coriander 100 gms
Thuur daal 100 gms
Curry leaves a hand full
Red chillies 10 nos
Turmeric root 1 piece
Crystal salt 1 tsp
Tamarind small piece
Gingelly oil for frying

Method
Initially dry fry salt and tamarind..

Fry each item seperately using a tsp of gingelly oil for each fry.
Then let it cool.Grind all the ingredient coarsely and store in an air tight container,.

SAMBAR POWDER

INGREDIENT

Red chillies 200 gms
Coriander 100 gms
Bengal gram daal 50  gms
Green gram dal 50 gms
Pepper 25 gms
Cumin seeds 25 gms
Turmeric 2 pieces
Fenugreek 10 gms
Cury leaves a hand full
Crystal salt 1 tsp
Tamarind a small piece

METHOD

Initially fry crystal salt and tamarind seperately. Then fry all the above ingredient except fenugreek,adding half a tsp of gingelly oil for every item .Fenugreek needs to be dry fried till a good aroma comes out of it.No need to fry turmeric. Let it cook and then grind a;; the above ingredient to a coarse powder.

The purpose of tamarind and salt in the above powder is it will retain its freshness till the last spoon.

I would give a suggestion that whenever sambar powder or rasam powder is prepared , prepare it in a small quantity , say for a month.