Cook Share and Feast

payatam paniyaram is a very famous snack/sweet made during the Tamil New Year.  This is also a very common snack/sweet made for weddings and other special occasions.

• 1 cup mung bean flour (payatam ma)
• ½ cup roasted rice flour
• ½ cup castor sugar
• ¼ teaspoon cardamom powder
• Pinch of salt
• Oil for deep frying

For the Batter:

• Unroasted rice flour
• Pinch of salt
• Water

Method

• Mix the flours, sugar, salt and cardamom powder
• Add about 1 tablespoon of boiling/hot water and with a back of a wooden spoon mix well.  If it’s too dry add a little bit of water at a time and mix.  The consistency should be like wet soil.  If too much water is added, the flour mix will become gooey and difficult to make the balls
• Let cool for a while and make into small balls – size of a marble
• Heat oil in a vessel
• Once the oil is hot, dip the balls in batter and drop into the oil one at a time and fry until golden. (You can fry more than one ball at a time.  Since I used a big vessel, I fried about 8 – 9 balls at the same time.  But don’t throw a handful of them into the oil simultaneously since they will stick to each other)
• Drain on paper towel.

To make the batter:

• Mix salt and flour and add enough water and mix well without any lumps.
• The consistency of batter should be like that of crepes batter (very thin batter)

Note: Some people add toasted shredded coconut to the payatam paniyaram flour mixture.  You can also add a little bit of ground black pepper for a sweet and spicy taste.

Susiyam is a kind of sweet dish made for Deepavali and other festivals.  Normally jaggary is used to sweeten this dish.  But here I have replaced with dark brown sugar.  At my home susiyam is made from whole mung beans.  But some people use chana dhal instead of mung beans.  When making the batter, rice flour can be replaced with maida (all-purpose) flour.  But rice flour gives a crispy taste to the susiyam

Ingredients

• ¾ cup whole mung beans
• Water to soak beans
• Pinch of salt
• ¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• ¼ cup dark brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon cardamom powder
• Oil for frying

To make Batter:

• ¼ cup white rice flour
• Pinch of salt
• ¼ cup milk
• Water as needed

Method

• Wash mung beans thoroughly and soak in water for about 5 hours
• Cook beans with a pinch of salt until all the water is absorbed and beans are completely cooked
• Let cool for a while
• Mash mung beans with the back of a spoon
• Add coconut, brown sugar, cardamom powder and mix well
• Make into small balls
• Dip the balls completely in prepared batter (recipe below) and  deep fry until golden brown
• Drain in paper towel

To make the batter

• Add milk to flour and mix well.  At this point this will look like a white paste
• Now add water little at a time and mix well until the batter is thin but not too watery.  If the batter is too watery, it won’t stick to the mung bean balls.  But if it’s too thick when covering with batter, it will become a thick covering and will take longer to fry and won’t be crispy.
• Makes about 8 susiyam

Ingredients

• ½ cup pottu kadalai (dahlia)
• ½ cup white sugar
• ½ teaspoon cardamom powder
• ¼ cup broken cashew nuts + raisins
• 1  tablespoon + ½ teaspoon ghee (clarified butter)
• 1 tablespoon boiling water

Method

• Dry roast dahlia for a minute or so
• Grind dahlia and sugar into a coarse powder
• In a skillet add ½ teaspoon ghee and fry cashew nuts and raisins for a minute or two
• Mix cardamom powder, fried nuts and raisins with ground dahlia
• Melt 1 tablespoon ghee and add to the dahlia mixture and mix well
• Add 1 tablespoon hot water to the above mixture and mix well
• Slightly cool a bit and make them into balls – laddu
• Do not leave too long before making the laddu, since the mixture will become dry and won’t be able to make into balls