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Chocolate dipped strawberries

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Idly batter

Idly is one of the staple food in south India especially TamilNadu. 
Idly is a rice cake made out of fermented rice and black gram batter. I recently moved to California, its been almost 6 months now. In India, I have idly/dosa for my breakfast. After moving here, i either have corn flakes or bread sandwich. On few days i prepare sprouts for breakfast. Over the period of 6 months we got bored of these 3 breakfast dishes and we ended up skipping our breakfast altogether which is not healthy at all. Meanwhile, i have put my hands at making idly/dosa with the rice i get at local stores. And even with sona masoori rice, the idly batter doesn't turn out well. It's always a failure attempt for me. The lesson i learnt from all my mistakes is "Rice really does matter" for idly batter consistnecy and a good idly/dosa. Hence i ordered idly rice from walmart and it worked well. Since then onwards we are relishing on idly, dosa, egg dosa, aapam and so on. Let's look at the ingredients we need.



Ingredients:

2 cups idly rice
1/4 cup black gram, with skin removed (urad dhaal)
1 tsp fenugreek seeds (optional)
1 tsp salt

Steps:

1. Soak idly rice in a bowl for 2 hours.



2. Soak black gram and fenugreek seeds in a separate bowl for 2 hours.



3. Wash black gram nicely with running cold water and grind it to a smooth mixture.



4. Wash the idly rice nicely with running water and grind it to a smooth batter. Do not add more water. Add water little by little so that the batter consistency remains thick and is not watery.


5. Now add the rice batter to the black gram mixture and stir it well with a tsp of salt. 



6. Let this batter sit for atleast 8 hours before making idly/dosa out of it. You could see bubbles out of the batter and it would have raised a little.



Note: 

1. 1/2 tsp baking soda could also be added to get the idly more fluffy.

2. If you are using a mixie to grind the ride, make sure the mixer jar doesn't get hot while grinding. This would result in harder idlies. If the mixer gets hot, pause the grinding process for some time and resume it later.

2. For making dosa, the batter should not be thick as we use for idly. Add little more water so that you can make a perfect dosa.










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