Jeet's Break the Fast : Kuli Paniyaram

Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. Its covered by the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Indian ocean in the south. Errr, wait don’t I belong to city of Mumbai. Mumbai is in Maharashtra not Tamil Nadu.So in general when people from Tamil Nadu ask me, where are you from I say Mumbai and people of Mumbai ask me where am I from; I say Trichy in Tamil Nadu. A confused citizen :)

How does geography matter? Well the people of Tamil Nadu speak Tamil which is no way related to Marathi, the state language of Maharashtra but within Mumbai due to the conflux of so many citizens from various part of the country, they have their own slang “The Mumbaieah Bhashaa”. Bhashaa in Hindi means language. So you might ask why doesn’t everyone speak one language - the national language Hindi and that is where political compulsions set in. But the only thing that would always remain untouched & unopposed by politics is FOOD. But then...geography can dictate food. 

My Mom,hmmm.. I miss her. She has magic in her hands,..!!! She can cook North Indian, Mahrashtrian & South Indian Food and she knows how to make the delicious Chaat. Well that did make her popular amongst my friends who used to come home under the pretext of meeting me during lunch and dinner hours and end up on the table eating my food…!

Well I assumed my Mom knows everything until my uncle got married and my aunt arrived in our family, she introduced me to my all-time favorite food. “The Kuli Paniyaram” . Kuli in Tamil means Hole and Paniyaram means Food I guess. So that makes it “Hole-Food” J
Or it is the food that is made inside a container which has Holes in them. J

So the container looks like this and mostly it is placed on top of a cooking range.

                                                    

                                            

The ingredients are simple fermented rice batter, onions, chilies, coriander leaves, mustard seeds, split Bengal grams, split black grams and then off course lots of love…! J

The Kuli Paniyaram looks like this when complete

Yummy..!! Isn’t it..??!!

That greenish thing is known as chutney and is made of coconut and green chilies, coconuts are white but the more the chilies the more green they turn out to be, even for an Indian this might be hot, considering some even add  ginger in them to increase their spiciness.

But it’s not for the coconut chutney that I crave for. She knew how to make onion chutney which made me go gaga over her culinary skills. It’s also because no one in my family ever tried making it.

                                                 

                  So my typical breakfast in Tamil Nadu is always Kuli Paniyaram with Onion chutney. J

Wow..!! All this has already made me hungry again..!

Recipes J

Kuli Paniyaram

http://www.samai.in/recipes/breakfast/kuli-paniyaram-idly-batter-kuzhi-paniyaram-spicy-pancake-puff-unniappam

Onion Chutney

http://www.nandinisfood.com/2011/03/onion-chutney.html

Various types of Chutney’s

http://ammumohan.blogspot.com/2011/03/chutneys-roud-up.html