Pakodas and Shavige Payasa

Festival or a party, or any occasion to celebrate and where 'eating' is a focus, pakodas and payasam are easiest and tastiest things to have on your buffet table. It was Akash's b'day last week and pakodas took a place on the party table, while Shavige Payasa/Semiya payasam was made for a dear friend who re-located to India recently. Here you go with both the recipes :

Onion Pakoda :
You can find rava pakoda recipe on TOM here (click on here). Few more modifications to rava pakoda recipe and it resulted in tasty onion pakoda.

Ingredients :
Onions : 4 big (chopped length wise)
Chiroti Rava/Fine Semolina - 1 cup (1cup=100ml)
Maida - 2tbsp
Rice Flour-2tbsp
Cornflour-1tbsp
Red Chilli Powder -2 tbsp
Salt
Curry leaves from 4 lines

1.Mix Onions, rava, maida, redchilli powder, salt and curry leaves and leave it aside for 4 hrs.This is just a dry mixture and the water given out by onions gets into the flour to make the whole mixture moist. ( I mixed all these ingredients at 8 in the morning before I left for my office and I fried pakodas at 3PM. If you leave it for more time you don't have to worry.)
2.Before you start frying, add rice flour and corn flour to the mixture and mix.
3.Scoop out little dough to a big cup, add water and mix to make pakoda batter.
4.Rub the flour between your fingers when you add the pakoda batter into hot oil. This action will keep pakodas thin, as thin as having a strand of onion with little batter sticking to it.
5.Fry them in hot oil till they are golden brown. Repeat the same procedure of scopping and frying till you finish all batter.

Tip for heating oil (for deep frying) :
Heat oil on medium flame. When it is hot (not smoky), reduce the flame to sim or less than that and continue to heat the oil for next 5 mins.
When you want to fry, brig back the flame to medium, add the ingredients to hot oil and reduce the flame to sim and fry on a low flame.
Allow a gap of 3-4 mins between the batches.
Frying this way will yield crispy pakodas.

Shavige Payasa/Semiya Payasam/Vermicilli Payasam

This delicious Payasa needs no introduction to you all .....

Ingredients
Roasted Vermicilli - 1 Cup (1cup holds about 100 ml of water)
Milk - 4 cups (keep 1/2 cup extra milk for soaking the badam powder etc)
Mixed Fruits and Nuts - 2tbsp (raisins, cashewnuts)
Badam Powder/Mixed Dried Nuts Powder - 2tbsp (For recipe of the powder click on it)
Sugar -3/4 cup for mildly sweet payasa 1 cup for sweeter version
Ghee -1tsp

1.Soak Mixed Dried Nuts Powder in 1/cup of warm water. Mix well so that lumps don't remain in the mixture.
2.Fry fruits and nuts in 1tsp of ghee, keep it aside
3.Cook 1 cup of roasted vermicilli in 2 cups of milk. When Vermicilli is half cooked, add Badam Powder soaked in milk to the half cooked vermicilli mixture and cook till it is done.
4.Add sugar and remaining milk and adjust the consistency of the Payasam. Bring it to boil. Let the sugar dissolve. Check for sweetness. If any additional sugar is required you can add.
5.Remove from the stove, garnish with fried nuts and Serve hot.

For Chilled Payasa
Remove from the stove, garnish with fried nuts and let it cool. Once the mixture is in room temparature, refrigerate and serve cold.

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Priti, Sireesha, Sowmya and Pavani for Awards and Tags. Bloggers you all make my day with your lovely coments. I would love to pass this beautiful butterfly to Dibs (Chitra Ammas Kitchen), Smita (Kannada Cuisine), Sushma (Savi-Ruchi), Rak's (Rak's Kitchen), Veda (Iyengar's Kitchen), Rekha (Plantain Leaf), Ramya (Ramya Cooks), Vidhya of My Recipes, EC of Simple Indian Food, Deesha of Vegetable Platter, Shreya of Mom's Cooking.

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Pakoda and Shavige Payasa are on a international food event tour to "Sunday Snack-Fry it" at Snackorama Blog, "Yummy Festival Feast" at All Things Yummy, "WYF-Party Food" at Simple Indian Food, "Festival Jihva" at Cooking 4 all seasons, "Festive Food-Diwali Celebration" at Indian Khanna, "FIC-Brown" at Tongue Tickelers