Sorry about the title. I don't know what it is called in English. Come summer, my mom would make kgs of koozh and spread plastic sheets on the terrace and make very pretty looking vethals. They would dry in the April sun for a few days and we would deep fry the vethals and eat them. Now the fun is not in that alone. Every stage of the vethal is edible.
Koozh: This is a rice based thingy, spiced up with green chillies and made tangy with the juice of a few lemon. Since the koozh is made only at that time of the year the first time you eat a spoon full, you cannot wait to taste it. The hot koozh will inevitably stick to the roof of your mouth and you will have to do this unique one-legged dance to get it off and swallow. Since it gets very hot by 10:00am my mom would get the koozh ready by seven, carry it to the terrace along with kozhal and achus and finish up by eight, much before the sun could scramble your brains. She would always leave us some koozh to eat and it would all be gone in a few minutes.
Half dried vethal: The next stage of the fun is in eating the half sun dried vethals. By the end of the first day, the sun facing side of the vethal would have dried while the bottom side would still be koozh. Now there is nothing in my entire world that tastes better than this. It is crunchy and soft at the same time and you can still taste the tang from the lemon. Yummy!!
Vethal: Once the vethals are completely dry, you can store them for a year and deep fry them whenever. My mom loved it when her hard labor paid off and she would get beautiful shaped, white colored, crunchy vethals.
Thus the summer of vethal fun would begin.
Why all this sudden post on Koozh vethal you ask? Well I made koozh yesterday. In all modesty I will have to say they turned out finger licking good. In case you want to try it here is my recipe.
Rice - 1 cup
Green chillies - 4
juice of 1/2 key lime
salt - 1 tsp
water 2.5 cups
Soak rice for about 2 hours and grind it into a smooth batter. The consistency should be like dosa batter. Ferment it overnight. I usually keep it in the oven with the light on. The next morning, the batter would have thickened, so add a little more water and bring back the dosa batter consistency. Boil the 2.5 cups of water, add salt, asafotida and ground green chillies. You can also add the lime juice to the water. Then slowly add the rice batter to the water and constantly stir it till you get koozh. You can switch off the range for this, other wise the bottom will catch!. That is it, in a few minutes koozh will be ready.
What with all my koozh making skills, I felt like Mahanandi Indira for a few hours!! But I don't have pictures like her, so there ends my boasting!
Koozh: This is a rice based thingy, spiced up with green chillies and made tangy with the juice of a few lemon. Since the koozh is made only at that time of the year the first time you eat a spoon full, you cannot wait to taste it. The hot koozh will inevitably stick to the roof of your mouth and you will have to do this unique one-legged dance to get it off and swallow. Since it gets very hot by 10:00am my mom would get the koozh ready by seven, carry it to the terrace along with kozhal and achus and finish up by eight, much before the sun could scramble your brains. She would always leave us some koozh to eat and it would all be gone in a few minutes.
Half dried vethal: The next stage of the fun is in eating the half sun dried vethals. By the end of the first day, the sun facing side of the vethal would have dried while the bottom side would still be koozh. Now there is nothing in my entire world that tastes better than this. It is crunchy and soft at the same time and you can still taste the tang from the lemon. Yummy!!
Vethal: Once the vethals are completely dry, you can store them for a year and deep fry them whenever. My mom loved it when her hard labor paid off and she would get beautiful shaped, white colored, crunchy vethals.
Thus the summer of vethal fun would begin.
Why all this sudden post on Koozh vethal you ask? Well I made koozh yesterday. In all modesty I will have to say they turned out finger licking good. In case you want to try it here is my recipe.
Rice - 1 cup
Green chillies - 4
juice of 1/2 key lime
salt - 1 tsp
water 2.5 cups
Soak rice for about 2 hours and grind it into a smooth batter. The consistency should be like dosa batter. Ferment it overnight. I usually keep it in the oven with the light on. The next morning, the batter would have thickened, so add a little more water and bring back the dosa batter consistency. Boil the 2.5 cups of water, add salt, asafotida and ground green chillies. You can also add the lime juice to the water. Then slowly add the rice batter to the water and constantly stir it till you get koozh. You can switch off the range for this, other wise the bottom will catch!. That is it, in a few minutes koozh will be ready.
What with all my koozh making skills, I felt like Mahanandi Indira for a few hours!! But I don't have pictures like her, so there ends my boasting!
14 comments:
Whenever I say I dont like Koozh, my friends and cousins say I have wasted half of my lifetime.
Half is a very conservative estimate!
What is the technical difference between a vathal and vadaam?
I love javvarisi vadam :D
I think it is the same. Iyer/iyengar terminology. As long it tastes good i don't care what its called. :-)
Vathal is done using a 'pressing machine', 'kozhal & Achu' while vadaam is made by simply spreading the dough/koozh on a plastic sheet or banana leaf with fingers. It is technically called 'vadaam ezhudardu' as in writing vadaam:)
/* Now there is nothing in my entire world that tastes better than this */
so true.. so true. i almost had tears in my eyes. nothing is as good as half dried vethal. i call it 'half maavu' and i steal it from my grandma's terrace.
Ferrari,
its not iyer/iyengar terminalogy,
vethal: is a kolam like shape. its shaped like a series of grid-lines with holes inbetween. sort of like a criss-cross of french fries (but its rice koozh and not potatoe)
vadam: its a single solid piece. no holes inbetween. its is rectangular cuboid and is like a cardboard.
the machine that spits put the maavu into the tarpaulin like sheet in your terrrace is different for both vethal and vadam
both are scrumptuous. but different.
Hawkeye,
Haaa. Thanks for the detailed explanation. That grid thingy has a name right? Apart from vathal. I seem to have forgotten it!!!
And Sowmya,
I forgot to mention. Arisi appaLam is another mouth watery thing :D
casement hit it on the head. thats the diff
Iyers call vathal, 'karuvadaam'. I think that shrank to be called 'vadaam'.
elai vadaam is tasty too. But intense labor.
Arisi appalam - mouth watering, i haven't had one in ages.
what is real appalam made of? Junta claim to have eaten the maavu but if it is just urad dal mostly - it would've tasted awful.
appalam is made of urad dal only, but they add perandai, appalam kaaram and mix the dough, so it doesn't taste awful. But the texture is something that many ppl don't like. It is somewhat like chapathi dough, only tighter :-).
perandai?
Perandai is a creeper, and it makes the skin a little itchy when you touch it. I did some search and here is a picture of it
http://www.lapshin.org/succulent/album/Cissus-cactiformis-1998.jpg
and some literature based on its botanical name
http://www.herbal-supplements-usa.com/herbal-library/lit-cissus-quadrangularis-0.asp
Some people make a 'perandai thogayal' for the death anniversary ritual.
hope this helps :-)
wow! very informative. I have never even heard of it before, let me check with my mmother this weekend and see if atleast she knew :-))
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