Handva uttapams.

I'm a gujju ben through and through. Gujarati food is very healthy in terms of the variety of vegetables and pulses in the recipes. The flip side is the food sometimes has a lot of oil and spices. I've been married for two years, and while I cook regular gujju food, I'm always trying to substitute ingredients and cooking methods to make it healthy. My blood pressure tends to be a little on the higher side (marginally), so I try my hardest to cook with less oil and minimum salt.

Handvo is one of my hubby's favourite foods, as it is mine. The problem with traditional handvo is baking soda and a lot of oil. Baking soda by itself is high in sodium, and it absorbs a lot of oil. But handvo without baking soda would just turn out extremely hard and chewy. So I came up with a modified version of this recipe from Mitho Limdo, http://mitholimdo.wordpress.com/category/recipe-by-name/handvo/. Instead of making handvo cakes, I made handva uttapams. Also, this time I took the easy option of ready handvo atta available at all grocery stores, because I was short on time, otherwise the proportions given in the Mitho Limdo recipe work well too.


My recipe:

For the handva batter:

1cup handvo atta (Available at all Indian grocery stores)
1 cup of sour yogurt
Mix the two thoroughly and let the batter ferment for at least 8-10 hours or overnight. In cold weather, preheat the oven at 250 F for 15-20 mins and then leave it for overnight fermentation. If you're doing this in the daytime, you can repeat this step every 2 hours.


For the handva uttapam:

1 cup grated doodhi.( A variety of vegetables can be added like zucchini, corn, peas etc., my husband prefers only doodhi).

In my recipe, you can keep the doodhi water because the uttapam batter can use the water.

Sugar to taste

Salt to taste

1 tsp grated ginger
2-3 chilies and 1 tbsp coriander leaves, ground to a paste.

juice from 1 lime/lemon

Mix all these together into the batter and prepare for tempering (tadka)

For the tempering:

3 tbsp oil

hing or asafoetida

mustard seeds

Kadhi patta- 7-8 leaves chopped coarsely
Heat the oil, add a pinch of hing and mustard seeds. When they begin to splutter, add the kadhi patta and pour the tempering into the batter. Mix well.






Heat a dosa pan/tava. Add a ladle full of the batter and spray some cooking oil. Sprinkle some white sesame (til) seeds on the batter. Let one side get golden brown, then flip it and cook the other side. The cooking must be done on a low to medium flame, otherwise it won't cook on the inside.







Serve hot with green chutney.




Here is the finished product.

I have to work on my photography skills, it's my first post, I'm sure the pics will get better. Also need to work on the post layout.

I'm sending this recipe to Nupur's Blog Bites # 3.

And so on and so forth until next time.

My first post

This is my first time writing a blog of any kind. I dabble in writing from time to time, but I have never written anything on a blog before. As a matter of fact, I was not too aware of food blogs. It started with a phone call from one of my friends, D. D was very excited that she had found a recipe that recreated the Mumbai street pav bhaji very close. It was on a blog 'One Hot Stove'. Before that, I pretty much always looked up Sanjeev Kapoor or Tarla Dalal recipes online. after that, I started reading recipes from food blogs. The recipes came with stories that were fun to read and easy to relate to. It was very encouraging to see regular people making food that turned out very celebrity-chef-like.

I started following blog events on different blog sites. Last month I came across Blog Bites # 3 on Nupur's 'One Hot Stove'. I felt like participating, and one of the prerequisites was that I had to have a food blog. The prospect of writing a blog is daunting, and a food blog... I think I cook just about average. But I want to be a part of this world too, so these are my first baby steps into the world of food blogs.