Ada Pradaman.. A Delicacy of Kerala

Onam last year was in Trivandrum, where I enjoyed the visual splendour of the city. This year I was with my family having a sadya prepared by my mother ofcourse. This is the day when an elaborate vegetarian meal is prepared. Note the vegetarian here. The meal or sadya ends with a payasam. And the payasam this year was made by yours truly who has never attempted one before. My inspiration tfor the payasam is from here. Maria's recipe worked like a charm here. I doubled the recipe and did not use coconut slices.

I have seen the house help in Kerala making this payasam. The way he set about doing it gave me an impression of it being a laborious journey. He made the ada from scratch. When it is Onam season, stores start setting up a section that caters to all that one needs to make a sadya. That is where I found packeted Ada. Now, Ada is basically made by soaking rice , dried and then ground to a fine powder. This is then made into a batter using ghee and sugar. It is then steamed. When they dry, they harden. So coming back to the payasam, this was indeed good. A little too sweet which calls for reducing the amount of jaggery. My first time at making this and the anticipation that it would turn out good was all compensated when there were hardly any leftovers and some of us didn't get a second helping!!!

A Chocolate Swirl Bread

With being tied up with work, birthdays and anniversaries, this space has been neglected to a great extent. But a couple od days back, when I made this awesome bread, I had to post it. Ever since I bought the book titled, Bread by Sara Lewis , I have been wanting to bake each and every bread that the book contained. I made the feta and spinach swirl bread from the same book so this becomes the second.

The original recipe is for a chocolate and pecan swirl bread. Mine has just chocolate and no nuts. I favour home made bread and chocolate is something I can binge one, so the two put together did win me over.This book has given me good results and hence I am making one bread from ot every week. Hope that works out because that would even feed my page at a regular pace. So coming to the recipe,

What you need are (From Bread, by Sara Lewis)

500g Flour

3T Butter

1/2 t Salt

50g Caster Sugar

1 and 1/2 t dried yeast

2 eggs, beaten

175 ml milk

Filling

125 g dark chocolate, finely chopped

125 g pecan nuts, roughly chopped ( I omitted this)

2T caster sugar

1 egg yolk for glazing

Put the flour into a bowl. Add in the butter and mix uisng your fingertips to make a mixture that resembles bread crumbs. Stir in salt and sugar followed by the yeast.Add in the eggs and use milk to work the mixture into a soft dough.

Knead on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes until the dough turns smooth and elastic. Put this in a  oiled bowl and allow to rise until double in size.

Tip the risen dough onto a floured surface and knead well. Roll into a 11 inch square. Sprinkle with chocolate and if using the nuts as well.

 Roll the dough and put into a greased loaf tin. Cover and let rise for the second time.

Preheat the oven to 200 degree C. Brush the loaf with egg yolk mixed with 1 T of water. At this stage sprinkle (optional) with chocolate and nuts.

Bake this until risen and browned well. If sprinkling nuts over the bread, cover the nuts 10 mins post baking to prevent burning the nuts.

Once done, cool and serve.

Although not as pretty as in the book, once the bread cooled well and sliced the swirl was pretty. A simple bread  with all that chocolatey goodness.

This bread is yeastspotted!