Hawa Hawaii Pooris

Whenever we have a craving to eat chole curry, we love eating it with pooris. *Pooris are another type of Indian flat breads which are made with wheat flour. If you have perfected or at least practiced the technique of making dough for chappati or roti, then making dough for pooris is a cinch. The following videos are broken down into easy-to-follow steps from making the dough to frying the pooris. We love eating pooris on cool and breezy nights when we want to eat some warm comfort food. Now with summer around the corner, pooris can also be enjoyed with mango pulp or puree.

Step 1: In a mixing bowl, mix together (3) cups of wheat flour, (1.5) tablespoons of oil, and less than 1 cup of water.

Once you are finished making the dough, you can make the dough balls. These will be rolled out and fried in the hot oil. 

Now you are ready to roll out the poori dough balls and fry in the hot oil. Hint: You can drop a tiny ball of dough in the oil to see if it's hot enough to fry the pooris. You will know it's hot enough when the tiny ball comes up to the top and you see bubbles. 

Just look at those fluffy pooris floating in the hot oil! Don't let the poori sit in the oil too long; otherwise it will soak up the oil and it will taste oily and heavy. You just have to flip it once or twice until it puffs up and is ready to be whisked out of the pan and into the drying bowl. Then just add it to the pile of hot pooris in your serving dish.

***Quick Tip: 
- For fluffy pooris add a little bit of milk when making the dough. 
- We used Deep Foods Whole wheat flour to make these fluffy pooris. This multi-purpose flour can be used to make dough for chappati, roti, poori and paratha.

Fun Fact: The title for this post was inspired by one of my favorite songs from a Bollywood movie called Mr. India and the song's name is "Hawa Hawaii".

~Instant Custard Gratification~

In the spirit of Earth Day, my parents and I spent the sunny part of today re-potting the vegetable seedlings into bigger pots and sowing more seeds in our vegetable garden. It's officially Spring and I love it. The air was filled with aromatic fragrances from the cherry blossoms and it was breezy but not cold. Sayonara Winter and Hello sunny days! After all the hard work, I decided to treat myself to a quick sweet treat...custard. Along with its thick and creamy consistency, I love the various flavors that are available. When we were in India, my mom used to make it for us all the time with these powder packets manufactured by Brown and Polson and Rafhan.

They had a variety of flavors to choose from: good ol' vanilla, raspberry, pineapple, banana, and mango. I used to eagerly watch while my mom made it. She heated up the milk, stirred in the powder slowly and then let it set in the fridge. I'm sure the whole process was all of 30 minutes but for a kid, that could seem like a decade. Since those custard packets are not readily available, I made custard-like dessert with the Jell-O Instant pudding packets.

Did you know Jell-O Instant pudding is available in Vanilla, Banana Cream, Lemon, Flan and Pistachio flavors? Pistachio was the biggest surprise for me. The next surprise was how much time it took to make it...5 minutes. No wonder, it says instant on the label. The ones from India required you to store the warm custard in the fridge for a couple of hours before serving it. With Jell-O pudding, it's ready when you want it. And if you want to make it more interesting, add some fruits. I recommend adding apple, banana, orange and mango pieces. Yum!

Nothing like settling down with a bowl of custard after a long day of gardening!

***Quick Tip - For a more aromatic and tasty custard:

- Add powdered cardamom to a tablespoon of milk, heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds and add the mixture to the cold milk before mixing the pudding powder to it. This infuses the cardamom flavor and makes the dessert even more tasty.