Handvo muffins

I’ve been down with a terrible cold and headache since the last couple of days. After two horrible days of the attacks on Mumbai, I wanted to do something normal, bring some normalcy back in life – to do something other than constantly checking on the situation at Mumbai.

So this is what I did. I cooked Handvo and in a state of madness – tried baking it in muffin moulds. And I call them Handvo muffins. I could use some ideas for some more interesting names. Well, the outcome was … interesting. But it wasn’t fabulous to be frank. Even though the batter recipe is the same that I’ve used a thousand times now, but it didn’t turn out perfect. Maybe it has got something to do with my state of mind when I cooked.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. The source of the recipe is my mother.

For handvo muffins, you need

1. Rice – 2 cups
2. Tuvar dal – 1 cup
3. Chana dal – 1/2 cup
4. Skinned moong dal – 1/4 cup
5. Curry leaves – 2-3 sprigs
6. Sour curd – roughly 2 cups
7. Jaggery (optional), grated – a fistful
8. Red chilly powder – 2 tsp
9. Jeera – 2 tsp
10. Mustard seeds – 2 tsp
11. Asafoetida – 2 pinches
12. Dry red chillies – 5
13. Sesame seeds – a fistful
14. Haldi powder – 2 tsp
15. Soda bicarbonate – 1 tsp
16. Oil – 1/2 cup
17. Salt to taste

Method of preparation

Soak items 1 through 4 for a couple of hours in lukewarm water. After a couple of hours, grind them till the batter is slightly coarse. Use curd while grinding, instead of water. After grinding, add more curd till the batter is slightly thicker than dosa batter. Let the batter sit covered for five-six hours, preferably in a warm place.

After the batter ferments, add salt, haldi powder, chilly powder, jaggery to the batter and mix well. Heat the oil in a kadai and prepare the tadka with mustard, jeera, asafoetida, sesame, dry red chillies and curry leaves. Pour the tadka in the batter and mix well. Dissove the soda bicarb in a tbsp of lukewarm water and add it to the batter.

Grease the muffin moulds and pour the batter till the moulds are half-full. Bake at 175 C in a preheated oven for about 40 mins or till the top of the muffins look red and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. You can also bake the handvo in any of the cake moulds. There’s also a traditional way of baking handvo in a handvo-cooker which has a sandbath and everything, but more on that on a better day.

You can serve the handvo with curd, tomato chutney, green chutney or chhundo (a Gujarati style shredded mango pickle).

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