Khaman Dhokla - Instant and Easy

Kitchen is the most important place in any household as it satisfy the basic need of all family members - "the hunger". In olden days, mother was the whole sole in-charge of kitchen. She was the one who was responsible for the inventory listing, buying, planning a meal and most of the time cooking it too. With working women around, the kitchen welcomed the entry of males into its domain.

With more and more boys and girls going out for career and studies, cooking has become a life-skill. I was never an enthusiastic cook but being a mother, I had a big responsibility to feed two hungry young growing up boys. Being working and having limited time at hand for "kitchen", I need to find out ways to make tasty food with minimum efforts. This skill of making difficult cooking easy has grown with me and came in handy to boys when they went out to study and work.

With both boys flown out to find their own horizons into the big bad world, I was stagnant with my cooking skills as my husband and father were very simple eaters. And then the life has taken another turn and the boys came back home after almost a decade. Now the dormant cooking skills have come alive. I have started checking the cooking resources on internet.

Being in Ahmedabad, does not require me to cook khaman dhokla as one gets the best dhokla at every other outlet serving "nasta". But I am destined to learn this healthy food as my son asked if it can be made for the breakfast? I searched for "instant khaman dhokla recipe" and my favourite Tarla Dalal's video was peeping out of the google search page. I have a very passionate relationship with Tarla Dalal. Her cooking books were my saviours after my marriage as I had nil cooking experience. I did not know the names of daals, kneading atta for chapaties or poories , making round chapaties and so much more.  It's a long story and will share in some other post.

The video was so well explaining that my first effort of making khaman resulted in the best khaman ever.

Ingredients:

Besan - 1 Cup , Sooji - 1 Tb spoon , Salt, Sugar - as per taste , Tatri / nimboo ke phul - 1 tspoon , Eno salt sachet - 1, Ginger - garlic paste - 1tspoon.

Garnishing - green coriander and green chillies .

Method :

Mix besan and sooji. Let the mixture be passed through a sieve so that there are no granules in besan and paste is smooth. Add remaining ingredients except Eno. Add water just enough to make a batter of flowing consistency like Idli or pakoras.

Now get your steamer ready on stove. Grease the plates/ thalis .

Add Eno sachet to the batter and add a tablespoon of water on the Eno. (No one has told this so emphatically as Tarla ji ) As water is sprinkled on the Eno, mix it well with the batter and let it swell for a minute or half. Now pour the batter into the greased thalis. You can sprinkle the red chillies and coriander powder  and put the thalis in the steamer. Let them be there for ONLY 7 minutes. If you let them be there for more time, the khaman will sit and all the softness would go.

Let it cool. Prepare the tempering in oil and mustard seeds and til. Once tempering is cool, add a tablespoon of water and sprinkle on the plates. The water in the tempering will be absorbed by the khaman and it will be softer.

Cut and serve with green chutney.

It's made up with besan, which is protein rich. 

Being steamed, it's healthy.

It's a very easy and healthy recipe and can be made in breakfast, lunch or dinner. It's specially for all the new cooks out there, searching for easy recipes. 😃

I owe most of my cooking skills to Ms. Dalal. May her soul rest in peace!