I don’t know the English term for ammikkallu. It is a flat bed stone with a round rolling stone. You place the ingredients on the flat bed stone and with the rolling pin, you crush and grind the ingredients and a chammanthi made like that is bliss.
I have seen portable version of these heavy stone in India. One of these days when I can sneak one into my suitcase without my husband's knowledge, I will surely bring it here. But for now, I have to make it in a small wet grinder. I have Revel small wetgrinder and is perfect for small quantities like chammanthi.
At home, mom would prepare the chammanthi using the stone crusher and finally make it into a ball shape. Somehow, the ball shape of the chammanthi is etched into my mind, whenever I make it, I have to have it finally in ball shape.
This is eaten with rice. Rose matta rice kanji, roasted papad and red coconut chammanthi….mmmmm.
How to make it?
Fresh grated Coconut – 2 cups
Red Chili powder – 2 tsp
Fresh Tamarind without the seed – 1.5 square inch (Do not use the paste)
One small shallot
Salt
Coarse grind all this together without adding any water. The water content the coconut is more than enough. Do not grind it fine. Then it becomes a chutney like consistency. Make it into a ball shape (optional) :-)
Serve with rice. This usually goes with only rice.
24 comments:
what a great chammanthi, inji ! and a new face for your blog ?! both looks, hmmmm... good !!!
i agree.. chammandis should be called as such and not chutneys.. lighter the new lighter looking you, i mean template.
Inji,
We call it 'ammi' in Sri Lanka and Chammanthi is called 'Sambal'. My family does not use tamarind And just add some curry leaves and substitute roasted dried red chillies and the recipe would be complete.
Somehow I associate round shaped sambal with the one ground on ammi too. My first memories are of sitting next to my aunt just as she crushes red chillies and salt. As it is my job to drizzle water, I would be more than eager to drizzle some. But, she would stop me always. It's beautiful just watching the two seperate ingredients with different textures combine together to form a paste. The paste would not seem much. But once my aunt's satisfied with the texture, she would scrape it off and bring to the center of ammi.
Then the shallots would be added and crushed followed by curry leaves. Scraped coconut would be the last ingredient. It would be slowly mixed and would turn a lovely pale red color. And the AROMA! Indescribable! Ah!
We also prepare sambal in ural. We dont have the big wooden urals here. But I make do with the smaller urals.
Thanks a lot for photo Inji. It took me down the memory lane. :)
-Mathy
the colour of that chammanthi is perfect.
a request: can you please make the "post comment" tag darker? it's hard to find it against the background.
something magical happened. the comment link looks fine now.
inji,chammanthi, rice, a fried fish, some cheera thoran in a banana leaf will take me to heaven right now.
your pic. looks so tempting. mine would be a little lighter.
we call the stone grinder "sheel noda" in bengali. My mom still uses it for making all her masala pastes...
It is like 'thuvayal'. This dish is also not watery and is eaten with plain rice and rasam rice. your Chammanthi looks great & sounds great. will try it soon.
Hi Inji,Chutney without water?! Pestle and Mortar?!
we call it Gundu kallu(round stone) in Kannada for that stone which looks way different from the flat stone,traditionally chutney and dosa batter made in that everyday.
Chammanthi looks great,I will try and grind that without water,fingers crossed:))
chammanthi looks great. Your English description of Ammikkal made me laugh but can't find a better way of describing it.
Nice chammanti .Inji this will go quite well with all the tiffin varites .
humm chammanthi looks yummi..hey LG can we use this grinder for making our coconut paste (kalan one)please let me know that.My blender has gone recently..i am planning to buy a new one..
Onnu paranju tharuvo which one is best ennu.bcos i am new to USA
my id is jishababy@gmail.com
njaanum chammanthi posti. hehehe
haay bloginu puthiya paintadichallo. cool!
I looked for the recipe of Mambazha pullissery on your blog, couldn't find it. I need a real authentic recipe for the dish. Please help.
chutney - chammanthi, potayto -potahto :) whats the difference? :D
Dry chutneys, ahem I mean chammanthis are my favorites, manga chammanthi, thenga chammanthi, anything goes... with kanji, OMG, pure bliss!
oru pathram kanjiyum chammanthiyum poratteeee.. :)
Yum yum!! ur recipe is quite different fro my MIL who roasts the cocunut and other ings to a brown color and then grinds it with jaggery and a a piece of some plant which is grown by her( I dont know the name of the plant.its sum kind of segmented cactus which is like e creeper). She says it got some medicinal properties but it tastes yum!! Its like a semi dry powder and heavenly with dahi and rice
hoow!! coconut chammathide padam kandappo vayil vellam varunnu :)
ippom veettipovanum thonnunnu :(
qw_er_ty
Hi Inji,
I am a regular reader of your blog. When I read this post, I immediately wanted to post my comment on "Ammi Kallu".
I book marked the links long back and couldn't find it immediately.
They call "Ammi kallu" as "Metate" in Mexico. I think the below links will help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metate
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/mortarpestle.htm#Suribachi
Being a keralite i know variuos uses of cocnut made chammnthis, it tasts good made from ammi rather than grinding in mixi.
RED CHILIIES WITH chopped onions grinded in ammi tastes so good with idlis.
Be proud to be an indian for our traditional values
Thanks for article!
Thanks for interesting article.
Yummy chammanthi. Yeah it's not chutney. Actually chammanthi has the best taste if we grind it without pouring even a drop of water, need to work a bit on the ammikkallu but the taste is the best that way...
Hi inji:)
Nice chammanthi, iam from Kerala too, and we eat this with kanji :) no other side dish required ! thanks for the recipe, one question, to make this , is onakka thenga (i dont know the english name) used ? I heard from my father in law that its used for these chammanthis.
Post a Comment