Art in a Café

Imagine my surprise, walking into a cafe and greeted by none, no servers, no clutter of tables, no clink-clank of cutlery, just a vast space with an array of staring fiberglass dolls of varying colors, and paintings on the wall.

If you are like me, who can stare at a painting or an installation for hours, drink some black coffee and gobble up some rich and delicious cakes, Kashi Art Café is the place for you.

An old Dutch house converted without disturbing any elements of the house, which is so important for me when I visit converted old buildings. Each house each building I believe has a soul and any renovation should not disturb these basic elements.

After you finish staring at the art, you can enter other rooms, where you are welcomed by chairs and tables scattered filling up discreet corners giving the feeling of an art gallery, never a cafe.

Then you see a small kitchen, sitting areas, a coffee corner with Italian Espresso mocha pots, a cake display stand, tables that look like chocolate fondue, open space into the sky, some plants hanging out, an old wall with moisture paint, and people lazing around. Reminded me of old European town squares tucked into a building at Burger Street, Fort Kochi.

For a moment, if you think they are craftily diluting their menu for art, you are wrong. The menu would seem unassuming and light with items like sprout salad and potato soup.

So you think until you order one of those devilish home made cakes. Oo Ma! The best chocolate cake I ever tasted in Kerala. The moment it tickles your taste buds, you are sure they have used the freshest ingredients without cutting any corners. While waiting for my espresso order, I chatted up with Anoop Skaria, the co-owner who must be loving his job tremendously.

He and his wife Dorrie Younger set up this cafe twelve years back in 1997 for their love of promoting art, and also because nothing like that existed in Cochin before. They are both art lovers and collectors and came up with this idea, Anoop says to remind him of Vienna(Austria) which seems to be his favorite place. It would have been really risky to start something like this in Cochin but to everybody's delight they were proved right. They now boast two Art galleries and Kashi Art Café is the most happening place in Fort Kochi.

Kashi Art Café welcomes budding artists and even run resident programs with a stipend for the artists. Skaria tells me with pride, many now famous artists like Upendranath and GopiKrishna started out small from their little cafe.

I ordered a chocolate cake (Rupees 55) and espresso (Rupees 45). They were perfect to the beans. All this along with Barbara Ash's 'Sugar and Spice'.

No wonder you feel connected to this place even at your first visit, with food and art, how could anything go wrong?

(I cannot express enough my gratitude to Thulasi Kakkat, for the extravagant beautiful pictures that accompany this post and for introducing me to Fort Kochi)

Series Reading.
1. A Princess Story
2. Upstairs Italian Cuisine

Idiyappam

Try telling the people in Tamil Nadu, that their staple food iddlis are not theirs but imported from Indonesia. Kakka Kakka, a Tamil film, which I loved, for the major part because of Surya ;) has an amusing scene. In that while the villain is questioning the lady, the co-villain interrupts the main one and asks, "anne pasikkathu, iddli saappittu varenne?" (Brother, I am hungry, can I go and eat some iddlis).

At such a tense moment, I burst out laughing. The dialog was so natural, accurately tamilian, cleverly put into the whole scene, it was amusingly ticklish. Iddlis are taken for granted in Tamil culture.

This post is not about iddlis, but about the stringy idiyappoms. Though as usual like we are proud of everything Malayalee, we are proud of Kerala's 'own' idiyappom too. Now tell that to the Konkanis, the Srilankans (it is called Indiappa....hmm...), the Malaysians etc. These food delicacies have legs, I say. They travel, roam the World, get stuck in various forms and shapes, in various cuisines and in hearts, we defend it as our own.

Idiyappam or String hoppers is a plain rice noodle made fresh. You can use double boiled rice or parboiled or raw.

Roast any rice flour in low flame, stirring constantly until it is just warm to touch. Boil water , add salt and add slowly to this rice in very low heat until it takes on the texture of wet clay. You are going to play with these.

Idiyappam press is similar to a cookie press, but it has an additional filter that will have very tiny holes. Make small balls and press the flour out to a steamer or your idli steamer.
At our home, we add fresh grated coconut between the layers of an idiyappam. First layer of strings, a little bit of coconut, second layer of strings, then a little bit of coconut.

Steam for around 10 minutes like idlis. You dont separate the strings as in a noodle, it is like rice steamed cake, with the texture of strings. Egg curry is a complimentary accompaniment with this breakfast dish.

Streetfull Stressfree Onam!

Have had many Onams and have prepared elaborate dishes sweating it out the previous nights and in wee hours. After preparing elaborate Onam Sadya, after the backbreaking and the payasam sweetness, I would just want to put up my feet and snore to glory and have happy dreams that another Onam is another year long.

This fresh flower carpet is made on top of an old tyre that caught my attention. This is an auto rickshaw stand and the drivers had decorated their little place with flowers.

Bee dear once proclaimed, Festivals are a burden for the women folks sweltering in kitchens. Very true. But I am addicted to festivals, the traditions, and all the hoopla around it.

This time my Onam is on the streets. Kerala definitely is a must visit on Onam days if you like crowds, food and colors. It is swarming with crowds everywhere from smallest tiny shops to the air conditioned malls. Every street has some kind of Onam mela (which means festivities), all shops lit like Christmas trees, and every tiny bit of waterbody having a boat race.

Onam is not about worrying whether the 14th dish that you are preparing which will be served at the right end of the feast leaf is going to come out alright. So next Onam, visit Kerala and order that Special Sadya meals and have fun on the streets. Every festival is about togetherness and yes, close thy kitchens for once and be together.

The old man at the payasam counter, he wants liters of payasam to take home. There are payasam counters at every nook and fresh flower carpets at every corner. Young and old alike, people are getting out to the streets, buying payasams by the ton, booking Sadyas that will be delivered to your homes on Thiruvonam day, and setting women free for shopping. Breaking the traditions is a must, breaking it like this is bliss!

Brisk business at all the counters selling Onam snacks and dishes.The big vessel is aravana payasam (a special food prepared at Ayyappan Temples)

There is nothing that is not available to buy these days, there is kaalan prepared in bottles. There are various pickles, snacks, injipuli all sold in bottles, you can easily prepare the feast without much work.

Snack items, for the street-tired and the shop-tired.

Onam is a harvest festival dotted with myths and legends and this is just a tiny piece of the harvest waiting to be sold to be made to Onam dishes at homes. This is the season when Govt sponsored farmers market springs up, have agriculture festivals and Kerala would smell like a giant vegetable.

Happy Onam!

Upstairs - Italian Cuisine

Strolling through the street of Santa Cruz Basilica at Ft Kochi, at the turn of the street corner, one could get a whiff of olive oil and mozzarella, the evening breeze carrying it down through a narrow stairway, part of an old house, painted in simple blue and white, the windows decorated in devil's ivy, in old earthen pots.


You climb upstairs to reach Upstairs, a homely Italian twist to Fort Kochi, run by Fabio Batistatti, who was already a cook in Italy but wanted to bring some Italian flavor to the historic town. From the windows of the one room diner, you could clearly get a good view of the old Basilica just across the road, rosaries and hymns reaching you as a backdrop to the simple decor, reminding you of Italy, her alleys of hymns and old churches. The place Fabio chose to run his restaurant couldn't get more authentic than that.

It has a wide varying menu of original Italian food, from the Antipasto to the original yummy Affogato. They have various pastas and the lasagnas, and fresh thin crust Pizzas and breads baked daily. It must be really hard to run an Italian restaurant with the minimal availability of original Italian ingredients in Cochin. They import their Salamis and Mozzarella of course and Fabio visits Italy every year for couple of months.

(Those are just the specials for the day from their wide ranging menu)

I had ordered a simple Bruschetta with Salami and Mozzarella and a cup of cappuccino to wash it down. After Indian cuisines, I love Italian cuisine as obvious from my trip to Italy for a Pizza :), I would want more olive oil dripped into my bread, the Bruschetta grilled a tad harder. Other than that, it was Italy all over again! My cappuccino was perfect. It is a simple unpretentious place and they do mean food!

It cost me 180 Indian rupees for the Bruschetta and 50 rupees for the cappuccino. I inquired for the famous Italian gelatos and they didn't have that! (ah!)

This restaurant is in its fourth season, closed on the months of May and June.

Open for dinner from 6 to 10, 8-11 for breakfast and noon to 3 for lunch.

Buon appetito!

(Series Reading.
1. A Princess Story )

A Princess Story

Cochin is considered to be the Queen of Arabian Sea, then Ft. Kochi must be her darling little princess. (It has a Princess Street too).

If one more time I see a Kerala picture with green, with Chinese fishing nets, I would hit my head somewhere. I am exhausted telling people, Kerala is not all about greenery to die for, and coconuts to eat for, that we have much much more. The best place to really get the message across is of course my blog and there it is, me writing about Kerala -- the nongreen version, of course from a foodie stand point. And where else to start, other than about Cochin, and her little princess.


As you stroll down the quiet streets of Ft Kochi, you are amazed by the non hustle, the non bustle, which is so much Cochin. Keeping in mind of Kerala's infamous harthals, you would be wondering whether, it is another harthal day, for you see only very few people, most of them tourists, some from North India and most from Europe. You hear a lot of languages from Kashmiri to Swedish, people idling round like this is their last home, like they have reached the end of the World and have no plans to move out. Tourists with books lazing around on window sills are a constant sight you have to grow comfortable with. I mean don't they have to plane to catch?

Ft. Kochi is not for the tourists, but for the traveler. You don't click pictures, you just breathe in the culture. There are small strange alleys, green moss on old windows, peeled walls, and food!

Before I write about three cute restaurants I visited, Teapot, Kashi Art Cafe and Upstairs, as an introductory post, wanted to showcase a decent restaurant which kind of sits on the edge of Fort Cochin boundary.

Fort Queen is yet another touristy restaurant, all the bells and whistles intact, with the ever present traditional Kerala Menu and the continental breakfasts eying the European traveler, but what caught my eye was the price tag. Food was fresh, delicious and considering other restaurants in and around Cochin, the price was on the lower side.

Ah? Why? and the manager kinda said, We are new, trying to catch up on the market and then we would hike up the prices (Okez, I spiced it up on what he actually said, but that is what he meant) ;)

The food was a lunch buffet, with items like a delicious Travancore Fish Curry, Jodhpuri Okra and freshly made Appams/Naan/Roti. All for a low range price tag of 150 Indian Rupees.


The guy was so shy while I clicked a pic :). He was making delicious appams for us.

Palm Sunday Kozhukkatta

There was this Sunday at church where we kids could play, play with smooth cream and green leaves, curl it up into shapes, making crosses, or just folding it until the brown creases show through and pretend they were work of art – all the while parents wouldn’t mind as long as we didn’t destroy the leaves or start a sword fight or trying to hold the thinner ends and try to fish or make them unholy by making them touch ground. It was this special day when you make kozhukkattas the previous night, it was not for the kozhukkattas but for the making and rolling and the filling and the smacking by our moms for dropping them on the ground that we waited for this special day. It is called Palm Sunday where Catholics celebrate the remembrance of arrival of Christ on a donkey into Jerusalem where the people waved and welcomed him with palm leaves singing Hosana (hence the name Hosana Sunday in Malayalam).

Certain areas in Kerala like Trichur make kozhukkata, others make pachoru (sweetened rice), and some others make avalnurukku, -- basically something sweet for this special day.

Today, Palm Sunday is the start of the Holy Week, a week full of ceremonies before Easter. It was surprising to me that Good Friday was not a Holiday in U.S, probably because you couldn’t wish Happy Good Friday and sell some stuff, like a Good Friday Fairy or something at McDonalds like a Good Friday Burger. Good Friday, though the name is suggestive of something good happening is not ‘good’ but a sad Friday since that’s the day Christ was crucified, and please don’t wish anyone Happy Good Friday since my friends have done that to me.

This recipe is for kozhukkatta. It is steamed rice dumplings filled with sweet coconut

Rice Flour used for making Appams – 1 cup (i.e. roasted and powdered rice flour)
Water – 2 cups
Ghee – 1 tsp
Salt

Mix the below list of ingredients with hand thoroughly and keep aside.
Cardamom powder – ½ tsp
Cumin – 1 tsp
Freshly grated coconut – 1 cup
1/2 cup jaggery

Bring water to a boil and take off from heat, add salt and ghee. Now slowly add rice flour ¼ cup at a time and make it to a smooth ball. Knead it well. You should be able to make small balls and it should stick. Divide dough to equal portions and make small balls. The important thing is to have a medium sized ball, since the filling will make it bigger and when you steam them, it won’t cook well.

Keep aside ½ cup of freshly squeezed coconut milk to stick the ends of the dough balls and to fill any holes that form. You can either make small balls and flatten them out and fill them with the coconut mixture or you can make a big depression inside the ball and fill it up. Dip your fingers in the coconut milk occasionally so that it is easier to handle the dough. Make sure the dough is lighter when you fill them with coconut mixture.

Steam them in idli cookers for 10 or 15 minutes. Serve with coconut milk as a dipping sauce. Refrigerate the leftovers for no more than one day.

Please dont wish me Happy Palm Sunday too, for there are some ceremonies and traditions where you just dont have to wish :-)

A brave woman’s journey

This is the first time I am making crabs in my life. I was (still a little) dead scared of these creatures. First of all, they look so scary and second you need to buy them fresh, oh my god! But I have eaten them so many times, once I ate so much, chewing even on the shells, I got a stomach ache. I just love to eat them.

But then to prepare, eeeewwwww! I don’t like the feeling of being scared. So, I put on my Brave Woman cap and decided to go and buy them. First I thought, I would go alone, I could get someone at the store to help me in getting those live ones into a bag, but then the thought of driving back with the creatures still alive in my car didn’t seem a good idea.

So, I got the help of my dear husband, who was teasing me all the way and even after eating. Grrrrrr! Now that will go down as a story in our family get together. He hasn’t finished teasing me on how I run when I see live fishes on the hook when he goes fishing. Hmph!!!

So what?? Big deal!! At least I prepared it. *sticking out my tongue*

Crab season typically starts when the weather turns colder. I bought blue crabs. I have no idea how to select a good one, but I think the best way is to choose a one that has all the legs and is huge and is alive and kicking. The live ones crawl to the bottom, so it is good to place the bucket in a slanting position to get the ones at the bottom. (Psst, all these I was watching other smarties do at the store :P)

Now pick them up, inspect and drop into your bag. And if you are like me, occasionally scream and jump when someone is doing that for you and get the entire store laughing at you. Very Funny! It is said, the crabs like these voice massages!

Bring them home, get the largest pot that would fit them all and keep water for boiling and add ½ tsp of turmeric powder and one whole lime squeezed. When the water is boiling, drop them all one by one holding each with a lengthyyy tongs. The blue crabs will turn orange and immediately immerse them in cold water. This will make the crab meat firmer for our curry.

Now is the cleaning process, you would really need to watch this live. If I can, next time I will put up a video of someone else cleaning! hehehe.

First break off all the legs, discard the tiniest legs at the end that has no flesh. Then with a knife, take off the orange outer shell by just poking at the bottom and pulling it apart. Clean out everything that doesn’t look right. I think some of it is good, but if you are not sure, except for the large chunks of meat, clean it out thoroughly. Below is the picture of the cleaned crab. If you want, you can cut through the middle and make these into two.

Below is a wonderful recipe for Crab in spiced and fried coconut paste.

This is for 8 blue crabs.
Grated Coconut – 2 cups.
Shallots – ½ cup

Heat 2 tsp of oil, Saute grated coconut until it turns brown in very low heat. Add shallots, 2 sprigs of curry leaves, 7 crushed garlic pods with the skin, 4 tsp of freshly grounded meat masala powder, 1 tsp of chili powder, 1/4 tsp turmeric powder.

Grind to a smooth paste.

Heat oil in a flat open pan, splutter mustard seeds, and add 2 fresh sprigs of curry leaves. Sauté 1 diced onion until brown, add 1 tablespoon diced ginger, 2 tomatoes chopped and add enough salt. Add some hot water to this paste and cook for 5 minutes until it comes to a boil. Add the crabs and the legs. Mix them thoroughly so that the paste covers the crabs, close and cook for some 10 minutes in medium heat.

Serve with rice or bread. You would really need to know the art of eating to eat a crab.

Kuzhalappam

Hey, wont it be great to have an event for Snacks with holes!

Kuzhalappam or Kozhalappam might be a distant cousin of those donuts and those uzhunnu vadas, if the hole is vital part of the dna of snacks. I am sure they come up with these holes just to fancy the kids, for the kids to get excited, wear it round their fingers like a giant diamond ring, and then munch on them. Oh what a wonderful life it would be if we could be kids again.

It is easier to make and stays longer makes it a Christmas time favorite of mine, since I can prepare it well ahead. The crunchy crunchiness and all those crumbs on the floor and around your mouth, oh what a way to welcome wintry Christmas.

Take 2 cups of white rice flour, mix ¼ cup of fresh shredded coconut. This will make the rice flour get some of the wetness of the shredded coconut. Now grind together 2 shallots, a pinch of cumin seeds, 2 pods of garlic, a single whole pepper. I had all the tendency to add a curry leaf, but I resisted it. Try it if you want.

Heat a flat saucepan or a uruli, heat the rice mixture in very low heat to dry the powder slightly, Add salt and the ground mixture and slowly add thick coconut milk in teaspoons so that it get wet slowly. When you feel the consistency is good enough to make soft balls, take from heat.

Now knead the dough thoroughly for some 20 minutes. If you have a Kitchen Aid (HAHA! SHOW OFF) use it now in low speed for some 8 minutes! :)

When the dough is almost ready, add 1 tsp of sesame seeds to this mix. I added white, but black sesame is preferred.

Make small balls, flatten them out in your hand to very thin, but manageable.

You can either roll some wax paper on a stick or can use the stem of a banana leaf to roll them out as shown in the pictures.

The thing you have to make sure is the rolls are very thin, so that the insides also gets fried properly.

Heat coconut oil and add them. Fry them till golden brown.

I was trying different levels of crispiness while frying, that’s why you see two different colors. I liked the lighter one better.

You can store them airtight for two or three weeks. Those little binoculars you can eat. Yummy!

Sausage Stuffed Egg Rolls

Christmas and New Year Party Time! Easy appetizers!

Buy some sausages, dice them up, sauté them in oil, add some pepper, add some shredded vegetables. Wrap them in pre-made egg roll sheets. I tried to bake some of them, it didn’t come out good, so switched to deep frying them.

Let them pictures speak.