Achappam

Think this is the only snack that's made with a hot iron dipped into hot oil in India. Most of the other snacks we pour the batter directly into oil. Also, it is a little strange that this snack is a favorite mostly among Kerala Christians. So I start looking for it, I find something similar in Thailand, then out of all the places Scandinavia and then rest of Europe -- all made with rosette stone. Aha! It would have been brought in by the missionaries. And the snack resembles the shape of a Rosette.

Achappam aptly named as a snack made with achu, which means mold.

This one is one easy recipe you wouldn't think from the complex shapes. I always thought this is going to be a very difficult one which I would never get right. I was wronnnggg. What you need is an achappam mold. I got this from Kerala. The mold dangles from the handle.

(Recipe adapted from K.M Mathew's pachakarama)

White rice flour powdered fine - 1/2 kilo.
Egg - 2
Freshly squeezed coconut milk - 2 cups.
Sugar - 1 cup
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp
Salt - just to adjust taste
Black sesame seeds - 2 tsp
Cumin seeds - 1 tsp

Beat the egg well and add to the flour along with coconut milk. Dont pour the entire coconut milk at one go. Slowly add to the flour.

The batter should be thicker than the dosa batter but dippable and pourable. Add rest of the ingredients, adjust salt or sugar accordingly. If you add too much sugar, it wont come off the mold. So first dont add the give sugar. Try with some and then add and adjust.

The most interesting part is the making. You have to get this right with some practice, like, say 5 minutes :)

Heat vegetable oil with the iron mold dipped in.

The oil should not smoke, but should be hot hot.

Now, dip the mold into the batter, only half way of the rosette shape. Dont dip it completely. If you are unsure just dip it lightly. Then put it into the oil and just shake it a little bit or use a fork. If everything is good, a little shake and nudge is all it requires to come off the mold and into the oil. Then dip the mold again into the oil, and into the batter. The key is the mold should be hot and with the oil. So the batter will barely cling to it until we dip it again in oil so it will release.

Fry until it turns color lightly and take off from the oil and strain the oil from the snack using a tissue covered plate.

Jackfruit seeds and Mango

I was in the mood of a quick simple dish, that can wash away homesickness. And it would be Jackfruit seeds along with sour mangoes in a simple coconut gravy. Both are not in season, so I open my freezer.

Half kilo jackfruit seeds, cooked. I bought the frozen one from store. But if you have them fresh, you would need to peel the hard skin and the soft brown skin and cook them thorough.


Add 2 cups of mango pieces and enough water to the cooked jackfruit seeds and when mangoes are done, add 1 tsp chili powder, 1/4 tsp turmeric powder, coconut ground to a paste 1 cup and enough salt. As the coconut mix starts to boil, reduce heat to a min, wait for 5 minutes and take from heat. Mangoes should not bee too sour but enough to tingle your tongue.

Heat 2 tsp of coconut oil, when it starts to splutter, to this add 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 sprig of curry leaves, two dry red chili. Saute well and then add to the jackfruit mango gravy. Serve hot with boiled rice.

Ah! it smells like rain.

Palm Jaggery

It is a type of jaggery(sugar) produced locally from a special type of palm, Palmyra Palm. Found abundant in Palakkad district in Kerala, made famous by O.V. Vijayan’s masterpiece novel ‘The Legends of Khasak’.
This sugar could be consumed by the diabetic and the kids with no side effects of white sugar, says folklore.

Small cuts are made into the head portion of the palm and the sap is collected. This is used as liquor and is heated and made into jaggery which is supposed to have medicinal qualities. Jaggery contains a lot of iron and other minerals.

I bought some from India. This type of sugar comes as solid blocks, so every time you need it, you would have to shave thin slices and then heat them which is time consuming.

So what I do is, pound them into pieces,


add 1 cup of water


for 1 kilo of sugar and boil it.



When every piece is dissolved, boil it for 5 more minutes stirring continuously in low flame until it becomes a caramel consistency. Do not forget to strain the liquid.

Store it in refrigerator. Add a teaspoon to black coffee. It is called karipetti kaappi. That's coffee with a whole new meaning.

Tea-poetry

Ever wondered where those tooth fairies and little elves have tea? Ever dreamed endlessly watching the rain pour down heavily holding a hot cup of tea? Ever longed for a place where you could get drunk in TEA? Then, come with me to Peter Celia Street at Fort Cochin, Kerala to a dreamy tea spot called, ah surprise "Teapot".

The ambiance of this little tea-poetry is to die for. Wooden cartons which were used to transport Tea are refurbished as tiny little tables.

Old tea cups reborn as wind chimes decorating the entrance doors. A large wide tea bush with a glass top serves as a table for five. Teapots of various sizes and shades and materials, some hung from the ceiling, some arranged on the sills. A clock that strikes T's.


Large hats used by workers at the tea plantations to protect themselves from the sun decorate the walls. Tea paintings, Tea stories, Tea sale prints on jute bags -- you dream it, they have them all. They have painstakingly made a wide range of collection of all kinds of tea paraphernalia which would take you hours to finish swooning over, of course over a cup of tea, a fifteen different varieties. The walls are painted in mustard, or you could say, could be a tea stain. :)

There are not many tea spots, thumping their chests proudly displaying the true tea spirit in Kerala, though tea is available easily than water at small shacks to big hotels. Teapot tries to fill that void and does it with élan. Quizzed the owner, Sanjay Damodaran, of the brainwave behind the tiny tables and that simple man said, "You know I wanted something easy to lift and move".

Many people have fallen in love with the place. There is a guy who donated his tea pot collections, a poet from New york who churned a poem for this place, people from all over the World disguised as tourists waiting to have that perfect cup of tea at this dreamy hang-out.

I ordered for a samosa which tasted too North Indian for me(pardon me for being divisive, but about food my friends I don't lie) and a Teapot Special tea, that cost me 30 and 40 India rupees respectively.

(Many thanks to the ace photographer Thulasi Kakkat for the photographs while I was enjoying my tea)

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 :-)

Nature's Shampoo (Thaali)

This is not about food. I can eat all I want, but who will take care of my hair? :-) I just want to note down some Kerala traditions.

Malayalee women are known to have abundant lustrous long, a little curly and dark black hair. We massage our hair and scalp with a little coconut oil everyday and wash it off. Many wonder how we do it everyday. But once you get used to the routine it is just a normal thing as brushing your teeth.

Earlier, that is even before my grandmother, kondakettal was the fashion.

Source Excerpt: Kondakettal (hair being bunched upon the left side of the head with strands of jasmine flowers circling it) was accepted as the coiffure of the art form. In any old picture of traditional Kerala women one can see this coiffure, let alone the royal women in Ravi Varma paintings.

This is a movie still of a recent Malayalam movie (Ananthabhadram). Wanted to show you the old hair style. No, this is not how we wear our hair now. :-)

Couple of years ago, short hair became fashionable and there were many Western type hair styles. I remember Remo in Cochin for a show and looking around wondered what happened to the stories of Malayalee women with long hair because all he could see were short haired women. Hehehe. However, now long hair is back in fashion.I never cut my hair short, but honestly few times I have had the urge to do so. But you know once you cut it; it will take years to grow it to the same length.

Hibiscus plants are abundant in each and every Kerala home. We make a shampoo out of it. It is so simple to make and very good for your hair. Pluck some hibiscus leaves, like a handful and put it in like one cup water. Shred or grind it in a mixer or what I do is, I just squeeze squeeze with my hand while watching TV. Then strain the thick juice which is a little slimy and use it to wash my hair. No need to use anything else. You can refrigerate this upto one week. This is known as thaali in Malayalam.

If you continuously use it for more than a week, your hair just turns sooo soft and healthy.