Semiya Payasam

There is a silly rumor out there that this girl InjiPennu of Ginger and Mango doesn’t know much of cooking and she makes very easy dishes which won’t take more than 15 minutes. Well, ahem. It is not because I don’t know okay, I work full time as a senior chef at a French Restaurant cooking up ohlala dishes, I purposely take it easy and blog the easiest everyday ones. I have my dear friend RP of MyWorkshop as an alibi to this claim. (RP, keep quiet!)

So, here comes a very complicated dish to shut all those rumor mills.

Buy a packet of readymade semiya payasam from some Indian shop, Double Horse brand is very good.

Follow the instructions or boil two litre of milk, empty the packet and cook it until done that is 15 minutes. That’s it, the contents of the packet has everything except milk.

That’s it, sweet payasam ready.

Payasam is Kerala’s signature traditional dessert. Any feast ends in payasam. Though Semiya is not really traditional, it is the easiest payasam and so easy to cook up, even without readymade semiya packets. Semiya is Malayalm for Vermicelli.

If you buy plain semiya, boil two litres of milk, roast the smeiya in ghee until they turn light brown (Thanks Bindu for reminding of this in the comments), cook 1.5 cup semiya in the milk, add sugar and keep stirring until the milk reduces to a three quarter of the original.

Heat 3 tsp of ghee, roast 3 tsp raisins, and keep aside. In the same ghee, roast 2 tsp whole cashew nuts and add everything with a little cardamom powder (cardamom seeds powdered) to the dish and mix. That’s it.

Vaazhakkoombu Thoran or Banana Flower Fry

There are a lot of blog posts by fellow bloggers for this banana flower side dish. But is there one with a banana flower plucked from your own banana plant? :-)

Well, this is my first entry of the GBP Summer 2007, hosted by dear Deepz at LetzCook.

A banana flower side dish from my garden. Vaazhakkoombu thoran. Vaazhakkoombu is Malayalam for banana flower.

Remember this Odissi dancer? It has grown and become a big banana plant. I had some honey from the same.

When the bananas start to mature, you can break off the flower from the banana bunch(?).

Banana flowers are without a doubt extremely nutritious with all that fiber content. It is a very tasty dish when prepared properly. The main thing one need to take care is the outer violet or res skin. Do not include that. It will taste bitter. Peel the skin until you reach the crème colored inside.

Cut of the stalk or the end-portion, dice them very small. If you have only one banana flower the amount will be very less when you cook it. So, I add whole moong beans.

Banana Flower diced and immediately immersed in water with a little turmeric. This keeps the color intact or the diced pieces will turn black. – 2 cups
Cooked whole mong beans (Cook this in a pressure cooker) – 1 cup
Shallots – ½ cup
Green chilies slit – 4
Garlic with skin crushed – 2 pod

Heat 3 tsp oil, add ½ tsp mustard seeds. When they splutter, add one whole red chili, add 1 sprig of curry leaves, and add the garlic. When garlic turns slight brown, add shallots and sauté them until translucent.

Add banana flower, add ½ tsp turmeric powder, enough salt, mix and cook covered in low flame for 5 minutes. Add moong beans and ½ cup coconut and cook covered for another ten minutes.

Cook in high heat for tow or three minutes uncovered to dry the dish.

Serve with roti or rice.

Okay, how are your plants doing? Are they all getting ready to enter GBP 2007?

Spring...and a good camera...

Just for this day, I got hold of my cousins digital point and shoot and had a riot taking picures of our garden which is starting to bloom again this Spring. Was clicking frantically until the battery was dead. hehehe.

Have uploaded them on my Malayalam blog.

Here is the link.

Mutton Stew

Most Malayalee Christian families make Stew as an accompaniment with the soft and lacy paalappam. Kerala Mutton Stew without any doubt is a completely Western dish changed to adapt to the Malayalee palate. I don’t need to check any history but the basic method and soul of this dish screams foreign. Hence, Stew is spice-less according to Indian standards.

I was not a big fan of this watery version of a mutton curry as I called it ealier. My mom too hated it and I don't remember her cooking it ever. Though I didn’t mind eating it, I never had any interest in cooking it. Which Malayalee wants to cook something where you don’t have to fry some spices which will burn your nose, grind some spices which will burn your hands while mixing it to the dish? Whenever I checked the recipe it had an ingredient ‘flour’ or maida (as we call it). Nah! I am not going to put flour into a Kerala dish.

Then one day I was bullied. “You cook mutton stew!” shouted the indispensable potluck 'head' one fine day in an obscure meeting of housewives.

I want to cook something complicated, I pleaded. But they were adamant.

So I checked the recipes books and liked one written by the old faithful Mrs. K.M Mathew.

I am not gloating here, but seriously I liked what I made. It is not watery if you cook it properly. It is not spice less if you follow the instructions and sneak in a little more pepper. Viola! I love stew. I now make it regularly as an accompaniment to appam. My husband and his whole family love gravies. So he loves stew since he can make his fingers swim in the gravy unlike any other dishes. Stew is technically supposed to have lot of gravy than any other curry.

Mutton – Cut into bite sized pieces. Yes, bones are welcome. – 3 cups
Cinnamon sticks – 1 inch length as whole – 2
Clove – 10
Green Cardamom whole – 8
Whole black pepper – ¼ cup crushed. Do not grind, just crush.

Onion diced – ½ cup
Green chilies slit – 6
Ginger diced very thin – 1 table spoon
Garlic – 20 pods
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Potato – 1 cup

Unbleached All purpose flour – 1 table spoon
Vinegar – 1.5 teaspoon

Fresh Thick Coconut milk Cream – ½ cup
Coconut milk thinner – 3 cups
(If using canned coconut milk, take out the crème from the top without shaking the tin. This will be the thick coconut milk)

Heat 5 tsp oil, in low flame sauté the Cinnamon sticks, cardamom, clove and black pepper. Sauté onion, green chilies, ginger and garlic diced, and curry leaves. Keep aside this whole spice mix.

Heat 2 tsp oil, add flour and sauté again for two minutes in low flame. Add the mutton and sauté again. Add vinegar and enough salt and cook this meat in thin coconut milk. Cook in medium flame. Stews are supposed to be cooked slowly, but if the mutton is too hard, cook it for ten minutes in a pot and then cook it in the pressure cooker.

When meat is 3/4th done, add the sautéed whole spice mix and the potatoes. Add 1.5 teaspoon of vinegar again into this and add salt again. Cook covered until meat is well done. Lower the flame completely, add the thick coconut milk and add 15 count whole black pepper. Keep for one minute and remove from heat.

Whenever thick coconut milk is added to any dish, make sure the milk gets only lightly warm. It shouldn’t be boiled. This you should make sure depending on the type of stove you use. If you use a heating coil, make sure you pot doesn’t sit on the coil after switched off.

Serve with rice or appam or any other rice based dishes. Since this dish is very mild in spices, you can turn up the heat by increasing the crushed pepper.

Recipe source: Mrs. K.M Mathew Cook books.

Also read:
Shynees Mutton Ishtu
Bee's Vegetable Ishtu

Guess

An Indian woman and her kitchen cannot live without me. But I am too bitter to eat. What am I?

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.

GBP Announcement

We can grow veggies in Winter
We can grow veggies in Winter
(repeat after me please)

Don't believe me? Please check out the wonderful Green Blog Project Winter 2007 Round Up by the lovely Mandira of Ahaar.

Missed the deadline for Winter. You mean, it is already Spring there? Dont worry. We have one coming up on Summer, GBP Summer 2007. Who is hosting it? Ah! I tricked Deepz into doing that :).

If you just landed from another planet, check out What is GBP all about? :)

Break!

(Trying to post this via email.)

On a break! (Yes, I am broke too!) :-)

Keep all those dishes warm until I get back home. tata. cee you. bye bye.

Sour Ginger / PuliInji

I had lot of plans for Winter GBP including carrots, cabbage etc. But since I got sick, everything flopped. But hope there are some entries for those veggies this coming GBP round-up.

I only have one entry for this Winter round-up. Mandira of Ahar is hosting this year's Winter GBP. Deadline is on April 10 2007.

Last year we had a wonderful GBP round-up with 41 entries. It was fantastic! (I lost my old post with around 40 plus comments on my old blog when Blogger beta died on me. Could recover only the post but not those valuable comments) :(

Inji is Malayalam for Ginger. If you know how to type Ginger, you will be bombarded with lot of information.

An old article from Indian Express caught my attention,

Excerpt:Cochin ginger , still considered the finest of ginger varieties by exporters .

Cochin ginger is second only to the legendary Jamaican ginger for its suitability for drying. While most of the ginger available in India now is suited only to be used as vegetable, low fiber content has made the Cochin ginger an all-time favorite with exporters.

Even though Ginger is from China, Ginger cultivated in Kerala has an exclusive flavor, due to the uniqueness in soil. It is smaller in size, has less fiber and has less water content than the commonly found variety. Potency of Kerala ginger is double fold than the other varieties.I had planted some ginger in a pot six months ago. The leaves die when ginger is mature.

As usual, there are many methods to make Sour Ginger or Puli Inji. I have heard Kerala Brahmins don’t add coriander seeds to this dish. My version has coriander seeds. This method of preparation is from Trichur or towards Northern Kerala. If you move towards the South, they add coconut pieces to this dish and preparation is slightly different. However this is the best way of preparation for longer shelf life.

Ginger scraped and cleaned cut into 2 inch pieces crushed into thin fiber like pieces. Crushed is the word here, Do not use a food processor and make a paste please. – 1 cup.

Whole coriander seeds – 3 tsp, Fenugreek seeds – ¼ tsp, Chili powder or red dry whole chilies – 1 tsp, Mustard Seeds – ¼ tsp. Roast everything in 1 tsp gingelly oil for one minute. If chili powder is used, add it towards the end and take off from fire immediately.
Grind to a watery paste with tamarind water (3 inch tamarind piece soaked in 1 cup of warm water and strained).

Shallow fry ginger in coconut oil until light brown. Strain the oil. In a non-reactive cooking pot, add fried ginger and the tamarind paste, salt and 2 cups of water and let it boil in high flame. Do not close with lid. Remove from fire when the dish thickens and add 2 tsp of jaggery to balance the flavors.

Heat 1 tsp of coconut oil (can use the strained oil from frying ginger), splutter 1 tsp mustard seeds, saute 1 sprig of curry leaves, ¼ tsp of fenugreek seeds. Add to the dish. Serve with rice.Sour Ginger prepared this way stores well for one month in your refrigerator and a whole week outside. This is served like a pickle or condiment. It is said, this is equivalent to 101 curries. The taste is so unique and delicious; if you ever taste it once; a slight memory of this dish creates floods in your mouth. I can confidently challenge anyone to come up with a dish in ginger better than this.

If you have never tasted this simple yet World’s best recipe on ginger, do try.

Curd v. Yogurt

Ref: Pulisseri comments

Curd is an Indian variety of Yogurt. Look what Wiki says,

Dahi yoghurt of the Indian subcontinent is known for its characteristic taste and consistency. The English term for a specific yoghurt in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan is curd.

Even if Wiki didn’t say that, I was pretty sure about it.

Curd’s texture, smell, taste is way different from the yogurt you get in U.S. I had painful cravings for pulisseris when I was curd-less in my life in U.S. I will try to make pulisseris with yogurt and it will end up pathetic. First the coconut taste will dominate and second there will be no puli (sour) in the dish which is a must. My life was incomplete and puli-less. Since I used to have longer stopovers from India to U.S, bringing curd culture was very difficult. Then I chanced upon a curd culture from a temple and my life has never been the same.Some tips and tricks. What you should do when you get hold of that curd culture to keep it alive? First make a large container of curd. Then distribute it all your friends. Yes, I know, I know...but this is not for the ‘sharing’ thing, but it is for keeping the curd culture alive when you are on a vacation or you just spoiled the entire batch of curd etc. But you will come across as a sharing angel, hehehe. Devious, uh?

How to obtain curd culture in U.S?

Temples are good source if they have kitchens. In U.S most temples are welcome to everybody. So go ahead, visit the beautiful temples and ask someone to show you the kitchen. I am sure you will be helped. We Indians are good and helpful people, especially inside the temple premises. hehehehe

Visit Bee’s information about curd. I still doubt whether she has the authentic curd until I have tasted it. ;)

What next? I will send you the curd culture. Yes, I will do it; if you leave me the address as a comment here (I am moderating comments so your address will not be revealed).

I am willing to ship it in next day air to one person. If someone is willing to pay the shipping costs, I will ship it to more people. But the first person who asks me will get it free. Leave a comment here with your postal address. You should have a blog or I should know you at least from your comments here and there. I am not going to ship it to complete strangers. Sorry.

When you get it, please ship to someone else and pay it forward. Let the Curd spread! Let us stop the invasion of Yogurt in our lives. Hehehe.

You cannot make pulisseris with yogurt you get in US. End of discussion. :-) . One more time someone tells me U.S yogurt is curd, grr….

Plantain Pulisseri

I can safely say most part of authentic Kerala cuisine is curd based. We love our pulisseris. We make it in a hundred different ways with a hundred different ingredients. Ah-ha! I know, if you are in U.S, you are thinking of something called yogurt. Nope, Nah! Yogurt is not curd. Phlueeze.

How to make Curd? Read Dhanya or Indira. I make mine in full throttle whole milk.

Where to get the real Indian curd active culture? If you have a Hindu temple in your state, mostly their kitchen will have it. Beg, borrow, steal!

Or, next time bring it from India if you will reach home in 24 hours. Mix a little bit of active culture with milk and throw it into your suitcase, it would turn curd by the time you reach U.S if you don’t have any lengthy stopovers.

You cannot make this dish with yogurt. You have to have curd, the real sour curd.Pulisseri in Malayalam means ‘sour dish’.

Two Raw Plantains – Wash thoroughly but do not take off the skin. Just scrape out the protruding rims on the skin. The skin gives it a very unique taste. Cut them into 2 inch pieces. Cook them thoroughly with a little salt and ¼ tsp turmeric powder in water. Cook until done.

Grind together 1 cup coconut, ½ tsp cumin seeds, 5 green chilies into a fine paste. Add to the cooked plantains. When it boils, lower the flame and cook for another ten minutes. With lowered flame, add 4 cups of beaten curd to this and keep on stirring until the curd is just warm to touch. Do not boil it.

Take off immediately from heat.

Heat 1 tsp coconut oil, splutter ½ tsp mustard seeds, 2 sprigs of curry leaves, 2 red chili split, ½ tsp fenugreek seeds in that order. Add to the dish.

Serve with rice.

Shrimp with Mango

Note: Yahoo Portal Content Theft Identification Parade. Check it out!.

I really want to break free from this 'curry' tag given to all our dishes. Almost all Indian dishes are universally tagged as 'curry'. No, every Indian dish is definitely not a curry. “We have different names!" Can’t you hear them scream? I can.

So, it is just Shrimp with Mango, Malayalam name for chemmeenum mangayum.

Shrimp is not Prawn. I remember having an argument with my boss at a restaurant and me googling the whole Internet for information. Before I moved to U.S, there existed only one i.e. prawns. In U.S however everything is a shrimp.

Chemmeen, smaller size of prawns is much tastier. Kochi in Kerala, India is very famous for its shrimps, prawns, tiger prawns harvesting. Kerala’s backwaters are perfect for prawn harvesting. However most of the catch is exported and we locals don’t even get to see them. In India, Shrimp or Prawns harvest season is normally from February to March. That’s the only time you get them a little cheap.

This shellfish is a delicacy everywhere in the World. It is said to be a little high in cholesterol. Clean shrimp. Take out the outer shell, pinch out its head and tail. Cleaning shrimp this way is called as chemeen nulluka or pinching shrimp if translated from Malayalam. This phrase is also used to tease Christians who miss the head and tail of a Sunday mass. Try to pinch the head and pull out the dark vein that runs through the middle. Or, just part the belly and take out the vein. Wash thoroughly.

For 3 cups of cleaned shrimp,
Mango slices (I buy frozen mango slices from Delight Brand, since it is difficult to get sour green mangoes in U.S) – cut into 2 inch. Mango should be sour. – 1 cup

Grind together 1 cup of fresh grated coconut, 1 tsp fenugreek seeds, 3 tsp red chili powder, 2 tsp coriander seeds, ½ tsp turmeric powder with enough salt. Grind to a fine paste with 1 cup of water.

Add the coconut paste to the shrimp and mango. Add 6 tsp of garlic diced, 3 tsp of ginger grated, 1/4 cup of shallots diced. Add enough salt and cook everything until it boils. Adjust to medium heat and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes uncovered.
Do not overoook shrimp.

1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 shallot diced thin and round, 1 spring of curry leaves, 2 whole dry red chili split into two. Sauté in 2 tsp of coconut oil when hot. Sauté until the shallots turn brown. Add to the dish.

Serve with rice.

Honey

I remember…

…the times when I was a little kid, asking the taller ones in the family to get me the small cluster of flowers underneath each crimson cover of a banana blossom, from those tall banana plants…please..daddy..please..one more we will open?

…getting all excited and going from one banana plant to another in search of this honey in the early mornings, the big leaves of the plant wet in yesterday’s rain…

…sucking the honey from its cute little pouches…sucking until my eyes come out, my cheeks become hollow…sucking on my lips to get the last bit of that pure honey…

I remember…home…soaked in honey…

Can you see the small white pouch? That’s where the honey is stored in a banana plant’s flower.

Duck gravy Kerala style

While we were living in Singapore I have had the fortune to savor the famous Pekin duck. A whole duck, basted with lot of spices, slowly roasted to perfection. Carved duck meat is then rolled into paperthin rice papers and served. It is worth a visit to Singapore or China only for this. Please don’t try Pekin Duck at P F Chang’s in U.S. They have no clue how to make Pekin duck.

Duck meat is a delicacy mainly due to its scarcity. Fresh duck meat is available here in U.S, a little expensive, but we get them extremely fresh from duck farms out here. We point to a whole live duck gobbling around and they would kill and clean it for us. That fresh!

Duck meat is harder, so you would have to cook it longer. While cutting or cleaning the duck, you will realize how hard the meat is than chicken. Accordingly, use more time in cooking duck meat. Check Asian or other specialty stores for duck meat.

Here is a Kerala style recipe for preparing duck. (You can use this method for any poultry)Cut and clean into bite sized pieces. Keeping or removing the skin is up to you and depending on the duck you get. If duck is fatty, don’t keep the skin. If not fatty, keep the skin.

For 3 cups of duck,

3 tsp of garlic and 3tsp of ginger grated and made to a paste
1 cup of onion

Heat oil, Saute onion and when translucent, add ginger garlic paste, 4 green chilies diced, 2 sprigs of curry leaves. Add ½ tsp of turmeric powder and salt. Sauté well.

Dry roast 6 tsp coriander seeds, 4 cardamom, 10 cloves, 1 tsp mace, 2 stick of cinnamon and grind dry. Add this and 2 tsp of red chili powder to the onions and mix and saute for one minute. Add the cleaned duck and mix well and add 3 tbsp of water and enough salt cook well. Cook until the meat is very soft.

Now, Roast 1 cup of coconut, 3 pods of garlic and 1 sprig of curry leaves until light brown. Grind this to a paste.

Heat oil, sauté ½ cup diced onion until brown, and then add ½ cup diced tomatoes and ½ cup potatoes and add the ground coconut mixture with 1 cup of water. When it boils, add the cooked duck and cook with lid open until the gravy is thick.Serve with rice or roti.

Cabbage Thoran

What is in a simple cabbage thoran? It is the simplest thing anyone can do. Why blog about it then?

There might be one new wife out there, a new student out there missing home and mama terribly, frantically looking and searching and thinking what to do with this whole cabbage he or she just bought it from the shop. She/he would have tasted the cabbage thoran umpteen times, but never thought of cooking it until now. These simple recipes, as simple as they might seem, always are a help to the new little chefs out there.

I always encourage people to blog about these simple dishes which we normally don’t get in restaurants and it doesn’t matter if there is a hundred posts about the same cabbage. That’s what blogs are all about. No matter how many homes you visit or no matter how many times you eat the same food, each time, each home makes it a little different. To me, food blogs are a celebration of that to be precise.

That’s why food blogging is so much fun. You create, you serve the food at home and then you share the experience with your virtual friends. Sharing is the most beautiful thing in this World. Take off two or three leaves off the cabbage and wash thoroughly. Cut a portion of it without the stalk in the middle. The hard stalk in the middle and the base of the cabbage should be discarded.

I have never been able to replicate my moms cabbage dicing. She makes small cuts like tak tak tak and then dices it very thin. I have never been able to do that, so I cut off a seven inch large piece and then dice it small like I do with onions.

For 4 cups of diced cabbage,
Heat 2 tsp oil, splutter 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, sauté 1 red chili split, 1 sprig of curry leaves, add 3 tsp of whole urad dal until light brown and add ½ cup diced onion and sauté well until the onion is translucent.

Add ¼ tsp turmeric powder and add the diced cabbage and lower the heat to minimum. Add salt and mix well and cover tightly and cook for 10 minutes.

Coarse grind 3 pods of garlic and ½ cup of grated coconut, 4 green chilies and ½ tsp cumin seeds. Keep this mixture in the middle of the cabbage and then cover the mixture with the cabbage.

Cook closed for another 10 minutes in low flame. Mix well and sauté until dry.Serve with rice or roti.