Why I celebrate Christmas!

Christmas is almost over and this post is late, very late at least by two days. But that is okay since I was celebrating the season with full glee. Baking cakes sending them to friends, arranging parties, thinking about finger food, decorating the house, going around houses for Christmas carols, Christmas shopping and what not.

This is exactly why I celebrate. I love festivities and their tradition and I like to celebrate every occasion. Celebrating Christmas is all about sharing. So as Eid or Onam or Diwali. It is sharingthe human spirit. A normal life is mundane. We need some color and we need it often. We need some joy and laughter. We need togetherness. It is not about having turkey or ham or Christmas food. It is about coming together to celebrate with others. It just shows we exist in this World as humans, the peaceful kind, the sharing kind, the smiling kind, the hugging kind.

The best part about all celebrations is being a woman. We make sure we keep the flame of tradition and pass it along. We are there teaching the World to share and to be kind. If it were left only to men, there would have been only one celebration -- the keg parties. I would even stretch it to say, these traditions is celebrating motherhood or womanhood over and over again.

“He was alive for last Christmas”
“It was three days before last Christmas we thought of moving back home”
“That was the best Christmas. I was with him and we held hands.”

Don’t we timeline our sad and happy memories with festivities? They surely keep us going. So Celebrate and create new traditions and LIVE!

Now on to a good Christmas spirit story.

I was completely busy at my work for the past two months sleeping only few hours. I always wanted to go for the cake decoration classes as our dear Archana at spicyana was constantly inspiring and urging all of us with her fabulous creations. Only because of her I knew that it is not fairies that decorate with icing, but it is the little elves like me and you. Due to my wonderful procrastination, It took me almost one year to finally signup for a class. And when I was the busiest of all at work and home, I went and joined. :-)

Though I always reached a ten minute late for each class, carried the cake open through the store running for the class, had icing all over my face, I loved every second of it. This is the best thing I have done in years. Love you my dear Archana for this. It is only because of her. It is because of blogs and it is because of her kind sharing.
Here it is. I made my first decorated cake. Ummmaaah!

Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year 2008 to all you, my lovely blogmates!

Guess Me!

Brides blush with me. Who am I?

Shrimp and Drumstick in coconut milk

There is a giant drumstick tree at our relative’s place nearby and it is a feast for the eyes to see the bunch of drumsticks hanging from each small branch. Drumstick trees are so brittle; the trees often break due to the strong winds here. Yet, they are resilient and they grow back again from the branch with much vigor. It is amazing to see the tree growing around 6 feet in a year.

We all raid the tree, scrape the drumsticks, cut them into bite size pieces and freeze them until it starts to fruit again.

A very delicious curry is made with drumsticks and shrimp. There are many versions of it and mine is a very simple version as usual.

Drumstick pieces scraped and cut and split into two – 2 cups
Shrimp cleaned and deveined - 2 cups

Coriander powder – 2 table spoon
Crushed black pepper – 1 tsp
Red chili powder – 1 table spoon
Green chilies slit – 4
Onion – ½ cup
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Ginger scraped and crushed – 1 tsp
Garlic pods – 7 diced thin
Kudampuli - 4
Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
Salt enough

Coconut milk thick – 2 cups

Cook drumsticks with all of the above adding salt in 1.5 cup coconut milk and 2 cups of water. When drumsticks are almost cooked, add the cleaned shrimp and cook for 5 or 6 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in the rest of the coconut milk. Adjust salt.

Heat 1 tsp oil, sauté thinly diced 2 tsp shallots (can use onion too). When the shallots turn brown, add two whole red chili (broken into two) and a sprig of curry leaves. Add to the dish.

Serve with rice.

Fried Rice

At school I would peek at my friend Arya’s lunch box and would wish we could switch mommies. Arya’s lunchbox always had food packed in aluminum foil in a plastic box that had cute stickers on it and her food looked as if she got a share of what the real fairy pretty people would eat. Her lunchbox was not runny or messy and would look like her, short haired and trim, very proper and polite, saying the right words with a soft node. She would always have some fried rice and a fruit with the right amount of flavors and color, everything subtle like pretty pink lace on her handkerchief that was pinned on to her shirt. Oh! How I wish my mom would be that sophisticated to prepare my lunch boxes like those that looked straight from a story book.

Mine was packed in a steel lunchbox up to the brim with rice and fish curry that would run a little outside which was wrapped in a check kitchen towel and it always contained a shocking colored vegetable thoran instead of an expensive fruit. At our house, food was always prepared during the early wee hours of the morning. Momma would fill the lunchbox with steaming hot food and I have seen her blowing away the steam in a hurry so that it doesn’t condense when she closes the lid. There was no need of reheating the food since it would still be piping hot during our lunch time.

We would get ready in frenzy for school and she would run behind us to give us the lunchbox that always looked like a baton exchange in a 400m relay. She would have her saree in a mess, her hair frizzed up and a dirty kitchen towel on her shoulder and would hold the hot lunch box with her saree pallu and would stuff it into our school bags while we were running and then would hold me tight and kiss me when the whole school bus was watching and would say, you should eat the rice completely without brining a morsel back, and I would be so embarrassed and would instantly wipe away the kiss and wished badly I had Arya’s mommie. I always saw Arya’s mommie in a starched crisp house-coat just waving at her, pretty and calm, no frenzy there, and Arya was always ready when our school bus stopped in front of her house.

Arya’s mom would prepare the lunch the previous day and would re-heat it and give it the next morning. It was always fried rice since it was so easy to make and it won’t run and it looks good in a lunchbox.

My mom never cared about those pretty and polite things in life. She wanted her child to have the freshest food and no fried rice but her signature fish curry and vegetables. Now years later, I will die for my mother to kiss me everyday, leaving the wetness on my cheeks before rushing off to office and get that steel lunch box and to do that baton exchange. If wishes were horses…

This is Arya’s fried rice recipe. This is very simple to make. Fried rice is Chinese, but somehow it ends up looking like a little Indian whenever I make it.

White rice. In fact it is better to use previous day's cooked rice. Fried rice was invented so you could dress up the old rice and make it look good. – 2 cups cooked and refrigerated.

Green Onion stalks chopped – ½ cup
Cucumber with skin chopped into thin strips. Steamed – 1/4 cup
Beans cooked – ¼ cup
Green Peas cooked - ¼ cup

You can use a mix of any kind of vegetables that you have. Don’t use vegetables that would seep out color into the rice. I normally use watery kind of fast cooking vegetables.

Mix ¼ cup soy sauce and ¼ cup chili sauce and keep aside. If you want it hotter, I add crushed red chili flakes to this.

Heat a wok or a frying pan, add 1 tsp of vegetable oil and fry the cooked rice for two minutes, then add the vegetables and the sauce mix and sauté everything quickly and coat the rice in this.

Now lower the heat and move rice to the sides of the wok away from the center and to the center of the wok or the pan, break an egg and scramble it quickly and incorporate into the rice. Sprinkle salt. Soy sauce is salty so make sure you adjust salt accordingly.

Serve with soy sauce or some fried meat or fish.

Guess?

Who am I? You dont eat my leaves. I am so shy I dont grow above the ground. I am so tasty I have a fan club in Kerala. I dont look like my big brother at all. Tell me tell me, who am I?

Chicken in a lot of gravy!

I used to often take long night journeys to reach Banglore in ‘Video Coach Buses’*.
Rash drivers, treacherous routes, air horns every other second and a grainy video with the wickedest songs – oh ma…Painful journeys! They would stop for dinner at around midnight at small offbeat dinner places called dhabas in Hindi where the drivers would get free dinners for coming in with a bus load of hungry starving people.

At these places I would always order porotta and chicken curry pooh-poohing my mother’s advice not to eat non-veg at shady offbeat places. I used to crave for the gravy than the chicken. The mesmerizing flavor and color soaking the porottas, separating each carefully folded porotta layers to a mushy sponge and I soak my fingers playfully in the fragrant gravy just to remember the feel against my skin…drool…wait a minute, I am writing about chicken curry, right?

This is a delicious chicken curry if you love gravy than the pieces.

5 cups of cleaned, skinned, bite size chicken pieces with one cup of onion, one tomato, 3 tsp red chill powder, enough salt and ½ tsp turmeric.

Dry roast lightly 5 tea spoons of whole coriander, 10 cloves, 5 cardamom, ½ tsp mace, 2 tsp big cumin, 1 cinnamon stick and grind to a powder.

Mix in everything with the chicken pieces. While cooking chicken, do not add much water. Close and cook in medium flame.

When cooked, sauté ½ cup onion to brown, 3 sprigs of curry leaves, add chicken and then add one and two cups of thick coconut milk to this curry. Simmer for 5 minutes only. Do not boil it again.

Serve with rice or porottas…mmm…your fingers wet and soaked…okiez okiez… stop…stop!

* They were called Video Coach Buses A/C – It would be written in big bold letters. I have no idea why. It had a video player, maybe that’s why.

Pindi Thoran

My writing has gone rusty. I stare at a Word document for minutes and nothing comes to my head. Too much of a break from blogging makes you so out of league from everything. There are great food events going here and there and there is a big event FAHC, yet I feel completely disconnected. Not that I used to write great stuff earlier, but something which took me a maximum of 15 minutes to write a post is now a humongous job for me.

I am sure that’s what has happened to a lot of other bloggers too who were regulars, their blogs now look abandoned and lonely. Their mamas are having starting trouble to write something. So this is a warning dears, do not go out of league and take a long break….

You might find this post squeaky squeaky with all that rust, but I know all you darlings out there is worried only about the food. :)

Kerala has this big fascination for banana stems. We use all portions of a banana plant. The fruit is used in cooking and eating, leaves as organic throw away plates and the stem and the flower after a fruit is matured in cooking. After the fruit is matured, you cut the fruit from the plant and hang it in a warm place for ripening. A single banana plant has only onetime fruiting capacity and should be removed. When you cut off the stem, you peel away the greenish layers and there you get a creamy white round part. This is known as unnippindi.

Poets describe a woman’s hands as round and slim and smooth like an unnipindi where unni means small. It is also known as vaazhappindi, where vaazha means banana. Essentially pindi is the name without any metaphors added.

I shake my head and grin when I hear about all the fiber talks in television and health magazines. They talk as if this is the new invention. Hello, this was there long existing...this fiber thingie in vegetables and you missed it all this while is what I want to say to them.

Pindi is fiber. Simple! You can get all the vegetables that claim to have fiber, add them up but a small piece of pindi can shame them all.

What does it mean? That it is a little hard to cut and clean it. First wash it and cut into round thin pieces. From each round, brush over a small stick to catch all the fiber. Yeah don’t be surprised, I was talking about fiber right? Do this to all pieces and discard the fiber ball.

Cut into small pieces; immerse it in water with a little turmeric added to prevent discoloration. This actually will feel like sugarcane pieces. Wash and strain

Splutter mustard seeds, one sprig of curry leaves and split red chilies. Sauté ¼ cup onion then add the cut pindi(1 cup), add little salt, add 1 tsp red chili powder, ¼ tsp turmeric powder and cover and cook in low flame. When half done, add grated coconut if needed, mix well and cook until done.

Serve with rice or roti. It tastes so good!

There it is, I have finally written a post and not bad took me only 20 minutes. :-)

Bacon wrapped scallops

It is summer time here in U.S and schools are closed for three months. Daily It is almost some kind of outing and partying. I am tired, tired, tired. Kids are having a great time demanding attention and making every parent fervently pray for school reopening.

Whenever it was big summer vacation, everyday my Mom would scold and curse the Government and the entire school system. She would be fed up of us making the house a mess, jumping up and down from the sunshades and trees like little monkeys, running like little mice inside and out, destroying everything on our way.

Whenever I host a party, I make sure I make 4 or 5 appetizers. Kids love appetizers and even the fuzziest kid would be happy and would eat something. Grown ups always love appetizers to nibble on while making a conversation.
This is the recipe for bacon wrapped scallops. It is very easy and simple to make.

Buy fresh bacon, toothpicks, and scallops. If you get fresh large scallops it would be good. But if you get frozen ones also, it is okay. Make sure they are large scallops not the baby ones.

Marinate scallops in ginger + garlic + chili powder paste. Don’t add salt, since bacon is very salty. This time I made a different marinade. I made a paste of cilantro and mint and green chilies to make a green marinade.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. On a baking tray, keep a wire rack and arrange the bacons like as shown in picture. Roll the bacon around the scallops and insert a wet tooth pick(place the toothpicks in water for sometime) to hold it together. You can also add a garlic pod if you want on top.
Now bake them for 10 minutes. Serve hot. Tasty!

Guess?

I like it, you like it. World goes crazy over it especially a dose of this in the morning is a must. The flower turns into a fruit. Whats it?

(This is specially for sweet Sig for asking me to put at least a guessing game. ) :-)

Ridge Gourd Theeyal / Peechinga Theeyal

I remember once a colleague of mine tasted theeyal from my lunchbox and she was hooked. She was not a Malayalee and fell in love with the Theeyal. In her description, Pulikulambu went to school and university and graduated to become Theeyal.

Theeyal is a very tasty flavorful dish from Kerala. Theeyal I think would roughly translate it into ‘in fire’ or “brunt”. Though the dish is not hot, it is made with browning the coconut. Thus the name?

You can make theeyal with any type of vegetables, or you can even mix all vegetables. You can make it even with Shrimp. Making of theeyal has to be very specific, following the exact instructions to get the right taste.

I made Peeching Theeyal or Ridge gourd Theeyal. Growing up, I never even saw this vegetable among our vendors. I think Ridgegourd is not a preferred Kerala vegetable. But once I started cooking with them, I started to like them.

I scrape the sharp edges and take off the inside seeds if the seeds are thick.

Cut them into pieces, wash – 3 cups

1.5 cup grated coconut and 2 shallots fried to a light brown color. Keep aside.

Dry roast ½ cup coriander seeds, 1 tsp fenugreek seeds, 1 tsp of whole black pepper for two minutes. Add 6 dry red chilies and roast them. Please make sure not to burn them. Add 1 tsp cumin seeds and roast them again for a few more seconds. Grind with coconut mixture and ½ tsp turmeric and salt adding only two tsp of water to a very smooth paste.

Tamarind paste – 2 tsp or 2 inch size tamarind in warm water, squeezed and strained.

Heat 1/4 cup oil, lightly fry the ridge gourd pieces and keep aside. Now in the same oil, splutter mustard seeds, saute whole red chilies two split into two, sauté 1 sprig of curry leaves and add the ground coconut paste. Add tamarind water and the ridge gourd piece and slow cook for ten minutes. Prepare this dish ahead and make sure it sits one or two hours before serving.

The flavor and taste is exquisite. Serve with rice or roti or even idli or dosa.

Green Mango Chammanthi - GBP

Wondering what a chammanthi is? Read this and RP's.

This time for GBP Summer 2007 Entry( my second entry), I don’t have anything to write for this post. Let the pictures speak.







3 Green Chilies, 2 Shallots, Salt, 1 cup Sour Green Mango slices peeled – Crush them first, then add 1 cup of coconut and crush them again. I use a wet grinder for making Chammanthi.

Note: If you are buying store bought mangoes in U.S, it might not be that sour, so add 1 tsp of vinegar to the mango slices to get the right sourness.

Guess?

Now, all you smartie pants out there, guess this.

(Warning: Any more threats, verbal abuse towards this poor me for putting pictures of my backyard will not be taken lightly. Will be forced to put more :-))

Jackfruit Seeds and Drumstick Leaves Thoran

A JFI Event started by our dear Indian Food Blog Queen Indira and the super cool ingredient choice by our cutest Bee – and you thought I would have only one entry?

Jackfruit Seeds are edible portions of the jackfruit. They have a nutty taste. I had some left over Jackfruit Seeds and some drumstick leaves. Jackfruit seeds which bee roasted are of ripe jackfruit. You roast only ripe jackfruit seeds. With the raw jackfruit, you don’t normally do that.

This is a simple delicious thoran. Acutally it tasted so good, I snacked on it than eating it with rice :)

Scrape jackfruit seeds, slice it into long pieces and cook them with salt and turmeric. – 1 cup

Crush ½ cup coconut, 1/3 cup shallots, 5 green chilies, 1 sprig of curry leaves, 1 tsp cumin seeds, 3 pods of garlic, salt and turmeric.

Mix this with the cooked jackfruit and add the washed and squeezed drumstick leaves.

Cover and cook in low flame until the drumstick leaves are cooked.

Serve with rice or roti.

Artichoke Thoran

What will Americans do to a foreign vegetable? They would add cheese slices on it and put in between two breads.
British? They would make it a tikka or fry it in batter and serve with chips.
A malayalee woman? Add some coconut shavings and make it a thoran.

That’s exactly what I do when I see all these alien looking vegetables like Asparagaus, Artichokes etc. I used to read in story books about asparagaus, artichokes etc and wanted to see these vegetables at least once. That time there was no Internet and now anyone in any corner of the world can easily see a picture of anything. Exciting isn’t it? A child sitting under a table (supposedly study time), reading a story book, munching a mango with some salt, wondering what this vegetable would look like that keeps on coming up on her story book pages, can now just click on the mouse and can get every information she needs.

She grows up, gets married, lands in a small town at an alien land, where the most familiar vegetable you get is a cabbage. Rest everything looks completely out of this world. With a deep sigh, with the memories of all those veggies she told her mama she hates while at home, floods in with a deep hurtful taste, she picks up one of these alien vegetables and make a thoran and voila…home…now seems a little more nearer.

Recipe for Artichoke Thoran.

How to clean?
First wash thoroughly in between the leaves and then cut off the stalk and two inches from the top.
Then pluck out all the outer leaves until you reach the leaf where it is half yellow and half green. The outer leaves are hard and chewy. For thoran, you need to take only the soft inside leavesCut it into two. Dip the cut portions in ½ tsp turmeric water since artichokes turn black immediately. Now take out the violet colored leaves and the small hairy portion which holds the violet leaves.
Dice it small (two artichokes prepared like this would yield 1 cup).
I had one cup of moong dal sprouts too. Blanch the sprouts.

Small onion – ¼ cup

Heat 1 tsp oil, splutter mustard seeds, 1 sprig of curry leaves, 1 whole red chili split into two, add diced onion and 1 crushed garlic, 3 green chilies, sauté until onion is translucent, add diced artichoke and the blanched sprouts, add salt and turmeric cover and cook in low flame. After 10 minutes, add ¼ cup of grated coconut and mix and cook for another 5 minutes.
Keep the fire in maximum and open cook for one or two minutes until dry.
Serve as a side dish for rice or roti.

Now don’t you want to know what it really tastes like? It tastes like banana flower. Yes! Ditto! Missing banana flower thoran? Make with artichokes!

Note: The leaves you pluck out from the artichoke can be put into sambar. It would be like drumstick sambar. You eat artichoke the same way you eat drumstick. The outer leaves you discard for a thoran are chewy. You just suck on it like you do for drumstick and discard the harder skin.

Guess

Yeah, Yeah I know it is easy! But, I am not here to make your life more difficult.:)