Kovakka Thoran

Kovakka, Tindora, Ivy gourd – This vegetable has many names, but the fact remains is that it doesn’t taste as good as the other vegetables. Yes, Yes, I am on an honesty trip here.

Kovakka is malayalam for Ivy gourd.

First of all, ivy gourd when cut has a light film of sap (?) which makes it a little bitter/tough to munch on, fresh. Even if you bombard it with all your spices your hands can get, kovakka doesn’t absorb the flavors and would still taste a little bland.

But why eat it then? It is so good for you, there are even claims it is good for diabetes patients. It is a good source of beta carotene as well. In Thailand, this vegetable is promoted to grow in homes to control the vitamin A deficiency.Ivy gourd is termed an invasive weed in U.S. One of our friends tried to sneak in the plant from India and the customs got him. So he acted as if he doesn’t understand English when the U.S customs officer questioned about the plant.

Customs officer being an Indian himself, told him straight to his face, “Until now, I heard you speaking good English to your wife Sir, how soon you got amnesia?” hehehehe

So, there you are, don’t sneak in the plant to U.S territory. :-) . Don’t ask me, whether I have it, then you would have to explain and define the word “is” (Courtesy: President Clinton).

Anyway, one friend gave me this wonderful recipe which will make any kovakka-haters swoon over it.

Wash the kovakka thoroughly in running water, cut off both the tips. Make two lengthwise cuts and then cut the kovakka into half making it eight pieces.

For 3 cups of cut kovakka,

Crush together, kudampuli or tamarind (1 inch size), ½ cup coconut, 6 shallots diced, 3 garlic pods diced, 4 green chilies, 1 sprig of curry leaves, ½ tsp turmeric powder and enough salt. Don’t grind it, just crush them in a pestle.

Mix this with the kovakka and add ¼ cup of water and keep in medium flame. When it is half cooked, add 2 cups of cooked small shrimps, mix it and cook again in low flame.

You can completely avoid the shrimp part if you are vegetarian, but non-vegans out there, the shrimp makes it too good :-)

When the mixture is dry, heat 2 tsp pf coconut oil, splutter ½ tsp of mustard seeds and add to this.Serve with rice.

Just do it!

This Nike ad reminded me of our spirit to fight against plagiarism.

There might be...

much chaos
many trolls
lot of dirt
many hurdles
lot of confusion
many failures

but

Just do it!

Don't forget March 5th! Visit CopyrightViolations

Radish mezhukkupuratti

If you haven't yet read about the March 5th Protest Event against Yahoo! India for plagiarizing, please do visit this link.

---

Red Red Radish – But what’ that nasty odor when you cook it?
Yeah, there is no doubt radish a very healthy vegetable, but I somehow cannot stand the pungent odor. So, I peel them completely, turn them into white little balls and make mezhukkupuratti with them. I know I am losing some of its nutrients, but I would rather pop a vitamin pill than eat it and say eeewww ;-)Mezhukkupuratti is Malayalam for plain sautéed vegetables.

Peel the radish, dice them small – 3 cups
Onion diced – 1 cup

Heat 2 tsp oil, splutter ½ tsp mustard seeds, sauté 1 sprig of curry leaves and add the diced onion and sauté them until translucent.

Add the diced radish, add salt, add ½ tsp turmeric powder and add 2 tsp red chili powder.

Mix well, add ¼ cup water, cover and cook in low flame. Cook dry.

Making mezhukkupuratti with red chili is a Trichur regional specialty. South of Trichur green chilies are added to the dish.Serve with rice or roti.

Moong Bean Thoran

If you haven't yet read about the March 5th Protest Event against Yahoo! India for plagiarizing, please do visit this link.

---

What is a food blog (mainly listing Kerala food) without a moong bean thoran?
Or in other words, I don’t know why I didn’t yet blog about the cherupayar thoran from Kerala.

Now I always write it as Moong, but actually it is spelled Mung Beans. ‘Mung’ is derived from Hindi word ‘mung’ says Wikipedia. That would also mean we can be sure it originated in India. Mung bean is cultivated in most places in South Asia and is very much a part of the cuisine in South Asia.

Ayurveda is very partial to mung beans.

Excerpt:
Of the most usable pulses, moong is one that has been described as the best for day-to-day use. Acharya Charaka has written that in both the green and yellow forms, it is astringent and sweet in taste, dry, light and cold in potency and has pungent post-digestive effect. It alleviates the vitiated kapha and pitta and is recommended to be served as soup during illness and convalescence. Due to its easily digestible properties moong dal is a dish of choice for people suffering from weak digestion, diarrhoea and dysentery and for those who are bed-ridden due to any prolonged illness. Sprouting makes the mung bean very nutritious adding Vitamin C to its list of nutrients. But be careful of buying the sprouted beans from shops. The link says, Commercial Mung Beans are grown with chemicals and gasses in huge 500 gallon machines. I have always wondered about that!

Whole Mung bean - 2 cups pressure cooked with 1 cup water for 15 minutes. It is ideal that the bean should retain its shape, so don’t cook it to death. (Yeah, I have done that many a times)

Heat ¼ cup oil; splutter 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 split red chili, 1 sprig of curry leaves. Crush 4 pods of garlic with skin, ½ tsp cumin seeds, and 5 green chilies and add to this. Roast the garlic until brown. Then add 6 shallots diced and sauté. Add 1/4 tsp turmeric powder.

Add the cooked mung bean to this and ½ cup of coconut, enough salt and mix well. Cover and cook until dry.Serve with rice.

Bloggers Protest Event against Yahoo! India - March 5th 2007

Interested in joining a protest against Yahoo! India plagiarizing contents from bloggers?

Why this is dear to me? Just because we write and take pictures due to our passion for food and writing and give the content for free for others to cook and create, that doesn’t mean someone can take us for a ride and copy our content, especially a giant corporation like Yahoo!

Yahoo! has to apologize to the bloggers and not shamelessly remove the content from their servers.

This plagiarizing and violation of our (bloggers) rights has been going on forever. Not anymore! We need to be heard!

Visit this link if you are not aware yet of what happened.

As dear Revathi and Shaheen suggested, I am going to fix this protest event on March 5th 2007.

What you can do,

1. First spread the word about this protest to other bloggers. It need not be food blogs only. It doesn’t matter in what language you blog, just create the post in English in your blog.

2. Create a post on March 5th 2007 about Yahoo! plagiarizing from bloggers. A short note and link to this post. Come up with catchy slogans as your post titles :-)

3. If you do not want to write-up something, you are free to copy the text from my previous posts.

Hope we will gather enough support and make this event a major success.

So spread the word my dear friends and let us all do a silent protest on March 5th 2007.

Easy Tomato Rasam

I hated rasam. I tasted rasam for the first time when I went to Tamil Nadu one time and I just couldn’t understand what this dark water curry was? We ordered a thali and there it was in a small steel tumbler, some kind of brownish water. I poured it on the rice thinking it was some kind of sambar and I thought the hotel people were fooling us by giving colored water as curry.

I hated that water! First of all, I didn’t know I had to mix it only after the meal as a final lap. And it tastes delicious if you mix it with a little buttermilk. It is even better if you just drink it. All these rasam tricks, I had no clue.

Later, I took some liking to it when I knew about all those tricks.

But, how do you prepare it?

Dal water, Rasam powder, yada...yada...yada.

Oh! I am not going to take so much trouble to make a curry which is not even a curry.

So I never made rasam.

Wait, that is not the end of story. I was visiting a friend of mine in Dallas. She had unexpected guests and she made something quickly for dinner and what did she make? Rasam! No rasam powder, no dal water, nothing. But it tasted soooo good, better than any rasam I had ever had.Here is that recipe. All those rasam aficionados don’t be shocked at this version. Try it and you will love it.

5 ripe tomatoes cut into 4
2 tsp whole peppercorns
½ tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp red chili powder
6 cloves of garlic
3inch tamarind soaked in warm water for some time, squeezed and strained to get the tamarind liquid.
1 tsp sambar powder – optional

Blend all this in a mixer adding ½ cup water.

Heat 1 tsp oil, splutter mustard seeds, pour this mixture and when it starts to boil, simmer for 5 minutes. That’s it. Tomato Rasam is ready! Easy as a breeze isn’t it?A must for any rasam, I have understood is fresh coriander leaves. Garnish with coriander leaves and have it with rice.

Montha

This vessel is called montha at our place in Kerala, India. Look at the peculiar shape, which makes it easy for pouring without spilling. This shape of the vessel makes it uniquely Indian. You hold to the narrow neck of this vessel and pour. That makes it a single piece vessel without any handles.

It is also known as Kudam, but at home, we say kudam for larger vessels in this special shape. Montha is smaller size.

I do not cook in this. I use it to store curries or moru (buttermilk).

This is for Indira's India Kitchen - Utensils

Yahoo! plagiarizes contents and blames it on subcontractors

Imagine this fictional scenario,

What do you do when you find a stuff you bought from Wal-mart is no good? Return the product to Wal-mart and get your money back, right? What if Wal-mart asks you to return those contents to its Chinese sub-contractors and say they are not responsible?

That would be hilarious, isn’t it? Yes, That’s exactly what Yahoo! has done.

Remember this post about Yahoo! India plagiarizing contents from bloggers?

How did Yahoo! and Yahoo! India respond? After trying to contact them through many methods, they give a reply after one week stating this:

The Malayalam story was provided to us by Webdunia.com (the content provider) on the express representation that they are duly authorized by the author of the story to publish it. In the circumstances therefore, we do not admit of any copyright violation, as alleged by you.

Although there is no copyright violation and without prejudice to our rights, the said story has been removed from our web site, to avoid any further controversy.

Should you have any further concerns on copyright violations, please write in to copyright@webdunia.com and it will be addressed by the webdunia team.

Great! So, now we need to go behind every subcontractor Yahoo! or Yahoo! India does business with. Who are they trying to fool? Do they think we bloggers are stupid and do not understand the basics of copyrights and responsibilities?

The plagiarized content appeared on Yahoo domain, not on WebDunia.com domain.

The plagiarized content appeared on Yahoo! India (Malayalam) Portal and not on WebDunia.com Malayalam Portal

Blogs are an individual person’s voice, free of corporations and money. Cheating bloggers by plagiarizing contents should not go unanswered, especially by giant corporations like Yahoo!

Yahoo! or Yahoo! India is answerable and they need to acknowledge what they have done. They owe the bloggers an unconditional apology. We are not going to be cowed down by irresponsible corporations. If we do not protest now, incidents like these will threaten a common mans blog existence in future!

What happened to good business practices and good will?

See more links regarding this news:
- Digital Inspiration

- DesiPundit

- Global Voice

- WebPro News

- Aloo Techie

- WatBlog.com

Thank you all for your valuable support and if you would like to join this campaign, create a post about this on your blog and join us. (Thank you mallugirl for the idea)

Humor: I am launching another portal, copying contents from Yahoo! India's portal and blame it on my 10 year old little brother. Recipes don't have copyrights you see, according to 'yahoo'!

Note: A new blog by Malayalam Bloggers Community for this cause.

Snake gourd barges

I think it is a very Indian tradition to have a cup of chai(tea) and a snack before sunset. Especially you reach home famished from work or school and evening snack is a must.

Usually at home, we open a chips packet for evening snack. I feel a little guilty about it and I am always in search of quick healthy snacks.

I am fascinated by snake gourd and I do think, if there is a vegetable on earth perfect for stuffing, it is this, it is this, it is this! The round and lengthy shape surely screams, “Stuff me!”

If there is a stuffing that never fails, it is potato, potato, potato!

So, I thought of making potato-laden snake gourd barges.

Choose a young snake gourd, cut of both tips, scrape lightly, wash and clean.Cut into equal portions of 6 or more inches. Cut open into two parts and remove the seeds from the middle. Brush outside and inside with a mixture of 1 tsp olive oil, 1/2 tsp chili powder and 1 tsp salt.
For 10 barges,
Dice potato into small pieces – 1 cup
Onion – ½ cup
Olive oil – 1 table spoon
Balsamic vinegar – 2 tsp
Chili Powder – 3 tsp
Salt – as needed.

Mix everything and stuff the barges.

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees. Bake on the top rack for twenty minutes or until done.Serve with cream or sauce.

Olan

I have been really busy this whole week, and have been eating only rice and pickle. So, couldn’t post which I wanted to very badly.

Now, when a friend gave me the recipe of Olan (a must dish in Onam Sadya), I thought she was kidding. How can an exquisite dish have a recipe so simple? I had never tasted Olan before and have never even seen it during my childhood years. Only later when I moved out of home, I got introduced to this wonderful dish.

It is a simple recipe yet so royal, which reminds me of the traditional Kerala Kasavu Sarees. Plain cream colored sarees with a small zari border, they look so simple yet when you wear it, it looks royal. Somehow Olan reminds of this.

You can make Olan using Ash gourd, young green Pumpkin.

I am not sure one can make it using young green Papaya. Anyway I tried it and it tastes the same as you cook it with Ashgourd. I normally make it with Ashgroud, but this time I made it with young papaya.

Papaya needs to be peeled, the seeds removed and cleaned, then cut into small pieces.
Papaya – 4 cups.
Red moong beans – 1 cup (pressure cooked, should not lose its shape)

Now, cook papaya with 6 green chilies split, 1 sprig of curry leaves, and ½ tsp of cumin powder in 2 cups of water. Simmer and let the water evaporate completely.

When done and the papaya turns soft, add 2 cups of fresh coconut milk and the cooked red moong beans. Cook for another 5 or 6 minutes with open lid. Olan shoud not be watery.

Take from stove and add 2 tsp of coconut oil and mix. (Yes, if you ask me coconut oil is a must.) That’s it.
Serve with rice. The Royal Olan is ready!

Now, for some updates. We all know about Yahoo India stealing contents from individual blogs. Concerned parties send an email to Yahoo (U.S) office and those emails were forwarded to Yahoo India. No reply yet! But the funny thing is those contents were removed from the site silently. That means they are sure they committed the violation.

However, I do think they ought to put an apology on Yahoo site. A silent removal is not accepted. Since, the main thing is we all cannot always go behind each and every person and it is a big headache. This time, Yahoo has done it and if they put an apology it will be a lesson to future violators.

What you can do? Please do send emails from your company address, especially if you have a good company name like Microsoft, Intel, Google etc. For this matter to be taken urgently and to get noticed since your company email id gives the complaints validity.

Please do send emails to Mary Osako (mosako@yahoo-inc.com), Linda Du (lindadu@yahoo-inc.com). You can get more email address from here


Thank you again all for the support.

Yahoo India and content theft

We read about content theft from individual blog sites here and here.

Now, Yahoo India steals content from a blog.

Yahoo India launched a beta version of their Malayalam (an Indian Language) portal and what do they do to fill their pages? Lift content just straight from small web magazines and blogs without asking a word or adequately compensating for those. What a shame!

We all like the idea of giants like Yahoo launching multiple Indian language portals. But that doesn’t give Yahoo India the right to lift contents, word by word and put those on their Malayalam portal.

View Suryagayathri's food blog.

They have copied some(6 and counting) of her recipes word by word. The only thing is that they changed the picture. What an easy way to cook up a portal. I can only laugh and sympathize at their confidence that their portal wont be read :). What other reason to copy contents?

They would have thought it is very easy to lift content from her blog, since she is a housewife sitting in a small town in Kerala, India. They won’t even think she would protest. But yeah, she figured it out and is indeed protesting.

I am vehemently joining in her protest!

In my opinion, I think Yahoo needs to compensate her for this content theft adequately. I don’t think it is acceptable to just silently remove the contents like most of them do without even giving a decent apology. Imagine what riot it would have caused if it was the other way? Huge corporations like them have the time, machine and money. What do individual blog owners do?

Since Yahoo’s servers are here in U.S won’t the U.S Law be applicable?

(Yahoo India - Malayalam Portal has lifted content from another web magazine too, but when the concerned party send an email, Yahoo India silently removed the contents even without a reply or apology)

Note: Yahoo has launched other language portals too. Kindly check if one your recipes or article is there.

If you want to comment, kindly leave a comment on Suryagayathri's post too.

Visit the Update

Update of my blog

Last week, I complained about a bug in my old blog to Google and bam! They nicely deleted the whole blog. Whoa! That too on a weekending Friday. Grr…

I had two parties to attend. One on Friday and another one on Saturday. But what did I do?

I searched searched and searched, saved the cache, reposted, published. Phew! It took me 48 hours of work to bring most of them back. So, my posts are here, yes in this blog and let us all forget about the old blog with the old address (injimanga.blogspot.com)

After couple of them, I was thinking. That’s enough. Let the posts go. I am not going to do this painful process again. But then I read one or two comments and I get my energy back. Yes, your comments really made me post them back again. I have retrieved and posted the comments also. Some posts I am still unable to get it. My search string is not getting any results. But most of it, yes I recovered. (Some of the posts might have bad links, if you read them and cannot find, please do leave me a comment there. Thanks.)

So, what does this teach me again and again? Even If I am a restless character and do this and that together, don’t play with posts and google accounts.

My dad used to have stamp and coin collections. He travels a lot and almost had around 60 or 70 countries in his collections. One fine summer holiday morning, his daughter had this bright idea, to help her dad.
I got a bucket full of soap and water and put the stamps and the coins. I wanted to clean them all. So, I left them there for a day. The stamps dissolved and the coins got rusted.
How old was I? I was twelve. (Yeah, then stupid and even now stupid!) .

Same thing I did here too. But thankfully, this is internet and there is google cache and I could retrieve them all.

Hugs and kisses to you all for having the patience to suffer my stupidity.

So, what does this mean? You all have this great wonderful opportunity of going through my old posts again! Hahaha.

Note: I see a lot of new bloggers and I haven’t got time to go through their blogs. But whoa! So many new bloggers in just two months. Also, I see a lot of good old bloggers stopped blogging completely. That really makes me appreciate the bloggers who have been here for a long time, posting recipes almost everyday and hanging on to this for all of us. Thank you guys!

Ginger Candy and Injithair

It has been a couple of blog years since I took part in JFI. I know I know they have been missing my entry :-). RP reminded me of JFI and this time the ingredient is JFI-Ginger. How can a ginger girl from ‘Ginger and Mango’ not take part in that?

So, I thought of all complicated dishes and ended up on this very complicated dish called Injithair in South Kerala. This I have seen only served during Onam festival sadya.

Grate some ginger 1 cup, 3 green chilies, crush them together, add 1 cup of curd.
That’s it. Injithair is ready.

Then I remembered how long back Sarah wanted the recipe for injimuttai or ginger candy. This candy is sold especially in bus stops by small vendors, for this can alleviate the nausea and discomfort during the bus journeys. This was the only candy that passed the test of parents and you could eat them lot.
I didn’t get the recipe for injimuttai. I searched for ginger candy and ended up with lot of recipes. I am unable to remember whether the ginger candy we used to eat was made from whole ginger or ginger juice? Anyway I made with ginger pieces. Boil 1 cup of diced ginger pieces in water for 15 minutes and strain. This makes the ginger pieces softer.

For 1 cup of ginger, add ½ cup of sugar and 2 cups of water and bring to a boil and then simmer until the sugary water evaporates completely. Make sure ginger pieces do not start to stick to the pan. Take off from heat, arrange the ginger pieces on a wax paper and dry them. (I used brown sugar and the candy resembled garnet)
I am not sure whether the ginger candy or the nostalgia tasted great.

Thank You Series - 2

Blogging is so much fun but it turns a little sour when an anonymous leaves a nasty comment. But then I shouldn’t generalize about anonymous since there are a lot of sweet anonymous(es) out there who leave absolutely wonderful comments like these.

My darling husband bought a bag full of cranberries thinking it was cherries (don’t roll your eyes please; it happens a lot in our home). The same day chanced upon Krishna Arjun’s post on cranberries and was curious about this cranberry thokku recipe left as a comment by ‘ash’.
Thokku is pickle, where the main ingredient is used in a mashed form. There is mango thokku, gooseberry thokku, tomato thokku etc.

Cranberries – 4 cups, cook with a ¼ cup water until soft.

Heat ½ cup gingelly oil, splutter 1 tsp mustard seeds, lower heat and add fenugreek seeds and 1 tsp asafotedia. When the fenugreek turns a slight brown, add 2 tsp chili powder and 1.5 tsp salt. Sauté well and let the water evaporate completely until the cranberry turns a thick paste with no water. Stir occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan.It tastes so delicious. Serve with rice or roti.

I am not sure of the shelf life so I have refrigerated the pickle. Thank you once again ‘ash’.

Dont laugh at the picture please, but I too made vettu cake. I think I am serious competition to Archana in cooking and photography. Poor girl! :-) . Had never even heard of such a thing until she wrote about it.

Then, I made Hyderabad Biryani following Nabeelas recipe and it turned out just great. This is as she says is 'Dum Biryani' where the meat and rice is cooked together.
Made cranberry salsa, following Krishna Arjuna's recipe

Thank you all once again.

Kadala Curry or black channa dal curry

Everybody makes channa dal and then my aunt makes channa dal…

Usually in Kerala households, black channa is made with ground fried coconut or coconut milk. Kerala has a special liking for black channa, but even then I don’t think our coconut version of channa dal curry or kadala curry is impressive.
Though this big secret of non-impressive kadala curry has been hushed up by many mothers and grandmothers, the rebel that I am had to come out with the truth one day.
“Actually, you know, err…I am not really found of our Kerala style kadala curry. Channa and coconut do not blend together and all the curries I have tasted of channa, the adamant black channa refuses to get infused with the delicate coconut”

There was absolute silence as I blurted this out during an unofficial family gathering and then my lovely aunt, held my hand, looked into my confused eyes and told me…
”I know what you are saying. I have been there. Come, I will teach you the secrets of this harsh World…err…sorry I got carried away…I will show you how to make proper kadala curry”

She then taught me how to make the best kadala curry I have tasted and how to ditch the coconut.

Black channa dal – 2 cups washed and soaked for more than 12 hours.

Pressure cook 1/2 cup onion, 2 tsp of chili powder, 1 tsp of garam masala powder, ¼ cup garlic crushed, 1 tsp ginger diced, 3 green chilies and ¼ cup tomato diced with the soaked black channa adding enough salt and 1/4 tsp turmeric powder and add ½ cup water. Pressure cook well. Black channa needs a lot of time to get cooked.

Heat oil, splutter mustard seeds, sauté 1 spring curry leaf. To this add a little salt and a pinch of turmeric. Then add the cooked channa mixture. Now is the trick. Add ¼ cup of ordinary tomato sauce, mix well in the curry and then let it simmer for 5 minutes.Serve it with rice, roti, or puttu.