My India, My Country

When idea-girl Indira came up with the theme of Independence, I wanted to write about some food that would be equally pleasing to North, South, East and West. Nah! I was not at all successful. I think we might agree on Kashmir some day, but not on a common food likeable by all of us.

The thought of food made me think of a great man who fasted seventeen times for all of us. Without him we Indians cannot mention the word freedom. Without his non-violence and leadership our freedom would have been a lot more bloody and our country would have turned a hell. Without his guidance and willpower, our leaders would have been lost with a huge country with so many different languages and cultures.

When British left us, we were robbed to the last penny. Famine and violence were everywhere.When they left us, they wished, we ‘uncivilized’ Indians would fight among ourselves and would disperse and they could laugh at that.

We might be a little poor, we might be a little corrupt, and we might have lot of follies of a nation celebrating only the 60th Independence Day.

Yet, we are surviving…beautifully! We are having the last laugh.

India has gained respect in the eyes of others. We didn’t do that by bombing another nation or demeaning another country. We did it with our passion and internal strength. For that, I am a lot thankful.

Thinking of fasting, it occurred to me that Gandhiji ended his fasting with nimbu pani. Yes, a simple sweet lemon juice.So, I made lemon juice…in a different way. It is called bonji in Trivandrum, Kerala. The fun part is equal amount of sugar and salt is added. It gives the lemon juice a very special taste. It is mainly available in small shack teashops. Since sugar is beaten well to dissolve with a steel spoon against the steel glass and it makes a taka taka noise and this process is called bonji adikkal which translates somewhat to beating bonji :-)

To celebrate our hard-earned freedom we need something sweet. Distributing sweets to near and dear is our common way of celebrating any happy occasion across India.

So, I made payasam. Kerala's own 'Pal Payasam'. God's own Country's special!
This sweet dessert is made with matta red rice.
Bring 3 cups of milk to a boil. Add ½ cup of sugar. Add 1 cup of washed rice. Let the rice cook in this. Add 1 tsp of cardamom powder.Heat 1/8 cup of ghee. Sauté 2 tbs of raw cashew nuts and 2 tbs of raisins. Add to the payasam.Serve as a dessert.

Freedom is sweet. Wishing and hoping every child on this earth would enjoy freedom!

Uruli

This cooking pot is called uruli in Malayalam. It was normally made of bronze and now is available in aluminum which was easier for me to carry. It is very useful for frying or making payasams. It has a large surface area and a wide open mouth. Look at the peculiar shape. I don’t know whether the shape has any significance.

Made Avalos Podi in this. The large ones are now used for decorative purposes representing a small pond.

This is for Indira's Indian utensils series.

Guess the plant? It is Ginger!

This is a very easy one. Clue is spread all over my blog!! hehehe :).

Everyone of you guessed it! Ah! I should'nt have left the clue. Thanks a lot guys!

GBP Summer 2006 - August - Amarapayaru Thoran (Hyacinth bean stir fry)

Finally, it happened! No, the sky didn’t fall nor did pigs fly…but my computer crashed. My PC’s motherboard gave upon me. Enough blogging, it protested! pretty vehemently this time.

But, hey I am back again…and it feels so good. Well, maybe you guys didn’t notice :), but I didn’t blog for ten days. Ah! What a loss to the blogging world..hehehehe.. Just kidding!

Now, dear non bloggers, if you don’t have a blog, but have a pot and a plant and a recipe; please do email me your pictures at, greenblogproject AT gmail DOT com.

Folks, hurry up! Summer is about to get over in a month. I will be posting entries on October 1st. If you have not received a reply from me, I haven’t got your entry yet. Let us all have fun and turn the blogs green on that day!

Here is my last GBP-Summer 2006 entry.This is called amarapayaru in Malayalam and Hyacinth bean in English. If you have a tree in your yard, I request you to grow this vegetable. It is so easy to grow, a prolific producer and rich in nutrients, fiber and vitamins. Moreover, it is disease resistant by nature. This also grows anywhere and will enrich your soil with nitrogen. It is a climber. So you can just plant them around a tree and it produces such pretty and long lasting flowers, the flowers are used for decorating too. Or you could just grow this as an ornamental plant in your flower garden too. Mix the violet and the white and you have long lasting flowers in your garden.I planted both the white and the purple. I don’t recommend the red variety since it is very hard to get it to produce. Don’t know why. Right time to pluck the bean is when the skin is smooth and the seeds haven’t started to protrude beneath the skin.

You have to string the beans.Then dice them thin.
For 3 cup diced beans,
Heat 2 tsp of oil; splutter ¼ tsp of mustard seeds, sauté two split dry red chilies, sauté 2 sprigs of curry leaves and ½ cup diced shallots or onion. To this add ¼ tsp turmeric powder and 6 green chilies split.

When the shallots turn translucent, add the diced beans, add salt and sprinkle 2 tbsp water. Cover and cook in medium to low flame.

When 3/4th cooked, crush ¼ cup fresh grated coconut with 2 garlic pods and add to this and cover the grated coconut with the beans and cook for another 6 or 7 minutes in low flame.Rice and beans packed in lunch box.Serve it with rice or roti.

Avalos Podi (Rice Flour Snack)

When JFI Flour was announced, I wanted to make something flour-y to project the theme.What else other than Avalos podi? Flour, that you can eat?

How many jars of Avalos podi, we, ever-moving Keralites would have taken to hostels or homes abroad, to eat with a little sugar or a simple banana? If you pass by my home in Kerala and get the whiff of avalos podi frying, you can be sure someone is leaving the next day. What other snack is there, which is simple to make, stores very well yet so filling and needs very simple accompaniments?

'Podi' means flour in Malayalam. No clue what Avalos means. Maybe it is the creator’s name?This is a very simple recipe and a good snack item. This will store good for 6 months if done properly.

Raw Rice Flour coarsely ground to sooji like consistency (If you don't get raw rice in that consistency, soak raw rice overnight, dry it completely on absorbent paper, then grind it coarse in your spice grinder).

Mix 1 cup of coarse ground rice flour with ½ cup of freshly grated coconut with ½ tsp of cumin and ¼ tsp of salt water. Keep aside for 3 hours.

Now take a flat pan or an uruli, heat it well and fry it until it turns light brown. Make sure you keep on stirring so that it won’t get burned. It should only turn a light brown color. Be very careful. You have to continuously stir so that it doesn’t burn.Now sieve the fried flour through a corase strainer and grind the lumps and add it to the fried avalos podi.Serve with a little sugar or a banana.

We also make 'avalos unda' with this which will test the strength of your teeth. About that later…

I am tired! Not from cooking but from thinking up stuff for events. My brain really hurts! No more events…please…for couple of months. :-)

My comfort food

Comfort Food is all about nostalgia to me. It is all about getting that heavy feeling in my heart while savoring it. The sad part is that while growing up; I never realized that what I was eating right then would be my ‘comfort food’ later in my life. You would never realize that in some years, eating a certain food would bring tears to your eyes and you would feel like hugging the food right in front of you.

When Revathi posted the theme, I first didn’t know what my comfort food was. So many different foods back home made by my mom displayed like a slideshow in my mind.Then I realized,It is not what food it is, it is that feeling you get.

I get it in when I eat food packed in a sautéed banana-leaf by my mom.

I get in when I eat it inside a train half way away from home listening to the sound of the train and trying to eat it balancing on the lap, with a book open and the wind trying to blow it all away.

I get it when I know my mom has packed three times the food I normally eat, to compensate for the long days ahead at college or work away from home. I stuff myself, wishing I was a Camel.

I get it when I lick my fingers for the last bit of it, wiping it on the newspaper that covers the leaf and throwing it away on the tracks and longingly looking at it again through the rusty window bars.It is that special taste, none else can experience with you.

Bombay Beef Fry

I don’t know why it is always referred as lazy Sundays. Back home, it was always hectic Sundays. We had to get up at 7 and get ready for Church at 9 a.m. Oh! How we hated it. Since we had to receive the Holy Quarbana, we had to have our breakfast two hours before church and then brush again to cleanse our mouths.

During those days, when the T.V Serial ‘Ramayana’ aired at 9.30 a.m., lot of people started skipping the morning mass for the evening one. My mother was one among them when my Dad was not at home. But the problem was morning Sunday Mass held a lot of ‘traditions’ like meeting people after the Mass, then walking back from Church and stopping at some of my mom's friend’s house on the way to discuss what their Sunday special was. Last stop would be at the meat shop of Hassanikka for a ½ k. g. of beef.

During the weekdays we never ate meat. Sunday was our meat day. Those days meat was quite expensive, so meat was a precious commodity and getting a chicken leg was like winning a lottery. Maybe because it was served not very often and when served, the quantity was so less, it tasted so good unlike now when I don’t like to eat meat that much and I crave for vegetarian meals. Also, I do think the meat we got back home was not ‘glorified’ Organic, but it did eat grass and did not have antibiotic treatments.Outside Kerala, I think it is very hard to find good beef.

Hindus regard Cow as sacred and you would get stares if you even said you eat beef. But in Kerala, even most Hindus eat beef.

This special and quick beef fry is from my Late Uncle. He used to call this Bombay Beef Fry only because he used to make it regularly during his bachelor days in Bombay, now called as Mumbai.Shallot is the main ingredient.

For 2 cups of beef, 1 cup of shallot diced.

First dice the beef to bite sized pieces and cook the beef with enough salt, ¼ tsp turmeric powder and 2 tsp chili powder.

Then heat ¼ cup of oil, splutter 1 tsp of mustard seeds, 3 sprigs of curry leaves. Now sauté the diced shallots until it is about to turn brown. Keep the flame to medium and add the cooked beef and sauté well. You should make it real dry. The beef should be sautéed well until the beef turns a brown color. It will take a good amount of time to get the beef dry. The actual thing is to sauté it until it will burn.This dish doesn’t have any garam or meat masala. Shallots sautéed with the beef give it a completely different taste and flavor. Serve with rice or roti.

Drumstick Leaves Fry (Muringa ila thoran)

Did you all see how Kitchenmate grew her own drumstick tree in a pot? I was so excited to see that. Because that definitely meant everybody can grow it in a pot even if you live in a place with 6 months of winter, just like a curry leaf plant. Now, I don’t know whether it will fruit in a pot, but it doesn’t matter. We can eat the leaves!
Those tiny pretty oval shape leaves holds so much nutrients, your body will thank you for that nutrient laden pot-of-gold. For that reason, it is called The Tree of Life.

I have a drumstick tree in my backyard. But it always had yellow leaves. I was going crazy because yellow leaves normally meant nitrogen deficiency and as soon as I feed them ( Organic Nitrogen fertilizer like Blood Meal etc) and turn, it would have yellow leaves. The soil we have here is beach type sandy soil and it means not even 1% of nitrogen. We have to buy and feed tons and tons of good soil for plants to grow. Still it had yellow unhealthy leaves.
I then asked a virtual blogger friend Mr. Chandra Shekar, and he advised me to feed it Magnesium. I did and Voila! It never had another yellow leaf (touch wood!).

For people who are planning to grow this in pots, you don’t have any worries like this. Since, you can control the soil nutrients easily.

This grows very fast; it can reach up to seven or more feet in a single year. You can trim the top of the tree when it reaches a certain preferred height like 4 or 5 feet. It will grow back soon.So, if possible try to grow a drumstick tree. A sunny window is all you need. You can germinate from seeds or get a tree from TopTropicals.com.
Okay, now roll up your sleeves for some real work:-).

The stems taste very bitter if added. So you need to really pluck the leaves from the tiny stems. Inspect and wash the leaves thoroughly under running water. Now pluck the leaves from the stems.

For 3 cups of leavesHeat 2 tsp of oil, splutter ½ tsp mustard seeds and two dried red chilies and a sprig of curry leaves. Add 2 tsp of urad dal or chana dal and sauté them. Add 1 cup of diced onion or shallots along with 5 green chilies diced. When onions are sautéed well, add the leaves and mix everything with some salt and turmeric powder. Close and cook for 6 or seven minutes. This cooks very fast. Now, add ½ cup of shredded coconut to the mixture, mix well and close and cook for another 3 minutes.That’s it. Pot of Gold is ready. Serve with rice or chapathi.If you know Malayalam, check out this wonderful malayalam article about Muringa Leaves, by a dear blogger Devan.

Boiled Cassava (Kappa Puzhungiyathu)

If you have never tasted Cassava, I want you to taste this delicious but simple and down-to-earth food.

My earlier post about kappa dealt with the dried Cassava. This is about fresh Cassava, which is available almost everywhere in U.S even in small town U.S, because I think it is produced largely in South America.

There is a certain way to clean and boil kappa. Kitchenmate asked me a while ago, how to choose a good kappa.Very simple! Break the thin end of long kappa stick and view the white inside. If it is pure white without any brown or black spots, it is good kappa. Also, a good kappa will be very hard to touch.

The starchy part of kappa is covered with two type of skins. It has a very thin brown skin and a pinkish hard white skin. You have to remove both. Cut both ends of the kappa. Kappa has a head part which is very hard and you can’t cook it well. So cut off the head which looks and feels like a tree trunk. Cut off only one inch or so of the tail portion. Now dice into 5 inch pieces.
Then, take a good strong wide blade knife on your right hand, hold the kappa piece on your left hand and with a sudden vertical cutting action, force a straight line impression on the kappa skin. Now, peel the skin off by rotating the kappa on your left hand.
There you can see the hard peel. You peel both the skins at one go.Dice the piece into 5 or 6 long pieces.Add water so that all the pieces will be immersed completely. Do not cover. When the water boils, strain the water. This is very important. Whatever people tell you, do not miss this step. Do not!

Now add the same amount of water, some salt and boil it again until very very soft when you pierce it with a fork. The boiled pieces should feel like solid butter kept at room temperature about 10 minutes. Not very soft and not hard at all. Strain the water completely.Serve with Kaanthari Chutney, Fish Curry, Meat Curry or any curry you would serve with rice and yummmmm…you will become an addict instantly!This can be served as a light evening snack or even as lunch or dinner.

Fish and Mango Curry

Time for some yummy fish, folks?This was supposed to be my entry for the first Jihva for Mangoes.

If there is a dish that imparts the exact flavour of raw unripe mangoes, it is Fish with Mango Curry. People make this with sun dried unripe mangoes too. Yummm…that’s another taste altogether! Just like sambar, when you make fish curry, you need a little sourness to the curry. Some add tomatoes, kokum, kudampuli or something as wonderful as sour mangoes.I don’t know how many times my Dad has said this, but if he is at home when it rains in April, he would tell us kids, “You know at my home in our village, when it rains, the small mangoes would fall on the tiled roof and would create a lovely music note…tapa tapa…tapa…” and he would longingly look at the rain outside to immerse himself in nostalgia…and we kids would look at him with our wide open eyes and ask…"Really, then what happened?” He would instantly snap back to real life and would say, “Then? Then, nothing! The rain stopped”...and he would brush us off.
For 3 cup fresh fish slices, take 1 cup Mango Slices (Make sure they are sour) peeled and diced.

Grind together 1 cup of coconut, 2 tsp of coriander powder, 2 tsp of red chili powder, 1/4 tsp of fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp of turmeric powder to a smooth paste.

Mix this with the mango and fish slices. Add 6 or 7 green chilies diced, crushed ginger pieces 2 tsp, crushed garlic ¼ cup, 3 sprigs of curry leaves. Add salt.Add 2 cups of water to this and cook in medium flame.

The curry should be very thick. So add water accordingly.Heat 2 tsp of coconut oil, sauté 3 green chilies split, saute1 sprig of curry leaves and sauté 1 shallot diced very thin until it browns.Add this to the cooked fish curry.
Serve with Rice.

Tips: While making fish curry, select fleshy fish and scrub the skin with lemon juice and salt. Keep aside in a strainer for sometime. Also, always make 'thick' fish curry.

GBP Summer 2006-July

I am sooooo happy to see so many of you guessed it right! Oh-ho! But I only have one trophy with me? Can you all please share? :-) . It is indeed Snake Gourd or Padavalanga in Malayalam.This is my GBP Summer 2006-July Entry. Recipe with Snake GourdHurry up folks! Just two more months for the Round up. I will post the Green Blog Project Summer Round up on October 1st.

If you still havent started your little garden, C'mon get a small pot, plant some parsley or thyme and keep it near your window (No excuses for not having a window!). Make some dish with that and send me your entries to, yes finally I created an email Id :-) greenblogproject AT gmail DOT com OR just post a comment on the GBP Summer Link.

Okay, I also want to hear stories about "Why it didnt grow?" too. Maybe we can see what happened. If you can take pictures, I could use that as a small sub heading in the Round Up Post.

I am really really happy, when someone sends me an entry from a patio or a window sill garden! I know the trouble you guys go through for that!

THANKS a million to a lot of sweet bloggers for spreading the Word. You guys are sooo sweet!

Guess the Flower - July 18.

Can you guess this flower? This produces a vegetable, we South Indians love but we rarely get it here in U.S and even if we get it, we have to pay through the nose. It is 5$ per pound here in Florida. If you can really guess this flower, I will award you with the "Green Guesser" Award :)Shape of this flower is very peculiar with tiny strings from each petals. Do you know?I really hope these guess posts give you lot if information about the vegetables or fruits we forget. At times, I think our next generations would end up thinking pineapple grows in a tree since it is an 'apple', since we see vegetables and fruits only on neatly arranged shopping isles these days.

Karinaaranga Curry (Lemon Curry)

What’s the cross between a pickle and a curry? Yeah, it is Karinaaranga Curry!
Melody of flavors in your mouth and even after days of savoring it, you would keep on wondering whether it was a pickle or a curry. Whatever it was, you would go crazy searching for the recipe, asking your friends or googling to recreate it in your kitchen so you could feel it again…
One such dish, my dear friends, is the Lemon Curry.Karinaaranga (That is in Malayalam. A dear blogger Priya searched and read for me, and came up with the name Eureka Lemons) . Alternatively, you can use the Lemons we get here in U.S. Or any other ripe lemon which is not sweet and also not too sour.

Recipe:
2 Big Lemons steamed for 10 minutes until the skin becomes very soft. Cut them open, deseed them and dice them into bite sized pieces. For me, this came up to 3 cups. So if you don’t get the Eureka Lemons, use 4 or 5 Lemons.

Urad Dal, Split Channa Dal, Raw Rice – 1 table spoon each. Roast them in 2 tsp sesame oil. Add 1 tsp of fenugreek seeds to this and 1 sprig of curry leaves and roast. Add ½ tsp of asafotedia powder to this, mix and take off from fire.

Grind together to a fine paste with Coriander Powder – 1 tbsp, Red Chili Powder – 4 tsp, Turmeric Powder - 1tsp
Lime-sized tamarind, soaked in 2 cups of warm water. Squeeze out the sour water. Make sure the tamarind is not too much. If you are not sure, add tamarind water in parts to the curry.

To this tamarind water, add 2 cups of water, ground paste and the lemon pieces. Add salt and cook in low flame until the dish thickens. Add 1 tsp of jaggery or brown sugar to this and mix.

Heat 2 tsp of sesame oil; splutter 2 tsp of mustard seeds and 4 red chilies split and add to this dish.
Serve with rice. It's taste is so unique, I have no other words to describe other than 'seductive'. Stores really well in your refrigerator.

Kanthaari Mulaku Chammanthi (Raw Green Chili Chutney)

What do I do when a certain Spicy Tiger announce the next Spice is Right theme, which is chilies?

I sit back, relax my grip on the mouse, throw my head back and give out an all-knowing laugh.

Why? Since I have the secret, oh-okay, some people know it, oh okay…okay, sorry the entire Kerala knows, recipe for the absolute chili chammanthi (chutney).

For the recipe, we need kanthaari mulaku. Nah! You cannot substitute with anything else and I don’t know the equivalent English term for this type of chili (Probably the English would not live to tell the taste, if they ever taste this hot chili pepper, hence no name, yet?) :-)
Women or girls who are smarter or naughtier or fiercer are 'lovingly' called Kanthaari in Kerala. It would roughly translate to a lioness or tigeress, I would think. And what other recipe is fit for the Spicy Tiger event? :-)

Three kanthaari mulaku (I used the white kanthaari, there is another dark green shorter version which is the best!) and one shallot (yes, we need shallot) ground coarsely in a mortar pestle.Add 1 tsp of coconut oil. (Yep, we need coconut oil) to this and mix the mixture using your index finger and then lick the index finger for that absolute flavor and a heady aroma, which will make you drool and tear. ;-)What's the best combination with this? Plain boiled Kassava pieces. Bliss! No other recipe gives you the exact flavour and pungency of this special chili.

Note: Will blog soon about how to boil Kassava.

Cucumber Kichadi / Pachadi

Most regions in Kerala call this dish Pachadi, but towards the south of Kerala it is called Kichadi.This is made with Indian cucumber or kani vellarikka. ‘kani’ ( ‘n’ is pronounced as in money) is added to the vellarikka (cucumber) part since it is kept as an offering for God on Vishu, which is the New Year for Malayalam calendar.

This type of cucumber available in Kerala is very soft inside and has the texture of the fleshy part of a very ripe apple. It is plucked when it is ripe and turns golden yellow in color.Peel the cucumber and discard the seeds. Dice into very small pieces (3 cups). You can definitely use English cucumber or any other cucumber variety too.Sprinkle some water and cook covered with some salt in low heat. Since cucumber has lot of water content, make sure you only sprinkle some water while cooking.

When it is cooked, add a very fine paste of coconut (Grind together 1 cup of freshly grated coconut, 1 tsp of black mustard seeds, 4 green chilies). Add ¼ cup of water if the paste is not watery. The dish should be thick so don’t add too much water. After adding the coconut, when it boils and the water evaporates, take off from fire.Heat 1 tsp coconut oil, splutter ¼ tsp mustard seeds, sauté 1 broken red chili.
Add to the dish and then add 1.5 cups of very thick curd (Not very sour and without any lumps).Serve with rice.This also is one of the Onam Sadyadish.

Thank You Series - I

Once upon a time, I googled for 'Moong Dal Sprouts' and was awe struck by what I saw.It was Open Sesame for me. An array of golden recipes made at home by a wonderful lady. Oh, Food Blogs? How come I, who thought of myself, as tech trend savvy, never ever, heard about this?

Then, I looked to the right side of her blog and discovered a whole new World, a welcome peek at a lot of fantastic kitchens! I am still awestruck by many of the creations by my dear blog buddies (Some of them have gone on to become my twin, my fairy, my sister, my dear friends)!

If one thing my husband approves of me doing is browsing food blogs, he is happy and excited like a kid at all the new dishes his wife is making. He has declared, "Now you have started to learn cooking"! Ah! Men! (rhymes with Amen! ;0)

The best part of food blogs is that you can ask the blogger your doubts about a particular recipe, which is like catching upon the basic training I missed with my mom and grandmom.

These are a few of those recipes I tried. There are many in my folder. But to start with…I used to make idlis and dosas before, but lovely Kitchenmate taught me to make the perfect idlis and dosas I have tasted, just like those I have had in Tamilnadu.
Idli Recipe : 4:1 (boiled rice: uraddal). Soak them overnight, grind urad dal first and rice separately. Her tip: Sprinkle water to the urad dal while it is grinding,which makes the dough very fluffy and the idlis soft like a flower.
Dosas
Darling RP's Salsa was finished off by my guests at the same speed of a salsa.
Strawberry Salsa

Saffron Hut's spectacular food pictures make any simple recipe look like an exclusive affair.Besan Burfi

And last from the Queen's blog:) .I have made so many dishes from Indira's blog I surely can't list them all, this one I remembered to take a picture.
Aloo Chole
Once again, thank you my dear buddies for being there with me in my culinary journey.