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.:)

Coconut red chammanthi

Don’t call my chammanthi chutney please. Chutneys are not chammanthi. Chutney is watery version of a chammanthi. In Kerala, this red chammanthi is made in a stone ammikkallu. View a picture of ammikkallu from another blog.

I don’t know the English term for ammikkallu. It is a flat bed stone with a round rolling stone. You place the ingredients on the flat bed stone and with the rolling pin, you crush and grind the ingredients and a chammanthi made like that is bliss.

I have seen portable version of these heavy stone in India. One of these days when I can sneak one into my suitcase without my husband's knowledge, I will surely bring it here. But for now, I have to make it in a small wet grinder. I have Revel small wetgrinder and is perfect for small quantities like chammanthi.

At home, mom would prepare the chammanthi using the stone crusher and finally make it into a ball shape. Somehow, the ball shape of the chammanthi is etched into my mind, whenever I make it, I have to have it finally in ball shape.

This is eaten with rice. Rose matta rice kanji, roasted papad and red coconut chammanthi….mmmmm.

How to make it?
Fresh grated Coconut – 2 cups
Red Chili powder – 2 tsp
Fresh Tamarind without the seed – 1.5 square inch (Do not use the paste)
One small shallot
Salt

Coarse grind all this together without adding any water. The water content the coconut is more than enough. Do not grind it fine. Then it becomes a chutney like consistency. Make it into a ball shape (optional) :-)

Serve with rice. This usually goes with only rice.

JFI - Chakkapuzhukku (Mashed Raw Jackfruit)

I have been missing out on many JFI’s mainly due to laziness. But as soon as I saw this JFI ingredient by our cute Bee, I knew I couldn’t miss it. JFI-JackFruit. Whoa! Can anything be more Indian ingredient than that? Can any food blogger with turmeric tainted blood stay away from that?

I couldn’t! and guess what? My mom who doesn’t even know I blog, sends me packets and packets of fresh jackfruit through a friend just two weeks ago. This is what you call heavenly godly coincidence.

Then, what do I do? I being a true blue Malayalee think about all different kind of recipes for JFI to surprise everyone and end up with the good old Chakkaapuzhukku, a very Kerala dish. Aarggh...! I think I am cursed.

I don’t have to search the internet to write down these. Just need to jot down my memories. While growing up on plenty of jackfruits every season in Kerala, I grew upon two varieties. One is koozhchakka, a very fibrous variety, but not as tasty as the other one which is varikkachakka. Varikkachakka has a special variety known as thenvarikka which really tastes like honey. Varikkachakka fruit is very firm and you can eat as much as you want without getting a stomach ache.

1. jackfruit seed removed and halved
2. thin skin covering of the jackfruit seed
3. white strings on the whole fruit
4. whole fruit plucked from the thick skin
5. how the seed is attached to the whole fruit.

Usually you ripen the varikkachakka and eat is as a fruit. People prefer ripe varikkachakka as a fruit than the koozhchakka. Raw koozhachakka is prepared into curries etc. It is said that if you feast on too much koozhachakka, you get a stomach ache. I am not sure on this or whether the elders made us believe it.

Most jackfruit trees need special care while growing to make it varikka. Even if you buy varikka varieties to plant, it might end up as a koozha, since I remember my dad telling, the trees offshoot should be trimmed early or something like that.

Cutting jackfruit is a very tedious process. It is full of oozy sap that will stick to anything in contact. In most Kerala homes, there is an open verandah at the backside near to the kitchen, where all these kind of work is done. My mom or grandmom would sit down on the floor, with one leg folded upwards. They then hold the chakka with the left hand and with the right foot and would cut it into pieces with a hoom hoom noise as the knife goes down. We all sit round waiting it to be cut and distributed to savor it. I remember this process when I hear someone crib about cutting pineapple. I would think, wait until you cut a jackfruit.

While handling whole jackfruit, one needs special care to avoid the sap from sticking to your clothes etc. So you need to be very careful while cutting it. If you eat it directly, your hand also will be coated with a light film of sap. To wash it off, you first apply coconut oil and then wipe it clean with a cloth and then wash it off. There is a superstition that if you wash it off directly without oil, next year the tree won’t bear any fruits. I think this is a technique to remind everyone that without applying coconut oil to your hands first, you cannot actually get it cleaned thoroughly.

Even eating jackfruit is an art. My mom would cut the whole jackfruit into small portions with the skin on. We kids would then pluck off the fruit from the hard skin, take out the white strings attached to each fruit, bite into it and cut open into two. Then we take off the seed and a thin skin which covers the seeds and eat the fruit. Seeds, the white string covering, the thin cover of the seeds should not be eaten. Seeds can be eaten cooked.

Chakkapuzhukku Recipe

This dish is made with raw koozha jackfruit.

Half the jackfruit like 1 and cut each fruit into two inch pieces. – 3 cups

Cook covered with little salt and turmeric powder and ½ cup of water. When cooked, crush 1 cup of coconut, with ½ teaspoon cumin seeds, 5 green chilies and one sprig of curry leaves. Add the mixture crushed to this dish, mix well and cook covered for 5 more minutes and mash the cooked jackfruit lightly.

Heat 1 tsp of coconut oil, sauté two whole red chilies broken and add to the dish.This is served as a main dish usually with chicken or some meat curry.

My picture doesn’t show it completely mashed, since I didn’t know how the picture would turn out, but you would need to mash it little more, maybe for 5 more minutes to get the right consistency of a puzhukku. Puzhukku in Malayalam refers to boiled and mashed.

This post is also for my dear Revathi who had so many questions about jackfruit.

See 1. KappaPuzhukku
2. Jackfruit Erisseri

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.