Kappa Erachi/ Mashed Tapioca with Beef

Some of the food we enjoy the most are the most basic ones, with no frills..comfort food at its best, probably devised by some tired mother as a leftover special, whipping some of the contents of the fridge together. Kappa is Tapioca or Yuca and I grew up calling it "poolla".  Getting good kappa was not easy (we were outside Kerala) and when we did get it,  we used to love it.. in all the myriad forms of kappa.. ..sometimes served with fish curry,  sometimes made into "puzhukku", cooked together with sardines; sometimes cooked  with sweet potatoes, plantain peels, and yams and served with spicy red fish curry. As an escape from the routine rice-roti meals, I enjoyed it a lot and had a soft corner for any kappa item. It was much later that I found out that Kappa is considered a "poor man's food" in Kerala, a thattu kada food.

A thattukada is like a"dhaba" or a street food joint, or a NY food truck, but housed in a small restaurant.  The restaurant may not be something to write home about (in fact, if you are in college, better not to let your folks know where u are eating.), but most likely the food there was special. My classmates(guys) used always rave about a thattukada behind our college which served fresh meals while we cribbed about our hostel food. It was a boys only place most of the time, so they refused to take us there. In our final year of college, we finally got them to agree to take us there to have a "rice meal". Needless to say, we were the only girls there but the food was good.

There is a dhaba or a thattukada on the fringes of everyone's memories.... the dhaba where we went for the midnight  egg dipped fried alu parantha, the place where you got ur thattu dosa fix, the anda burji place, the puttu-mutton curry shoe hole, the appam stew place, the kuthu porotta joint.  Some are  liquor joints, the local place to get the nadan kallu, i.e. the country liquor, but a lot of them just cater to a hungry working/student  population with fast cheap eats, at all times of the day and night, when even the "decent" restaurants are closed off. Which one was your favorite thattukada? Anybody want to comment?

Now, far away from the crowd, this food is also a food group we miss, as much for the taste as for the fond memories of the time and place. Kappa Erachi, now known as a glorified "Kappa Biryani, used to be known simply as "erachiyum poollayum" in our houses, is a mashed concoction of spiced beef and tapioca, held together by a ground coconut paste. There are versions of this everywhere now, with more spices, more garam masala, with roasted coconut, but back home, its made very simply with some beef varatiyathu mixed into the kappa. My mom was amused to see our humble food being marketed as a ethnic gourmet delight in the TV and the resorts of Kerala. Well, I guess, as long as there are expatriate Keralites around, these resorts will do well and I definitely won't mind going and eating there.:)

Ingredients for 4-6 servings
Tapioca/ Yuca – 2 lbs
Beef – 1 lbs


For Cooking Beef
Shallots – 10
Fresh Ginger - Garlic Paste– 2 tbsp
Hot Green Chillies – 7
South Indian Garam Masala Powder – 1 tsp
Red Chili Powder – 1 tsp
Roasted Coriander Powder – 2 tbsp
Turmeric Powder – 1 tsp
Pepper Powder – 1/2 tsp
Fenugreek Seeds- 1.2 tsp
Curry Leaves – A handful
Salt – to taste

For Coconut paste
Shallots-2
Grated Coconut – 1 cup
Fennel seeds  – 1 tbsp
Curry leaves-1 sprigs

Preparation:
1.Clean and cut the beef into small cubic pieces. Peel the tapioca and cut into medium sized chunks. Do not use any portion that is discolored, has blue lines or looks too soft.
2.Mix the spice powders and salt and keep aside. Chop the green chillies finely and add  to the beef, along with the ginger garlic paste and spice powders under the beef heading. Keep aside for about half hour.
3. Add the marinated beef, 4 sliced shallots, ginger-green chili paste and the rest of the ingredients including the leaves. Add half cup water and slow cook the meat on low heat and covered for 1hr, and stirred once in a while to prevent it from sticking to the pan. The cooking time will vary with the quality of the beef. Usually beef back in Kerala used to take forever to cook and here  it gets over cooked too easily. So keep an eye on it. Alternately, pressure cook the meat without adding any water, for 2-5 minutes after the first whistle and then open the cooker and let the extra liquid dry up on medium low heat in the cooker itself.
4.  Meanwhile, boil the tapioca pieces along with salt and 1/2 tsp turmeric until tender. You would need to add water for boiling....about double the quantity of tapioca. I usually pressure cook that too in just enough water to cover it, for just one whistle.  If there is too much water after the tapioca is cooked, drain the water (reserve it)and keep the tapioca pieces aside. The tapioca should be soft.
5. Grind the coconut with the fennel, shallots and curry leaves. Optionally, dry roasting the coconut for about  5minutes gives it nice flavor.
6. Mix the tapioca pieces with the beef, its gravy and the coconut. Adjust salt as needed. Cover and let it simmer on very low heat for about 5 minutes till the flavors blend in. Leave it covered for some more time. The texture should not be watery, it should be semi- thick and chunky with pieces of beef and tapioca.
Heat 1 tbsp coconut oil and fry the remaining 6 shallots (sliced finely) till brown and then add the curry leaves. Pour this mix over the kappa erachi  and serve.