Erachi Pathiri/ Paratha Stuffed with Minced Meat/ Fried Meat Pie...

A blog on Malabar Food will be incomplete without the palharams or snacks popular in our houses. I should have blogged this a while ago but I don't make these snacks often enough. Ramazan of course will see all of them make their rounds in my kitchen, but unlike my reader's imagination, my house is more likely t o have simple, light, un-interesting food on a regular basis than these delicacies.

Most of  the delicious Malabar dishes are meat based and spiced and fried to get its rich texture and taste.Comfort food in its raw form.... I love making them every now and then just to fill my kitchen with the ghost chatter and sounds of another time back home where it was made by more than one person interspered with a lot of conversation to take the tedium away.
Though why these dishes are called "palaharam", meaning a "light repast", or snacks is beyond me. They are delicious but in no way are they a "light" snack, unless u treat it as a pie and take just a slice. They are a meal in itself  and should get their time in the limelight on their own..not with a hazaar other co-stars. It's literally a crime to eat anything after eating one of these, except fruits or a sulaimani.

Erachi pathiri is a Ramazan delicacy in the Malabar regions, mostly in Calicut and north of there. Any salkaram/celebration there is not complete without this delicious and elaborate item on the table.Though a standard item in most houses, it is still not commonly available on the menu in restaurants. Wait for a Malabar Food festival to get a taste of the real deal or wangle an invitation to a house there. Zain's restaurant in Calicut is one of the only places that has it on the menu for those who want to try it.

Just like the name suggests, it is a chapathi/flatbread stuffed with minced and spiced meat.
It is made with beef mostly but you could make it with chicken or mutton too.  Not to be made with ground meat, it has to be meat cooked with the spiced and then chopped up and shredded by hand.
Kind of similar to the beef samosa but the pastry casing is fried after stuffing, and then dipped in a egg custard and shallow fried again. So the tastes vary from the sweet french toast like outer bites to the spicy meat-onion filling inside. I like it more than the uni dimensional samosa but my family goes for the spicy samosas more so that gets more show time.

Finding out the exact recipe for this item, I have come to realize that there is nothing called "authentic" any more. Just like I modify recipes to my family's taste, each family back home also has modifications to its recipe. So what I consider "authentic" may not be your "authentic". If all the recipes of a particular kind have 75%of the method and materials  in common then , that should be called an "authentic style" of a particular recipe. Every house would have a go-to recipe for meat filling and though slightly different house to house, that's what gets used for the samosas, erachi pathiri and chattipathiri (with meat). Some use fennel in the filling , some don't. Some use more onions than meat, and some vice versa. So here is a recipe to get you started and then add your modifications as you need.
For meat filling (makes about 4-5)
Boneless Beef/Mutton -1/2 lbs
Ginger -1/2 inch long piece
Garlic -3 cloves
Green chilies- 3
Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
Roasted Coriander powder – 1 tbsp
Red chili powder -1/2 tsp
Fennel powder -1/2 tsp
Salt to taste
For Sautéing:
Onions – 1 lb(3 medium ones)
Small green chilies -4
Curry leaves- A handful
Oil- 2-3 tbsp
Preparation:
1. Clean and cut the meat into small pieces. Grind ginger, green chilies and garlic into a paste. Mix everything with the meat, including the spice powders and leaves.
2. In a thick bottom  pressure cooker, add the marinated meat and let it cook uncovered for 5 minutes. No need to add any oil at this stage. When the meat starts releasing its excess water, place the lid and let it cook on full flame till the first whistling sound and then lower the heat to the lowest and cook for another 5 minutes. (Some meat may need more time so open, check and redo the process.) Take it off the flame and open after the steam is fully released. If there is excess gravy, simmer uncovered for 5-10 minutes to evaporate it.
Slow cook the meat covered on low heat for almost 1hr if you do not have a pressure cooker.
3. Meanwhile, chop the onions, green chilies and curry leaves into very fine pieces.
When the meat cools down, chop that also. You could use a chopper for this.
4. Heat the oil, and sauté the cut onions, chilies and meat on medium high heat till it looks dry and slightly separated. The onions just need to be translucent, not brown.Add chopped curry leaves.
Keep stirring to avoid the mix from sticking to the base. Adjust the salt and spice level. When the mix cools down, the filling is ready. the filling should be semi-dry and not too moist.
P.S.If onions were cut by the chopper, it becomes a bit moister so the frying time increases.  
For the Custard:
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
sugar- 2-3 tbsp
Cardamom Powder- a pinch
Mix everything and keep aside. Make more custard in the same proportion if this is not enough.


For the wrapper dough:
3/4  cup wheat flour
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour/maida
½ tsp salt and 2 tsp oil.
warm water -approx. equal quantity of flour.

 Make the dough the same way as for you would make for puri. Add warm water slowly. The dough should be hard but pliable, else it would be difficult to roll it out. Spread a drop of oil and cover with plastic wrap and keep aside for at least 15 minutes. Divide into even sized balls...about the size of a small lemon. 

Roll it out evenly till about 6 inch in diameter .Keep aside and roll out another chapathi of the same size. If they are nowhere near the same size, pile them up together and trim with a sharp circular lid. Now place one chapathi on the rolling board and place 2-3 tbsp of filling in the middle leaving a good 1 inch or more from the edges. Place the second chapathi over the this and press the ends together. The ends are crimped and pinched and rolled together to form a pattern.

Heat about 1 cup of oil in a saute pan. When it is medium hot, slide the stuffed chapathi into it and deep fry on each side for about 2-3 minutes. It should be brown and puff up. Drain onto paper towels.
Dip each stuffed chapathi into the egg custard and turn over once. Now shallow fry  the dipped chapathi in a non stick pan( uses less oil and the egg doesn't stick) with just enough oil to cook the egg on the outside.(Not deep fry). Drain and serve hot. Cut into slices if the pie is too big.

My measurements may be not be fully accurate for the dough-filling, so just bear with me. I will update with more details soon. If there are any queries they will be answered promptly.

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.

Ghee Rice II

If mutton stew is around, can ghee rice be far behind?
Ghee rice is pretty common in most houses now.. If it's a party ..well, then, lets make ghee rice and a plethora of dishes to go with it, veg or nonveg based. Sunday lunches in my mom's house tended towards biryani during my days there but lazy me, opts for ghee rice and a curry to celebrate the weekend. The winter doesn't help.. we almost stop eating rice as plain rice in the cold weather and only the pulavs and fried rice seems to satisfy. So here is another version of the typical Malabar style ghee rice.

Mutton Stew My Style

Its Feb already and there is hardly any signs of the great winter letting up.. The schools closed in preparation for the great storm that assailed the East coast and now will open only mid next week... now at least I can sleep in on these cold cold days without gearing up to confront the icy winds seeping in from the windows. I guess I am going into hibernation, putting on more padding to keep warm as well as turning indoors to avoid battling the cold. Though once we are dressed in clothes, well, layers and layers of them, the cold is not so bad, but the body is just stiff and unbending.

Just kidding.. I love the snow  and the white beauty all around..it is so picturesque and calm..They say its a "storm"..to me storm means lightning and thunder, floods of water and general mayhem.. the Kerala Monsoons. Well, the mayhem and floods of snow are there on the roads as is evident in the news, but the glamorous sound and light show is missing and the "storm" is a day filled with an eerie unnatural silence with a steady stream of cotton candy floating down covering the roof and trees with "frosting".

Meen Pathiri/ Steamed Fish Pancakes

One of my favorites from Malabar cuisine is meen pathiri i.e. rice pancakes stuffed with fish and steamed..is that an accurate description of such a balances of flavors? or is fish pie a better title? Trying to explain traditional cuisine to those who haven't tasted needs a stretch of imagination in terms of the language and ingredients.
This is another of those traditional Malabar recipes that is getting endangered and should be on a protected list..They were (and maybe still) are so commonplace in our houses but you might be more familiar with it through the travel cookery shows in Kerala where they are deemed exotic and laborious.


Pathiri is a term used loosely in Malabar region of Kerala to mean roti/chappathi/ or flatbread. The prefix of the word" pathiri" decides what kind it is..godumbu pathiri is made of godambu,i.e.wheat, ari pathiri is made of rice flour, erachi pathiri, has erachi /meat stuffed in it, meen pathiri has meen,/fish stuffed in it and so on.
This fish pathiri is made with Kng fish/Aikora or with Mackarel/ Aila or even with Sardines/ Mathi. When pressed for time, I have made this with canned tuna, canned sardines and it tastes passably good.

Beans Carrot Mezhukkuparatti or Stirfry

How many kinds of vegetables do you buy? All kinds indiscriminately or do u end up getting the same set week after week? Do you get excited by new veggies in other households? Do the experimentally bought veggies get relegated to the back of the drawer and only resurface during fridge clean up? Do you stereotype veggies as mallu, gujju, punjabi, marathi etc? Do you feel that certain vegetables taste like a particular cuisine no matter what you make with it? I am as guilty as you are and the only reason I can think of is environment. We tend to attach foods to a weather, a place, a cuisine that we first ate it in, a way of cooking...and to break out of that mold is difficult.

Kadala Kari/ Parippu Paysaam with Pidis/ Chana Dal Kheer

It's been a long month and am just glad to be sitting here nearly at the end of it, sighing in relief! Some days dragged their feet, some days got stretched taut like a rubber band only to have to let go and let it snap back with a sting. If I start to tell you what all happened in the last month, I will be here all evening, so suffices to say that our house has finally changed hands and we have moved out into an apartment. Even though I am writing it here now, it's still a bit hard to believe and sink in.
Since this is the country where you can return anything ( well, anything you buy and sometimes what you don't buy) I still get nightmares where our buyer wants to return the house for some weird reason or the other. I guess it will take a while, to settle in.

Chicken Samosas..

This is one of the Ramazan specialities, samosas filled with meat. It is made completely by hand but feel free to replace with ready made wrappers such as spring roll wrappers, samosa wrappers or puff pastry sheets (Bake it as per the instructions on the box if you use puff pastry to make chicken puff). Ground meat(chicken or beef) is not recommended for samosas as it changes the texture. Chicken can be made either by pressure cooking, or by just cooking the boneless pieces in the spices and mash it up for a shredded texture. Also, the quantity of onions to meat is a personal preference. Increase or decrease as you like.
If you have any leftover grilled or fried chicken or chicken dry curry , u could add onions and chilies and make the filling masala.  The filling should be dry for the samosa to hold together.

Central Kerala Red Fish Curry...

For this post, I don't want to dwell on the house sale.. the status quo on that is still the same. It's been hot and humid here the whole of last two weeks.. hey wait, isn't that the weather in Kerala? Maybe the weather allocation got switched.. upside, I don't have to water my flowers, they are blooming like never before. Beautiful!! Downside.. my veggie garden is neglected and is attacked by weeds which are growing faster than the veggies. I didn't put down a weed fabric when I set the garden out and regretting it now. We did get some red delicious tomatoes and a gigantic cabbage was harvested this week.. the plant came from my kid's school as a competition to see who will grow the biggest cabbage. We just planted it and fed it and it grew big..

Mathi Mulakittathu / Moliyar/ Sardines in Spicy Curry...

The house sale has become just another factor in the list of daily chores and activities. Even my kids are pitching in the daily clean up now.:)
"The blushing bride" as one of my blogger friends called the house, is wilting under all the attention or the lack of it. We had one open house last week and nearly went a little berserk getting it ready. Still not much response. The house prices are falling so much that bigger houses than ours are encroaching on our price zone, while the buyers are just shopping around still. The daily headlines of unemployment and housing market in a down spin doesn't help either. But let's see, we still have to wait and bide our time.

We are also on the other end, like most of my blogger friends, looking for a house and I know how difficult it is to like a house. When we were living in an apartment, it was easy to go around seeing houses and visualize ourselves in it, since they were almost always bigger than the apartment. The second home is not so easy. Now when we do our round of house viewing, can't visualize it as where we want to live in and at the end of the day, just want to come back "home". We get back home, stretch our feet in the backyard patio, peruse the endless grass and hear the twitters (the original bird sounds, not the internet chatter) around, wave to the rabbit, sip a cup of tea and think aloud, "why again are we moving?"

Makes you wonder what is it that we call "home". It's bricks and mortar, alright, but there must be something primeval about it that we get so attached to it. I have lived in a lot of houses over the years yet when I dream, there is only house from my childhood that comes regularly in my dreams as Representative of "my home". As children, we probably get fixated on the house that we lived in the longest with our family. Now as adults with our own families, each house that we live in represents a phase of life..newly married, FOB, pre-kid, post kid...

Anyway, in a rebel state of mind, I didn't buy an induction stove, but started cooking some fish curries to "perfume" the house..just kidding...couldn't stay away from some spicy curry for too long..... just have to do a thorough airing and cleaning after each cooking though. Vinegar and a wet towel help a lot.

So here is a really easy Mathi Curry. When I went to my regular fish market this time, I had to regretfully decline the King Fish head..pheeeuu!!Couldn't afford to cook that as that smell will linger on like a bad memory. But they had these Sardines, so good looking that I couldn't resist it. Thinking of the heaped plates full of fried sardines, from last summer back in Calicut, I chose 3 sardines and came home smug to find my DH laughing at me..u bought just 3 sardines? Well, one for me and two for you... And I decided to make the curry as the leftover fry smell is another torture.
The recipe is the way my mom makes it but she couldn't give me numbers. Ummi Abdullah's book had a similar recipe so I used that to come up with the final recipe. There are only slight differences in the recipes such as we don't really use mustard and my mom almost never fries the shallots. But I like it this way.

You Will Need:
Sardines-3 or 4
Shallots-6 sliced finely
Green Chilies-2 slit vertically
Garlic- 3 big cloves crushed well.
Tomato-1 small one
Red Chili Powder- 2 tsp(substitute with Kashmiri chili powder if you don't like the spice level.)
Turmeric-1/2 tsp
Tamarind Extract- 1tbsp(Laxmi Natural Tamarind Concentrate.)
Mustard-1/2 tsp(optional)
Fenugreek-1 tsp
Coconut oil-2 tbsp
Curry leaves
salt to taste

Preparation:
Use a pan or clay pot. Some say the high heat damages the clay pot so you could do the spluttering of mustard in a pan and add to the clay pot.

Heat the oil in a pan/ meen chatti( clay pot) and add the mustard seeds.
Cover and reduce heat and let them splutter. Open and add the fenugreek, onions,green chilies and garlic. Fry till the onions are transparent and starting to brown at the edges. Add the tomatoes and saute for just a minute. Mix the chili powder, turmeric powder with 1 tbsp water and add to the pan.

Fry for a minute or so and then add the tamarind extract. This extract that I use has the natural taste and the light brown color of real tamarind. If you are using whole tamarind, soak a small ball in half cup warm water and extract the juice by squishing the tamarind into the water and straining it.

Add 1/2 cup to 1 cup water if there is no liquid left in the pan and let it come to a boil. Adjust the sourness and salt and then add the fish and the curry leaves. Cover, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 7 to 10minutes. Keep it covered for some more time. The fish will take time to imbibe the flavors and tastes better definitely the next day or later in the evening.

Pazham Pori or is it Appam? /Smushy Plantain Fritters

If I stay away from the computer for too long then I feel hesitant to come back and blog..it's like entering a party late and hoping you haven't missed out on the happenings.
I had another exam to cover last week and I had a blogging ban by my better half so resisted spending all my online time surfing aimlessly. So I wrote anyway but put all my thoughts into draft, saving it with the intention of blogging everyday! This week, kept wondering which one to start with and hesitated...finally got tired of seeing the same post and decided to change it before people unsubscribe to my feed burner!

The weather is changing for the better and the days are getting longer, meaning I am out of the house longer... taking the kids to their myriad activities and then to the park etc..Dinner seems to come in the way of savoring the sunlight. It's so beautiful all around now... with all the dry dead brushes and bare branches all covered with flowers and leaves.

When there is so much greenery sprouting around, it's hard to sit down and put it into words. The lushness of the new leaves, the soft carpets of the lawns, the feathery leaves on the trees....the light green reminds me of the diminishing paddy fields but only just so.. the green in Kerala is a vivid green, contrasting so deeply with the red laterite soil that it stays in the mind long after the image has faded.

Laterite is quarried and cut into blocks and used as brickstones for house-building. They are used for rough walls between properties and for lining wells and ponds. The laterite is a soft stone with surface texture and it allows the roots of the plants to penetrate it, becoming a planting bed if the surface is not closed with plaster. When the walls are broken down, the blocks are crumbled and worked back into the earth

The rambling vines and undergrowth cover every inch of the laterite walls to create a symphony of varying shades of green and red. The undergrowth is always renewing itself and the color is always lush. Truly an organic and sustainable building material!!!

Here in two more weeks, the lushness will give away to a dull green, as if the leaves were forever there and the greenery will fade into the background. The lawns will slowly reveal what they really are.. just dry wild grass forced into submission by weekly (expensive) mowing and endless watering...the trappings of suburbia.



But let's enjoy the intermittent spring showers and new growth it brings. What's the best way to celebrate this cool weather? Maybe fry up some fritters and a cup of tea...hmm...maybe masala tea. These plantain fritters can be made with regular bananas too. I end up making this whenever I buy plantains and they get too ripe too soon.

You will need:
Fully ripe blackish colored plantains-2
All Purpose Unbleached Flour (Maida)-1 cup
Rice flour (optional)- 1 tbsp
Sugar -1tbsp
Kalonji/Onion Seeds - a pinch
Water - 1/4 cup
Salt -a very small pinch.
Oil - for frying

Preparation Method:

1. Peel and cut the ripe banana into 2 sections. (Wash your hands well if you are using hands.) Then smash the banana with your hands into a mushy mess. It should have some lumps left for texture and should not be a puree. This is fun.... you could even get your kids to do it. They enjoy the messiness of the banana squirting thru the fingers.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add water slowly while stirring to make a smooth paste. It should be lump free and not too watery. If it does become watery, add a little more flour. Add the banana and mix it well.
3. Heat oil in a skillet. You could fry this in a Unniappam chatti/Aebleskiver Pan too.
4. Slowly slide one spoonful/dollop of the banana mix into the oil.You could fry 4 or 5 at a time based on the size of your pan. Deep fry on medium heat till it turns a golden brown. Make sure the oil is hot before adding the batter. (It's hot if you put a drop of the batter and it rises to the top in a second.)If the oil is not hot enough, the fritters will absorb too much oil. Once it heats up, you could reduce it to medium heat. Drain onto paper towels and serve.

Vegetable Pulav/ Pilaf/ Pulao...

A very Belated Happy Vishu to all my readers and blogger friends. I just got back from spending some days with family in CA and I am still stuck between time zones. The West Coast is only 3 hrs behind the East Coast but for the biological clock, it seems like much more. Plus coming to an empty house with all the chatter still ringing in my ears, didn't feel like blogging.

It was no fun to get back to the blow hot blow cold weather we have been having all week long but the wonderfully warm weather yesterday was heaven sent. We went to a park nearby and it was studded with so many families that it looked like we stumbled on a convention. All winter long the parks and lakes lie dormant, empty, cold and uninviting and now the trees there are laden with flowers, there's lush green grass and humans crawling out of the woodwork.

To get back to the west coast stories, it was nicer weather there though it did get cold along the waterfront. We inland people couldn't resist being along the shore at the slightest pretext and so there were all of us at the beach shivering away while the kids were playing in the cold wet sand!! The skies and beaches there are so clear and blue that the photos don't do justice to the beauty.

Got to eat some good stuff from my mom's pantry and also some "healthy" west coast food. The highlight of the trip other than meeting family, having kids of different ages underfoot and pandemonium everywhere was getting live Dungeness Crabs from a fishing boat,(2 1/2 pounds each), getting home in time to cook it, and then eating it 15 minutes before leaving for the airport to come back home. My siblings had warned me that this is not the crab season so don't expect it, and when we got it from the boats, we were skeptical. We were all pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality of it. Yummiest crab ever..I even considered moving to CA for the availability of these crustaceans.

We also got to try a new crab in my food vocabulary..Box Crab. We were talking to the fisherman after packing our crabs and he picked up a piece of coral like rock. I thought it was a crab shell and was listening to his description about the other crabs swimming in the tank when the rock suddenly moved and out popped the legs!! It was a live crab so expertly camoflagued as a coral piece!!The thin, spindly legs of box crabs can be withdrawn close to the body, giving them a box-like appearance. I didn't have my camera with me!!If I get any photos from the locals there, I will add to this post. The taste..more like lobster, richer creamier than regular crab. There were mixed reaction to this crab in the house. Some liked it but some didn't.

Vegetable Pulav is an odd item to combine with the crab stories but this is what my mind stopped on. This is my mom' style of veg pulav...quite light and it goes well with almost any curry. It tastes like a cross between veg fried rice and ghee rice.

Note: The combination of vegetables will change the taste of the rice. Red peppers, soft vegetables like zuccini, etc are strong flavorings and personally, I don't think go well in the rice. The green peppers and scallions are the ones which give it the Chinese flavor. You could use this rice as a base and change the flavor to your liking.. add more spice, add some biryani masala to it to make it more pronounced South Indian pulav or add chili garlic sauce to it to change the orientation to a South East Asian rice. I use a frozen bag of diced mixed veggies and add scallions and peppers for a quick pulav.

You Will Need:
Basmati Rice: 2 cup
Onion- 1/2 medium sized one. sliced finely.
Green Chilies -2-3
Ginger- Garlic Paste-1 1/2 tbsp
Vegetables- 2 cup chopped(peas, beans, carrots, green peppers, scallions, cauliflower)
Ghee/Butter- 4 tbsp
Cilantro- 2 tbsp chopped
Garam Masala-1/2 tsp
Ground Black Pepper-1/4 tsp
salt to taste

Wash and soak the rice for at least 10 minutes. Drain and keep aside. Chop the vegetables into small even sized dices. Boil the vegetables in very little water for just 3-5 minutes. Drain and keep aside.

Heat 2 tbsp of the ghee and saute the onion. When they are slightly brown, add them to the rice cooker along with the rice and 3 1/2 cup water(water to rice ratio is mostly 2:1 for most kinds of Basmati rice but some just need 1 1/2 :1 so check the cooking instructions) Add 1 tsp salt to it and let the rice cooker do its work.

If you are using a frying pan, just add the rice to the pan after the onions are sauteed and then mix them. Add the water and salt. When the water boils, cover the rice and cook on low heat for 10-12 minutes. Fluff it and let it rest covered for 5 minutes. Open and fluff it and let it cool slightly.

When the rice is cooked, open the rice cooker and cool the rice.

Heat the ghee/butter in a pan and saute the ginger garlic paste and green chilies. When they are fragrant, add the vegetables and saute just for 4-5 minutes. They should still have a bite left in them. Add the cooked and cooled rice to the pan and mix well. This is done on medium flame so that the rice is not getting fried again.

If you mix the veggies with the hot rice, the hot rice grains will break up, so wait for it to cool a bit.The veggies are not cooked with the rice to avoid them getting mushy.)

Garnish with cilantro, garam masala and pepper if you like the flavor and mix it in.

Note: You could combine all the steps into one pot method for a weekday. Don't boil the veggies. Just mix the oil and ghee( use less ghee), saute onions, and add veggies. Then add the ginger garlic paste and stir well. Add the washed rice and stir fry for a minute till the rice turns opaque. Add salt and water and cover and cook for 10-12 minutes on medium heat. Open and fluff the rice and add garam masala and pepper.

Fish Head Thoran.../Fish Head Stirfry.

Once every two months, I go thru a barbaric ritual. I go to the fish market and buy a whole King Fish, better known as King Mackeral here.
Earlier, I would get the fish cleaned and cut into steak slices. In the brief English that the fish monger knew, he would lift up the fish head and ask, "No head?" and I would make a disgusted face and shake my head signaling no. The guys there would look at each other and one would say something in Spanish, causing incredulous smiles from the others. They probably consider it a delicacy.
Did I mention the fish head and tail curry that was so relished by every one else during my last visit home? I just sat and stared in shock and awe.
Visions of parents and in-laws disapproving the wastage of good fish would clamor for attention but I would refuse to give in. Unless family was visiting, there was no one to eat the fish head, so why tag home with it only to stink up my waste bin?

Then my friend's mom visited and showed her a simple way to use up the fish head. My friend started taking the fish head home and making thoran with it. She suggested the same to me and I had a mixed reaction of curiosity and yuckiness. I got reminded of the Food TV's Next Food Network Star show, where the sole Indian contestant was shown the door when she couldn't handle raw fish.
Finally curiosity took over and I decided to try it. The first time I did take it home and followed her instructions and made the thoran....BUT I didn't eat it. DH ate it unsuspectingly and liked it. Of course he hadn't seen how it was made.

The next time, I made it and kept it in the fridge. Two days later, after the memory of the whole process had slightly faded from my mind, I tasted it and could appreciate why so many of my family loved fish head. It had a buttery rich taste to it, kind of like fish and crab mixed together. This is not a real thoran as I did not add coconut but you could add that too if you want.

Now the fish monger happily packs the whole fish in ice and I make a face thinking of the work after I get home. Why do I do this exercise in primitive cooking?
I like it but I have decided not to eat it the same day I make it. I wait for it to age in the fridge before setting it on the dinner table!!

Making the thoran, dealing with the fish's head, teeth and eyes.... is an experience in grossing out itself!! I am sure hardly any of my readers will try this out but still had to post it just for the fear factor value!!
You could even make this with any big fish pieces, doesn't have to be the head.

You Will Need:
Serves 2-3
King Fish Head or any large fish head-1
Ginger_garlic paste-1 to 2 tablespoon

Red Onion or shallots- sliced- 1 cup
Green Chilies- 3-4 slit length wise.
Turmeric-1/8 tsp
Red Chili Powder-1/2 tsp or more as per taste
Coriander Powder-1/2 to 3/4 tsp depending on taste
Black Pepper powder- 1/2 tsp
Kudam Puli or Regular tamarind- 1 tiny dry piece
Salt-to taste
Oil-2 tablespoon
Curry leaves-1 sprig

Preparation:
Wash the fish head pieces (add tail or any other ugly looking pieces) and put it in a non-stick or steel saute pan with the ginger garlic paste and salt. Take care not to heat the pan before adding fish. If the pan is hot, the fish will stick to it. Cover and cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. Open and if there is water let out by the fish, cook uncovered for 5 minute or more so that the water gets evaporated. After the fish cools down, take a deep breath and start removing only the meat from the fish. There will be eyes and teeth and all that but keep at it. Remove all the meat possible from all the nooks and corners. Keep aside and make sure you get rid of the waste immediately.
Heat oil in a pan( cast iron or non stick works best. Fish sticks to steel)and drop in the curry leaves. Then add the onions and green chilies. Saute till the onions start turning a little brown at the edges and add the red chili powder, turmeric and coriander powder. Stir a couple of times and then add the fish, one tiny piece of either dry kudam puli /tamarind and stir well. Continue sauteing on medium or low heat till the fish gets a little dry and crisp and then add the pepper powder. Add oil if you feel its too dry. Adjust salt as needed. At this stage, you could add a pinch of fennel powder, a tablespoon of coconut grated etc but I prefer it without it. Don't let the fish dry out too much. Serve with rice or chapathis.

Thenga Aracha Meen Curry/ Fish curry with coconut

A typical scene back home(now seen only during vacation): It's 10.30 am in my house in Kerala and we are chatting around in the kitchen after the breakfast is cleared. The stomach is protesting from the hogging but Mom is already cutting veggies, assigning work to her helper B and discussing what to make for lunch. I just hover around, pretending to help while trying to take furtive notes....mom sometimes adds the magic ingredients when I turn my back....the kids are running underfoot and with their bellies full are for now appeased.

With so many people at home on vacation, food dominates the day. Whether it's my house or my in-laws, it's almost the same scene. "What's for lunch?" "What's for dinner?" is as much a conversation piece as the latest news and movies. Plus the endless cravings will pepper the discussion resulting in a skewed menu, meeting every one's demands.

Once back in the parents house on vacation, isn't it great to take a break from menu planning? No, I am not on vacation now, but was conjuring up home for a write up that Sailaja asked me to do. Once I started, it was like a time machine transporting me back!!

Anyway, to continue, just as we speculate on the itinerary for the day, the fish of the day makes an entrance. Wrapped in a newspaper,(earth friendly packaging, anyone?)placed in a designated fish bag, it seems like it's still alive and flapping. My mom's trusty helper B takes over, gets comfortable in the work area of the kitchen and meticulously cleans the fish, attracting a slew of stray cats, mewing pitifully while patiently waiting for their share. The palm trees are swaying and there is a kind of peaceful swishing all around. The green itself is so soothing!

Meanwhile, mom is busy in the kitchen, extracting tamarind paste, grinding ginger garlic and tossing some onions, green chilies, and spice powders into the clay pot. There is a constant chatter going on, sprinkled with a generous dose of gossip.

The ingredients are all crushed together by hand instead of stirring with a spoon...it blends the flavors, she says. Soon the clay pots are bubbling away on the fire... and B has the fish washed and clean in the work area, ready for the curry. No sign of any yucky stuff now, and the fish/fishes are quickly separated into fry pieces, curry pieces and moliyar/molaku chaar pieces. All the curries are made simultaneously. Small quantities, daily cooking..is the mantra.

When the mix in one claypot boils, the fish is added to it and when the fish is cooked, a fresh ground paste of coconut is added to it. (And if the fish is bad, you will know it the moment the fish hits the bubbling cauldron. It will stink up your kitchen!!)Seasoning is just curry leaves and shallots. That's it. This is in direct contrast with the other fish curries which need slow frying of shallots or roasting the coconut etc.
The other claypot has its own set of ingredients which will become the molaku chaar. And the fish pieces are marinated with chili powder, turmeric, ginger garlic and salt.. sometimes crushed shallots and curry leaves too are added to it.

This coconut based curry is best with the middle pieces of the fish.. the most meaty ones... the yucky parts will hinder the delicate flavor of fresh coconut. The head and tail are more suited to the rustic molaku chaar/ red spicy fish curry. (Once only head and tails were bought from the fishmonger for a much relished Molaku chaar!!!) And every piece is suited for fry but mostly the meaty pieces are reserved for it.

Ah! It's the weekend here so maybe I will replicate the scene in my kitchen. I will imagine the palm fronds and the lush green and try not to see the white blanket outside all around.


You will need:
Any fresh fish-/Porgie/Perch/Red Snapper/Pomapano-6 pieces
Onion(optional)-a very small pieces, sliced
Green chilies- 4
Ginger-1/2 inch
Garlic- 3 clove
Turmeric- 1/2 tsp
Red chili powder-1 tsp
Fenugreek seeds-1 tsp
Coriander powder- 1 tsp
Grated Coconut– 1 cup
Tamarind extract- 2 tsp or as extracted from a lime (small) sized ball.
Salt-1/2 tsp or to taste

Seasoning:
Coconut oil or Canola oil- 2 tbsp
Shallots- 6
Curry leaves- 1 sprig

Preparation:
1. Preparing the Fish: Clean and slice the fish. Wash it and toss with lime juice.
2. Dry Grind the ginger and garlic to a coarse paste.
3. Grind the coconut with the 1/2 cup water till it is a very fine paste. If you are using frozen coconut, make sure it is at room temperature before grinding to avoid clumping. Add water only as needed and not all together. When you think it's done grinding, grind some more to make it superfine. You could use coconut milk as a substitute.
4. Put the sliced onions, green chilies, ginger garlic paste, fenugreek seeds, the red chili powder, turmeric, coriander powder and the tamarind extract into the cooking saute pan or clay pot. If using tamarind extract, add 1 cup water. Crush everything in the pot by hand and mix well.
5. Adjust the sourness and add salt as required. Place this pot with the mix in it on the stove and when it is boiling, slide the fish pieces gently into the pan. Let it cook for 5 minutes without stirring. Add the ground coconut. If the ground coconut is a thick paste, add 1 cup water to it, else omit additional water. The water content is a matter of experience so add water slowly.
Reduce heat to a simmer and cover and let it cook for about 5-8 minutes. Do not stir with a spoon. Just hold the pan on the sides by the mittens and shake the pan to mix well. Remove from flame and keep covered.
6. Seasoning: Heat the coconut oil in a pan and sauté sliced shallots and curry leaves till slightly brown. Pour over the prepared curry. Serve with rice or with triangular paratha.

Beetroot Thoran...

There is change in the air and a new President here. The inauguration was everywhere...in schools, in offices., in libraries...they were showing it live everywhere and it was exciting to see such an occasion of history being played out in front of us. I watched the inauguration as I used to watch the Republic Day parades as a kid. The pageantry, the ceremonies, the commentary...it was a little too much but it is hard not to get swept into it. The sense of something big, something momentous happening was all around, so much so that I felt I should keep my fingers crossed so that the expectations doesn't end up tripping over itself and falling flat. Time will tell.:)

On another note, here's another thoran/Stirfry to add to the endless thoran list. By now everyone knows what a thoran is...a side dish of steamed/stirfried vegetables with coconut. This one is relatively new in my house. I am not a fan of beetroot..I always end up just tasting the earth/sand in it. Mom used to make very lightly, just steamed with a seasoning of mustard, curry leaves and green chilies, but that didn't work for me for this earthy vegetable. If you like that, great.. healthiest way to eat it. Skip to the comment section straight now.:)
But I adopted the other style of thoran...cooked with a crushed chutney like mix of coconut, chilies and shallots. You could add garlic to this mix too. These flavors dominate the blandness of the beets. The other trick I use is to cut the beets really tiny so they cook fast and the bites are smaller. And if you have the food processor or grater, the beetroot tastes best if it is grated and cooked. If you are using small beets with leaves attached, you could make add the leaves to the thoran as shown here.
Serve with rice . Leave the last spoonful of beets to be mixed in with rice and yogurt and watch as it slowly turns the rice pink in color!!Kids get a kick out of that..pink rice!!

You Will Need:
Beetroot-1 big one.
Green chilies-4
Shallots-1
Coconut-1/2 cup
Curry leaves-one sprig
Mustard-1/2 tsp
Oil-1 tbsp
Salt to taste

Preparation:
Chop the beetroot into very small cubes.. the smaller the better. You could even grate the beets. The one beetroot should yield about 2 cups of chopped beets. Pulse the grated coconut,curry leaves, shallot and green chilies to a coarse mixture without any water.
Heat the oil in a pan to high heat, add the mustard seeds, lower the heat and cover till the mustard stops popping. Add the crushed mixture and saute for a couple of minutes till the raw smell is gone. Add the beets and 2 tbsp of water. Maintain the heat at medium, cover and steam cook for 8-10 minutes. If the beets are grated, they don't require so much time to cook. Add salt to taste and turn off the flame but keep it covered for 2-3 minutes more. If there is still a bite left in the beets when you take it off the stove, don't worry..it will cook further while it is left covered. Serve hot with rice.

Shrimp Biryani...

Thanksgiving came and went. Eid came and went.:) and my hands were too full to sit down and wish you all properly. This is what happens when you decide to study in old (:) age. Everything takes second place even celebrations.
Eid Mubarak to all my readers! Happy Thanksgiving too!! Hope you all had a wonderful days on both occassions with friends and families.
I was talking to my parents and they were regaling me with incidents from the Eid lunch at my Grandpa's house with all the cousins and aunts and uncles. Eid lunch there is something I miss, even more than at my house. My grandma makes the best beef biryani ever. Though now she is old and hardly has any energy at home, she would still make everything from scratch, finely slicing to mincing to grinding the chutney on the ammi (stone grinder). No food processor or grinder for her. The house will smell of all the green leaves and green chilies chopped up, just before the fragrance of dalda and ghee takes over. She believes that dalda makes every thing taste better and that what she uses in her biryani. I never got the opportunity to sit with her and learn to cook her way so even now the mystique remains. For me and my cousins, biryani, Eid and grandparents house go hand in hand.

Eid has been quiet here.. Just another monday. But I will take that any day compared to the mayhem in Mumbai. That's all that is there everywhere, from the media to the mind. Though we here always complain that the US media never covers the world news, this is the saddest way to have the complaint answered. The Taj burning is an image that won't be ever go away, just like the cars I saw burning a eon ago in the 84 riots and people jumping off the WTC in 01. The people hurt have no relation with the senseless killers hurting them!!The terrorists have to be brain dead to inflict such damage without thought. Words are inadequate to express the anger towards those killers and to understand the anguish of those affected.

Now it's all cold and rainy outside and its one of those days that you just want to curl up with a good book or movie, with someone taking over the kitchen.:)It's almost the end of the year and almost the end of the time period I set for myself to finish my long drawn out exams and now there is so much to do and so little time. Soon it will all be over and then we can move on to bigger discussions.

So hardly feel like blogging anything. So just posting a biryani I made a while ago but didn't get around to posting. Enjoy while I hit the books again!!

Shrimp Biryani is very similar in preparation to the fish biryani..in both, the fish/shrimp is marinated lightly and fried just a bit to seal the flavor and then placed on the masala/gravy and layered with rice and baked. It's pretty simple and though there are a couple of steps, if you have more than one stove burning, the work is done simultaneously and its gets you the fastest and easiest biryani.
For 4 people.
The Marinade
Shrimp- 1 1/2 lb more or less
Red chili powder- 3/4 tsp
Turmeric-1/4 tsp
Lemon Juice-2 tsp
Salt-1/2 tsp

For the Masala:
Onion –3 or 4 medium ones( one onion is for garnish onions)
Tomato - 2 medium sized ones cut into chunks.
Green chilies –10 in number
Ginger - 1” piece
Garlic pods –5 cloves (big)
Pepper powder – 1/2 tsp
Turmeric powder – 1/2 tsp
Plain Yogurt- 1/2 cup (thick)(Drain the yogurt to thicken it)
Fennel Seeds/Perinjeerakam/Saunf - 3/4 tsp
Cashew nuts-4
Poppy seeds (Khus khus) – 3/4 tsp
Mint leaves (Pudhina) - 1/2 cup chopped
Cilantro leaves (Dhania) - 1/2 cup chopped
Curry leaves- a handful chopped
Biryani Masala- 1 teaspoon
Lemon juice- juice of 1/2 lemon.
Salt-2 tsp Or as per taste

For the rice:
Basmati rice - 2 cups
Cinnamon (Karuvapatta) -1 stick of 1 inch length
Cloves (Carambu) -2
Cardamom (Elakkai) -2
One bay leaf, salt -1tsp.
Lemon juice- 2 tsp or juice of 1 lemon
Garnish: Cashew nuts – A handful, Raisins- A handful
Clarified butter (Ghee) – 2-4 tbsp or 2 tbsp mixed with 2 tbsp oil( For frying garnish onions)
Salt to taste
Canola/Vegetable Oil -3/4 cup or as needed for frying the fish.

Biryani Masala:
Cinnamon 2 inch piece
Cardamom 8
Cloves 8-10
Nutmeg (Jathika)-1
Bay leaves- 1
Fennel seed- 1tsp
Mace( Javithri/Jathipathri) 5-6
Caraway seeds/Shah Jeera- 1 tbsp
Star Anise-1
Dry roast all together and grind to a fine powder. Store in a tight lidded bottle and use only 1 tbsp for this biryani.

1.Basic Preparation: Soak the fennel(Perunjeerakam) seeds, cashew nuts and poppy seeds in a bowl with water for an hour at least. Wet grind the soaked nuts and seeds with very little water to a fine paste. Only after that, add the green chilies, ginger, garlic and pulse to make it into a coarse paste. Keep aside. Alternately, you could first powder the poppy seeds and fennel seeds and then soak and grind to make it smoother. Chop the tomatoes into cubes and slice the onions. One onion should be sliced extra fine. This one is for the fried onion garnish.
2. Marinating and Frying shrimp: Cut the shrimp into medium size pieces,wash with 1 tbsp lemon juice and drain. Marinate it with the chili powder (use Kashmiri chili powder if you want it milder), turmeric, lemon juice and salt. Keep aside for half hour to one hour.
Heat up 1/4 cup oil(even less if u are using a non stick pan) in a wide shallow pan and pan fry the shrimps on medium high heat till they just look cooked on both sides. The shrimp should just change color and NOT get crisp as in a fry. Drain onto paper towels and remove any pieces left in the oil. Drain all the oil into a bowl.

3.Frying the Garnish: Heat the ghee/oil in a heavy bottom pan. Add the garnish portion of the sliced onions and fry, till golden brown and crisp. Sprinkle some sugar over the onions to speed up the crisping. This should take about 10 minutes. Remove the onions and fry the cashew nuts and raisins on medium heat till it turns brown on all sides. Remove onto paper towels. Drain the ghee/oil into a small bowl and keep aside for flavoring the rice.
4. Rice Preparation: Clean and soak rice for 10 minutes. Drain and keep aside. Boil 4 cups of water. Heat the ghee/oil mix and saute the whole spices and one onion. Add the rice after 2 minutes and saute that till the grains turn opaque. Add 3/4 tsp salt. Add the boiling water and stir well. Let the whole rice mix come to a boil and then lower the heat to medium and cover it. Cook it for about 10 minutes and check. If all the water seems to have disappeared but there is still water left beneath the top layer, remove from fire and just let it sit covered for another 10 minutes. It should be cooked perfectly by then.
5.Cooking the biryani masala/gravy: Use 2 tbsp of the reserved shrimp oil and add the rest of the sliced onions to the pan and saute on medium heat till it starts getting brown on the edges(about 8 minutes). Add the poppy seed – ginger garlic green chili mixture, tomatoes, curd, lemon juice, pepper, salt, turmeric, biryani masala one by one. Cook on medium heat for another 10 minutes till the tomatoes get cooked and everything comes together. Add the coriander, mint and curry leaves and mix thoroughly. Check the taste and add salt or lemon juice if needed. There should be some semi-thick gravy left. Mix in the shrimp with this gravy. Take it off the stove.
6. Layering the Biryani: Spread a bit of the gravy around it. Spread the cooked rice over the shrimp and garnish with the onions, raisins and cashews. If you want more flavor, you could add the oil from frying the shrimps over the rice now.:) Only if you want to. Not more than 1/4 cup of oil altogether.
Pour 2 tsp lemon juice over it. Now cover with a lid and set it back on the stove over high heat for 6 minutes and then on very low heat for 10 minutes. Turn off the flame and let it remain covered for another half hour. You could heat a cast iron griddle/pan or tawa and place the covered pan with biryani in it over that and let it cook for 20 minutes on medium heat and just leave it there on the tawa without flame after that for another 15 minutes.

Alternately, you could layer the shrimp and gravy and rice and garnish as described above in a oven proof dish and bake at 250 degrees for half hour. Mix the rice with the masala gently and serve.
Serve with coconut chutney (biryani chammandi), Onion relish (Ulli surka), Yogurt and Papadam.

That's how my dirty rice looks all mixed together. :)

Lemon-Date Pickle

Didn't I put u guys in a pickle? Sorry, I have all these silly puns rolling around so couldn't resist. Wonderful guesses as usual.. only Sig got it right.. wonder how..she always does get it right!!Mandira followed suit but Happy cook's "Cake" and Srivalli's "whatever" were the best of the lot!!

Well this is the story of a pickle..I don't make pickles..I get them made by my family. Else, there is an entire aisle in the Indian store dedicated to all kinds of pickles.. Mother's , Grandma's, Uncles....even Double Horses, though they are not related to anyone.

Mishmash started it..with her munthiri pickle post. Last week we had a Biryani meal and sorely missed that essential thing called Karakka (Date) Pickle. Now those who are used to Biryani with that tangy sweet and spicy pickle will know how incomplete it feels without it and those who haven't tried it with biryani or pulav.. well, what to say..you are missing something.

Usually there is always a batch of the date pickle with carrots or with limes left over from my mom's last visit but now we were out. So I went to the Indian store to get Double Horse Lemon-Date Pickle (which is really good) and kept staring at the bottle I picked up..For some reason, it was all dusty and the contents looked cloudy and weird.. it was a revelation...I got transported back to Calicut..during the elementary school we visited a science show in the Medical college and saw some real horrors encapsulated in bottles!! Not to gross anyone with any further description, but suffices to say I was ready to make pickles at home.:)

RP has a collection of pickles for those to inclined to make them, so I decided to make her lemon-date pickle. So another day goes by and I raided my fridge and found 3 lemons.. not too old so will do..fresh is of course better. Very simple recipe and started out frying it with my last bit of Idhayam Nallenna (sesame oil) and salting them and I left them in the sun for 2 days...by then my Biryani was over!!:(

Anyway not to be stopped, I carried on..all this is in between my latest bout of studying..and when I had to do the second round of seasoning, I had no ginger.. so drove to the store and got ginger. So at each break I took, I would get back to the pickle. Got ginger so after cutting them, I started searching for the garlic. When I looked in the fridge now, my garlic had suddenly finished!! Argh!!! so borrowed garlic from my friend who I see more than the Indian store guy anyway and got back. Got everything now and then remembered that my nallenna had finished! I really should start making lists before going out. It seemed all the forces were against me.
Still didn't give up... everything went in along with olive oil.. I used light olive oil and it tasted just fine.. even nice, I would say...and then it sat on my window sill basking in the sun.. It looked a little less oily , so I topped it with a little olive oil to prevent air influx. Even though I had only 3 lemons, I added 12 dates and half Kashmiri chili powder, half hot red chili powder.


RP said one week so I waited, and I waited..shaking it, turning it, and finally after one week , it got opened.. and this is the result. It's really good even if I say so. The pickle is sweet, spicy and sour..maybe next time, I will put in more dates. So if you like more sweetness, add more dates and less lemon. Now pickles are not good for anyone, with their salt and spice and oil and all these bad in it..but a little bit of this home made one and you might start finding excuses to pass it as health food.
The recipe is exactly as RP wrote so I am just directing you there.

Love Letters../Mutta kuzhalappam /Madukku San...

Oct 10th was the first day of our college life.I wonder if any of my old hostel mates and friends remember that. My hostel days were best enjoyed at the evening tea time... we get back from a hard day (:))!!!)at the college, tired and hungry and rush to the mess. A cup of tea with the snack of the day and we all sat down on the steps trading gossip and news about co-hostelers, classmates, teachers..no one was spared. A lot of laughter and leg pulling punctuated our nonstop talking.

The steps were a important element in the Hostel's layout. The hostel's plan was a large octagon encircling a courtyard. There were only two diagonal points of entry stepping into the courtyard..one at the entrance and one on the other side of the courtyard...critically located just outside the TV room, en route to the mess(cafeteria). To reach any room, you could either cut across through the courtyard or take the long route around inside the walls.

Sitting at the steps opening into the courtyard was the final rung in the hierarchy of the senior -junior relationships. The freshers at the beginning of a year would skitter away from the steps, walking briskly, almost hugging the walls, trying not to meet any one's eyes to escape the senior's questioning, taking the longest possible route to get back to their dorms. But by the end of the year, most of them would be leisurely sharing a laugh with the same seniors and awaiting the next batch of freshers with relish.

The rush to the mess was to get the tea as hot as possible and to test our luck with the snacks. The mess was (is?) ruled by the three top (iron) chefs, "chechis"/ladies who could only be called "prosperous" to be politically correct. Looking at them , you could understand why the hostel inmates always looked hungry..(as the guys used to tease us saying we get only kanchi-payar in our cafeteria).

The snacks ranged from Uzhunnu Vada, which was pretty good to sukiyan, which I never endeared to, to dried up tea cakes wrapped in old parchment. Sometimes the snacks were so horrible that you just wanted to trade them away and sometimes they were the only redeeming feature of the whole day's menu.


Love letters, as the mess cooks called it, was something that had a taste and resembled good food reworked into mass quantities. It was a thin layer of a crepe like soft roll filled with coconut and sugar that oozed out when you bit into it. I tolerated it at first but over the years there, slowly got a fondness for it. We did wonder why they called it "love letters" though. Probably due to its scroll like design.

Mishmash and Ian gave me two other commons names for these crepes, Mutta kuzhalappam and Madukku San which is what you must be familiar with so I have added that to the title now.

This is one versatile pancake or crepe or love letters, whatever you want to call it. Just like crepes but much easier and lighter in preparation, they are a bland backdrop to any filling that can flavor it..sweet or spicy.


You Will Need:For about 8-10 crepes
All Purpose Flour/Maida: 1 1/2 cup
Egg -1
Milk -About 2 to 1 1/2 cups
Salt - a pinch

Preparation:
Lightly beat the egg and then add to the flour with salt and milk. You could replace 1/3 of the milk with water with no taste difference. Whisk everything till its well combined and of a pourable consistency. Heat the griddle/ non stick pan and lightly grease it as you would do for a dosa or pancake. When the pan is medium hot, lower the heat and pour one small ladle of the batter. Quickly spread it in an even circular motion, making sure there is only a thin layer everywhere. As soon as the crepe changes color to a golden brown and the underside comes off in one sweep, its' cooked. It takes less than a minute to get one done. Remove to a plate, and spread filling of your choice and roll.

Ghee-sugar: Spread a thin layer of ghee (clarified butter) on the hot crepe/love letter and sprinkle sugar evenly. Start rolling from one side tightly to get the roll.

Coconut-Sugar: Toast the coconut on medium heat for 2 minutes and then add sugar (to taste) and stir till the sugar melts and the coconut is sweetened. Add cardamom powder for a spice kick.

Coconut-Jaggery: Same method as above but add melted and filtered jaggery syrup to the coconut. Substitute with brown sugar to save time. Add chopped ripe plantains as an option.

Apple pie filling: Apples cut into tiny pieces, cooked with cinnamon and sugar till they turn soft and gooey.

Spicy Filling: any of the fillings used in the erachi samosa/meat samosa or the meen pathiri/fish pie will go well with this.

Chattipathiri...

See this link of Images of Ramadan in the Boston.com for a humbling experience to make you thankful for every single blessing you have received whether it's good health or prosperity or a warm home or just food on the table. It's beautiful to see the variations and commonality of the different people observing the fasts.

I have been busy with exams and a bathroom renovation so haven't got the time recently to blog as many Ramadan food as I would have liked to. The one full bath in the house is now demolished and is a pile of ceramic and dust and its the hope of two shiny new bathrooms that keeps us going.
When I sit on the computer, there is a constant cacophony of construction noises upstairs and I wonder whether the ceiling will fall on us with the guys banging away carelessly. The ceiling even got a couple of small holes and a bolt poking through!! When the emphasis is how to get rid of the dust that seems to be everywhere now, selecting tiles and colors and whose house do we go to for today's shower, cooking tends to take a back seat. Even my dreams have tile patterns on them now.:)

So I am posting a traditional recipe which was made sometime back and which was not posted earlier as I didn't have a cut photo for it.. it got served and finished before I could get the camera.
Chattipathiri, the original crepe cake made at a time when wood burning stoves were more common than ovens and baking powder. It's an unleavened cake made by layers of chapathis or rotis(similar to tortillas) interspersed with eggs, nuts and raisins, all submerged in a egg and milk custard which binds it together when baked. Decadent and definitely not healthy but so yum that you have to have it at the end of a fasting day..and on Eid and on festivals, and at salakarams, and on any special day..It just makes the day special just like having a cake center table makes you ask, "what's the occassion?"
It's similar to the Arab dessert Umm Ali and creamier cousin of bread pudding.
Chattipathiri is the epitome of Malabar cooking and making a good one is an art as well as matter or pride. It should have been on my blog a long time ago but I hesitated as this is definitely not a beginner recipe and needs experience to get it just perfect each time. There are so many things that can go wrong with the preparation and I am no expert to resolve all the issues. So try it and give me the feedback and if there are experts out there, send me pointers that I can add to this recipe.
Chapathis ready for layering...

Cashew filling...

Egg Filling...

Layering in a baking dish..

You Will Need:
For the chapathis( 6-7 layers):
All purpose flour-2 cup
Salt -a pinch
Water as needed to make dough.

For the filling:
Eggs-6-7
Milk-1 cup
Sugar-3/4 cup
Ghee +Oil-1/4 cup Ghee+1/2 cup oil.
Raisins-2 tablespoon
Cashew-2 tablespoon
Poppy seeds/Khus Khus-1 tablespoon
Cardamom-8 crushed into powder

Preparation:
1.Make the dough for the chapathis by mixing the water and flour and salt. The dough should be soft and pliable. Divide it into lemon sized balls and roll out the chapathis thinly. Heat a griddle/tawa and cook each chapathi on it. Cook each side for a couple of minutes on medium high heat. This is dry cooking and after each side turns opaque, it will start puffing up. At that stage, its cooked and the raw taste will have gone. A lot of people replace these chapathis here with ready made tortillas or chapathis but the final taste will then vary. The tortillas are slightly leavened so has a little too much thickness and the chapathis ready to buy are made of whole wheat so the texture changes. But you could start with those for ease of cooking. It still does taste good. Keep all the chapathis cooked and ready.

2. Egg Filling: Beat 2 of the eggs slightly with the 2 tablespoon sugar till the sugar dissolves and then add 1/4 tsp cardamom powder to it. Heat enough oil/ghee mix to scramble it lightly on medium heat till it form small clumps. Keep stirring while scrambling to avoid it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Keep the mix aside.

3. Cashew filling: Heat 1/2 tsp of ghee/oil mix and roast the cashews, raisins and the khus khus in that order. Keep the heat low to avoid burning the cashews and the tiny khus khus. Just roast till a nice aroma comes through and remove from flame. Keep aside. You could add almonds also to this mix.

4. Now beat the rest of the eggs, milk and sugar and cardamom powder together with a whisk nicely. This is the custard base.

5. Assembling: Take a round baking dish which is the same size as the chapathi. Brush the base and sides of the dish with the ghee/oil mix. Dip a chapathi in the egg-milk custard and place it in the baking dish. Sprinkle some of the scrambled egg filling and the cashew filling all over it. Pour one teaspoon (or maybe 2 tsp) of the ghee/oil mix all over it. Place the next chapathi dipped in the egg-milk custard and repeat the process. When the last chapathi is placed, decorate the egg and cashews over it as this is the top of our cake. The egg and cashew filling should be distributed evenly amongst all the layers. Pour the remaining egg-milk custard over the layers, pressing down on the layers so that it absorbs the mix fully. Keep this aside for 15 minutes in the fridge to allow the chapathis to soak the liquid in completely.
6. Preheat the oven to 300 degree Fahrenheits. When you are ready to bake, pour the remaining ghee/oil mix over the layers and place in the middle rack in the oven.
Ideally this is cooked in a special cast iron or copper/bronze wide rimmed vessel. It is covered and cooked on a wood burning stove, with heat applied to it from the top by placing burning/smoldering coconut shells. That ensures even cooking from the top and bottom and the cake comes out in densely packed layers.
Cooking it in the oven here, the center rises prematurely leading to the custard running to the sides and then the custard cooks in that position, with the center layers devoid of too much of the custard. When it cools down, the center does flop back down and the layers merge, but still this is not perfect section of the cake. So there is this minor problem with the technique here but it doesn't alter the taste.
Bake for about 30-40 minutes, depending on the heat in your oven. Similar to cake, when it is cooked completely, a needle/knife inserted in the center should come out clean. Leave it uncovered and let it cool down completely before cutting. It only stays in the refrigerator and is good for 2-3 days at the most. A few seconds in the microwave just before serving will remove the frostiness of the refrigerator.