Palada Payasam...and a Happy Rest of the Year.

Ah! A new year is already here.. where did the year go?
 In the Malayalam new year, which begins with Vishu, the big deal is Vishu  kani... the auspicious first thing that you see when you wake up which sets the tone for the rest of the year... a prosperous year, a healthy year, a happy year.. all the usual trappings we yearn for. For those who want to know more, there is a link above to the vishu custom.  The concept creates quite a treasury of material for jokes in the layman's language and the malayalam movie industry. Anybody remember Meesha Madhavan? If your day doesn't go well, the common question is, " Who did you see as kani in the morning?"

 Alas, for the New years day, there is no such symbolism.. just a late awakening, still recovering from whatever late night party you happened to be at...legs aching if u were at a dance, head abuzz with a medley of sounds and voices, a hangover for many.... quite a somber beginning to a new year!!

For me the first post of the year is always a dilemma. I want it to be short, sweet, crisp.. it should  be inspiring, joyful and poetic, like one of the verses on New Year's cards. (Does anybody send cards to anyone now? Does anyone collect them still?)

But the search for the perfect words will instead mean that I won't write at all for the month of January and that propelled me to just get started! Here's to wishing a very productive and prosperous year to all my readers and friends. May this be the year of change.:)) May this be the year where we resolve to be resolute to our resolutions.

As for me, I decided to start my blog year with a sweet recipe. All those on a diet can move on to the next blogs where you will find yummy healthy food....just not here today. Well, we all need sugar after a gruelling workout, don't we?:))
The last few weeks were great with a air of festivities all around and a lot of visiting families to complete the festive feeling. The expectations for the holidays start half a year early and just keeps building up but the holidays itself go so fast!! Even a blizzard, two feet of snow and  multiple bouts of flu and cold couldn't keep the spirits down.
Cleaning the house, refrigerator and pantry  after all my guests left, I got stuck with a quart of milk nearing expiration date, a sweet craving, some unused sweetened coconut la languishing in my freezer , a bit of palada, (not enough for a party)and one too many cans of condensed milk. My better half recently asked if I really know the contents of my pantry and I bravely said yes, despite finding endless packs of the same stuff.
So, half the can of the evidence or a bit less went for the payasam and the  remaining contributed to the sticky consistency of coconut macaroons. I have two recipes for the macaroons.. one with just coconut flakes and egg whites and almonds which is what is common.  But my sis-in-law put me onto the eggless version which has just coconut flakes and condensed milk which is much better in taste, reminding of coconut burfi back home, with a fraction of the work!! Flavoring it with cardamom instead of vanilla and aniseed,  Indianized it instantly.
For the payasam, the only ingredient you need is a thick bottom pan, as milk burns instantly and doesn't withstand long cooking. I use an uruli, a traditional thick bottom pan made usually of bronze but now available in aluminium too, which is fool proof for making payasams. It's great for doing any kind of milk based cooking as it never burns!! Get one if you are a fan of payasams. A copper bottom pan available locally may suffice but I am not sure.
By the way, see this link for a multitude of payasam cook off in California. Did any of you attend it?

There is no recipe.. just follow the instructions at the back of the packet!But for those who need it, here it is..
Palada Payasam
A really thick bottom wide pan or an uruli.
Double Horse Palada-1/3 pack
Milk- about 1/3 gallon (which is 4-5 cups)
Condensed Milk-1/2 tin or a little less.
Salt- a tiny pinch
Cardamom powder- crush 5 cardamom into powder.

Preparation:
Boil 2 cups water and steep/soak the palada in the hot water( off the flame) for 15 minutes. Drain the water and then add the palada to the milk and cook for 15 minutes or till the palada is soft and cooked. Then add the condensed milk, cardamom powder and salt and cook further for 10 minutes. If it looks too thick, add 1/2 cup milk. The consistency and sweetness is to each one's taste so use your judgement. I like my payasams not too thick and a bit less sweet than headache inducing sweet. These proportions may end up too loose and not too sweet for you so change as you need.
Garnish with ready bought roasted cashews(or you could fry a handful of cashews and raisins in ghee) and raisins. Serve hot or lukewarm or cold.


The rest of the can of the condensed milk went into the Eggless coconut macaroons which I will post next.:)

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.

Godambu Payasam../Whole Wheat Kheer...

Time flies especially after leaving college and school. The daily grind of house, job and family has a way of making the day seem long but the years go by so fast.....and though you keep making friends, the intensity of old friends sitting up late at night, chatting, drawing, gobbling maggi, pretending to study while you discuss everything under the sun just can't be met so easily now.

Of course, once in a while we do come across some people we can talk to, without getting into a family friendship status but mostly now the pattern and the language of friends are mostly dictated by everybody in the family getting along well.



Godambu Payasam is a happenstance dessert recipe. My good friend had come over to visit me after 10 lo..o.o.n..g years during which time we each had got married, got kid(s)and still found time hasn't moved much from the hostel days. We could still talk despite being interrupted by our respective little ones. But we just kept tripping over the sequence of events over the years, Memento style.

We were meeting in Calicut and my mom was putting together a hasty lunch and was floundering for dessert. Then she remembered this payasam she used to have as a kid and in more recent times from her closest friend's house who is from the Telicherry side and made it regularly. So from one friend to another....
I remember liking it instantly thinking it is familiar but that I didn't remember mom making it often. We usually have this whole wheat as Godambu Veragiyathu which is the grains cooked with coconut milk and fennel and shallots and topped with ghee and sugar.

My friend liked it too and she kept requesting me to blog it but when I asked my mom, she said... add a bit of this, a bit of that.. and its only now when she came here, that I could pin her down to make make it again and again and take notes.

We loved the taste of the coconut milk and jaggery and the creamy wheat kernels which still had a bite to it but then thats just us. Whats not to like about jaggery and coconut milk? A lot of people are not fond of the same wheaty taste and dub it a poor man's payasam. So try it and let me know which camp you fall into.



What is a whole grain?
Whole wheat grains contain all three parts of the grain intact:The bran, the endosperm and the germ. Some grains have a fourth part-inedible husk/hull. Whole wheat berries are wheat kernels that have been stripped only of their inedible outer hulls.

Skinned wheat are wheat berries whose bran is scrubbed off lightly...by hand or by machine. It's less nutritious than whole wheat, but more popular since it's not as chewy as hulled wheat and it cooks faster.

It is commonly used in the Malabar area and is available in as "Kuthiya Godambu" A reference to the way it was made in earlier days..by soaking, semi drying and then the bran is removed by hitting it in a tall mortar-pestle kind of equipment.(Ural..see this picture in Mathy's Kandasamy's site)It was done by the 2-4 women of the house, gossiping and alternately hitting the long stick...the same way Puttu podi used to be made in the pre-mixie days.)
There was an old Hindi movie by Gulzar which featured this ural activity charmingly. Click here to see it if you are interested.

The closest approximation to the skinned wheat here would be "pearl Barley" which has some of its bran removed too. So you could try this recipe with that too. Cracked wheat will give a similar flavor but not the creamy sago-like texture. The wheat and the milk will stand apart like new people meeting at a common party. Close but not blending in.

You Will Need:
1/2 cup skinned Whole Wheat
1 cup jaggery melted in 1/2 cup water and filtered.
1 tsp cardamom powder
1 cup thick coconut milk
3-4 cup second milk of coconut or substitute half with water.
Nuts, raisins as per taste.

Preparation:

Soak 1/2 cup skinned wheat in warm water for 10 minutes. Cook it in a pressure cooker with the second milk of coconut till just before the first whistle comes. Try not to let the whistle blow... it makes the milk a bit agitated. Then lower the heat and cook for 10 minutes on very low heat. Open and check to see if it is creamy and cooked. Recook the same way for another 3 minutes if its not ready. Add more second milk or water if all the milk looks absorbed.

Once the grains are creamy and fully cooked (the whole mix looks opaque similar to cooked oats and tastes soft), add jaggery syrup and cardamom powder and a pinch of salt(literally a tiny pinch). Let it simmer for 5 to 8 minutes and taste it. When the sweetness is to your liking, lower the heat to a minimum and add the thick first milk. Let it simmer without over boiling.

My photo looks thick since it was taken on the second day after making the payasam so it thickened further. The consistency should be looser just as a regular payasam. So add the milk accordingly and adjust taste. The proportions are really up to individual taste. Some like it drop dead sweet and thick with coconut milk, I like it milder and a little lighter, so feel free to modify as needed. You could further fry nuts and raisins in ghee and add it to the payasam if you like that.


A first day consistency photo. The white specs are from the coconut milk I hurriedly made.
Coconut Milk: For two cups of thick coconut milk, I used 2 cups of grated coconut. From the same coconut, I extracted 4 cups of second milk. To extract the milk, first grind the coconut with just 1 cup of water and take out the milk.. then regrind it with water twice to extract the thinner milk.

This is my entry for the RCI-Kerala Hosted by my good friend Jyothsna of Curry Bazaar.

Related Links: Another yummy payasam made with Wheat..from Simply Spicy.

Paliayakka/ Sago or Tapioca Pearls Payasam

Thanks to all you who made me smile throughout the day with your near correct, imaginative, funny, not anywhere near correct combinations. I never there would be such a response. Makes me almost want to create an event about guessing! And all because I was too lazy to write the recipe down and so just posted the picture!

I thought it would be sadistic if I kept up the secret today too so while I don't have the time for the full recipe now, let me just introduce you to another Malabar speciality.

It is indeed Sago Payasam, called Paliayakka, a probable corruption of the word Pal-Vayakka (Milk-Plantains). It is made of sago pearls(Tapioca pearls or sabudana),sugar,fennel seed powder, coconut milk,and plantains.
The sago pearls are cooked till transparent in the second milk of coconut and then the first milk, sugar and ripe plantains are added and allowed to simmer just until the plantains barely cook. When is is hot, it has a silken texture with all the bubbles and milk and when it is cold, it sets into a pudding.

It is also called Bubble Payasam by my son. He doesn't care for the bananas but its the bananas and fennel seed powder that gives its unique taste.
I will surely add the recipe today. Meanwhile, do check out our post on some luchboxes at the Daily tiffin.....
You will Need:
Sabudana or Tapioca Pearls-1 cup
Thick Coconut Milk-1cup
Thin Coconut Milk-2 cup (or 1-2 cup coconut grated)
Sugar-8 tbsp( adjust as per taste)
Ripe Plantain-1 cut at an angle into 5 thick pieces.
Shallots-1
Fennel Seeds-1/2 tsp
Cardamom-3 crushed.

Preparation:
1. Grind the coconut with the fennel seeds, cardamom, shallot and 1 cup warm water. Extract the thick first milk and keep aside. Add one more cup of water to the coconut, grind again and extract as much of the second milk as you can. If you are using frozen coconut, ensure that the coconut is defrosted and soaked in warm water
to maximise the milk. If you grind it without defrosting properly, it will curdle into oil. If you are using coconut can milk(don't :( ),mix one quarter of the can with water to thin it. Grind the seeds and shallots seperately and add to this half of the milk and strain it through so no bits remain.

2. Cook the sabudana in the second milk (or even water) in a pressure cooker and allow only 2 whistles. When it cools, open it and check if all the bubbles look tranparent. If they look white in the middle,there is some cooking left so add more liquid and let it simmer for another 5-8 minutes.

3. Now add the sugar, the plantain slices and the thick milk. Adjust the quantity of the milk so that it looks really fluid.
The payasam will thicken later and is best eaten hot, so when serving later, you may need to microwave it.

Note-Worthy Points:
The liquid need is approximately 3 times the quantity of the sabudana. The sugar retards the cooking, so add that only after the sabudana is fully cooked. There is a very thin line between fully cooked sabudana and over cooked sticky, gummy sabudana so take care as it nears completion.

Bubble Payasam:
This is my son's version of the payasam. Cook the sabudana with 1cup milk thinned with 1 1/2 cup water in the pressure cooker for 2 whistles. Add 1/3 cup(or more) condensed milk and 1 cup milk to the cooked sabudana. Add either cardamom powder or vanilla essence to flavor it. The payasam should be really liquid so adjust the quantity of milk. Serve hot or cold.
There is a egg added pudding version of this, sold as Tapioca Pudding in Grocery stores, which everyone in my family loves. It involes adding warm beaten egg to the cooked pearls but I haven't mastered that so no recipe for that as yet.

Black Rice Payasam/Kheer

I first came across the black sticky rice dessert at a Thai/Malaysian restaurant and was intrigued by the lilac color. The desset was a rice pudding/kheer/payasam flavored with coconut milk. When raw, Black rice appears black and rounded, medium grain. Upon cooking, its colour changes to a deep purple and it is a non-glutinous rice.
It has a relatively high mineral content (including iron)and, like most rice, supplies several important amino acids. Black or purple rice is unmilled, leaving a dark husk in place, which colors the grains when it cooks.The husk leaves a chewy bite to the dessert. As it is unhulled, black and purple varieties of rice are classified as brown rice too. So payasam can be healthy too, I guess. Yum.
I bought the rice at an Asian Supermarket and used it instead of our regular rice for rice pudding(payasam). Cooked it with water first and then with milk and condensed milk and it came out a beautiful lilac color, with a nutty chewy taste. The only drawback is that it has a longer cooking time so cooking it on gas is a long process. It has been suggested to soak it overnight to spped up the cooking. It has not yet been tried as a rice dish but since we like the wild rice, my guess is that it would taste similar.
You will need:
Black Rice- 1/4 cup
Milk - 4 cups
Condensed Milk- 1/2 tin (more or less depending on your sweet tooth)
Preparation:
1. Soak rice overnight. Boil rice in plenty of water till half done. Better still, add 1 cup water and pressure cook till one whistle comes, and then cook for 5 mins on very low heat. Drain excess water and keep aside.
2. Heat milk, bring to a boil, add the rice and let it cook on low heat till the rice is fully smashed. This may take anywhere between 10-20 minutes. After it is cooked, add condensed milk and let it simmer for 10 minutes.
The more the rice is cooked before adding the milk, the better. I pressure cook the rice even after adding the milk but it gets messy.
Serve hot or cold.
I am sending this to Anthony's Kitchen increasingly popular Curry Mela.
Black Rice Desserts,Payasam,