making it to the Foodista Cookbook! ©, .

Every Nair family in Kerala has a sacred grove, its a place where family deities along with ancestral spirits live and if generally pleased and affable bestow the tharavadu (the lineage) with blessings and good fortune. The sacred groves have long fascinated me, its a magical piece of land where snakes, yakshi (banshees), goddesses, tree spirits, all commune and conspire to make your life a fortunate incident or a living hell.  A sacred grove must be protected, no trees are cut here, and life in all forms is allowed to live here, unfettered.

In the grove after a special pooja, prasadam, which has been cooked in a makeshift kitchen in the grove, is offered to gods and then to us to partake. Its a simple Sarkara Payasam, but having been slow cooked in an uruli over a wood fire, its mulled over with the scent of smoke. Chunks of candy sugar, coconut, holy basil, and chethi flowers, generously garnish the prasadam.

Sarkara payasam can be easily made at home, and tastes every bit as good as the payasam of the gods.

Ingredients
1 cup rice
about a cup of jaggery syrup (boil 1 cup jaggery with 3/4 cup water)
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup shredded coconut (or chopped fresh coconut)
1 tablespoon clarified butter (optional)

Method
1. Wash and cook the rice with 1 1/2 cups water, until its just cooked, but not mushy.
2. Pour the jaggery syrup into the rice and simmer on low heat, until the jaggery is almost absorbed, the mixture would be still wet.
3. Add the grated coconut, give it a good stir and let it cook on sim until most of the liquid is evaporated.
4. Turn off heat, add ghee if using, and keep covered until ready to eat.
5. If desired you can add a chopped banana along with the coconut, gives a nice wholesome taste, I often add one.

Sarkara Payasam ~rice & jaggery pudding~ ©, .

Last week saw a belated Mother’s Day celebration at my daughter’s school. To spread the word on healthy eating the school had set up a Cookery Competition for Kindergarten 1 mums, the theme was ‘cooking without fire’. I thought the idea was terrific and wanted to do something more than a salad or sandwich kind of thing. We’ ve all been reading about the raw food movement and how rawtarians are recommending that to get maximum benefits out of food we must not cook it. Cooking is believed to diminish the nutritional value and life force of food. Ofcourse I like to think that everything in moderation is a good idea, so generally strive to include raw foods along with cooked foods into our family diet.

But this was a good time for me to experiment with something that I have been dying to take a shot at for some time now – Raw Carrot Cake. I found a good source at The Raw Chef: Carrot Orange Cake. I adapted the recipe with what ingredients I had on hand, I also used fresh whipped cream to ice the cake. Very very nice cake, its the kind I would like to take a bite into once in a while.

The cake won the 1st prize at the competition. Look at the table for the winning recipes, there’s nothing left of my cake, it had been demolished! sans a cupcake wrapper someone was too polite to remove

Ingredients
4 Carrots, finely grated
1 c Raisins, soaked
¼ c Dried apricots, chopped
½ c Mixed peel
½ c Date purée *
2 c Almond flour
1½ c Desiccated coconut
1 tsp Ginger powder
1 tsp Cinnamon powder
5 cloves

Method
1. Pulse carrots, raisins, date paste & spices in a blender.
2. Drop in the chopped apricots, and mixed peel and pulse a couple of times.
3. Remove the mixture into a large bowl, along with the almond flour and desiccated coconut.
4. Mix well, press into place in a large cake pan, and refrigerate uncovered till it sets.
5. Cut into bite sized squares, frost it with whipped cream or roll them into balls and dust with desiccated coconut.

* Make the date purée by grinding 1c soft dates and 1/2c orange juice in a food processor until smooth.

Raw Carrot Cake ©, .

This is the first time I tried making fresh pasta at home. I don’t have a pasta maker so had to make do with my trusty wooden rolling pin. I am sure the pasta could have been thinner if there was a pasta machine, I just didn’t have the strength to roll the dough out any thinner, next time I’ll make it when my brother is around, I am pretty sure he’ll be game for a show of strength especially when the results will be as delicious as this ravioli was. The original recipe called for 2 eggs, I used one. So if you don’t mind using eggs, go ahead and use two eggs. I also forgot to add the sundried tomato in the filling so I used it as garnish, but I am sure adding it into the filling will be even better.

Ingredients
for the pasta:
1 cup AP flour
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
4 tablespoons fresh coriander, finely chopped
pinch of salt

for the filling:
4 cloves garlic on its skin
2 cups pumpkin cubes, cooked
1/2 cup cottage cheese/paneer
4 pieces sundried tomatoes, chopped
freshly ground black pepper

Method
1. Place the flour, salt, egg, milk and finely chopped coriander on a lightly floured board and knead into a smooth dough. Cover and refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 200 C. Place the garlic on the baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes until soft.
3. Separately mash the pumpkin, and cottage cheese.
4. In a large bowl place the mashed pumpkin, cottage cheese, drained and chopped sundried tomatoes, mashed garlic, and mix well. Season with some salt and lots of freshly ground pepper.

5. Divide the dough into 4 portions and roll out as thinly as humanly possible (if you have a pasta machine you need to roll out to 3mm thickness), and leave the pasta on a dish towel until it dries out a bit.

6. Using a 3 inch crinkle edged round cutter stamp out 30 rounds of pasta, I used all the bits and bobs and rolled out again and cut up almost the entire dough.

7. Top 15 rounds with spoonfuls of the filling and brush the edges with water and place another round of pasta on top. Press firmly around the edges to seal.
8. Bring a large pan of water to boil, add salt, add the ravioli and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, the pasta when cooked will rise up to the surface of the water.
9. Drain well and toss with the drained oil from the sundried tomatoes. Sprinkle with pepper and a few sprigs of fresh coriander. Nice!

Coriander Ravioli with Pumpkin & Cottage Cheese filling ©, .

My paternal grandfather, my achachan, was an excellent cook. I am sure if he were alive today he might be outraged at how some of the traditional recipes have evolved bearing no resemblance to their former selves. Achachan had no interest in farming – which was terrible for a household whose mainstay was agriculture… instead he wanted to cook. At some point in the 1930s he boarded a ship and cooked his way to Penang. Here he worked as a khansamah on one of the plantations until WW2, at which point he returned home to his village and set up a Tea Club (the café culture was yet to arrive).

Years later when my mother entered their household, my achachan apparantly found his true successor. And it is to her that he handed down his precious cookbook. Now torn at the edges, its delicate pages brown with age – it perhaps holds the secret beginnings of many tamil-malayali dishes we see today and some that have disappeared up with the chimney smoke.

In an attempt to resurrect these old recipes I have started trying them out in my kitchen. I try not not to improvise and to stay true to achachan’s cookbook, that way we get the idea of what the dish tasted like, back then. The language in the book is old malayalam and I do take a while to read and comprehend it, the measurements are according to old Kerala standards, so I am taking proportionate measurements to suit me.

So here’s Vazhakkai Puli Thuvayal from the good ol’ days. Thuvayal is like a chammanthi/chutney/dip. It essentially belongs to the Tamil kitchen, but I suspect pallakadan malayalis may also be familiar with the taste. The consistency is a bit like hummus, which most people are familiar with. Its really simple to make and I really liked it.

Ingredients
1 large vazhakkai/raw plantain
2, 3 whole dry chilly
1/4 cup urad dal
1 teaspoon tamarind
Salt to taste
Some hot water

Method
1. Char grill the plantain, till it looks cooked, should take around 10 min. or use oven to roast. Discard the charred peel of the plaintain and cube it.
2. In a pan, roast the whole red chilly and the urad dal.
3. Blend together the cubed plantain, roasted red chilly, urad dal, salt, and tamarind, adding a little hot water along the way, until you get a paste with a hummus like consistency.
4. Mix in some warm gingelly oil and have with rice, or use as a dip for chips. Interesting texture, nice taste.

Vazhakkai Thuvayal on other blogs - Cardamom – Vazhakai Thugayal

This post first appeared on my former blog: a vegetarian in the middle east.

Plantain

Vazhakkai Puli Thuvayal ~roasted plantain dip~ ©, .

Indu Huike - sarpanch Pavnar Panchayat

Indu Huike is the first woman sarpanch  of Pavnar Panchayat; a village in the Wardha district of Maharashtra. As the leader of the VHNCC or Village Health and Nutrition Co-ordination Committee; she  ensures  that nutritious care and advice is provided to children in need of it. And there are many such children – malnutritioned children and underweight babies are the norm here rather than the exception.

hello! come get your laddoos!

As a solution, Indu Huike turns to an old Indian recipe – laddoos made of jaggery and groundnuts – these delicious laddoos are made and delivered by the sarpanch and her assistant. All anemic and underweight children in her village get homemade laddoos that she personally delivers once a week – 7 per child; one for each day of the week.

writing down the baby's progress

She says that after a few weeks of these children eating the laddoos she can see a definite improvement in the child’s health and weight.

happy mother and child! the laddoos are yum! I ate one in the interest of research!

Healthy Laddoos ©, .

I am gradually clearing up my recipes from my old blog a vegetarian in the middle east and shifting them here. The idea is to file all my recipes in one place, I often repeat my recipes at home and find myself opening my blog to check on the ingredients. With two blogs and recipes scattered all over its been very confusing. So I am reposting some old recipes. Earlier I was pre-dating them while reposting, like the Vegan Chocolate Avocado cake (I think its one of the most popular recipes from my collection), but now I think these old posts need new energy so I will maintain the current date and time, I will be also using the same photographs unless I have better ones that I have taken more recently Here’s Tofu Tikka.

Tofu Tikka is really simple to make and infact you can assemble it a couple of hours in advance and regrigerate it, in any case it requires a minimum of 30 minutes of marination. First thing you need is a block of extra firm tofu. Rub a pinch of salt on the tofu and leave it on an incline near the kitchen sink, so that water in the tofu drains out.

Meanwhile get hold of the following ingredients for the marinade
Chilly pdr – 1 tsp
Cumin pdr – 1/2 tsp
Coriander pdr – 2 tsp
Thick yoghurt – 3 Tbsp
Ground Pepper – 1/2 tsp
Fennel powder – 1/2 tsp (optional)
Turmeric – 1 pinch
Minced ginger – 1 tsp
Minced garlic – 1 tsp
Salt to taste

Other vegetables for the grill:
Capsicum/Bell Pepper – 1
Onion – 1

Method
1. Pick up the resting tofu block and press it together between your palms to drain out any water left in it. Cut into thick cubes.

2. Mix the ingredients for the marinade together are apply on the tofu cubes, put away any remaining marinade. The the tofu sit for atleast 30 minutes, or put it in the refrigerator for later use.

3. When you’re ready for the grill, cube the capsicum and the onion. Separate the onion layers. Apply the leftover marinade on both.

4. Arrange the pepper, onion & tofu cubes on a skewer – alternating between them. I made bite sized tikkas by skewering them onto toothpicks. Smear a little oil on the tikkas.

5. Grill on both sides till brownish spots appear on the veggies.

Serve piping hot with yoghurt and mint sauce

Check out the recipe for Yoghurt and Mint Sauce on my Vegetarian BBQ post.

Tofu Tikka ©, .

GHOSTS OF SUMMERS PAST

Summer afternoons in Dehradun were filled with mysterious boredom. Ghosts of colonial folks moved imperceptibly around the old bungalow and its surrounding garden making the air thick, impenetrable, and inscrutable. Sometimes you could hear the ghosts whispering through the silver oaks, sometimes when they were playful, they would startle the parrots greedily engrossed in devouring sun ripened mangoes. These mango trees belonged to these ghosts, they lived there, they had been for centuries now. Sometimes my brother and I saw our swing, hung high on a strong branch, swinging merrily by itself. We didn’t mind it, after all the garden was as much theirs as it was ours.

In the afternoons there wasn’t much to do, we were banned from entering the house, our mum was on night duty so she would be sleeping inside and we were too noisy. So the garden, the mangoes, the ghosts and us, we were banished until evening. Right outside our house, on one side there was a Gharwal Higher Secondary School or maybe it was a college, I don’t remember it now, we were at that age when everything was atleast four times larger in size and comprehension. The college was still in session and the local ice cream vendor had taken his position outside our second gate.  The second gate was never used and it had a huge, rusted lock and chain around it. Decomposed leaves and dirt had already embedded the gate into the earth, so there was very little likelihood that the gate would ever be opened. The college kids liked to hang outside our second gate, maybe because it was the ice cream vendors favored location. We were always shy of the college kids and would play far into the garden hidden out of sight, but watching them from the corner of our eyes. They looked so big and fashionable. But more than that our eyes were always on the ice cream vendor who held the keys to a forbidden land. The land of cold ice creams, crunchy cones and juicy popsicles. We would greedily swallow dribble just thinking about the ice cream man’s house. But due to strict instructions regarding the perils of eating unhygienic roadside food we were practically banned from even thinking of the word I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M. But the real reason for our deprivation was that we had no money, all we needed was 2 Rupees and all we had was a big fat zero.

That’s when the mango ghosts put the idea into Raghu’s head, “Raji lets make a deal, I have a great idea!” he said to me. His ideas always put me into trouble because I could never lie. Raghu knew my weakness so he told me all I had to do was keep my trap shut, he would do everything there was to do, I just have to be an accomplice and I would get a nice milky vanilla bar for my work. The words ‘milky vanilla bar’ is all that I heard and I followed him like a lamb. Raghu stretched himself up to his full height, took a full breath, and without a single stammer made an offer to the ice cream man “you give us two ice creams and we will give you two bigggg mangoes, what do you think?” The ice cream man thought hard, and drove a hard bargain “I’ll give you two ice creams for 4 mangoes, deal or no deal?” Everything sounded fair for ice creams, Raghu ambled up the nearest tree and brought down 4 huge mangoes, they barely fitted into our tiny hands, still we managed to get it over to the gate. The ice cream man kept his word and pulled out two big vanilla pops and handed over to us.

Raghu and I settled under our favourite mango tree, the farthest from the house, from where no one could spot us, peeled away the paper from the pop and licked.

Aam Panna also called Kairi Panha (Kairi meaning raw mango) is a summer tradition at my home. Summer is incomplete without cool sips of iced mango panha. Deliciously cardamomy, sweet and tart panha usually looks pale green because of the raw mangoes in it, mine turned a little orange because the mangoes were almost ripening. Further, in addition to cardamom I also added saffron and jaggery, so orange mango panha it is – but tastes just like home!

I have to add here that my mum always peels and chops up the raw mango and its really a load of work, and that is one of the main reasons that deterred me from making panha at home. But I was recently going through a cookbook that talked about pressure cooking raw mangoes, and bingo!  So truly its really easy to try this at home and do give this traditional drink a shot – I am planning to spike some panha with vodka one evening, endless possibilities, I feel giddy thinking about it

Ingredients
1 kilogram raw mango
1 1/2 cup jaggery, shavings
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon saffron, soaked in a spoonful of warm water
1 teaspoon cardamom powder

Method
1. Wash the raw mangoes well, and pressure cook to one whistle. Remove and let cool.
2. The cooked mangoes would have slit open, remove the peel and scrape off any pulp on the peel using a teaspoon. Using your hands squeeze out the rest of the pulp from the seed. Discard the seed.
3. Pour the extracted mango pulp into a blender along with the jaggery, sugar (if using), saffron and cardamom and whisk until combined.
4. Pour into clean glass jars and refrigerate. I got about 750 gms of panha, filling 1 + 1/2 empty Horlicks bottles. I put one bottle into the freezer, will take out when the other’s used up.
5. To prepare kairi panha or aam panna pour a couple of tablespoons of the panna into a glass top with water and ice cubes, garnish with mint leaves, give it a stir and enjoy!

You can also make instant mango lassi with the panna sauce. Just pour a bit into a glass, and top with chilled milk and stir. The citric acid in the mango turns the combination into a thick mango lassi! double yum!

Srivalli from Cooking 4 all Seasons is celebrating 3 years of blogging with her Thanda Mela event. Here’s a glass of chilled Aam Panna for her!

Well if the story is the whole truth or farthest from the truth is something you’ll have to keep guessing, for now this post is also my entry to Aqua’s Of Chalks and Chopsticks, now being hosted by Bong Mom.

Aam Panna ~raw mango cooler~ ©, .

This is a simple and delicious recipe for chocolate chip cookies. My daughter loves to have one cookie along with strawberry milk for her second break at school. My previous attempts at chocolate chip cookies have been more or less disastrous, simply because I always experiment to make them eggless or the amounts are too much, or something always goes wrong. And then I am left with huge amounts of cookies with no takers. So I was looking for a recipe that made just a few cookies, so I could always bake fresh batch every week, also which resulted in cookies that tasted like they were supposed to.

This one makes about 10 cookies, and is adapted from a Kids recipe book, the original asks for more sugar, the sugar in my version tasted absolutely alright, not too sweet. Just right, and nice and chewy cookies!

Ingredients
2/3 cup + 1 tablespoon A.P. flour
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
4 tablespoon granulated sugar
4 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon water
5 tablespoon chocolate chips

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree and line a baking sheet with butter/parchment paper.
2. Sift the flour, soda bi carb and salt into a bowl.
3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolk, vanilla and water, mix well.
4. Gradually stir in the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Add the chocolate chips and combine.
6. Scoop out spoonfuls of the dough onto the lined baking sheet, I used my hand to roll them into lime sized balls. Do not flatten.
7. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges of the cookies begin to brown.
8. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet until they are firm, but still warm.

Chocolate Chip Cookies ©, .

Two kinds of peechingya (ridge-gourd) are commonly available – one is the gourd thats allowed to be dried to make nice, exfoliating loofah, the kind that we pay couple of dirhams for at body shop, and the other is this one with proper ridges on its body. Its sort of like the armadillo of the vegetable world. Thick skinned, but once pared and cooked, incredibly soft with a delicate flavour. Although when it comes to flavour I prefer the other loofah gourd. With a prominent and permanent place in our kitchen garden, my grandmother used to chop them up along with potatoes and make a yummy subzi to go with chappatis and masoor dal. A few were allowed to dry for the loofah business, which was used everyday to scrub us at bath times. So I do like the loofah gourds a degree more than the ridge gourds, but then I find only the ridged ones in supermarkets here. Here’s a theeyal recipe.

Theeyal is a malayali favourite and has fried or sautéed vegetables in a thick gravy of roasted coconut, coriander, pepper and tamarind, all easily available ingredients in Kerala. The word theeyal probably has been derived from ‘theeyil’ malayalam for ‘in the fire’, and could mean its sometimes fiery taste (if its made too spicy) or it could be because the ingredients have been roasted over a wood fire. Theeyals can be prepared with a variety of vegetables like shallots (ulli theeyal), bittergourd (pavakkya theeyal), aubergines (vazhuthenengya theeyal) and so on.

In this theeyal recipe I have neither fried nor roasted the chief ingredient – the ridge-gourd. The gourd has been slow boiled, and the curry ingredients have been dry roasted on my gas stove. Nonetheless it tasted good.

Ingredients
3 ridge-gourds, pared, halved and chopped to 1/2 inch length
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
salt to taste
1 small ball of tamarind soaked in hot water

for the curry paste
1/2 cup fresh coconut, shredded and toasted
4 shallots chopped, sauteed
2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds, dry roasted
1 teaspoon peppercorn, dry roasted
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds, dry roasted
2 torn pieces of dry red chillies, also dry roasted

for the seasoning
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 piece of dry red chilly, torn (optional)
2 sprigs of fresh curry leaves

Method
1. All the ingredients for the curry needs to be ground to a smooth paste.
2. Boil the ridge-gourd with a little water, salt and turmeric, until its just cooked.
3. Add the tamarind extract to the boiled ridge-gourd and allow to simmer for 2 minutes.
4. Next, add the curry paste, give it a good stir, adjust the salt and let it come to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes, until all the tastes combine.
5. Heat the coconut oil in a saucepan and pop the mustard, red chilly and curry leaves, and pour the seasoning over the bubbling curry. Remove from heat.
6. Let the ridge-gourd theeyal sit it out for an hour before serving with mounds of steaming hot rice, pappadam and thoran.

Peechingya Theeyal ~ridge-gourd in brown gravy~ ©, .