If you love eating, you can surely be a good cook, but to be an excellent one, you should have good critics at home. For that I owe to my husband and my children.

I dedicate this blog to the young ladies - "the starters".

Monday, March 23, 2009

Bread Fruit Curry (kadachakka curry)



Bread fruit - ½
Onion - 1
Ginger - 3 inch
Green chillies -2
Curry leaves - a bunch
Coriander powder - 1 tbsp
Chilli powder – ½ tbsp
Garam masala -1 tbsp
(10 pepper corns, 2 cloves,
2 petals of star anise, 4 cardamoms)
Turmeric powder - ½ tsp
Grated coconut - of 1 full
Oil - 3 tbsp
Mustard - 1tbsp
Shallots - 4
Garlic - 4
Green chillies - 2
Pepper powder - 1 tsp
Vinegar - 1 tbsp

Peel , wash and cut bread fruit into small triangles.
Slice onion ,ginger, green chillies.

Combine these cut vegetables in a vessel with turmeric,
Coriander, red chilli powder, garam masala, salt, curry leaves
and half glass of water. Let it cook covered on low flame till
the bread fruit is soft.
In a blender, pour warm water and grated coconut to extract
thick and thin coconut milk.

Add thin coconut milk to the cooked bread fruit and let it simmer
on low flame for 10 minutes.
Now pour the thick coconut milk, keep on low flame for 5 more minutes.
Pour 1 tbsp of vinegar. Stir and add salt if needed.

In a wok add oil, mustard seeds. As it splutter add sliced- shallots,
Garlic, green chillies and curry leaves . As the green chillies turn
Brighter in colour, turn off the flame and pour on the curry.
Serve hot or cold with rice or chappati.

Though it is called bread fruit , it turns soft as butter when it is cooked.
You can make wafers, erisheri , cutlets etc. with this bread fruit.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Prawn Papaya Curry(chemmeen kapenga palucurry)




Ingredients
Prawns - 15 nos
Raw papaya - ½
Raw mango - ½
Grated coconut - 1 full
Onion -1
Green chillies - 3
Ginger -3 inch
Curry leaves - a bunch
Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
Fish masala -1 tbsp
chilli powder,fenugreek and dry ginger powder)
Kudampuli(gamboge,kokam) – 1
Salt - to taste
Oil - 3 tbsp
Mustard - 2 tsp
Shallots - 5
Garlic - 5
Dry red chillies - 4

Preparation
Peel, de-vein, wash and cut the prawns into pieces.
Size of the prawns does not matter.

In a wet chutney grinder, put 1 cup grated coconut,
1 green chilli, 1 inch ginger, half onion, 1 tbsp curry leaves,
1 tbsp fish masala, turmeric powder and ¼ glass of water.
Blend it to a fine paste and set aside.

Extract thick and thin milk from the
remaining grated coconut.
In a blender, pour warm water and
grated coconut to extract coconut milk.

Peel and cut papaya and mango into
about 3 inch long pieces.
Slice remaining half onion,green chillies and ginger.

In an earthern vessel, add prawns, papaya,
mango, green chillies,ginger,curry leaves,
coconut-fish masala paste, salt, small kudampuli
and the thin coconut milk. Cover the vessel half and
cook on low flame till the papaya pieces turn soft.

Add the thick coconut milk and
cook for 5 minutes on low flame.

In a wok,on low flame pour oil,add
mustard seeds,thinly sliced shallots,
garlic,dry red chillies and curry leaves.
Saute,till the ingredients turn crisp.
Pour this on the curry and close the lid
to lock the flavours in.

As the curry cools,it gets thicker and creamier.
All the taste of the prawns and mango are absorbed
in the gravy and papaya pieces.

This prawn curry is one of our all time favourite dishes .

A bit of history

There was a time when prawns was affordable to
both rich and poor.Though not tiger prawns,the
small shrimps were abundantly available.
It is extremely difficult to clean but those
small ones are realy tasty.

Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
To feed the large number of family members,
the queen of the house had to come out with some new ideas.
Which resulted in adding suitable vegetables with
those shrimps, to bring out recipes which could double
the quantity with out compromising taste.

Thus in cochin side with prawns, raw papaya, mango,
long beans,snake gourd and many more were combined
to make tasty dishes.

Prawns- fresh or dry, roast or fry, curry or chutney powder,
you name it... prawns was essential part of dining.

Muffins



Ingredients

Plain flour -2 ½ cups
Baking powder - 2 ½ tsp
Sugar - 1 ½ cups
Salt - ½ tsp
Soft butter - 7 tbsp
Egg -1 large
Curd - ½ cup
Vanilla essence – ½ tsp

Preparation
Sift flour and baking powder twice and keep aside.
Powder sugar and mix in butter.
Wisk till smooth.
Beat an egg to its peak and fold in to the butter sugar mixture.
Add salt, vanilla essence and curd. Mix well.
Spoon by spoon fold in flour baking powder mixture.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Line muffin tins with paper cups.
Fill the cups to the top.
Pre- heat oven.
Bake for 20 minutes at 180c.
Prick the muffins with a skewer to see whether it is done.