Gooseberry Pickle

Pickling is an art! And since summer is here, gooseberries are available aplenty. Here is my recipe of gooseberry pickle which I got from my maid - Mrs. Gracy Mathachan , who used to run a small scale pickling unit years ago. I have used a variety of green chilly called 'kandari' ; feel free to omit it or just use chopped ordinary green chilly in its place.

Ingredients:
Gooseberry - 1.5kg
(opt) Green Chili - 1 cup
Gingelly / til oil / nallena - 1 cup
Mustard seed - 1 tbsp
(opt) Ginger - 4 tbsp
Curry leaves - 5 sprigs

Powders:
Salt - 7 tbsp heaped
Chili powder - 6 tbsp heaped
(if not using green chili, add 2 tbsp more)
Sugar - 2  1/2 tbsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tbsp
Asafoetida powder / kayam - 1 1/2 tbsp
Uluva / fenugreek/ menthayam powder - 1 tbsp

Vinegar - 1/3 cup
Coconut oil - 1/2 cup


Steam gooseberry in a large vessel. Do not let water touch the berries. Just steam as you would do idly or dhokla.  If you use the pressure cooker, steam until one whistle and turn off flame.
Cool, deseed and break into pieces.

Heat the Gingelly oil in a thick bottomed vessel and splutter the mustard.
Into this add the ginger, green chili and curry leaf. Give one good stir and reduce flame. (get ready for some explosions)







Mix all the powders together and increase flame to medium high. Tip the powders, all in one go, into the oil. Stir continuously even when you sneeze! DO NOT STOP STIRRING.








The raw smell of the chili powder will go in about a minute. Now reduce flame and add the vinegar. Stir well.









After one minute, add the goose berry and start mixing. Come on, work those muscles.









Once the gooseberry is evenly coated, and heated through, add the coconut oil. Turn off flame. Mix well.





Cool. Stir intermittently.
While cooling do no close the vessel completely with a lid as the condensed water vapor might fall on the prepared pickle.

Store in clean dry glass jars. This pickle stays fresh for upto a year.

Spinach Cheera thoran

Cheera / keerai / Spinach  is a fine source of iron and Popeye's favorite.
There are many ways of making thoran or dry dish with keera, but this is my family's favorite. Made with coconut and various fresh and dry spices, mouth waters when the lid of the vessel is lifted!

Recipe courtesy: Jessamma Boban

Ingredients:
Spinach - 1 bunch , chopped fine
Salt to taste
Coconut oil - 2 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Red chilli - 1 , broken into 3 pieces

To be ground into a coarse paste without water:
Coconut - 1/3 cup
Curry leaf - 1 sprig
Red Chilli - 4
Small onion - 5
Turmeric powder - 1tsp
Garlic (opt) - 1 pod
Asafoetida - 1/2 tsp
Jeera - 1 tsp

Method:
Wash the spinach well and chop finely.
Heat the coconut oil and add the mustard seeds and red chillies.
Once it crackles, add the coarsely ground paste and salt. Saute on a medium flame, stirring continuously for 1 minute.

Now add the spinach. Mix well. Reduce flame and cook covered for 5 minutes.
Open, mix well and cook on a medium flame till all water evaporates.
Serve hot with rice.

Energy Bar

My husband is a runner and he usually takes along an energy bar to have during his runs. 

My energy bar is a variant of a rich Christmas cake , but heavily loaded with dry fruits and nuts.

Eggs -2
Sugar - 75 gms , powdered
Butter / Margarine/ refined oil - 75 gms
Nuts (feel free to add different varieties of nuts like pistachio, almonds, peanuts and walnuts) - 150 gms
Soft dry fruits (dates, raisins and fig)- 100 gms
Cinnamon - 4 * 1 inch pieces - ground
Clove - 4, ground
Ginger - 1 inch piece , squashed or ginger powder - 1 tbsp
(Optional) Orange peel - 1 tbsp
Orange juice (or any orange flavoured no fizzy drink) - 100ml
Maida / All purpose flour - 100gms
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Salt - 1 tsp

Preheat oven at 160 C for 10 minutes.

Line and grease a flat shallow tray (30cms *24cms * 1inch) with butter paper and keep aside. A tray in which you bake sponge cakes , is the best. More the depth, the more time you have to bake.
And this is a bar, not a cake.

Sieve the flour with the baking powder, salt and finely ground spices.

Mix in the chopped nuts, chopped dry fruits, ginger and orange peel. They have to be evenly coated with the flour.

Beat the sugar and butter/ oil until fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time and beat well.
Add in the orange juice and make a thin batter.
Incorporate the flour into this and FOLD well (meaning do not use a beater).
Spread evenly on the lined tray and bake for 40 minutes.
Allow to cool before cutting into rectangular slabs.

Kerala Raw Mango Chammandi

During the mango season, my dear friend Manju Rajagopal (nee Balakrishnan) used to bring a special 'chammandi' to school. Her classmates (meaning my friends and I) would devour it within seconds and Manju would be left with just plain rice and no accompaniments!
That is when her mother found an ingenious solution - make a larger batch for her classmates.
Aunty was kind enough to share this recipe with me , but I got to say, what I make will never taste as good as what I had during my school days!
A true blue KERALA recipe.

Raw mango
Small onion / shallots - 4 or 5
Red chillies - 4 or 5
salt
Coconut oil - 2 tbsp

Heat the red chillies (without oil) and cool to room temperature.
Pound all the above together (except oil) to get a coarse paste.
(If you cannot pound the ingredients and you need to use a mixer, try to not make a paste.
The fun in eating this dish, is when there are pieces of mango and onion in between.)
Top with coconut oil and mix well.
Serve.

Gujarati kadhi

Every state in India has a recipe which changes curd into a curry. This is a Gujarathi recipe. So no onion , no garlic!! It has got a beautiful sweet, spicy taste. A delicate balance of flavours. I have made both plain kadhi and kadhi with fried pakode. Today I had some left over dal vada, which I have added.(a south Indian twist?)

Curd - 1 cup
Water - 2 cups
salt
Sugar - 1 tsp
Ginger pounded - 1 tbsp
Green chilli - 2 - pounded
Besan / kadalamav / chick pea flour - 1 heaped tbsp

Mix / whisk all the dry ingredients (salt, sugar and besan) with the curd and water till no lumps remain. If necessary, sieve. Then add the pounded ginger- green chilli and keep aside.

Ghee / clarified butter - 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Jeera  - 1 tsp
Red chilli - 2 , broken into pieces
Methi seeds - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Curry leaf - I used 2 sprigs, lesser is fine
Asafoetida - 1tsp

Heat ghee and splutter mustard, jeera, red chilli and methi seeds.

Then add the asafoetida powder, curry leaf and turmeric powder.

Add then the curd mixture.

Bring to a boil, while stirring constantly.

Reduce flame and continue cooking for 10 -12 minutes.

If you are using any fried pakode / vade add it to the kadhi and cook for 1 minute.

Serve with rice or Khichdi.

Gujarati Khichdi

This recipe will serve 4 hungry people.

Ratio
Rice : Dal
3 : 1

Rice + Dal : water
1 : 3
Meaning - When you mix the rice and dal together , that quantity times 3 is the amount of water that has to be used.
In the below recipe I have used 1 1/2 cups rice and 1/2 cup dal. Both together equals 2 cups. So I used 6 glasses of water for cooking the khichdi.

Ingredients:
Rice - 1 1/2 cups
Cheru payar / dal / lentils - 1/2 cup
Ghee/ clarified butter - 2 tbsp + 1 tbsp
Jeera / cumin seed - 1 tsp
Cloves - 3
Cinnamon stick - 4 pieces of 1 inch lenght
Asafoetida - 1 tsp
Vegetables* - 2 cups
Salt

*An assortment of vegetables like carrots, beans, green peas and cauliflower can be used in varying quantities.

Method:
Wash and soak the rice and dal in water for half hour.
Heat 2 tbsp ghee in a pressure cooker and add the whole spices.
Once spluttered , add the asafoetida and the drained rice + dal.
Fry for a minute and add the vegetables.
Add 6 cups of water and salt to taste.
Mix well.
Put the lid on and add the pressure weight.
Reduce flame after one whistle and cook for 15 more minutes.
Open after all steam has escaped.
Mix well and serve hot topped with ghee.

Serve with Kadhi.