Puli Kozhambu by Chef Mathivannan

When we went to Taj Varkala two Onam's ago, the menu was skewed towards non-vegetarian food and our choices were completely depleted in 3 meals. The chef (Mr.Mathivannan) took pity on us and served us every afternoon an amazing 'puli kozhambu' with fluffy white rice. The taste was so good I needed the recipe. He conducted a class for me on our last day of stay and showed me how to make the curry from scratch.

I have made this curry so many times after that trip, but sadly never gotten around to posting it here.

The taste is excellent and reminds you of Tamilnadu hinterlands (read : Chettinad).

Ingredients:

Sunflower / Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp 

Til oil / Gingelly oil / ellennai / nalla ennai - 2 tbsp

Mustard - 1 tsp

Jeera - 1 tsp + 1 tsp

Uluva / methi / fenugreek seeds - 1/2 tsp

Small onion / shallots / chinna ulli / chinna vengayam - 10, sliced thin

Curry leaf - 1 sprig

Garlic - 2 pods, sliced thin

Green chilli - 2, slit

Turmeric powder - 1 tsp

Chilli powder - 1 tsp (or more)

Coriander powder - 1 tbsp

Salt to taste

Jeera powder - 1 tsp

Tomato - 2, Blanched and pureed

Vegetables - 2 cups, thinly cut

(drumstick, raw banana, brinjal, beans)

Tamarind - 1 inch ball (or) 2 tbsp thick extract mixed in 1 cup water

Coconut - 1/4 cup

(my notes taken during the class)

Method:

If you are using vegetables which might take time to cook like drumstick and raw banana, unlike brinjal or ladies finger which is easy to cook, please boil them in just enough water to soften a little.

Grind the coconut with 1 tsp jeera into a smooth paste and keep aside.

Heat both the oils in a heavy bottomed kadai.
Splutter the mustard. Then add the jeera and methi.
Next add the onion, green chilly, curry leaf and garlic.
Saute until onion starts turning golden brown.
Then add all the powders - salt, turmeric, chilli, coriander and jeera.

Saute on a low flame for 2 minutes and if you feel the oil is less add one more tablespoon of oil.
Now add the tomato puree.

Cook on a low flame for 2-3 minutes until raw smell goes.
Now add the vegetables and saute till they soften well.
Now add the tamarind paste and water.

Cook covered for 5 - 7 minutes and then add the ground coconut-jeera mixture.

Give just one boil and turn off flame.

Serve hot with white rice topped with ghee.

Spaghetti with Tofu Balls

Spaghetti with meat balls.
Everyone has heard of it and since it is a classic I wanted it too. But meat balls for us vegetarians? That is where Soya comes in.
Tofu is made from soya and is called 'faux meat'. And I have used that to make the 'meat balls'.

Serves - 6 adults

Ingredients:
Spaghetti - 500 gms
Italian Tomato sauce
Parmesan grated - 1 cup (heaped)
Tofu balls (recipe below)

Cook the pasta in ample salted water until cooked. Drain.
Add the tomato sauce.
Mix well and add the tofu balls and half of the cheese.
Mix carefully.
Serve on induvidual plates and top with more cheese.

Ingredients to make tofu balls:
Tofu - 200gms
Garlic - 2 cloves
Celery - 1 stalk
Salt to taste
Thyme - 1 tsp
Rosemary - 1/2 tsp
Pepper - 1/2 tsp
Chilly flakes - 1/2 tsp
Bread crumbs (or) corn flour (or) all purpose flour - 1 tbsp (to be used only if necessary)
Oil for deep frying

Method to make tofu balls:
Crumble the tofu, grate the garlic, chop the celery finely and add in all the powders.
Mix everything together.

Now form tight balls with this. If water oozes when you do so, add either the bread crumbs (or) corn flour (or) all purpose flour and knead again.
Make small balls and keep aside.

Deep fry in hot oil, until golden brown.

These are your tofu balls.
Eat them as they are with tomato sauce or add it to your spaghetti.

Kerala Mixture

Yep! Everything is deep fried and mixed together.

I have used sev, boondi, corn flakes, cashewnuts, green chilly, pottu kadala / roasted gram, ground nuts and curry leaf.

People add many other ingredients like pieces of murukku, raisins and bhujia. What I have made here is typical Kerala type Mixture.

Ingredients:

Besan / Kadala mav / chick pea flour - 1 cup

Salt - 1 heaped tsp

Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

Chilly powder - 1 tsp

Asafoetida powder - 1 tsp

Rice flour - 1 tbsp

Ground nuts - 1/4 cup

Cashew nuts - 1/4 cup

Pottu Kadala - 1/4 cup

Green chilly - 4, sliced

Curry leaf - 1 cup, tightly packed

Corn flakes - 1/2 cup

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Heat the oil in a large kadai.

Mix together 1/2 tsp salt with 2 tbsp water. Add this to the groundnuts and mix well. Keep aside.

Mix together the besan, salt, turmeric powder, chilly powder, asafoetida powder and rice flour.

Carefully add water (by the tablespoon) to make a thick paste. Add 2 tsp warm oil to this and mix well.

Once the oil gets hot, first fry the curry leaf till it turns crispy. Keep aside. This imparts a beautiful aroma to the oil.

Using the sev / idiyappa nazhi / mould, press out thin circles of the besan mix into the hot oil.
After about 2 minutes (do not hurry, the bottom has to set), flip this and cook the other side too. Once both sides become golden, remove from oil.

Repeat process under almost all of the mixture is over.

With the rest of the batter, add more water and make a loose batter.
Make boondhi with this. Use a perforated ladle to get this shape.

Now fry the groundnuts (until you hear a popping sound), cashewnuts (till they turn golden brown), Pottu Kadala (till it turns golden brown), Green chilly (till it starts changing colour) and corn flakes separately. ( I dusted some salt and chilly powder over the cashewnuts and corn flakes after they were fried)

Now break the sev and mix all the ingredients together.
Your Mixture is ready.

7 cup sweet

While at times you really wish to cook, there are times when you wish you could 'get away'. Diwali time is cooking time and this sweet will be your saviour when you 'have to' but you 'don't really want to'. You know those times when you want to present home-made sweets to your guests instead of store bought ones.

7 cups sweets is not all that easy, but comparatively it is very easy.

The name "7-cups" explains about the basic ingredients quantity - which is 7 cups; and that includes 3 cups of sugar. This make the sweet unbearably sweet and almost impossible to eat. (Atleast in my house!) So I have reduced the quantity of sugar and made it 2 cups; thereby changing the name of the sweet to "6 CUPS"!

Feel free to add 3 cups of sugar.

Ingredients:

Kadalamav / Besan / Chick pea flour - 1 cup

Coconut - 1 cup , grated fine

Ghee - 3/4 cup + 1/4 cup

Milk - 1 cup

Sugar - 2 cups (originally 3 cups)

Cardamom - 2 pods, powdered

Slivered Almonds for Garnish

Method:

Grease a thali / plate with sides with 1 tbsp ghee and keep aside.

Heat a heavy bottomed pan and add the besan.

Fry on a low flame till good smell comes , but be careful the colour of the powder does not change.

Now add the coconut and continue frying for 1 minute. If the coconut is very fresh, it might clump up with the besan as it might leave out it's oil. Not to worry, just sieve this besan -coconut clump through the wide holes of the sieve.

Now add the milk, cardamom powder and sugar. Mix well.

Place back on the fire and add 1/4 cup ghee.

Keep adding more ghee, keep stirring and keep cooking on a low-medium flame until the mixture gets cooked and starts leaving the side of the pan , or until a line drawn in the middle takes time to close in.

Now pour this hot sweet on the greased thali and pour 1 tbsp ghee on top. Using this ghee as the grease, flatten and leaven the top of the sweet.

Garnish with the almond slivers.

Press down these while still warm.

Cool a bit and cut into shape. 

Unmould on reaching room temperature.

Diwali marundu / Deepavali Lehyam / homemade medicine for digestion

ONLY on Diwali / Deepavali day are you forced to get up much before the sun rises (read 3 am) and eat a 'medicine' and not a sweet before having an oil bath!

This medicine or marundu or lehyam is made at home and tastes great initially, but seares the throat towards the end. But my grandmother and mother-in-law would rather swear by it than Digene or any other digestive.
Made on a low fire with constant stirring, a large quantity is made in a cauldron and the house gets a pharmacy smell. It is packed away for travelling bachelors and is given as a quick remedy to any one with digestion problems. Newly delivered mothers are given evil, sadistically large balls as 'gumman' (local name for the gas monster) which has entered the empty womb, needs to be thrown out.

This medicine is not made in my household anymore, but after reading an article, I got reminded of it and my old recipe book + mother-in-law's brain and some vague memories of my grandmom's recipe from my aunts helped me revive this dying medicine. All the usual anti-gas home remedial stuff (ginger, omam / ayamodakam/ ajwain, jeera) are used to make this.
I would ask all of you to make this and keep it stored.
Hope my children don't hate me for making them eat this on an empty stomach this early on Diwali morning!
But if they want to eat all those sweets and deep-fried stuff, they better have this!

P.S. - If you have very young kids at home, you can add a little honey before feeding them.

Ingredients:
Fresh Young Ginger - 1 cup
Jaggery - nearly 3/4 cup
Cloves - 11
Cinnamon stick - 1 1/2 inch
Jeera - 1/2 tsp
Pepper - 1 tsp
Cardamom - 2
Ayamodakam / Omam / ajwain - 1 tbsp
Ghee - 2 tsp (optional)

Method:
Dry fry all the spices in a hot pan for a minute and cool to room temperature.
Now powder this and add the ginger.
Grind into a smooth paste.
Measure the ground quantity and take 75% of this quantity jaggery. (Meaning, I got 1 cup of ground spices, so I used 3/4 cup.)
Melt the jaggery in little water and sieve to remove all the dirt.
Into this add the ground spices and start cooking on a low flame.
In the beginning you will not have to stir much, but after it thickens, the stirring has to be continuous.
Once it cooks down to a thick paste, you may add the ghee if you wish.
Heat through and mix well.
Cool and store in a glass vessel / bharani.

Youtube video link: https://youtu.be/n7vRsWSdsMM

Pictorial:

Dry fry the spices

Powder the spices

Powdered spices

Add the fresh ginger. Use young ones, which have lesser fibre.

Finely ground spice paste

After adding the spice mix to the jaggery syrup

45 minutes later, it has thickened enough to add ghee.

How it looks on Diwali day!

Butter Murukku / Crispy rice flour savory

Diwali time is high calorie time.
Sweets and savouries are churned out of the kitchen in kilos. Buying from outside is scorned upon. But I am guilty of this until recently. This year I am going to recreate my mother's and mother-in-law's recipes here for you to try.
And trust me, I am NOT going to go overboard and do something tough.

Butter murukku is a so crispy - it melts in the mouth!!

Ingredients:
White Rice flour - 1 cup
(find how to make this below)
Besan / kadala mav / chick pea flour - 1/4 cup
Pottu kadala / Roasted gram dal - little more than 1/4 cup
(find how to make this below)
Butter - 1 heaped tablespoon
Salt - 1 tsp
(if you have used salted butter, omit or use less)
Jeera - 1 tsp
Asafoetida powder / kayam - 1 1/2 tsp
Oil for deep frying

Method for preparing rice flour:
Wash and soak the rice in water for 10 minutes.
Spread the drained rice on a clean white cotton towel and place under the fan for 10 minutes.
Powder well and sieve through the smallest hole of your arippai / chalni.
Powder and keep sieving until all the rice gets used up.
Throw away the non-fine particles.
Heat a heavy bottomed vessel and add the flour to this.
Stir for 2 minutes and turn off flame.
Keep stirring till the vessel reaches room temperature.
Measure 1 cup of rice flour for this recipe.

Method to make Pottu kadala flour:

(image source : google images)

Dry roast the pottu kadala in a heavy bottomed vessel on a low flame till it gets heated through , but does not lose colour.
Cool, powder and sieve.
Use 1/4 cup of this in this recipe.

Method to make Butter murukku:
Mix together the rice flour, kadalamav, pottu kadala flour, salt, jeera, asafoetida.
Add the butter and using your fingers, mix it in well.

Now add enough water (by the tablespoon) to make a dough which is nether too thick, but surely not loose.

Use any shape you desire in your press to shape your dough. (I used the star shape.)

Heat oil and once it heats up, but is not TOO hot, deep fry in batches.
The dough will fall in broken pieces into the hot oil.
Do not disturb for a minute and then flip it.

Keep the oil temperature low or the murukku will get brown on the outside, but will remain uncooked inside.
The trick is to maintain the oil temperature at a constant.
Notice how the bubbling stops?
That is your signal to remove the murukku from the oil.
Cool and store in an air tight container.