Tag Archives: kerala

All Posts, Breakfast

Jackfruit Dosa

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I love ripe jackfruits more than any other fruit. In the 80’s while living in Manipal, our neighbour made jackfruit dosas for us. I never knew of this dish before and she obliged me with its recipe. Now every time I get a ripe jackfruit , this is a must have preparation.

Jackfruit dosas served with honey, mango launji and fresh mango

Ingredients

1 cup rice soaked for 3 to 4 hours- to make 6-7 dosas

8- 10 deseeded bulbs of ripe jackfruit

Salt to taste

½ tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp turmeric powder

1/3 tsp dried ginger powder (optional)

Water

Instruction

  • Grind all the ingredients with sufficient water to a thick batter and make dosas
  • Can be served with honey,  butter, chutney , or any sweet pickle
    All Posts, Mains, Sides

    Jackfruit Curry

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    So the fridge is empty and I go to buy veggies and there’s a, what? RAW JACKFRUIT!!!!! Like, wow!!
    Now this just HAD to be made! Even better with a friend joining for lunch! So kathal-alu sabji in mustard oil and with coconut milk, a concoction that turned out very successful, paired with urad dal khichdi and scrambled eggs Gordon Ramsay style.

    Ingredients:

    4 cups of skinned, cleaned jackfruit cut into cubes
    2 potatoes peeled and cubed
    1 tbsp cashew nuts
    1-2 cups Coconut milk
    1 cinnamon stick
    1 bay leaf
    ½ tsp crushed pepper
    1 small onion sliced
    2 green chillies
    6 flakes of crushed garlic
    ½ tsp turmeric powder
    1/3 tsp red chilli powder
    1 tsp coriander powder
    Mustard oil (or oil of your choice)
    Salt to taste

    Instruction:

    – Fry cashewnuts in ghee till golden brown. Set aside.
    – Pressure cook jackfruit with 1 cup water for 2 whistles, cool, open and drain.
    – Heat ample mustard oil, fry chopped potatoes. Set the potatoes aside on a paper towel.
    – Add a stick of cinnamon, coarsely crushed pepper, and a bay leaf into the hot mustard oil,
    add onions, green chilies and crushed garlic .
    – Add turmeric, chili, coriander powder.
    – Add jackfruit, let cook for a few minutes, add the potatoes, let cook for some time – it
    becomes soft and creamy this way.
    – Add coconut milk, let simmer for a few seconds, add salt to taste, mix in cashews and serve!
    Note: Can substitute cashews with prawns for a delightfully tasty non-veg version. Just fry them in the same oil after the potatoes and before the onions.

    All Posts, Sides

    Cabbage Thoran

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    This is a Kerala dish that is fast and easy to prepare, and an awesome accompaniment with steamed rice and dal. It took just 6 minutes to get cooked.

    Ingredients

    2 cups of cabbage cut very fine
    ¾ cup grated coconut
    ½ tsp cumin seeds
    3 flakes of garlic
    1/3 tsp turmeric powder
    1/3 tsp red chilli powder
    1 tbsp oil
    ½ tsp mustard seeds
    1 tsp udad dal
    1 sprig curry leaf
    Salt to taste
    ¼ cup water

    Instructions

    • Grind the coconut with cumin seeds, garlic, turmeric powder and red chilli powder.
    • Heat the oil in a pan, add the mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the udad dal and when they brown lightly, add the cut cabbage and curry leaves.
    • Stir for a minute on high flame, add the salt and water, reduce the flame to low, cover and cook for five minutes.
    • Now add the ground coconut mixture, cover and cook for a minute.
    • Mix everything nicely and remove from the fire.
    All Posts, Breakfast

    Jackfruit Dosa

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    Jackfruit dosas for me are associated with childhood memories. Mom would serve it with a drizzle of honey and maybe a dollop of butter. So yum!

    I found merely dosa and honey to be a bit minimalistic, so this time I combined it with chutney and dal instead. It worked out fine for me, but if you like it sweet, add a dash of sugar or jaggery to the batter, and top it up with honey and butter for a delish breakfast.

    Makes 6-7 dosas
    Time taken: 20 min

    Ingredients

    2 cups raw rice
    ½ cup grated coconut
    6-7 pods of jackfruit, deseeded
    2 tbsp jaggery (optional)
    ½ tsp salt
    Water
    Ghee/ oil for cooking

    Instructions

    • Soak the rice for at least 3-4 hours. If you want to make this dosa instantly, you could use rice flour instead, to cut down on soaking time.
    • Grind the rice along with coconut, jackfruit and salt. If you want to make it sweet, you could add jaggery at this stage.
    • Mix enough water to make a smooth batter, and spread over a hot pan to make dosas. Flip over when brown underneath, cook for a couole of minutes and take off the heat.
    • Serve immediately with dal and chutney or with honey and butter.
    All Posts, Desserts

    Jackfruit Payasam / Chakka Pradhaman

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    I absolutely love jaggery and coconut milk payasams. There’s something magical about them, and this one is no exception. In fact, the jackfruit only makes it better. And if you have chakka varati sitting in your fridge, this is something you can whip up in about 5 minutes!

    Serves 4
    Time taken: 5 min

    Ingredients

    ½ cup chakka varati
    1½ cups coconut milk (or 1 cup second & ½ cup first milk)
    2 tbsp ghee
    2 tbsp chopped nuts & raisins

    Instructions

    • Heat ghee in a pan and add the chopped nuts.
    • When golden brown, add the chakka varati and coconut milk, mix thoroughly.
    • Simmer for 2-3 min and remove from heat.
    • Serve warm.

    Variation

    I like the taste of chana dal in the payasam and feel it really adds value. I usually pressure-cook chana dal for 10 min with 2.5 times water and add it along with the chakka varati in the second step of the recipe. The rest of the process remains the same. Cooked sago is another wonderful addition.

    All Posts, Desserts, Easy Recipes

    Chakka Varattiyathu / Jackfruit Jam

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    In Bangalore, one is lucky – one can buy just a few pieces of ripe, juicy jackfruit from roadside fruit-stalls. This is not a luxury people have in many other places, where one has to settle for buying a whole jackfruit usually to the tune of 10-15kg. One ends up with like a 100 or so pods of jackfruit and to the uninitiated, this can seem like a nightmare. It did seem like one to me when due a twist in life I ended up with a 10 kilo jackfruit, and I was feeling fed up even before starting to eat it, just by thinking of all the days I’d have to spend eating jackfruit in various forms.

    What saved me was this – also called chakka varati, jackfruit halva, jam or whatever you might want to call it. Such a flexible item, this can be used in a variety of dishes and extends the life of the jackfruit so that you’re not pressured to finish everything up within a couple of days. This is pretty amazing to eat even as it is, even more so when it is freshly cooked.

    Ingredients

    5 cups ripe jackfruit pods, deseeded
    1 cup grated jaggery
    4 tbsp ghee

    Instructions

    • Grind the jackfruit into a coarse paste.
    • Heat ghee in a pan and when hot, add the ground jackfruit.
    • When the jackfruit is almost cooked, add the jaggery. Traditionally, the jaggery is heated with a tablespoon of water until it melts, and then strained and poured into the paste so that any impurities in the jaggery and filtered out. This can also be done.
    • Cook until a jam-like consistency is reached and it leaves the sides of the pan easily.
    • When refrigerated, It will keep easily for a month.

    Note: You might want to vary the quantity of the jaggery depending on the sweetness of the jackfruit.

     

    All Posts, Breakfast

    Coconut pancake

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    Wandering along the Bogmalo beach, we entered a shack to have something before returning to the guest house to sleep. ‘Coconut pancake’ caught my attention and I ordered one for me. To my pleasant surprise I found my favorite childhood dish ‘muttayappam’ (my mother used to make it quite often) placed in coconut milk in a shallow dish and I enjoyed it to the last bit!

    Makes 4 pancakes
    Time taken: 20 min

    Ingredients

    1  cup refined flour for
    A pinch of salt
    2 teaspoons sugar
    1 egg
    ¾ cup water to make a free flowing batter
    2 tbsps ghee or oil
    1 cup coconut milk

    For filling:
    1 cup grated coconut
    1/3 cup sugar
    ½ tsp cardamom powder

    Instructions

    Take the refined flower in a container, add salt and sugar and break the egg into the center. Beat the egg and gradually blend it into the flour.

    Add the water slowly and keep stirring, to make a batter of flowing consistency.

    Heat a shallow kadai on medium flame, smear ghee or oil on the surface.

    Pour a large ladle of the batter. Hold the kadai with both hands, take it away from fire, rotate it to spread the batter into a round. Keep it back over the flame.

    When it is cooked, spread the grated coconut, sugar, cardamom mixture in a straight line close to one side and roll the pancake over.

    Take it out and keep on a plate.

    At the time of serving, pour some coconut milk in a shallow dish, and place the pancake over it.

    All Posts, Breakfast, Mains

    Appam

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    Almost every Keralite away from home craves appams and puttu. And why not? Who can deny the charm of this magical dish, especially when combined with an exciting stew or kadala curry?

    2 cups Rice (for 8 no.s)
    ½ cup Coconut water
    5 tsp Sugar
    A pinch of Baking soda
    ½ cup Grated coconut
    Water
    A pinch of Salt
    Sesame oil for cooking

    Method

    • Soak rice for about 4 hours.
    • Add 2 tsp sugar to the coconut water and keep for about 10 hrs to allow fermentation.
    • Grind the soaked rice
    • Take one heaped tsp of this mix, add 5 tsp water and cook it on slow fire till it thickens. Let it cool.
    • Grind this and the soaked rice with coconut and the fermented coconut water to a very smooth paste. Keep aside for 12 hrs.
    • Add a pinch of baking soda, salt and rest of the sugar, and make a somewhat thick batter by adding enough water.
    • Heat an iron karahi, smear evenly with oil, add a ladleful of the batter, swirl to spread into a circle and cover with a lid.
    • Cook on a low flame until it comes off easily.
    • Serve with kadala (black channa) curry or vegetable stew.

    Variation: Immediately after spreading the batter, break an egg into the center of the appam. Cover and cook on a low flame until the egg reaches the desired consistency.

    Note: Another way of making appams is by using yeast. Instead of coconut water, soak a quarter teaspoon dry yeast in a half cup of lukewarm water for 10 min. Then mix it in along with sugar and ground rice and let sit for about 4-5 hours. Continue as mentioned.

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    Simple Kadala Curry (Black Chickpea Curry)

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    Kadala curry served over idiappam
    Kadala curry served over idiappam

    Having grown up in a family with North-Indian as well as South-Indian influence, I always associated Kerala food with simple, easy to digest food. It was only recently when I visited some Mallu friends that I realised that Kerala food can also be very, very sharp and loaded with spices. To me, this was the way Kerala made kadala curry. Now I know that there is a much more complicated version similar to the Punjabi chole that is served with appams in many a Mallu household. Having grown up with this version, I’d say I’m biased. To me, nothing beats this simple, soothing kadala curry and the bliss it brings when paired with a soft appam. Enjoy.

    Serves 4
    Time taken: 25 min (    Overnight Soaking Required)

    Ingredients:
    2 cups black gram (kadala/ black channa)
    1 onion, finely chopped
    1 tomato, chopped
    5-6 cloves of garlic, chopped
    1″ piece of ginger
    ½ tsp turmeric powder
    1 tsp chili powder
    2 tbsp coriander powder
    2 sprigs Curry leaves
    ½ cup coconut milk (optional)

    Method:

    • Soak the black gram overnight and pressure-cook for 10 minutes with salt and enough water. (If you like your kadala soft you may add a pinch of baking soda before cooking)
    • Take 2 tbsp of the cooked black gram, mash lightly and put it back into the curry.
    • Heat coconut oil in a pan and add mustard.
    • When the mustard begins to splutter, add the onion, garlic, ginger and curry leaves and stir on medium flame until soft.
    • Add the spices and stir well.
    • Add the cooked black gram and coconut milk.
    • Serve.

    Goes well with: Appams and Puttu

    All Posts, Mains, Sides

    Kerala Vegetable/ Egg Stew

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    vegetable stew
    Egg and vegetable stew with idiappam (string hoppers)

    Stew is one of the most soothing, calming dishes I know of. Pairing it with a rice based item like idiappam or appam takes it to another level altogether, although it is also fine with chappatis.

    It is wonderful on those days when you’ve eaten something too heavy or spicy and want something to help the body come back to balance. It is soothing, but filling at the same time.

    Time taken: 20 min
    Serves 3-4

    Ingredients

    1 big potato, peeled and cubed
    1 carrot, peeled and cubed
    1 cup cauliflower florets
    ½ cup peas
    ½ cup sweet corn (optional)
    4 eggs, hardboiled (optional)
    1 500 ml can coconut milk
    2 tsp chopped ginger
    1-2 green chilies, chopped
    2 sprigs curry leaves
    1 tsp mustard seeds
    2 tbsp coconut oil
    salt to taste

    Method

    Heat coconut oil in a wok, and add the mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the ginger, chilies and the curry leaves.

    Add the potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, baby corn and peas.

    Add salt, mix, then cover and cook. Stir occasionally and add a little water if it starts to stick to the bottom.

    Check to see if the potatoes are cooked – they should be easy to poke through with a knife. Once they are done, add the coconut milk and bring to a boil.

    Cut the eggs into pieces and add to the curry.

    Take off the heat and adjust the salt if necessary.

    Serve hot.