Patrodo

There are dishes that give me mental fatigue. That is only to say that just thinking about making the dish makes me tired, because in my mind the process is a lengthy one. Patrodo is a perfect example.


We had the colocasia leaves growing in our garden when I was a child. Every once in a while, we'd go through the routine of cutting the leaves, making the masala or massol as it is called in Konkani. H and I would always be assigned the job of destemming the leaves. What fun! More fun because we could play the blame game whenever a leaf was cut or got beaten beyond repair. We would cut the stem by marking a V at the base of the leaf and then string the leaves. After this we would lightly beat the veins using a rounded smooth stone.


I made this when I found colocasia (taro) leaves at the INA market. It is much simpler than I imagined. The result is superb and so the work that goes into it feels like nothing at all.

Ingredients:

7-8 Colocasia (Arbi) Leaves
1/2 cup Rice
1/2 cup Dal
7-8 Red Chillies
1/3 cup Coconut, scraped
1/4 cup Tamarind Paste
1 tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Asafoetida
2 tbsp Jaggery
Salt to taste

For the tempering:

1 tbsp Oil
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
7-8 Curry Leaves

Soak the rice and dal together for at least 4 hours.

Destem the leaves and flatten the veins using a rounded stone.

Grind the rice and dal together along with all the other ingredients except the leaves.


Place the largest leaf on a clean surface, smooth side down and smear the paste over the leaf.



Place the next leaf over this in such a way that the tip of the leaf is near the base of the one below.

Smear the paste over the leaf and place another pointing in the opposite direction and proceed in the same manner until you have used the smallest leaf.

Fold the sides of the leaves inwards and smear more paste. Roll the leaves in a swiss roll like manner and tie with a string.

Steam cook this bundle in a cooker without using the pressure for about 30 minutes. When done, it should look like this.

Cool completely and cut into slices after removing the string.

To proceed, heat the oil in a kadhai. Add the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add the slices of patrodo and fry for a few minutes allowing the slices to crispen.

Amma says that there are variations here. The slices may be deepfried or toasted on a tawa. I like my patrodo with tadka and I love it with rice and dali saar.

You could adjust the tamarind paste int he recipe to suit your taste. The tamarind helps remove the itchiness that these leaves cause. Also, the leaves with purple stems cause less itching than the ones with green stems.

The partodo rolls may be made in advance and frozen. When you are ready to eat them, bring them out from the freezer, thaw them and then proceed. I have yet to make the final dish. Am saving the rolls in my freezer for an evening when I return from NOIDA so tired that all I want to do is eat dali saar and fry patrodo. And believe that all is well with the world.

Rice being the one of the ingredients here, I am also sending this entry to Jihva for ingredients started by Indira of Mahanandi and hosted by Sharmi of Neivedyam.

As this is a Konkani dish, I am sending it to Asha for the RCI Karnataka, an event started by Laksmi that celebrates the regional cuisine of India.

Avakaya Rice

There are ways and ways to use up leftover rice. I recently tried the Fried Rice from Jugalbandi and I am glad I have one more way to use up rice.

S made this with leftover rice one day when I was out for lunch and I would love to have it again.

2 cups cooked Rice

3 tbsp Avakaya Pickle gravy

1 Onion, sliced

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

4-5 Curry Leaves

Salt to taste

Mix the rice and the avakaya pickle. Add some salt if necessary.

In a kadhai, heat the oil. Add the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the onions and fry for 2 minutes. Add the rice mixture and fry for a few minutes.

Enjoy this with some curd on the side.

Off this goes to the Jihva for ingredients event started by Indira of Mahanandi and hosted by Sharmi of Neivedyam.

Avakaya or Aavakaaya is a traditional pickle from Andhra Pradesh, S's home state. You can read more about it here. The main ingredient in the pickle is aava or mustard which gives the pickle its famous pungent kick. So, this also goes to Sunita for her monthly event Think Spice... Think Mustard.

Jeera Kotambarya Chitni (Cumin Coriander Chutney)

This is the chutney that I made to go with my Appeys. My strongest memories of eating Appeys with this chutney take me back to Bangalore. My aunt, at whose place I spent many vacations, used to dish out one type of dosa after another. (So many that even the ardent dosa lover in me would hope for a different item at the breakfast table!) So appeys would be that very very welcome change.

This is a very simple chutney and it goes very well with Appeys.



Ingredients:



1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1 tsp Coriander Seeds

1/3 cup scraped Coconut

3-4 Red Chillies

1 tbsp Tamarind Paste

Salt to taste



Grind all the ingredients to a fine paste using a little water.



There you go... Konkani cooking is really simple, isn't it? This chutney from the kitchens of South Canara or Dakshina Kannada goes to Asha as my third entry for the RCI Karnataka event.

Appey

Ever since Nupur mentioned that her mother brought her a couple of Appey Patras or Appey Kaylis, I've been meaning to get one for myself. And when we went shopping for vegetables, I found the pan along with a muffin pan and bought them both.




Ingredients:

1/2 cup Urad
1 cup Rice (Boiled or Raw)
1 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
Salt to taste

Oil for frying



Wash the urad and rice. Add the fenugreek seeds and soak in plenty of water overnight. (At least 4-5 hours). Wash well and grind using a little water. Add salt and water to dilute it as required. (Don't add too much water as the appeys will not turn out well.) Ferment the batter for a few hours or overnight.









Heat the appey kayli and smear a drop of oil onto each mould. Simmer the flame and pour a spoonful of the batter into each mould.




Turn each ball after a few minutes using a pick.

The appeys should look like this.




You can now do one of two things.

1. Ogle at the appeys and take loads of pictures.
2. Eat them when they are piping hot.

I enjoyed them with a Cumin Coriander Chutney. The recipe will come as another post.


As this is a Konkani dish, I am sending it to Asha for the RCI Karnataka, an event started by Laksmi that celebrates the regional cuisine of India.




Rice being the main ingredient here, I am also sending this entry to Jihva for ingredients started by Indira of Mahanandi and hosted by Sharmi of Neivedyam.

Beans Upkari

This is a very simple preparation and it is served at every wedding. I'd infact gotten so tired of eating this at weddings that I told Amma, "If this is served at my wedding, I'll order a pizza!" Somehow that story spread within my family and folks took it to mean that I didn't like this vegetable.

I make this in a pressure pan and so this is ready in no time. A perfect hit with sambar and dali saar alike.

1/4 kg Beans, strung and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 tsp Oil

1/4 tsp Urad Dal

1/4 tsp Chana Dal

1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds

2 Red Chillies

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

1 tbsp Coconut, scraped

7-8 Curry Leaves

Salt to taste

Heat oil in a pressure pan. Add the urad and chana dals, mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves and the red chillies. Fry for a minute. Add the chopped beans and the salt along with a little water. Cover and cook for one whistle.

When done, open and cook without the lid to let the excess water evaporate. Add the coconut and mix well. Serve as a side dish with rice and Dali Saar or Sambar.

This also goes to dear Asha as yet another entry for the RCI Karnataka event.

Carrot Kosumbari

It is here. RCI Karnataka! Finally! I missed the RCI Tamilnadu event as I was very new to the blogging world at the time. I could have, with S's help, participated in the RCI Andhra event, but I was still reasonably new and thought that participation in food blogging events was only by invitation. Silly me.

Now, I know better. And I even saved up the stuff that I cooked right through August just so I could send them all to dear Asha, the hostess of RCI Karnataka. All through the next 30 days, you will mostly see recipes from Amma's kitchen, lovingly passed down from mother to daughter generation after generation.

For those of you who may not have read my original introduction, and are confused with the many states that I represent within India, I'm half Konkani (maternal) and half Tamil (paternal) and am married to a Telugu. I have lived all over India in the years since I left home (Madras) in 1997 and the city (town/village??) I now call home is Gurgaon. I have a tendency to call a lot of places "my own" and would consider myself Indian above all else. Home cooking for me is very global, but for this month, I am going to showcase a lot of Konkani recipes. (It does help a LOT that I will be at home with Amma starting tomorrow until Sunday evening.)

I'm starting my flood of entries to Asha with a simple carrot salad. Koshimbir, kosumalli, call it what you will. This dish is ready in minutes and is nutritious and tasty all at once.


Ingredients:

2 large Carrots, grated
1/4 cup Moong Dal, washed
2 tbsp scraped Coconut
1 tsp Green Chilli-Ginger paste
Salt to Taste
Coriander leaves for garnish

For the tempering:
1 tsp Oil or Ghee
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
7-8 Curry Leaves


Place the washed moong dal in a large bowl. Add the chilli-ginger paste, carrots, salt, and scraped coconut and mix well.


In a small kadhai, heat the oil or ghee, add the mustard seeds and asafoetida, and when the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves. Add this to the carrot mixture.




Garnish with coriander leaves and leave aside for 5-10 minutes. Enjoy it as a side dish with rice and dal.

This goes to Asha with loads of love as my first entry to RCI Karnataka, an event started by Laksmi that celebrates the regional cuisine of India. My earlier posts celebrating Konkani Saraswat cuisine have been:

Tomato Saar

Tandlya Roti Ani Lasnye Chitni

Biscuit Roti

Ambya Sasam

Rasayan

Tendlya Talasani

Sabudana Khichdi

Batat Phow

Bread Upkari

Chhollia Ghasshi

The sole Karnataka (non Konkani) dish that I have posted earlier is

Akki Roti

I am sure there'll be a lot of participation in this event. I'm off to Madras tomorrow for a lot of reasons. It's Rakshabandhan (no, it's not exactly a festival for us - Bhau Beej after Diwali is) tomorrow. My dear friend and ex-neighbour is getting married on the 30th. And my parents celebrate their 44th wedding anniversary on the 1st of September. So I'm going to have a lovely time with my folks.

Dahi Nadia

When Swapna announced the RCI: Oriya Cuisine event, I thought to myself, "Even though I've had Oriya friends and colleagues, I have never learnt much about the cuisine of the state. I read Bijoylaxmi Hota's interview in The Hindu when she released her book Healthy Oriya Cuisine along with her daughter, Kabita Pattanaik.

Soon after reading the article which talks about acidic and alkaline foods, I met a lady who had spent all her life in Orissa, though she was originally from Bengal. I asked her about Oriya cuisine and I was rather shocked when she said, "There's nothing great about Oriya Food." I left it at that. If I didn't like something I'd say that I didn't like it. I think each cuisine has its own flavours, tastes and hues.

Anyway, my research told me that the cuisine has so much in common with other state cuisines. I found recipes of things like were similar to the aloo bonda (batata vada) and one sweet dish that was the adirasam of Tamilnadu. I found this recipe on Oriya Kitchen which has an uncanny resemblance to the Tayir Pachadi of Tamilnadu.

Ingredients:

1/2 Fresh Coconut(grated)

2 green chillies

1 cup Curd

small piece of Ginger

4-5 Curry leaves

1tbsp Sugar

Salt to taste

Punch phutan

1tbsp oil

Process:

Beat the curd properly. Add the sugar, salt and coconut to the curdand keep aside in a bowl. Cut green chillies and ginger into small pieces.

Heat oil in a frying pan. Add punch phutan and allow it to splutter. Add curry leaves, ginger and green chillies and fry them little bit. Add the seasoning to the curd mixture.

This is being rushed to Swapna as today is the last date for the RCI: Orissa event. Happy hosting Swapna.

Ragda Patties and an Award

I didn't realize I had to go on this trip to Mukteshwar. I knew I was supposed to go, but then, given all the confusion with the new office, I thought that the trip might have been cancelled or postponed. But my boss made it very clear to me that it was on as per schedule.

S travels quite a bit on work and I've gotten used to his trips (which fortunately have come down a great deal these days) but I've never had to travel on work since the time we started living together. Until this last weekend. (I do take off to spend time with Amma Appa every once in a while - but that doesn't count!!)

So, just before I left on this trip, I wanted to make something special for S. I'd been talking of Ragda Patties for ages now and our friends even invited us over on Tuesday for a nice evening with Ragda Patties and Pani Puri to celebrate the eve of I-Day. I'd some leftover Vatana Ambat in the fridge. (The recipe for Vatana Ambat will come out only after the RCI Karnataka starts - yes, I am finally getting smart!) S insists that the Vatana Ambat wasn't leftover. He insists I saved some so I could make Ragda. Well, it doesn't matter, does it?

I asked our friend's mother for the recipe and she gave it to us. But when my time to came to make it, I decided to try it on my own.

Ragda:

1 cup Yellow peas, soaked and cooked

2-3 Onions, chopped
3-4 pods of Garlic, chopped
1 tbsp Ginger-Chilli-Garlic paste
2 tbsp Oil
2-3 Tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp Turmeric Powder
2 tsp Chilli Powder
1 tsp Garam Masala

1/2 tsp Pav Bhaji Masala
Salt to Taste

To serve:
2 Onions, chopped

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a kadhai and fry the onions. When the onions turn brown, add 1-2 pods of garlic, chopped. Add the ginger-chilli-garlic paste and fry for 2-3 minutes. Cool this mixture and grind to a fine paste.
Heat the remaining oil. Add the remaining garlic and fry for a minute. Add the ground paste and fry until the oil separates from the paste. Add the turmeric powder, chilli powder, pav bhaji masala and garam masala. Add the chopped tomatoes and fry for 2 minutes. Add plenty of water and salt. Add the cooked peas and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Mash the mixture a little and add some chopped coriander leaves if you like.

Patties:


For this, I mostly followed Amma's recipe for Aloo Tikki. My friend had made them like cutlets, so I coated my patties with bread crumbs and shallow fried them instead of deep frying.


4 Potatoes, boiled and mashed
1 tsp Chilli Paste
1 tsp Ginger Paste
1/4 cup Coriander, chopped
2 slices of bread
Bread crumbs for coating
Salt to Taste
Oil for shallow frying


Soak the slices of bread in water for a couple of minutes and squeeze the water out.

Mix the potatoes, chilli and ginger pastes, coriander and salt. Add the bread slices. Form small balls using this mixture and flatten them a little. Coat these patties with bread crumbs and shallow fry them on a hot skillet using a few drops of oil, cooking them on both sides.


To Proceed:


Place the patties on a plate. Pour the ragda over these. Top with chopped onions and enjoy the dish.

There have been a lot of awards going around and two of my friends, Richa and Srivalli awarded me with this title.

Thanks girls. I didn't expect it and it came as a pleasant surprise. Thanks a ton.

It does feel like everyone I might want to pass this on to has already been given this award. But I'd like to pass this on to the people who have ensured that this blog lives and thrives. The people who encouraged me when I was a newbie. There are lots more and this should go out to all of them. So, please treat this only as an illustrative list and not an exhaustive one.

Nupur

Nandita

Anita

Asha

Sia

Sharmi

Seema

Sig

Jai and Bee

Coffee

Trupti

Jeena

And Sreelu thought I was being such a tease when I said I was jumping off a cliff in the Himalayas over the weekend. So, just to remove any doubt, here's a picture.

I'll write more about this when I pen my Random Thoughts. That's my other blog: the other side to me.

Almond Raisin Muffins

Breakfast. The meal that I consider the most important of them all. I can skip any other meal and not feel the pangs as long as I've had a hearty start to my day.

Breakfast usually consists of a cup of coffee, a glass of juice or milk and poha, upma, eggs, dosa, bread. On occasion, I make pancakes and we have them with maple syrup. But elaborate breakfasts are meant for special occasions like weekends or birthdays.

What was special this time around? Well, several things. We completed 11 months of being married on Saturday. But we weren't together on that day as I was out camping in the Himalayas, jumping off a cliff, climbing a rock and doing a lot of other rather strenuous things. And I was cut off from the rest of the world. Even from S. And I had no idea that he was running a temperature. When I got back, I was really in no condition to cook anything elaborate. But the next day, I thought I had to make something really special to make up for everything and help S feel good.

It was just then that I saw Strawberry Muffins on Sharmi’s blog and I knew I just had to make them for breakfast. But I didn't have strawberries at home. I thought I'd use my strawberry crush. But then I remembered the stuff I used to have for breakfast at Barista when I was working in Gurgaon: Almond Raisin Muffins and a Latte. We'd just bought a packet of raisins and I had a packet of almond slivers which I received from Canada. I modified the recipe I found on Sharmi's blog to make these fluffy, absolutely out of this world muffins.

Ingredients

3/4 cup Milk

1/2 cup Vegetable oil

1 cup Raisins

2 cups Flour

1 cup Sugar

1 tbsp Baking Powder

1 Egg

1/4 tsp Salt

Topping

Almond Slivers


Place all the ingredients except the raisins and almonds in a food processor jar fitted with the dough blade. Run the food processor for 2 minutes until the ingredients form a batter.

Grease 12-muffin pan.

Blend the raisins into the batter and pour spoonfuls of the batter into the muffin moulds. Sprinkle the almond slivers on top and bake in a hot oven (400 F) for 20 minutes.

Enjoy these with a cup of coffee and get set for a great day.

Muffins form part of an American breakfast and this goes to Glenna of A fridge full of food who is hosting this month's Weekend Breakfast Blogging # 14, the theme of which is Ethnic Breakfast. WBB is the brainchild of Nandita of Saffron Trail.

Egg Roast

I used to make only one type of egg curry all through, but I almost never tried making the different ones. Stuck to curry for a long time. (I haven't yet posted that here.) As with most of my recipes, I learnt that one from Amma. But over the years, I've enjoyed eating the various types of egg curries from the Kerala style to the Punjabi style to even an Oriya egg curry, but when it came to cooking, I stuck my tried and tested recipe. I first modified that to make this yellow Egg Curry a few months ago.

My friend and former colleague, Anandhi, also known as B to all of us, used to bring a dry egg roast in her lunch box a couple of times a week and I almost always polished it off. I never tried recreating that dish until earlier this week.

I am, however, not quite sure if that was the dish I recreated. My office has temporarily shifted to NOIDA which means that I now travel across 3 states to get to work. And retrace my steps when I return. That also means that I am, most of the time, too tired to cook anything elaborate at night. The first day that I undertook this journey, I came back exhausted. I quickly boiled 4 eggs and made this. I remembered that Cinnamon's Egg Curry had been posted only recently and that seemed quite similar to Anandhi's. But too tired also means too tired to browse the net. But my memory seemed to have remembered the ingredients to a large extent.

I boiled and peeled the 4 eggs and then put them in the freezer to cool down.

Ingredients:

4 Eggs, boiled, peeled and cut in half

1 large Onion, sliced

1 tsp Chilli Powder

1/2 tsp Turmeric Powder

1 tbsp Cumin Powder

1 tsp Cumin Seeds

1/2 tsp Coriander Powder

1/2 tsp Garam Masala

1 tbsp Oil

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

1 tsp Chilli Ginger-Garlic paste

Salt to taste

Coriander leaves for garnish

Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Add the cumin seeds and the asafoetida. When the seds crackle, add the onion slices and fry for a minute or two. Add the chilli-ginger-garlic paste and fry for another minute. Add the cumin powder, coriander powder, chilli powder and turmeric powder and fry for a few minutes.

Add the salt and garam masala and fry again for a minute. Add about 1/3 cup of water and cook the onions till most of the water disappears. Add the eggs and cover and cook for a couple of minutes. Turn the egg pieces around so that both sides are covered with the spices and get cooked evenly.

Remove from the fire and garnish with coriander leaves. Enjoy this with rotis or rice, or even with toasted bread as we did that evening. I was really too tired to even make rice.

Cumin is the most dominant spice in this dish. I absolutely love cumin and can use it in just about anything. So, I am extra glad that Sunita chose Cumin as the spice of the month for her event Think Spice... Think Cumin.

I am rushing this off to her as my entry to this event. I will not be blogging for the next few days and will not be able to reply to any comments. But I will do that as soon as I am back on Monday. Have a good weekend, keep blogging and see you when I get back from the Himalayas.

Tropical Cupcakes

Sig wins! It is her event after all, but yes, she guessed it right. I did bake a cake. Correction. I baked several mini cakes.

We did a lot of shopping on S's birthday. Apart from things for him and things for me, we bought things for the kitchen and the blog specifically. We got some nice ceramic stuff at throwaway prices and I bought a few just to photograph my food in. We also found muffin pans that fit my microwave. I don't have the luxury of a cooking range in this house and so we bought a microwave-grill-convection-combination oven and I never found muffin pans that fit. So when I found those at the I.N.A. market along with the Appey Kayli (special pan to make Appeys), I went ahead and just bought them.




I modified the Golden Glow Cake recipe to come up with this recipe. I thought of all the tropical flavours that I could pair Litchi with. I decided to use coconut and pineapple as I thought these would go well with the litchi flavour.




I used:

1 cup Flour
2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 cup Demerara Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Oil
1 egg
1/4 cup Cocount Milk
1/2 tsp Pineapple Essence
1/4 cup Litchi Juice

Sift all the dry ingredients for the cake together into a food processor jar with the dough blade. Pour in all the liquid ingredients and run the processor for 2 minutes.

Prepare muffin pans by first smearing a little butter all over the cups and then dusting them with flour.

Divide the batter equally between the pans and bake for 15 minutes at 350 F. The cakes are done when a knife or skewer inserted into them comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the tins and cool completely.

Pour a little Litchi Sauce over these cupcakes when you are ready to serve them. They taste divine. I just replaced milk with a combination of coconut milk and litchi juice, the sugar with demerara sugar, the butter with oil and the vanilla essence with pineapple essence. What I was left with was a very 'tropical' cake batter.

We've enjoyed these fresh out of the oven and also after they went cold. I didn't think I could just replace ingredients to suit my preference (or that of Sig's!!). But guess what? I actually could. And the end result was simply divine.

Hopefully, this will be the last dessert I make for some time. Given that we're just two people, and ones who don't need dessert, I will stick to normal healthy food for the next few weeks.

So, this is another entry to the A Fruit A Month (AFAM) event hosted by Sig of Live to Eat.