Strawberry Cupcakes

This is what I had originally made for the FMR-picnic at the park (without properly reading the rules!). When I found out that the entry should highlight the taste of India, I emailed the host to confess. The host seems to be a cupcake lover, she wanted me to bring cupcakes as well even if I make something else related to Indian cuisine(I made plantain chips as another entry - a popular snack of Kerala). I know this would have made a good entry for JFI:Strawberries, but I am giving in. Here it is…….all for you Meenakshi! Looking forward to see your roundup.

Strawberry Cupcakes (with white chocolate filling)

All purpose flour – 2 cups
Baking powder – 2 tsp
Salt – 1 tsp
Sugar – ¾ cup
Butter – 4 tbsp
Vegetable oil – ¼ cup
Milk – 1/3 cup
Eggs – 2
Vanilla extract – 1 tsp
Strawberries – ½ cup, chopped
White chocolate morsels – about 1 cup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tins with paper layers. Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Set aside. In a big mixing bowl, mix the melted butter with vegetable oil and milk. Add the eggs and beat. Add vanilla. Add the flour mix little at a time and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. Stir in the strawberries. Cupcake batter is ready.
Fill the cupcake layers with the batter just enough to cover the bottom, about 1 tbsp. Drop in a few white chocolate morsels. Top with more cupcake batter until cups are 3/4th full. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, and the edges are lightly browned. Cool on a cooling rack. This recipe will make 12 cupcakes.

You may frost these cupcakes with cream cheese frosting if you wish.

Plantain Chips

Raw plantains – 4
Oil
Salt

Peel plantains and immerse them in water.

Take ¼ cup of water in a bowl and mix with about 1 tsp salt. If you want the chips very yellow, add some turmeric powder to this water. Set aside.

Heat up oil in a wok.

Take one plantain from the water and dry it with a paper towel. Start slicing them on to a cutting board. Some people slice it directly to the hot oil so the slices won’t stick each other. It is important that you use a mandolin for slicing the plantains unless you are an expert in making thin even slices using a knife.

After slicing the first plantain, add the slices to the hot oil. You may need to separate them using your hands while you add to the oil. Do not overcrowd the pan.

Stir gently using a metallic slotted spoon.

Let it cook for a couple of minutes. Stir again, and wait until it look and sound crispy. Sprinkle some salted water. This will make a big sound and the oil will bubble vigorously so stay away from the pan or use a splatter screen.

The bubbles will settle down in a minute or two, and you will see and hear the crispiness again. Now you can remove the chips from the oil using a slotted spoon. Drain them on a paper towel. Repeat for other plantains. When they are completely cold, you can store in an airtight container.

I would like to pack these plantain chips in snack size ziplock bags and take to the picnic at the park! So you all can grab a bag each and munch...munch...munch....... Would you??

Also check out Indira's recipe for plantain chips.

Sarkara Upperi (Plantain chips with jaggery coating)

Plantains – 2
Jaggery – about ¾ cup (You may substitute with brown sugar)
Ginger powder – 1 tsp
Cumin powder – 1 tsp
Powdered sugar – 2 tbsp for sprinkling
Oil

Slice the peeled plantain into four pieces lengthwise and cut these pieces into ¼ inch thick slices. Deep fry them on a medium flame until they are very very crisp. The color of the chips will change to light brown. Be patient, it took about 20-25 minutes for me to get them really crisp. Remove from the oil and drain on a paper towel. Prepare the jaggery syrup by boiling the jaggery with 1/4 cup of water. When the syrup reaches a stringy consistency, turn off the flame and immediately add the chips to it. Sprinkle ginger powder and cumin powder. Stir very well to coat. Let it cool. When the chips are cold, sprinkle powdered sugar and mix again. This is to get rid of the stickiness of the syrup. Store in an airtight container.

This is my contribution to Sarah's quest for Onasadya dishes.

Cooking from the blogs....

Years ago, I used to google for recipes. Then google started confusing me by giving out hundreds of different recipes for the same dish. If the dish is new to me, and I get several different recipes for the same thing, I didn’t know which way to go. For non-Indian recipes, I go to Food Network. All the recipes I have tried out from this site have turned out good. So this is one place I can trust for non-Indian recipes. I also love trying out recipes posted by cooking forum friends. But where do I go for tried and true Indian recipes? I kept on googling and tried the recipes that sounded good. Sometimes it would turn out good, and sometime it would not. Learned a lot from trial and error. My recent love is to try out recipes from the food blogs. Nowadays if I want to search for a recipe, I do a blog search instead of plain google search. I feel like to try each and every one of the recipes my blogger friends have posted. But most of the time, it stays in the wish list. Here I would like to do a little roundup of what I have tried recently.

Saffronhut's Dahiwale Baingan
I broiled the marinated eggplant slices instead of frying. Mixed about a tbsp of oil with the eggplants right before I put them in the broiler. Instead of sour cream, I used the yogurt-flour combination. The gravy turned out sort of curdled. I didn't care because this tasted superb. This recipe is a keeper. Thank you Saffronhut for sharing such a wonderful recipe.

L G's Red Fish Curry
I have been wanting to make this red fish curry for a long time. I have tried it several times, but it never came up to my expectations. As L G has properly diagnosed, the problem was adding too much water. I followed her recipe exactly except that I used Kashmiri chilli powder(see the color?), and here I have yummy red fish curry! My husband asked if I could make this again, that means it clicked! Now L G, you play all those guessing games. Guess which fish I used for this curry! By the way thanks a million for sharing this recipe.



Mahanandi's Moong Bean-Plantain Curry
This is one simple but delicious recipe. Like Indira did, I too used coffee grinder to make the coconut mix. I thought 6-8 green chillies were too much for us, so I deseeded them to make it mild. It turned out really delicious. We all love plantains, and moong bean is my daughter's favorite beans. So this dish was loved by all at my home. Thank you Indira.

Finally, giniann's Flan!
Yum yum yummy!! I made them individually in ramekins. I like baking individual desserts so when it is dessert time, everyone can grab their dish and enjoy. No cutting or serving. I will be making this very often. Thank you for this wonderful flan recipe giniann.

The flan recipe requires 6 egg yolks. I halved giniann's recipe for making flan, still I had 3 egg whites. So where did they go? I added sugar, whole milk and vanilla to the beaten egg whites and baked along with the flan. Beautiful egg white pudding, or to make it fancy, you may call it snowwhite pudding or something like that. :)

Steamed Rice Cake

This is a recipe from a Malabar recipe book. I think this is the savory version of the sweet kinnathappam which is made by adding jaggery.

Steamed rice cake/Appam (cooking from cookbooks)

Parboiled Rice – 2 cups
Grated coconut – ¾ cup
Red onions, preferably small onions – ¼ cup
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Aniseed – 1 tsp
Ghee – 1 tbsp
Salt – to taste

Heat up water in a saucepan. Turn off the stove before it comes to a boil, but very hot. Add rice and cover the pan. Let soak for 5 to 8 hours. Grind the rice with coconut, onions, cumin seeds, aniseeds and salt to a smooth paste. Add water just enough to make it a pouring consistency. Grease a dish with ghee. Pour batter into the dish and steam cook until done. Let it cool before cutting into desired shapes. This can be served with chicken masala or mutton curry.

I used brown parboiled rice. For steaming, I used the dish that came with the pressure cooker and steamed in the pressure cooker. It took about 40 minutes to get it done.

Celebrate the Motherhood!

A very happy Mother's Day to all moms!

My daughter baked a double layered cake for me in her Easybake oven.

Her plan was to refrigerate the cake so Mommy can have it tomorrow on the Mother's Day. But the poor little Chef was all exhausted and hungry after spending about an hour mixing, baking, frosting, and licking the bowls and spoons clean. Even though she wanted to save the cake until tomorrow, her face told she wanted to taste it. So I gave her a fork and knife....

After a few minutes I saw the plate on the table with only a few crumbs left....the Chef ate it all!

Read what wiki says about Mother's Day

Puttu & Kadala curry!

Puttu & Kadala curry is one of the most popular breakfasts of Kerala. You can also serve puttu with ripe bananas, steamed plantains, egg curry, fish or meat curry.

I use instant puttu mix. All you need to do is mix the flour with warm water, fresh coconut and salt. Add enough water until it holds shape when you form a ball. But don’t make it like dough by adding too much water. I use a puttu maker that sits on top of the pressure cooker vent. The steam coming out of the cooker vent will cook the puttu in 3 to 5 minutes. Priya has posted a pictorial on making puttu here. Another pictorial here. Using coconut shells instead of puttu maker(shown in the second pictorial) is another method, but I haven’t tried that yet. Make a hole on the bottom of the halved coconut shell, fill it with the wet puttu mix, and place the coconut shell on top of the cooker vent for steaming.

Here is how I make kadala curry:
Black chana – 1 cup
Red onion – 1 big
Garlic – 4 to 5 cloves
Ginger – 1 small piece
Green chillies – 3
Tomato – 1 big
Curry leaves – a few
Chilli powder – 1 tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Coriander powder – 1 tbsp
Garam masala – 1 tsp (optional)
Coconut milk powder – 2 tbsp (optional)
Oil
Salt

Soak black chana overnight and cook with salt and enough water.
Finely chop the onions. Crush garlic and ginger. Slit the green chillies. Chop the tomatoes.
Heat up oil in a pan and sauté the onions until they change color. Add garlic, ginger and green chillies and cook for 3 minutes on medium heat. Add all the masala powders and coconut milk powder if using, and cook until the oil separates from the sides of the pan. Add tomatoes and the chana. If there is enough water in chana, you don’t have to add any extra water otherwise add 1 cup of water. Add curry leaves and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or until you get the right consistency.
I used Maggie coconut milk powder.

Here is a picture of puttu made with brown rice flour. Some people (like my husband) think that brown puttu is the best. Some people (like my daughter) think puttu has to be made with white flour. And there are some people (like me) think that both brown and white puttu are just as delicious.

Aloo mutter

Aloo Mutter - Potatoes and Green Peas in spicy gravy

I made idiyappam and egg curry yesterday. So today for breakfast, there were some idiyappams left and no curry. I needed to make something quick. I don’t know if idiyappams can be served with aloo mutter! (I can hear you laughing) Anyway, that’s what we had for breakfast, idiyappam with aloo mutter.

Potato – 1 big, boiled and cubed
Green Peas – 1 cup, cooked with salt(I used frozen today)
Onion – 1 small, finely chopped
Garlic – 3 cloves, crushed
Ginger – 1 small piece, julienned
Green chillies – 2, slit
Chilli powder – 1 tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Garam masala – ½ tsp
Tomato – 1 big, chopped
Bay leaf – 1
Oil
Salt
Cilantro

Heat oil in a pan and add chopped onion. Cook until the onion is translucent, and add garlic, ginger, and green chillies. Cook for about 3 minutes and add the masala powders and bay leaf. Stir and cook until the oil separates from the sides of the pan. Add tomatoes and cook until they are soft. Add the cooked green peas, potatoes and half a cup of water. Bring it to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Salmon Cutlets

Salmon – 3 slices
Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
Salt – to taste
Potato -1 big
Onion - 1 medium. Finely chopped
Ginger – 1 tsp grated
Green chillies – 2 thinly sliced
Egg – 1
Fresh breadcrumbs – from 2 to 3 slices of bread
Oil

Cook the fish with salt and turmeric powder until it is done. Remove the bones and shred into small pieces. Keep aside.
Cook the potato in a pressure cooker, peel and mash it with a fork.
Heat one tbsp of oil in a frying pan. Sauté onion until they are translucent. Add ginger and green chillies and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the shredded fish and stir well. Cook for another couple of minutes and turn off the flame. Let it cool.
Add the mashed potatoes to the fish mixture. Mix well and add salt if needed.
Take lemon size balls and shape into cutlets.
Prepare the wet dip by whisking one egg with salt.
Prepare the dry dip by processing the fresh bread in a food processor. You may also use store bought breadcrumbs, but the fresh breadcrumbs make the cutlets very crispy on the outside.
Heat oil in a frying pan. Dip the cutlets in egg and then in the breadcrumbs. Shallow fry until it is golden brown on both sides.
This is a less spicy version. If you want the cutlets spicier, increase the number of green chillies or add chilli powder.

Jihvā for Mangoes

I would have preferred to cook with green mangoes, but I couldn’t find good green sour mangoes. When I was a kid, we had 4 different kinds of mango trees in our compound. We never had to buy a mango. Baby mangoes, sour mangoes, unripe, ripe, sweet mangoes were all lavishly available during the season. We, the kids, loved to eat baby mangoes with salt. I remember taking baby mangoes in my schoolbag to distribute among my friends. My grandmother used to blanch the sour mangoes(whole) and preserve them in salted water in big china jars, and we would start using this once the mango season is over. We would make a chutney out of these salted mangoes which tasted heavenly. The mangoes are mashed with a fork(they would be very soft after being in the salted water for long time) and then mixed with crushed shallots, chillies, and coconut oil. Ahhhhh...those were the days!! Now I live in a place where getting good mangoes, especially green mangoes is just a dream. So I decided to make something with ripe mangoes. Sweet ripe mangoes –we just love to eat it as it is. The only thing I make out of ripe mangoes is Maampazha Pulisseri, a sweet, sour and spicy sauce that can go with rice. So here goes my JFI entry:

Maampazha Pulisseri – Sweet, Sour & Spicy!!!

Ripe mango pieces – 1 cup
Yogurt – ¾ to 1 cup
Coconut – ½ cup (I used dried grated coconut)
Cumin seeds – 1/8 tsp
Green chillies – 2 to 4, depending on how spicy you want it.
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Chilli powder – ¼ to ½ tsp
Salt – to taste
Tadka – Oil, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, curry leaves, whole red chillies

Grind together coconut, 2 green chillies and cumin seeds. Cook the mango pieces with turmeric powder, chilli powder, 2 green chillies, and ½ a cup of water. When the mango pieces are soft, mash them with a masher or a fork. Add the ground coconut mixture and bring it to a boil. When it start to boil, turn off the stove and add the yogurt immediately. Stir well to incorporate the yogurt. Add the tadka. Serve with rice.

After preparing this for JFI event, I have also tried Mango Crème Brulee & Indira’s Mango Jam. Crème brulee came out good, but the picture didn’t! It looked good on the camera screen, but after uploading to the computer it didn’t look that good. I cannot capture another picture because it’s all gone!

Here is the recipe for Mango Crème Brulee:

Heavy cream – 1 cup
Egg yolks – 4
Vanilla – ¼ tsp
Sugar – ¼ cup
Mango puree - 2 tbsp
Brown sugar – for caramelizing the top

Preheat the oven to 300 degree F. Heat the heavy cream until it almost comes to a boil. Turn off the stove and add vanilla. Beat the egg yolks with sugar until it turns to a smooth batter. Add in hot heavy cream one tbsp at a time. Whisk very well to avoid scrambling the egg. Add mango puree and mix well. Strain the mixture to get rid of any lumps. You could also add mango cubes instead of puree if you like to bite into the mango pieces. If you prefer to add mango cubes, add it after you strain the mixture (obviously!!). Pour the mixture into two ramekins and bake for one hour in water bath. To make a water bath, place the ramekins in a big baking dish with boiling water filled almost to the half of the dish. Make sure the ramekins do not touch each other. Crème brulee is ready to come out of the oven when the edges are set and the center is still jiggly. It will complete the cooking process as it cools. When it is cooled to the room temperature, cover the ramekins with a plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours. When it is ready to serve, sprinkle brown sugar/white sugar on top of the crème brulee and broil for 2 minutes.

Then the Mango Jam, wow!! That is all I can say. It is sweet, luscious…… and exotic as Indira put it. It really got that lip smacking taste. We finished it within a few hours. I didn’t even have to find a jar to keep the leftovers. Thank you for this recipe, Indira.