Prawn Sukka (Spiced Coconut Prawns)

One of the few regrets in my life is that I never had the opportunity to cook with my grandparents. My paternal grandfather passed away before I was born. My paternal grandmother was in the USA for a lot of my life, and though she is still alive today, she is not good shape right now, being all of a 105 years. Both my maternal grandparents were alive for a long time, but it was mostly in my teens and early twenties, when I was naive enough to believe that they would live forever. Or at least I would get to see them often enough, that I could get recipes and instructions from them, and cook with them. But this was the arrogance of youth, to think that they would wait forever for me. 

My grandfather died when I was in the UK, in the first three months. My grandmother survived a lot longer, and I was lucky enough to talk to her and get some of her recipes over the phone and through my mother and aunts. She got too old and too sick very soon after though, and I never really got to cook with her. When I went searching for her 'samadde', her hand carved wooden spice box, it had already been given away. I was still lucky enough to have a little of her jewellery, but let's face it, no one really wears that much jewellery here in Canada. They're still my heirlooms though, so I keep them, in the hope of passing them on my daughter sometime. 

I am luckier than most though, because after all said and done, I do have some recipes and a lot of memories of my folks' cooking, and those are memories I treasure. Whether it is making boti, or climbing mango trees, or spending summers at my grandparents' house, they are there, and they will be there with me.

The reason I went down memory lane with my grandparents though, is that my recipe today is inspired by another grandmother, my friend Rohan's Nana Betty. This is her, in the below photograph.

Nana Betty, photo courtesy Rohan Gonsalves

Rohan, an old school and college friend of mine, is a lucky man. He has been quarantining with his grandmother in Mangalore, and one of the things he started doing was posting photo recipes of his grandmother cooking. You can imagine that went down rather well with the grandparent-parched generation all over the world. Not just mine, but strangely, also the generation before and after mine. The request for recipes became so numerous, that Rohan had to actually create a Facebook page for Nana's Recipes (you have to be a Facebook member to access, sorry), where he posts picture journeys of the recipe with his grandmother, and collection of aunts and uncles. 

I call Rohan a lucky man, because, had I had the opportunity, this is exactly what I should have done with my own grandparents. Granted, recording recipes is very different today, with our camera phones, and social media, as opposed to frantically writing everything down as fast as the spices would go in. But even then, what he has with his nana, is a dream a lot of us have had, I would imagine. To cook with our parents, or aunties, and relatives, it is a dream that is not always possible in today's world where a lot of us are away from our families and building our own families. It is a familiar pain, but then Nana Betty (or rather, Rohan) would post a new recipe, and for a while Nana Betty stands in for our own grandparents and everything is okay for a while. And in today's world, we need it.

This recipe is a result of inspiration from Nana's Clam Sukka, or spicy clams with coconut. I wasn't able to go out for clams, but I did have a bag of raw prawns that were perfect for this version of prawn sukka. These prawns can be served as a side dish with rice and vegetables, or as a finger food with toothpicks stuck in them. Either way, they are delicious, just as I imagine Nana's clams were.

Recipe: 

250g shelled prawns
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon neutral oil (I use grapeseed) 
1 small onion, finely diced
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tomato, diced
1 teaspoon (or to taste) bafat spice mix
Salt to taste
1/4 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut

For the seasoning: 

1 tablespoon neutral oil
1 sprig (5 - 6) curry leaves
1 clove of garlic, bruised, but left whole

Method: 

Place the shelled prawns in a bowl, and sprinkle over the turmeric. Keep aside.

In a shallow pan, over a medium heat, heat the oil and add the onions. When the onions are golden around the edges, about 5 minutes, add the ginger and garlic. Saute for a minute, then add the tomatoes and the bafat spice mix.

Cook this mixture for about 5 - 7 minutes, until the raw smell of spices disappears. Add the prawns to the pan, and cook together for about 5 minutes, until the prawns have cooked through.

Season with salt to taste, then stir in the dessicated coconut. Taste and adjust seasoning.

In a small pan, heat the tablespoon of oil, then add the curry leaves and garlic. Sizzle everything together for a minute, then pour the fragrant oil and seasonings into the cooked prawns, and stir in.

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Tales from India - Memories of Mai

It was mid-morning late in January, just over five years ago. Adz and I were visiting India, before our big move to Canada from England. I was lying on the bed next to my maternal grandmother, Mai. Perhaps, I was flipping through a magazine or a book of some sort. I was also wearing one of Mai's housecoats – it smelt faintly of her talcum powder, and the soap she used – as it was too hot to wear anything else.

Adz, then two, was sitting at our feet, chattering away, playing happily with Mai's rosary, the warm wooden beads worn smooth from all those years of her fingers caressing them in prayer. The sun filtered its rays through the ancient wooden shutters, warming the room. When the heat got unbearable, I got up and turned on the ceiling fan. The whirling, rattling sound was hypnotic, as I lay back next to Mai, dozing off and on.

Mai was talking. I was only half listening.

"... and you were a saitan, devil of a child", I heard her say, with amusement. "You decided that the best time to go and pull on the cow's horns was when I was milking her. She kicked at me, and the half filled pail was knocked over. Before I could come around and grab you, you'd disappeared. Even at that age you had a fine sense of drama. Probably ran and hid behind your grandfather, who was always too indulgent of you. Luckily for you, I had to go and finish milking that cow, otherwise you'd have had a smack on that fat bottom of yours. I finished milking, and came around to the kitchen with that pail of steaming milk, and there you were, innocent look and all, standing there with your little kutte (small mug), looking up at me hopefully with your big big eyes. I couldn't stay angry with you. So I filled your kutte up with milk and you drank it all in one go, like we were starving you. After that you grabbed all the cooking pots from my shelves and decided to bang them together."

Surprisingly, I actually remember that incident with the poor cow, though I must have been pretty young. I smiled at Mai lazily, and noticed that her eyes were closed. She was falling asleep, so I grabbed Adz and we headed out into the courtyard of my grandparents' home for a rousing game of chase-the-kittens. My cousins Hemma and Blaise joined us, and we hung around chattering away.

It was also possibly the last real conversation I had with Mai.

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Tales From India - Shivanna's Charmuri Stall, Making New Friends (and a Recipe for Charmuri)

One of my friends recently posted a picture of her baby girl – who just turned six. I left an offhand comment on the post, saying that our children would be teenagers by the time we considered ourselves adults. Afterwards, I spent a long time thinking about that offhand comment. I've always considered my generation of Indians a rather unique generation – a lost one. My contemporaries were almost all born in the late seventies, and we are definitely not Millenials. We are also not flower children, or children of the war, or children of the freedom fighting generation. Nowhere else is it more obvious than when I go back to India and catch up with all my friends. In India, I revert back to being a teenager. When my friends and I all catch up – some of us after more than ten years – it is a warm, comforting familiarity, like we were never away, like we were still young and carefree, like we had families, but we were absolutely comfortable with leaving the kids with our parents when we are out drinking socialising.

This lost-ness is obvious in our professions, in particular. When we were growing up, we had two options (which increased to four, by the time I'd graduated) – doctor or engineer (or IT/ software specialist and investment banker or both). Somewhere along the line, things changed in my generation. When I go back now, I catch up with architects, advertising gurus, writers, entrepreneurs, those dagnabbed investment bankers, speculators, small business owners, restaurateurs and artists. In my generation, a switch flipped, turning us from robots who did what we were told to do (and what everybody else did), into bright sparks who followed our own way. However, a lot of us are still conflicted and this is where the gap is most apparent.

I mean – take my own story. I moved from a science based background, to being a sociologist to a grad student, to an academic, to a food writer. My teachers thought I'd end up being a poet (okay, I do consider food to be poetry, so they may be right there?). When my sister and I were born, my mom and dad became parents. They behaved like parents, they provided like parents, they loved like parents. When I became a mother, I found the deepest love I could have for another human being. But somehow, I didn't lose myself the way my mom did in us. I still stayed the same, and in many ways, I saw that sameness in my friends, in that retaining of their individuality, of what makes them who they are.

However, when I go back home, despite the familiarity and comfort, and the rightness of hanging out with my friends – there is a gap somewhere. That gap comes in when I meet the next generation, the one born after the Millenials (Generation Y? Z?). That gap acutely brings back to me the discomfort of being old enough to be considered an 'aunty', but young enough to easily get all the cultural references of Generation Y/ Z, thanks to the overwhelming reach of the internet. That gap, which is so painfully familiar to me and my generation of in-betweeners. I am always wondering where I fit in and this lack of space is what I always struggle with when I go back to India.

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Spiced Green Beans With Coconut (Beans Fugath/ Fugad)

What do you do when your best friend shows up with a giant bag of fresh, crisp green beans from her garden? Well, first off, you give her a giant hug, cause everyone loves those beans. You then hand over the bag of beans to your mom and bat your eyelashes at her and ask her to make you the most delicious, super simple, vegetable comfort food of your childhood. I am lucky to have my mom visiting, and am aiming to make the best of having here here with me, even if it's for a short time.

Us Mangaloreans are not known for our love of vegetables. Every meal, however, does include a vegetable or two, usually as the sidekick to a main of meat or fish. More often than not, vegetables are an afterthought, designed strictly as filler food. Even though half of India is vegetarian, simple steamed veggies - like you find here at almost every meal - are a rarity. Veggies are jazzed up with spices and sauces, and cooked to within an inch of their lives. The results are usually tasty, but, hey, where is the distinctive flavour of the greens? 

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Masala Pepper Mutton Chops

If there is one thing any blogger dreads, it's those two words - writer's block. I don't know if its post-holiday blues, but I've struggled to even sit in front of the computer, let alone process any pictures, or read or write. Most of the time its easier to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed. The smartphone doesn't help... it just means access to emails and papers, and harder to write on it, so its an easy way out... albeit one that doesn't help in the long term, as it merely enables the wallowing. And I can keep pretending that I am working, with the odd status update on Facebook, or a Twitter message... or an Instagram post. I am fooling no one though, because I am not actually writing.

It shouldn't be so hard. I assumed that when I got back from India, I'd be brimming over with ideas and that words would flow out of me in this easy, effortless stream. I assumed I'd be refreshed and head back with a clear head, with my life in order, with enthusiasm for writing up and testing all the recipes I brought back with me.

Instead, each day has been a drag. Its a struggle to get out of bed in the mornings. Only the fact that my kid needs to be packed off to school gets me up. Jet lag didn't help. I didn't have any on the way in to India, so I naively thought that I'd be fine getting back - I wasn't. It took me a week to get over it, and all I want to do is sleep, sleep and sleep some more.

How do I get over it?

Frankly, I don't know. I just don't. When words are your living, losing them creates a massive hole in your world. How I am going to patch it, I honestly don't know. What I am going to selfishly ask, is for your support, as I fight my way out of this. It feels like a fight, and I don't want to give it up. I love doing what I do, and I love my readers, and it feels like I am letting you down by not posting every week. I am sorry, and I am going to ask you to bear with me while I get my head straight and my inspiration, passion and drive back. I am reading and rereading this Food Bloggers of Canada post, and I am hoping that following its advice will bring me back, refreshed and ready to rock again.

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Indian Classics - (Mangalorean) Pork Indad

Pork Indad is one of those classic Indian dishes, that truly is a combination of communities that have made India the cultural melting pot that it is. Originally derived from the vindalho, pork indad is similar dish, but one that is made by the Mangalorean Catholic community.  

These, technically, are some unusual flavours for South India, mint, for example, and rum. This is the influence of the Portuguese community, and results in a dish that takes in Portuguese ingredients and marries them to Indian spices. The resulting combination is a heavenly one, of tender melt-in-your-mouth pieces of pork, enveloped in a sweet/ spicy sauce, with the heady aromas of mint and a good kick of rum at the end. 

This one of my absolute favourite pork dishes. I used to carry it all the way to Delhi when I was at University there... a whole three days on the train, nibbling at it every so often. I always promised my friends the taste of pork indad, and sadly, none would remain by the time I actually got to the hostel. Burp.

Pork indad is a traveller's dish. The meat is first salted, and then cooked to the point of preservation, after which a good glug of rum is added at the end in order to 'preserve' the meat even more, and make it suitable for carrying on long journeys. Today, pork indad is synonymous with the Catholic community, with each household boasting their very own recipes. This is a recipe that was originally given to me by my mom, who makes a really delicious indad. Over the years, I have refined it, using techniques that I learned at work, and while the method is not strictly traditional, the taste absolutely is spot on. 

I am reposting this recipe, as I recently made it again for my uncle, an ardent foodie and food historian, and we ran through the recipe, making a few more tweaks as we went along. My mother actually ground the ingredients for the sauce in her giant mortar and pestle, and I'll be honest, that is one aspect of this dish that really cannot be replicated with a mixer, as I have found to my cost. Canadian airlines do frown on excess baggage though, so I sadly have to leave the heavy beast behind :)

Recipe: 
(Printable Recipe) 

Ingredients

1 kg pork shoulder, marbled with fat and cut into 1 - 2 inch chunks. 
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unscented oil
25 ml dark rum

Spice Mix:

10 long mild red chillies, preferably Kashmiri
1 teaspoon whole cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon whole black pepper
1/2 teaspoon whole cinnamon sticks or cassia bark
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves

Sauce:
 
2 large onions, chopped
Thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
12 garlic cloves, crushed
1 green bird's eye chili, chopped
1 teaspoons tamarind concentrate
25 ml white or red wine vinegar 
Small handful fresh mint leaves, chopped
50 ml of water, if required + an extra 1/2 cup beef stock or water

Garnish

Fresh mint leaves
50 ml dark rum
Salt and sugar to taste

Method

Salt the pork and keep aside for about half hour.

In a heavy pan, dry roast the chillies, cumin, pepper, cinnamon and cloves, one by one, for about 30 second to a minute, until fragrant. Blend until finely powdered.

In the same pan, dry fry the onion for a few minutes until the raw smell has disappeared and the onions are very lightly toasted.Add the ginger and garlic, and fry for another minute. Remove to a blender, and add the green chili, tamarind, vinegar and mint leaves. Process to a fine paste. Add the spice mix, and blend until well mixed. Add a splash of water to help the process, if required.

Heat the oil in a a heavy based pot. Add the salted pork slices, and fry on a high heat, in batches, until the meat is caramelised and sealed. Remove to a plate, leaving any rendered fat behind. 

Deglaze the pot with the rum. Add the onion-spice paste to the pot, and saute for a few minutes, scraping up any caramelised bits. Turn down the heat, and fry this masala for about 15 minutes, stirring often. The oil and fat will start to separate at this point. Season with a little salt.

Add the 1/2 cup water or stock to the pot and simmer gently, until the sauce is quite thick.

Gently lower the fried pork into the sauce. Bring to a gentle boil, then stir until the slices are well coated with the masala. Add a little more water, if required, and simmer the pork on a low heat for at least an hour, topping up with more water is the sauce looks dry. The meat should be fork tender once it is cooked and the sauce should be thick, but not dry.

Season generously with the salt and sugar to taste, then stir in the rum.

Simmer for a few more minutes, then take off the heat and garnish with the fresh mint leaves. 

This dish tastes best if made a day ahead, and left to mature in the fridge. Reheat and serve with sannas, pulav rice or fresh bread. 

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Mangalorean Fried Prawns With Chilli and Vinegar (Sungtan Meeth Mirsang)

So the Yeggies came and went, and as I predicted, I didn't win :) But I did get the opportunity to chat about food with CTV's Morning Live with host, Stacey Brotzel. I haven't been on TV since my Masterchef days, so I hated how I looked and sounded, obviously. Of course, I then had to go and have a look at my old MC video and I was kind of shocked how much my accent had changed and how blimmin' young I looked in those videos. Anyway I'll let you be judge, as the video is over here. Just try not too laugh too hard, will you?

Meanwhile, in other news, Aditi has been getting all cheeky on me. Today, I had a ladybird fly into my hand. So I got all excited, and told Aditi, 'hey, look, a ladybird flew into my hand... I am going to be so lucky' At which point, she deigned to look up at me from her game, all bored, like, and went 'yeah mom, you are lucky. You have me'... ooooh, that li'l monster. If she didn't have her moments like the one below, she'd be sold to the gypsies in a second (kidding, of course, no one would pay anything for her, in fact they'd probably pay me to take her back, haha)

So what did she say that made me bawl? Well, she's been getting an allowance of a dollar every Friday, and she has been saving up hard for a backpack toy. Every week she counts her coins and decides how many more she needs for the toy.

So she comes up to me a few days ago and said, 'Mom, I've decided not to buy the toy after all'. So I said, 'Why not, Aditi?' She then says to me, 'Mom, cause next Sunday is Mother's Day and I have two more Fridays to go before that... and I want to spend all my coins buying you the best present in the world!' I was stunned and asked 'Did Dad tell you to do this?' and she was like 'No, I just decided this, and of course Dad will be taking me to get you a present, but I want to spend my own money and its going to be the best surprise you ever had'.

I think I already got the best present in the world!

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Dukra Maas (Mangalorean Pork Curry with Bafat Spice Mix/ Bafat Pork)

Its a ritual that takes place in almost every Mangalorean Catholic home every Sunday. First, the women of the family are up at an ungodly hour to start the sannas, the batter of which would have been ground the night before. Then the kids are unceremoniously kicked out of bed, and yelled at to get ready, otherwise they're going to be late to Sunday school. After the due religious routines have been followed, said kids may be lucky enough to be taken to a nearby restaurant, duly salivating at the thought of a masala dosa or a idli sambar (a thin rice crepe filled with spicy potato curry, and a steamed, fluffy rice cake, not unlike a sanna, with a hot steaming vegetable stew) Then the men of the family are dispatched to various grocery errands, while the women (and very often, the reluctant, whining, complaining kids who would rather be watching Sunday morning kid's television) would start the (seemingly endless) chopping of onions, ginger, garlic and hot green chillies that could take out an elephant, that was the base of this dukra maas. 

The bafat would usually have been made a few weeks earlier, with fresh batches smuggled legally sent to various relatives who live in 'abroad'... and a small batch is left behind for the weekly Sunday ritual of the dukra maas, of course. Once the chopping is all done, the pork is then cubed into small pieces, and the cooking process begins. During the cooking process there will probably be a steady stream of 'I am hungry....' whines coming from all directions. The dog would add a couple of squeaks too... and he may be lucky enough to get a bone for his troubles. The house starts to smell more and more fragrant as the curry simmers away, and the smell is strong enough to lure a few interested neighbours into the fray. They peek at the curry, shoot some breeze, ask a few questions about the provenance of said cooking pig, and then meander away to their own homes, where, perhaps there is another kind of curry cooking.

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Quick Spiced Prawn 'Roast'

The one word that’s almost synonymous with a working mum is ‘balance’. How do you balance all the ten million things that we all do, even with the support of your partner? Just thinking about all the things I have to do every day and every week makes my head spin sometimes. Child, husband, household, work, school, shopping, appointments, birthdays, more shopping, more child, more work, cleaning, cooking, laundry... it’s enough to just make you want to hide yourself under a duvet and just wish you were on a warm tropical island, lounging on a beach with a long tall cocktail, and... what the heck, a few cabana boys at your beck and call.

But since that’s not happening any time soon, I just take the example of my mum instead. I talk about my mum many a time on this site, because for me, my mum was the epitome of balance. I still have no idea how she managed to keep all those balls in the air, and never dropped a single one. She’s now almost sixty two, and she’s still balancing out her life and all her commitments with a grace that I certainly do not possess by any means!

There was one thing my mum never ever missed, though. And that was dinner. Now dinner for us, growing up in India, was very different to how we have dinner here. For one, we rarely, actually almost never, sat around a table and had dinner as a family, as we would do here. Instead, once we came back from school, we would make ourselves tea with a substantial snack, and mum would start dinner when she got back from work. She had a repertoire of quick and easy dishes that she could throw together in a few minutes, and dinner was then on the table. We then wandered over to the table and helped ourselves to rice and whatever dish mum made and usually with a side of a simple spicy pickle or two.

So, of course, when I moved to England and then subsequently to Canada, I took with me a whole bunch of recipes from mum, particularly the easy ones, the ones that I could throw together in minutes.

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Chicken Sukka (Dry Chicken Curry with Grated Coconut)

 

Well, well, well, look whose 5th birthday it is this month? 

Yep, five whole years have passed since I created this website and made my first tentative post. And from those early years, look how much this baby has grown! Its only a month younger than Aditi (although, looking back, I have no idea how on earth I managed a blog and a baby... I guess it was football that helped me through, haha) It feels weird to think that not only did I managed to sustain this site for five years, but also, looking back on my older posts, I am constantly amazed that I actually managed to grow it the way I have. I think I had about 50 visitors for that first post... and all of them just wanted that recipe I made on Masterchef, and weirdly, all of them arrived from that addictive forum, Digital Spy. 

From that point to where I am now is just crazy and I am so hugely humbled that so many of you read my idle meanderings and share in my world. Its been a rollercoaster ride from Masterchef contestant to stay-at-home mom recipe blogger to good home cook to sous chef and full time chief leftover scrounger at Get Cooking.

I never ever thought that my love of cooking would lead me to a real career in food, but it has, and I am just so grateful to be doing something that I love, enjoy and am truly passionate about. Its not many people in the world who love doing what they do, but I can attest from experience that when you do find the one thing in the world that you can wake up in the morning and be constantly excited about what you're going to be doing that day, well, its a joy that's second to not very much in this world. 

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Bhendan Tel Piaow (Okra in a Coconut Oil and Onion Saute)

So Christmas preparations are in full swing on almost every blog I visit and to be honest, I do love looking at the pictures and drooling over the recipes. But in my household, we are all trying to lose weight and be healthier, so I am restricting my sweet tooth to just looking, rather than baking and eating. I am lucky to have lovely friends (yes, Susan M and Marlow Moo, I am looking at you :-)) who have already dropped off beautiful treats, and so even though I've done very little baking, my house is still full of delicious treats and more are being added as I meet up with friends. MIL sent her boozy, dark, fruit filled Christmas cake, and its being demolished even before Christmas is here, so I may even have to ask her to send another (gulp!)

Coming back to the site though, I must apologise for my lack of regular activity on here. Its been a bit of a crazy ride with Get Cooking, and maybe its just the season, but we've been incredibly busy, especially after Kathryn was featured on the Edmonton Journal. Its winding down a bit though and much as I love my work, I am looking forward to the Christmas break. I promise to cook and bring to you a lot more recipes. In fact, I have drafts months old sitting in my folder that I haven't gotten round to taking pictures for, its that bad... and of course the waning daylight never helps either. I am still aiming to get four to six posts a month, though ocasionally they may err on the four side.

 

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Chana Sukka (Sweet and Spicy Chickpea and Coconut Sauté)

How do we define memories? How do we remember events, times, places, people? How is it that a fragrance, a taste, a picture, a thought can take us back to a different time, a different place? 

It was a simple question, asked by Elizabeth Ng from CBC Radio that got me thinking. A few weeks ago, Elizabeth contacted me to see if I would be interested in an interview project she was working on. She wanted me to make a dish that brought back to me vividly, memories of my home and family. She was hoping to talk to my mum as well, and having me make the dish at the same time. I loved the idea of the interview, and agreed almost immediately, and called my mum excitedly. 

Mum was pretty chuffed as well, but then asked me what she thought the dish that defined my childhood - and hers - was... and we both thought that it was this chickpea dish. My grandfather was a wedding chef. He was the person that people called when they were hosting large dinners (and I mean large, Indian style - between 500, 1000 people or more)  This was one of his signature dishes, and while it is by no means an original one (a lot of Mangalorean wedding chefs have similar recipes) its the one that stayed with me, in its simplicity, but also its evocative fragrance that takes me right back to the kitchens of my mother and my grandparents. 

Mum and I had both differening memories of this dish. My mum talked about how she remembered going to large wedding feasts with my grandfather, and how he would split ingredients around his helpers and make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. She described the heat, the noise, the glow of the firelights as everyone worked the night to make sure the feast was ready for the next afternoon. And while she spoke, I saw my grandfather, in his quiet, soft spoken, yet commanding way ordering everything about, with his basket of spices and meats. I saw him wringing the neck of a freshly bought chicken, then plunging it into hot water and defeathering it... with me being co-opted in to do the little ones that were hard for his large hands. I saw him tasting, spicing, salting, mashing... I remembered so much, so many memories! I also remembered my grandmother's food. She was the cook to my grandfather's chef. She was gentle, and delicate in her ways. She fed us congee and pickles and papads and kharam. She made the food we ate everyday and took for granted, just like my mum did all her life. 

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Indian Classics - Kori Rotti (Coconut Chicken Curry with Crisp Rice Wafers)

If you ask any meat eating Mangalorean what their comfort food is, chances are this dish will be at the top of their list. 'Kori Rotti', also known as 'Kori Ghashi' is a traditional Mangalorean chicken dish that is loved all through the Konkan coast, and a staple in every household. 'Kori' is the Tulu word for chicken and rottis are a confusing addendum, because they have nothing to do with what people would normally think of as rotis. These 'rottis' are made of ground rice paste that is thinly spread and either dried or baked into crisp sheets. These sheets are then broken into pieces, and served with steaming hot chicken curry. The sauce softens the crisp rottis which are then messily devoured. 

The origin of kori rotti has been lost to culinary history, with some claiming that it was a corruption of the spicier Kundapur chicken. Others claim that it originated in a hotel in the town of Udupi. It is usually associated with the 'Bunt' community in Mangalore, with their recipes being the most sought after. 

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Beet Greens Fugath (Spiced Beet Greens with Shredded Coconut)

I've been absolutely loving the weather in Edmonton this summer. Its been in the low plus thirties all this week and its due to last into next week, and for me-from-the-tropics, its heavenly weather. The husband and kid complain that its too hot, but I tell them both to suck it up, cause I'd rather it be plus thirty than minus thirty.

All this beautiful weather has meant that the garden has been doing extremely well. We've had some nice rainy weather on a few days, and this has helped everything grow, and the sunshine means that fruits and vegetables are ripening up beautifully. I don't have much of a berry crop this year, as we onlt just planted our strawberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberries, but my highbush cranberry bush has gazillions of berries on it, and I can't wait for them to ripen. The pin cherries only need a couple more days, and then... mmmm... pie.

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Peas Pulao

Peas pulao. Aka, what I cook when I can't get my arse around to cooking anything else. This simple, flavourful pulao has been a staple in my culinary repertoire ever since I had a yelling match telephone conversation with my dear grandma. It was one of the first things I learnt how to make, which makes me wonder why on earth I've never posted this recipe before.

My grandma's version calls for a Maggi cube (a stock cube) to be crumbled into the boiling water when making this pulao, and I have always credited that little cube with all the flavour in this dish. However, I recently had a small stock pot's worth of homemade vegetable stock left, and so I decided to make this pulao with it, instead of using the stock cube. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of flavour homemade stock added to this pulao, so if you happen to have some homemade stock banging around your kitchen, go ahead and use it. Obviously, my stock was vegetarian, because of Kay and Aditi, but I imagine that this pulao would really suit a full bodied chicken stock as well.

Other than that, this recipe is pretty much foolproof.

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Mangalorean Ivy Gourd With Almonds (Tendli/ Tindora Sukhe) and Goodbyes!

First off, I am not quitting the blog... this post is not about that kind of good bye :)

Readers of my blog will know that I was born and brought up in Mangalore, in India. My family and I lived in a beautiful, quaint old house, almost a hundred years old. Last week, my beautiful childhood home was demolished to make way for a block of flats. This has elicited a huge amount of emotion from me, and I am writing this post to help me sort through all these emotions.

As a child, your home is your castle. I have a vivid memory of sitting on sun soaked steps, and watching my mum's prized grape vines (that never produced any grapes) and thinking that this has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. My sister and I wandered the gardens, got yelled at for going too close to the incredibly deep well, climbed every fruit tree that was ever grown. We ate nectar sweet guavas straight from the tree, screeched in horror at the caterpillars festooning our roseapple tree, raced out into the depths of the orchard to find my mum fresh bay leaves. We revelled in the sweet fragrance when our two coffee bushes were in bloom, and grumbled constantly about all the work we had to do when coconut drying season was in full swing. We muttered and whined when we were asked to help mum with all the cleaning, and we made up all sorts of games in our yard. We helped mum with the garden, and loved the beautiful flowers she grew.

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Mangalorean Fried Chicken

OK, I'll admit it. This recipe from my mum is so easy that I had half a mind to tinker with it just so it looked a little more difficult. Not that I did, mind, because in my world, the simpler the better. And why mess around with a winner anyway?

In fact, my actual notes for this recipe went something like this - chicken, chilly, bit ginger, garlic, taste salt, lemon, whatever stuff, marinate, fridge, fry lowish oil.

Yes, that's how I scribble my notes when on a phone call with mum, mostly in between discussion about family and friends and children and coconut trees and cousins and visas and visits and everything (and everyone, wink) else in world.

I made this chicken fry a few weeks ago, but felt like making it again to celebrate my birthday. When I was a kid, birthdays were a lot of fun, but there wasn't a huge fuss made, one way or another. We would get to go to school in 'colour dress', which basically meant not in uniform, and we handed out chocolates or candies to the rest of our class. But of course, I had to make this simple routine difficult for my mum, right? Right. My birthday, unfortunately for me, almost always co-incided with mid term examinations. Without fail, for the first seventeen years of my life! Sigh! Not much celebrating you can do, when all you can think of is studying your backside off for maths or science exams.

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Beet Greens and Green Lentils, Indian Style

Have you ever hated anything as a kid and started to love it as an adult? I posed this question on this blog's Facebook page a few days ago, and got a wide variety of answers, from avocadoes and fish to sorpotel [though how anyone can hate sorpotel is beyond me!!!] When I first started weaning Aditi, one of the best pieces of advice that someone gave me was not to assume that just because I hated something it automatically meant that Aditi would hate it too. That advice has served me well, and surprisingly, has also led me to try things that I used to hate as a child.

The reason I asked the question on my page, is because I realised after quite a few years that beet greens are not the enemy after all. My mum always used to say that beet greens make your 'blood redder'. I finally figured out that she meant that they were high in iron, geez mum, talk about cryptic clues :-) And I do need all the iron I can get as I have always been on the anaemic side. But I hated those greens as a child, however my mum cooked them, and only serious threats would make me eat them. Mostly I would hide them under my rice or try and feed them to my numerous cats and dogs!

I don't know why I didn't like them. Perhaps it was the slightly bitter edge to them, or the crunchiness? Who knows the mind of a child anyway? For example, Aditi won't eat eggs at all, however I cook them. When I ask her why, she says that she doesn't like that they have been taken away from the hen! An ethical kid, just what I need, when I am already struggling to make sure she has a balanced diet.

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Mangalorean Egg Puffs

My childhood and adolescence were defined by these puffs. If you think that's a sweeping statement to be making, well, lets just say that these puffs figured in, oh, 300 out of the 365 days for the first 20 years of my life. Yes, that's a lot of puffs, wouldn't you say? In all their varieties of course, meat, vegetable and eggs.

Puffs are very popular snacks in many parts of South India, particularly Mangalore and the south coast. They consist of a spicy onion masala, with either meat, vegetables or eggs encased in a light puff pastry. I am not sure how they originated or how they came to be such a such a staple. I suspect that they may have been part of the Portuguese culture that colonised Goa, and then been adopted by the Indians in their spicy avatar. Whatever the origin, these spicy snacks are ubiquitous everywhere, and an absolute favourite of every young child, teenager and adults too.

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Mangalorean Biscuit Ambade (Gram Fritters)

As you've probably already noticed, the blog has lost a lot of its pictures... I am slowly working to get them back out on here, but its a big task. I never actually realised how many pictures and recipes I had on this blog until I had to go through them to upload on Flickr and then repost. I took the opportunity to rewrite some recipes, and revisit the posts, so I could make them better. So I guess, in a way, there was a silver lining to this blogger induced black cloud. The pictures are not all up yet, but will be by the end of this week, and we can get back to business as usual :-)

But that said, I will also be taking a short blogging break for two or three weeks. One of my best friends is visiting me from Germany, and we have decided to head out into the Rockies for a road trip! I cannot wait... in my opinion there is nowehere as gorgeous as the Rocky Mountains in the summer, and the Jasper-Banff Highway, also called the Icefields Parkway, is simply paradise on earth (well, if you exclude all thr tourists, that is :-)) So after this one, my next post is likely to be at the beginning of August, unless of course I get inspired at a campsite or two or three!

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