Pesto and Prawn Sandwich

Sandwiches are something that I make on daily basis for the husband to take to work. He prefers sandwiches and easy-to-eat, fuss free, smell-free meals as he can have it on the go, rather than having to sit and indulge in a heavy meal during his work. Plus, he claims Indian food has strong smell, which I too agree, and the smell spreads the whole place. It is easy to whip up a sandwich in the morning with any leftover meat or prawns if you have them. And it is a better way to use up the left over meat as well.

On one of our holidays to the Lake District, we had our lunch at an Italian Restaurant. It was lovely, small restaurant and we were late for the lunch. So there were just few options from which we could choose our food from. I love pesto and pesto prawn sandwich was one they had, which we could order. I was not sure how I would like the taste and I ordered it all at my risk.  When the food arrived, it was a mount of prawns slathered in thick, creamy pesto sauce sandwiched between ciabatta breads. It was literally a heaven on plate, and tasted just great.  

Here we get shelled and cooked prawns which makes the job very easy.  Even though it comes cooked and you could mix it up straightaway with other ingredients, I usually boil it with a pinch of salt and lemon for few minutes and the wash off the prawns again. I am over obsessed when it comes to cleaning and cooking food and I need to clean them many times. But, it is not necessary. 

  

I usually serve pesto prawns in a seeded bread, but any kind of bread could go with it, especially ciabatta. You could toast them, or  just have them plain, which is what we prefet. You could add few rocket leaves, and play around the ingredients to suit your palette. Here is how I make it, and this is one of the several sandwiches that I made for the son’s b’day party last year and got rave reviews about.

Pesto and Prawn Sandwich

Preparation time: 5-10 minutes

Makes 2-4 Sandwiches

Ingredients:

320g cooked prawns (2 cups)

4-5 tbsp mayonnaise, you may use low fat, or full fat

2 tbsp pesto

¼ cup sweet corn

a pinch of salt of necessary

½ tsp crushed pepper or chilli flakes (optional)

Bread to serve

Preparation:

1. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl thoroughly(To get rid of the smell from prawns, just marinate them in lemon juice for about 10 minutes and wash it off).

2. Spread the mixture heavily on one slice, and sandwich with another. If you wish, you can use toasted bread as well.

You can make upto four large sandwiches depending on how well you fill your sandwich.

Chemmeen Pathiri/ Chemmeen Pathal (Curried Prawns in Rice Pockets)

We are having first snow of the season and it's snowing real thick today. Whole place is covered in snow, it looks beautiful and serene and it's so Christmassy. I like the slow build up of the Christmas mood in here and the snow just makes it perfect. Here is a warm recipe for the cold winter season.

Have you joined my Facebook page yet? It is the places that I hold my foodie discussions, interact with the readers, post recipes and updates. It’s a formal page to hold informal discussions and foodie talks and to get to know the readers suggestions, opinions and more. Couple of weeks back we had a discussion about what the readers would like to see on the blog and most of them came with the option of Malabar Food. In spite of dishing out Malabar food regularly at home, I rarely post them in here or even draft the recipe down. 

Most Malabar recipes are time consuming, very elaborated, and lot of typing as well which probably would be the reason I really don’t include the food that I grew up devouring every day. I almost feel lethargic when it comes to typing very long recipes and that is one reason you tend to see fewer Malabar posts. Some of the recipes would want to have pictorial representation as well as the method would be a bit too complicated for the novice cooks to grasp. But, I will try to include and post as many Malabar recipes as possible in the future.

Today I am going to share one such elaborated recipe that takes time, but well worth the efforts. These kind of recipes are usually made in the Malabar Muslim households usually as an evening snack and is a popular party dish. Malabar is known for its variety of pathiri/pathal which are usually rice based pancakes, some stuffed, some seasoned, some fried and then some just steamed. Really, the amount of recipes that could be made of out rice is just not a handful or two; but several of them, some of them which you would come across my blog too.

In this post I am going to share you one of my favourite dishes, chemmeen pathal/chemmen pathiri. These are rice pancakes stuffed with a spiced mixture of shrimps or prawns and steamed usually in banana leaf placed in a steamer. This is like roti and curry amalgamated into one single dish, just by stuffing the curry into the pancakes and then steaming it. I had the similar version of this stuffed pathiri several years back during one of the grand parties I attended back home and it is actually prepared using fish rather than prawns. But prawns work very well here and I suppose squid or mussels should work great as well if you can get hold of them.

Chemmeen Pathiri/Pathal (Makes 12-14 medium size ones)
 

Ingredients:
For the pathiri:

(Please refer to the Neypathal dough and options given there. You can prepare the dough in any of the method mentioned there).

This is prepared in the same manner as my Fish pathiri, so check out that for a step by step pictorial illustration.Here is the link.

1 ½  cups Parboiled rice (Puzhukkalari (Ponni rice))
1 Tbsp fennel seeds/saunf (Perumjeerakam)
1 cup freshly grated coconut or frozen
water, just enough to grind the rice to a coarse paste

rice flour, just enough to bind the whole mixture to a soft dough.
Salt – As reqd

For the prawn masala:;
300g cleaned shrimps (cleaned weight)
2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp salt
6 Tbs oil

For the masala:

3 Large onion (400 gm, 3 cups chopped)
5 large cloves of garlic, grated- (1 heaped Tbsp)

1 tbsp finely chopped ginger

2 green chilli, finely chopped
½ tsp turmeric powder

½ tsp fennel/saunf powder

¼ tsp garam masala

½ tsp pepper powder
¼ cup chopped coriander leaves
¼ cup grated coconut

Preparation:

1. Marinate shrimps with chilli powder, turmeric powder and salt for about ½ hour -1 hour.

2. Heat about 3 tbsp in a wide pan and fry the shrimps for about 8-10 minutes until thoroughly cooked. Take the cooked shrimps out and reserve.

3. In the same pan, heat remaining oil and add onions and salt. Add less salt as the shrimps are fried with salt. Sauté until it becomes soft and translucent.

4. Add ginger, garlic, green chilli and sauté for few minutes until the onion is reduced and raw smell of ginger and garlic has disappeared.

5. Add ground pepper, ground fennel and turmeric powder and sauté for few seconds.

6. Add the chopped coriander leaves, cooked prawns, coconut, garam masala and stir well, cook for a 8-10 minutes until all the flavours are well blended. Add the fish pieces, cover and cook on very low flame until all the flavour is infused well for about 8-10 minutes. Add more salt if needed and turn of the heat.

For the making pathiris and assembling:
1. Soak the rice in warm water for 3-4 hours or overnight.

2. Grind it along with minimal water until you get a coarse and grainy mixture.

3. Add coconut, fennel seeds and roughly chopped onions to this and grind for few seconds until everything coarsely ground and not smooth.

4. Tip the whole mixture in to a large bowl, add salt and mix well.

5. Add the rice powder and mix well using hands until you get dough that can be shaped into balls.

6. Divide the dough into 20 -24 portions and roll it into smooth spheres. Take a portion of the rice dough  and flatten it on a sheet (I use baking paper or a clear shopper bag cut into square shape, u can use banana leaf instead) using the heel and fingers of your palm. Add some masala in the centre leaving 2 centimeters around the edge.

7. Make another pathiri on another sheet the same way and flip it over to the pan cake with the prawn filling, covering the masala completely. Gently press the edges using the fingers to seal all the masala in or use a fork to press the edges and to give it a patterned egde. Carefully lift the sheet/banana leaf and place it in a steamer. Steam cook for about 10-12 minutes or until the pathiri is firm to touch. Wearing an oven mitt, hold all the edges of the banana leaf/baking paper and lift out the Pathiris. (Be careful here as the steam can burn your hands).

8. Make pathiris with rest of the dough and steam couple of them at a time.

Tips:

1.To make soft Pathiris, soak the rice in hot water instead of cold/tap water. Use good quality rice.

2. For reheating, its always best to re-steam it to bring back the softness.

Njandu Curry (Crab curry - Malabar Style)

Crab is something that I adore, but haven’t really got a great deal of knowledge about apart from relishing its intense and unique flavour. Iam not aware of the kind of crabs and never knew how to do the cleaning until I prepared it last time. It is a bit tricky to clean and prepare, I should say and it takes a while to prepare a crab.

I had prepared crab before this, but while preparing it this time, I watched couple of videos to make sure that I do things right. I then realized that I din’t do proper cleaning and I even dumped the large back shell into the gravy when I prepared the first time!! Check out this video here if you are not sure how to clean a crab. 

Now here is the kind of crab curry that my mom makes back home. It’s slightly dry or rather crabs smeared in spicy masala paste. I got the recipe from her the other day when I got hold of some fresh crabs from the fisheries. I bought three large crabs which weighed 1.5 kilos, and after I was done with the cleaning, it just weighed half the original weight!!Most of it had to be thrown away. Feel free to increase the amount of spices per taste. You can also add coconut milk towards the end if you wish.

Njandu Curry (Crab Curry)

serves 3 - 4

Ingredients:

750g Cleaned crabs

3 Tbsp coconut oil

3 medium onions, 380g sliced thin – 3 cups

3 twigs curry leaves

2-3 green chillies, slit

2 medium tomatoes chopped, ~200g, 1 cup

salt – as required

3-4 teaspoons Kashmiri chilli powder

2-3 teaspoons coriander powder

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

1 ¼ - 1 ½ cups of water

¼ teaspoon garam masala

Preparation:

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan.

2. When hot, add sliced onion, 1 twig curry leaves, green chillies, salt and tomatoes. Cover and cook on medium heat until onions go soft and tomatoes are mushy and soft.

3. Add chilli powder, coriander powder and turmeric powder and stir well.

4. Add cleaned crabs, stir well, cover and ook on medium heat until steam comes through.

5. Add water and keep cooking on medium heat until the crabs are smeared in thick gravy.

6. Add garam masala and remaining curry leaves and stir.

7. Serve along with plain rice or chappathi, porotta etc.

Notes:

1.You can add more spices if you want. I add a mixture of paprika and kashmiri chilli powder to balance the heat.

2. Also you may add coconut milk towards the end of cooking.

This post also goes to Kerala Kitchen event hosted by Jehanne who blogs at the cookingdoctor.

Meen Porichathu (Crispy Fish Fry) and a Tour around the Fish Quays

Fish in UK is not cheap; I am talking about the ones that we get in the monster supermarket chains. They are really pricey and who lives in UK would nod head on that. So, during my exploration I ended up on this beach in Fish Quays which I mentioned in my previous post and also stumbled upon so many fisheries which sell fresh daily fish that is very cheap. Incomparably cheap! A box of 3-3.5 kilos of fish cost just 5 bucks, that’s how cheap it can get, which otherwise, less than a kilo cost more than that.

The fisheries have loads of fresh fish caught on daily basis, contains loads of varities and  they even have fresh lobsters swimming in the aquarium! I love that place. I was told many a times that we get real cheap fish from the Fish Quays, but we never bothered to go there for a very long time until very recently.

We live quite close to the North sea, and so is blessed with lots of beautiful beaches. The one that I regularly go to is the Fish Quays for the reason it is close to my son’s school, loads of fisheries around, nice to walk and you have these series of steep stairs that I along with my friend now started climbing as part of our exercise regime; our free local gym. I love to spend time there, may it be just for a walk or just to spend some time at the beach myself or with my family.

Fish Quays is a fishing port close to the Tyne river in North Shields, Tyne and Wear, England. It has lot of history to speak. Many old 18^th century houses, courts, piers etc can be seen in and around the fish quays. During the 18^th Century when the banks started getting over crowded, buildings began to erect on the plateau, which is sixty feet above the old town otherwise called Low town. The new town built above is called High Town. The Upper and lower parts of the town are linked by a series of steep stairs. These stairs still remain. If you remember Laurel and Hardy, the Comedians, Stan Laurel lived in this High Town during 1897-1902. His statue stands in the middle to commemorate his stay there. It is beautiful, especially if you want to walk around, on a beautiful sunny day. 

This place also has a fair that is open every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 8-4. They sell many old, rustic antique goods, furniture, vintage crockery, crafts, and other bric-a-bracs.  I pick up few odd things from there every now and then that could be used as a prop for the blog. 

Today’s recipe is something that I prepared using a fish we get locally called the sea bream.  You can adapt the recipe using any fish available. It’s a simple Kerala style fish fry, but to add crispiness, I gave it a thin coating of sooji/semolina. You can also use rice powder or even plain flour instead. 

Kerala Style Crispy Fish Fry

Serves 3-4

Preparation: under 10 minutes

Cooking time: Less than 10 minutes

Ingredients:

350g, 1 large sea bream/tilapia or any other fish cleaned

3 teaspoon kashmiri chilli powder

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

1 ½ tsp lime/lemon juice

½ - ¾ tsp salt or as required

1 tbsp water

1 tbsp semolina/rice flour

1-2 twigs of curry leaves

4-5 tbsp of coconut oil

Preparations:

1. Make 6-7 shallow gashes on the cleaned and washed fish. Make a semi - thick paste of chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt, lemon juice and water. Smear it all over the fish and let it sit in the fridge for a minimum of an hour.

2. Just before frying, sprinkle the semolina or rice powder on both sides of the fish. Gently press it down. Alternatively, you can place the semolina or rice pwer and press the fish on them.

3. Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan. When hot, throw in curry leaves. Immediately place the fish and cook on both sides until crispy and cooked through, about 6-7 minutes on medium heat, depending on the size of fish.

4. Drain on kitchen towel and serve hot.

Notes:

1.To get rid of the foul fish smell, wash the rub the fish all over with salt and lemon and leave it for few minutes and wash it off.

2. Given here is the simplest of fish fries. You can also add 1 teaspoon each of minced ginger and garlic along with the paste for a different flavour.

3. Using sooji or rice or even flour also prevents the fish from breaking off while frying or sticking to the pan. So if you are using any soft fish, it is always better to give it a thin coat of sooji/rice powder etc to prevent it from breaking off.

This post of mine also goes to the Kerala Kitchen Event created by Magpiesrecipes, being hosted by Jehanne of the cookingdoctor.