Brigadeiro Chocolate Fudge Balls

I got this recipe from the GULF NEWS COOKERY BOOK and thought of giving it a shot as it was too easy to prepare and required just three ingredients which were already there in my pantry. I think it’s rather a kid’s recipe. But I and my mom couldn’t stop munching them :)

Ingredients: (Serves 6 )
1 can condensed milk
15 gm/ 1 tbsp butter
50 gm/ 3 tbsp cocoa powder
For covering:
Granulated chocolate, cocoa powder or desiccated coconut.

Preparation:
1. Mix the condensed milk, butter and cocoa powder in a non-stick pan.
2. Cook on a medium heat, mixing vigorously until the mixture thickens (it should be quite stiff)
3. Let the mixture cool completely and then make golf ball-sized balls (grease your palms with butter in order to form balls without sticking to your palms).
4. Roll the balls on granulated chocolate, dessicated coconut or dust with cocoa

Gulab Jamun

Finally, I am back to UK and back to blogging. It has been a long vacation back in UAE where I had splendid time with my family. But the time just flew away so soon. I swill restart my blogging with the very Indian favourite dessert recipe- Gulab Jamun. I made it quite a few times at home and it turned out perfect and all my family loved it. In the beginning I was a bit reluctant to make this recipe since I thought it was difficult for such recipes to come out good. So the first time I made it, I made it using half the amount. If the recipe is followed with exact measurements as given here, they ought to come out excellent.

Dry ingredients:
2 cups Milk powder
3 tbsful Semolina
2 tbs Plain flour
2 tspful Baking powder

Wet ingredients:
2 medium eggs beaten lightly
2 tbs vegetable oil
3 tbs Thick cream
Oil for frying the jamuns

For Syrup:
1 1/2 cups water
3 cups sugar
6 cardamoms
A squeeze of lemon

Preparation:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients well with a wire whisk or sieve all the dry ingredients together.
2. Add vegetable oil and mix well. Add cream and mix well. Add enough egg to make smooth dough. Here I have never used all the egg. A little bit was left behind. The dough will be a bit sticky.
3. Smear oil in palms, take a large pinch of the dough and roll it by placing in the palm to make a gooseberry sized ball. Make sure there are no cracks on the surface of the ball.
4. Repeat the process with the entire dough.
6. Heat up a large wok or kadai and pour-in enough oil to deep fry few balls at a time. Add 5-8 balls and fry them at LOW flame until you get a light golden colour and the jamuns puff up. Drain excess oil. Repeat the process until all the jamun balls are fried.
5. Meanwhile heat another sauce pan and add water and sugar and boil for about 8 minutes until all the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is syrupy. Add cardamoms and a good squeeze of lemon to this and boil for a minute more.
7. Add the fried jamuns to this syrup and boil for about 3 minutes until the jamuns soften. Turn off the flame and let them cool.
8. Garnish with crushed pistachios and serve warm or room temperature.
(If refrigerating, leave them in room temperature for an hour or two else it may be a bit hard.)

Notes:
1. I have used the shop-bought measuring spoons and cups to get the exact measurements which gave me perfect results every time I made it.
2. Here in the recipe, I have mentioned tbs and tbsful. Tbs refers to sharp tablespoon measure and tbsful is a heaped tablespoon measure and is the same for teaspoon.
3. Lemon or lime juice is added to the syrup to stop the syrup from solidifying into sugar crystals.
4. Don’t fry the jamuns at high flame because it gets charred very quickly thus obtaining an undercooked inside part and overcooked outside.

Fish mollee/Fish molly (A mild fish curry in thick coconut milk)

This is going be my last post before I go to Abu-Dhabi to pay a visit to my family and my friends. Iam planning to travel on november 2nd and should be there for a couple or months. I don't really know how much of blogging I will be able to do from there, but sure, I will come back with a bunch of my mother's delicious recipes.

I had fish mollee for the first time at my friend Z’s house when we went there for the Iftar party. There were around 15 people for the party and this curry was a super hit of that day. The curry was so delicious and everybody was drooling over. Its very easy to make. Here goes her recipe:

Fish mollee
Serves 4

Ingredients:
500 -600 gm Fish cut into 1 ½ inch pieces
½ cup chopped onion
1 medium size tomato
1 ½ tsp black pepper powder
¾ tsp turmeric powder
1 ½ cup thin coconut milk
½ cup thick coconut milk
2-4 Green chillies split lengthwise
4 cloves
2 small piece cinnamon sticks
3 sprigs Curry leaves
½ tsp plain flour
½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
Salt as required
Oil – As required

Preparation
1. Marinate fish in 1 tsp pepper powder,1/4 tsp turmeric powder and salt and keep aside for 20 minutes.
2. Heat a pan and add litttle oil. Shallow fry the fish slightly until partially cooked. Drain them on kitchen towel.
3. Heat another saucepan, add 2 tbs of oil and add cloves and cinnamom. When the aroma of the spices starts to come off, add onion and sauté until golden. Add tomato, pepper powder, turmeric powder, kashmiri chilli powder,green chillies, plain flour and curry leaves and sauté until the tomato goes soft.
4. Add thin coconut milk and boil for around 5 minutes. Add fish to this and boil for further 3 minutes. Add thick coconut milk and boil for another two minutes.

Serve hot with chappathi, puri and plain boiled rice.

Notes:
My friend Z had added capsicum and I really liked the taste of it. So I also added ½ of a medium size red capsicum diced at step 3 along with other ingredients. But that’s purely optional

Sraavu varuthathu (Crushed Shark in spicy coconut masala)

I feel somebody might feel bizarre when I post this recipe as I don’t really know many people eating shark. These are not the giant man eater shark that Im talking about. These are edible baby sharks. If you think this dish is bizarre, please feel free to comment. And let me know if you had any bizarre dishes before as well….like a hundred days old egg, a fertilized egg, (these are had in China), or even a stuffed camel?! I read from a food article that stuffed camels are found in the Middle Eastern countries, but I don’t really know how far this is true. May be it is a myth. And the way they described stuffing the camel was even strange. The camel is stuffed with a large sheep or goat and rice along with dried nuts and fruits. The sheep itself will be stuffed again with around 20 chicken and rice, nuts and spices. And not to finish there, the chicken itself is stuffed with a huge number of boiled eggs and rice!!!!And this serves a mob of 100 people it seems!!! I don’t how the camel is going to be cooked though, and they wont fit the oven or any vessel.:). So may be it is a fairy tale.
The only part that I hate in making this dish is the smell of the fish that comes out while boiling. Keep the kitchen well ventilated and open the windows. Else you will have a fish smeling house!

Sraavu varuthathu (Crushed Shark in spicy coconut masala)
serves 4

Ingredients :
300-400 gms Shark or 1 ½ cups of crumbles shark..
1 ½ cup onion
2 tbs kashmiri chilli powder
1 tbs Coriander powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
3 green chillies
½ cup freshly grated coconut
15 curry leaves
5 tbs coconut oil
salt as required.

Preparation:


1. Boil shark in plenty of water for about 15-20 minutes until it is cooked.
2. Drain off the water and wash the fish in cold water. Peel off the skin and crumble the fish using hand. (I had 1 ½ cup of shark crumble. Take equal amount of onion as shark crumbles.)
3. Heat a frying pan and add oil. To this, add chopped onion, green chillies, curry leaves and fish and cook it covered until onions go soft and transparent.

4. Add chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder and salt and mix well and sauté for around 2 minutes until the raw smell of the spices goes off.
5. Add in the grated coconut and mix well and cook it covered for about 5 more minutes.

It goes very well with rice, rice pan cakes etc.

Chemmeen Varattiyathu (King Prawns in spicy masala)

Ingredients:
2 cups King Prawns,shelled and deveined.
3 cups Onion sliced thinly (2 medium size)
1 ½ cups chopped tomato (4 medium size)
2 tbs Kashmiri Chilli Powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
3-4 twigs of curry leaves
2-4 green chilli (as per taste)
4 tbs coconut oil
Salt as required.

Preparation:
1. Heat a large heavy base non stick cooking vessel on medium flame and add all ingredients except curry leaves.
2. Cook it slowly on a medium heat until onions are cooked well and mushy and prawn are completely cooked. It takes around 20-25 minutes. When it reaches that stage, add curry leaves and stir well. It is delicious with rice, ottil polliachathu, marichedutha appam etc. if you want you can add half a cup of water at the end just before adding curry leaves.

Marichedutha Appam (Rice pancakes 1)

These are ver simple and delicious pancakes made of rice to go with many curries including Chicken curry, fish curry, prawn curry, prawn varattiyathu etc….And having a sweet tooth, I have it with sugar! I like it that way. I use to have this at home when my mom makes it for us either for breakfast or dinner. I am surprised that I never made them even once. I just forgot about it. Two days back when I was thinking what to make for dinner, Marichedutha Appam just popped into my mind out of blue, and since I had lots of leftover rice in the freezer I made them. My mom makes different kinds of stuffs like Ottil pollicha appam, mutta ssurkki, thenga pathal, kalthappam etc..out of the same batter. They are made with slight difference and yet taste so different. I think this name might be very new to many people as it is used colloquially in our place.

Marichedutha Appam
Serves 2-3

Ingredients:1½ cup raw rice (Pachari)
2 cups cooked rice
1 medium onion
3 cups water
salt as required
oil- as required

Preparation
1.Soak rice in water for a minimum of 1 hour.
2.Grind it along with coked rice and onion until very smooth and no grains of rice can be felt when you touch it.
3. Add enough salt and mix well. When u taste the batter, you must feel it a bit salty but again not too salty.
4. Heat a frying pan at high heat, add 2 tbs of oil and pour 2-3 ladleful of batter (1-1 ½ cups of batter) and just wobble the pan a little to spread the batter evenly.
5. Cover with a lid and cook until the bottom side is cooked and you can see golden patches here and there. The top part will be just getting set. At this stage, using a spatula, flip over the marichedutha appam. If you see that its breaking, and is difficult to turn, close the lid and wait for some more time until you can turn the appam easily. Cook the other side also in the same way until you get golden patches here and there. Keep turning a couple of time to ensure that it is fully cooked and edge is crispy. It takes a bit of time. May be 4-6 minutes to get one cooked.
6. Continue the same process with the rest of batter until all batter is used up.
Serve hot with its best combination King prawn varattiyathu, or even simple chicken curry or fish curry.

Notes1. I used 26” pan to make this. If you are using a larger pan, pour more batter.
2. My mom used to add half the amount of cooked rice to the raw rice. But she uses cooked long grain rice. I tried using the same amount with the cooked basmati rice, but my appams turn out very hard. So I increased the amount of cooked rice.
3. Even if it is cooked, the rice inside will be a bit sticky. It will get set once it is cooled.
4. The thinner version of marichedutha appam which uses only one ladle of batter and just a drop of oil or no oil is ottil pollichahu. But it tastes different and ofcourse takes longer than marichedutha appam