Pineapple Jam

Pineapple jam is one of my favourite Jams. Simplest of it can be made without any spices, just sugar, lime juice and pineapple. But to add an extra depth you may opt for some spices of your choice. I have used whole cinnamon and cloves which was inspired by Shn of Mishmash. Long back she had posted a stunning pineapple jam recipe and the drool worthy pictures were stuck in my brain. Making of jam was in my mind ever since. Recently I spotted some huge pineapples on offer and they smelt heavenly. I just grabbed one didn’t think anything else other than this pineapple jam. I love pineapple flavour, may it be in juice, desserts, cake, jam or even curries. But like many other fruits, I am not keen on eating pineapple as it is. Adding a bit of sin to the fruit makes it more appealing and tempting!

You may add or reduce sugar depending on the sweetness of the fruit. My pineapple was quite sweet, and I added the amount of sugar as given in the recipe below. It was perfect for our taste. But I have come across recipe that calls for equal amount of sugar as the fruit, so if your pineapple is not sweet enough, feel free to use more. You may also puree your pineapple to get a spreadable jam or leave it slightly chunky by chopping it fine to get a chunky jam, however you may prefer your jam to be. Here the picture of jam displayed on the ramekin is the chunky pineapple jam and on the toast is the finer version of it which is prepared from pureed pineapple. I preferred the latter one better because it had a spreadable consistency.

Pineapple Jam

Almost Fills a 1/2 litre Jar

Ingredients:

750 g very finely chopped pineapple (3 cups)

500g (2 1/3 cups) regular white sugar

2 tsp (10 mls) lime juice

4 cloves (optional)

4 small pieces of cinnamon stick (optional)

Few drops of yellow food colour

Preparation:

1. Mince the pineapple finely or puree in a processor depending on the texture you want your jam to be. You can also leave it slightly chunky if you like your jam that way.

2. Tip the minced/pureed pineapple in a cooking saucepan. Add in sugar, lime juice, cinnamon and cloves. Leave it aside for 3-4 hours or until the sugar has completely dissolved.

3. Place the saucepan on heat, bring to gentle boil and simmer for around 35-50 minutes until it is thick and syrupy; depending on the pan and mode of heat used. Make sure you stir every while because the sugar can easily burn. Add few drops of yellow colour and stir.

4. Meanwhile sterilize the jar and lid in boiling water for 8 -10 minutes.

5. To check the doneness of jam, spread a tablespoon of jam on a cold plate and return the plate to the freezer and chill for a minute. Run your finger through the jam and if you see it wrinkling as you pull, then the jam is ready. If not continue cooking until you reach that ‘wrinkle’ stage. Jam will get thicker and stiffer as it cools down, so make sure you don’t make it really thick. Wait until the jam is completely cooled. Once it is completely cooled it will be easier to judge the consistency of jam you require. (Read notes on how to fix if you overcooked or undercooked your jam). Fish out the whole spices and discard them using a sterilized fork or spoon.

6. Let the jam cool down completely before transferring into a sterilized jam jars. You can use this jam on jam drop cookies, toasts, puddings etc.

Notes:

1. Take care not to include the central stalk of pineapple.

2. If at all your jam gets cooked beyond the required time, and you ended up in candy like jam or very stiff jam that is difficult to spread, don’t panic. Just Pour 4 - 8 Tablespoon (1/4 cup – ½ cup) of water to the jam and bring to gentle boil. Stir well and simmer for 3-4 minutes until the jam reaches a ‘jammy’ consistency.

3. Unlike soft fruits like strawberries and raspberries, pineapple does not break down considerably on mashing. So you may need to mince it to your suitable preference before you prepare it. Well, I pureed it half through cooking when I realized that it doesn’t get mashed on mashing. The texture will be fine and of spreadable consistency on pureeing.

4. Some people likes the flavour of Star anise. You may add half of whole start anise along with other spices. It gives a strong flavour, so be cautious.

Nadan Kozhi Curry (A simple Kerala Style Chicken Curry with Fried Potatoes)

Ingredients:

1 Kilo Chicken cut into medium size pieces

2 ½ large onion finely chopped (340g, 2 ¾ cups)

8 large flakes of garlic minced (2 good Tablespoons)

1 ½ inch fat piece of ginger minced (1 heaped tablespoon)

3 small tomatoes, chopped fine (240g, 1 ¼ cups)

1 large potato diced to 1-1 ½ ”(250g, 1 ½ cups)

2 1/2 – 3 rounded Tbsp lightly roasted coriander powder

1 ½ tsp black pepper powder

¼ tsp turmeric powder

½ tsp Garam masala

4 green chillies, slit lengthwise

A handful of curry leaves

¾ - 1 cup thick coconut milk

Salt as needed

Oil- as needed

4 small pieces cinnamon sticks

3 cardamom pods

5 cloves

½ tsp fennel seeds

Preparation:

1. Wash chicken and drain.

2. Heat a large saucepan to medium heat and add few tablespoon of oil. When hot, add diced potatoes and cook until it turns golden on all sides. Drain on kitchen paper and reserve.

3. In the same pan, add cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom and fennel seeds and sauté for around 30 seconds until it leaves aroma. Add onion and salt and sauté till it is completely soft and starts to turn golden. Add ginger and garlic and sauté for a minute until the raw smell goes off.

4. Add tomatoes and slit chillies, cover the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes until tomatoes goes completely mushy.

5. Add coriander powder, pepper powder and turmeric powder and sauté for couple of minutes.

6. Add chicken pieces; mix well until it is evenly covered in masala. Add 1/3 cup of waterif requied, cover the pan and cook till chicken becomes tender. (You may omit adding water here, if the chicken is added to the curry without completely being drained.)

7. Add coconut milk, fried potatoes, garam masala and curry leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes until all flavours are well blended. Serve hot with rice, chappathi, coconut rice, Neypathal, poori, Pathiri etc.

Kalakand Made Easy (Microwave Version)

Shab's Cuisine finally exceeded 1 lakh hits, yesterday and here is a decadent sweet to celebrate this small milestone- Kalakand. The counter was uploaded somewhere last year, so the count should be for an year or more. When it comes to Kalakand, it is a popular Indian sweet traditionally made from ‘Chenna’ and ‘Khoya’ and sweetened with sugar. ‘Chenna’ is typically ‘paneer’ (Indian cottage cheese) which is un-ripened cheese prepared by curdling milk either by adding lime juice or acetic acid. On the other hand, ‘Khoya’ is very thick milk reduced by heating milk over a prolonged time. Prepared ‘Paneer’ or ‘chenna’ is then cooked along with ‘Khoya’ until it reduces into doughy and lumpy texture. It is then sweetened with sugar, flavoured and garnished with nuts. The whole process takes a painful amount of time with lot of stirring and constant watching! Quite a time consuming affair, isn’t it? You can watch this traditional preparation of Kalakand at manjulaskitchen. She explains it beautifully there and I got the above information through her video. She has tempted me enough to try the traditional version at home, well, some time later.

Once I started blogging, I was astonished to see the recipes of so many Indian sweets on net and some of them were easy and pretty straight forward! I Had bookmarked some recipes and kalakand was one among top ‘to try’ list. Recently Kalakand appeared on few minute wonders which inspired me even more. So gathered all the ingredients, went ahead and made it without further thinking. For the amount of ingredients given here, it makes huge amount of kalakand, so you may try halving the recipe. I froze the leftovers for later use, which can be thawed just before eating.

Here is a quick version of the exquisite Sweet, easy to do and something that takes considerably less amount of time compared to the original one. Here, the recipe uses ricotta cheese which is an Italian cheese. Freshly prepared paneer may be used instead of ricotta, but you may need to adjust the cooking time accordingly depending on the moisture content. I would say this Kalakand preparation is really good in taste and texture, perfect to soothe your sugar cravings, but it is slightly different from the shop bought ones. It's taste was something like a cross between a Peda and Kalakand, which are both really good but texture was just perfect.

Kalakand (A Popular Indian Sweet made easy)

Serves 20

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups (650 g) Ricotta Cheese

2 * 397g Condensed milk

1/3 cup Cream of wheat/Rawa/semolina (5 Tbsp,sharp)

1/3 cup – ½ cup white granulated sugar

2 tsp Butter or ghee (Clarified butter)

¾ tsp cardamom powder

Chopped almonds to garnish

Chopped pista to garnish

Preparation:

1. In a large 2 litre microwave safe bowl, tip in ricotta, condensed milk, sugar, Cream of wheat and butter or ghee and stir until it is thoroughly combined.

2. Place this bowl in Microwave at cook it at high power for 3 minutes. Take it out, stir well and put it back in for another 3 more minutes. Take it out and stir well again. Do it few more times, but you can increase the time up to 5 minutes and stirring in between, for a total of fifty minutes. Here my Microwave oven is 800 Watts. Ovens with more or less power, cooking times may be changed accordingly. Make sure you keep an eye on it constantly as it may spill out if you are using a small pan. Cook the mixture until you get a slightly stiff mixture, which is something like a very soft dough. Add cardamom powder and mix very well.

3. Tip in the mixture in an oiled dish and spread evenly. Sprinkle some chopped pistachio and almonds on top and press gently. Let it come to room temperature and then chill it in the refrigerator until slightly firm and cut into squares of 2 ½ inches. Makes 16-20 pieces.

Notes:

1.You may replace ricotta with chenna or freshly prepared paneer. Adjust the cooking time depending on microwave oven. Cook until it all the liquid had evaporated and the mixture starts getting lumpy and doughy

2. You may also cook it on the hob using a heavy base saucepan, on a moderate heat if it is convenient, with constant stirring to avoid burning.

Cherry Crumble Cake with Cinnamon

For the last couple of weeks the weather has been perfect, all bright and sunny and I just was in mood for baking something fancy. That is when I spotted this lovely Cherry cake at Mowie’s delicious blog and instantly fell in love with it. This cake was cooked the next day I saw at his space and is one of the best cakes that I had in recent times. I very much like the look and taste of it.  Mowie's recipes are simply superb and his photography is just beyond words - stunning, marvellous, creative and what not! The cake looked like a huge one for my small family, so as usual I halved the recipe and baked it! I don’t really know if halving has made any difference in flavour or taste, but it came out well and you can see the result - A perfectly baked cake, that’ so pretty and elegant. The golden crumble and the bright red cherries added an extra chic to the cake. One thing I would like to put in notice is that I would like my cherries to be slightly immersed in the batter rather than resting on top. So I might try pressing the cherries gently into the batter, just halfway through, so part of the cherries go down the batter and part of it stays on top. Here you go, an amazing recipe, that’s definitely a keeper. Please Visit Mowielicious for the original recipe and inspiring photography.

 

Cherry Crumble Cake with Cinnamon

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

160 g (1 cup) Plain Flour

100 g Unsalted butter, at room temperature

160g (around ¾ cup) Castor sugar

2 Medium eggs

1 Tsp Baking powder

4 Tbsp (1/4 cup)Milk

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

150g Cherries, pitted and halved (1 cup)

Extra sugar to sprinkle

For the crumble:

75g (8 Tbsp/ ½ cup ) Plain flour

50g Cold Butter

40g (2 ½ Tbsp) Castor Sugar

2 Pinches of Cinnamon powder

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius 10 minutes prior to baking. Grease and line a 7” round pan and keep it aside.

2. Whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and creamy.

3. Add eggs one by one and mix well after each addition.

4. In a separate bowl sieve together flour and baking powder.

5. Fold this flour mixture gently into the wet mixture. Do not over mix. Add milk and mix gently until just combined.

6. Pour this batter into the prepared pan and level the surface.

7. Top with cherries and sprinkle some sugar all over until evenly covered.

8. Combine all the ingredients for the crumble with hands until it resembles bread crumbs. Sprinkle it all over cherries evenly covering them.

9. Bake it in the centre rack of the pre heated oven for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean and the crumbs turn golden. Serve warm or cold.

Coconut rice – South Indian style.

Coconut rice is a very popular rice preparation from Southern part of India where coconut is found in abundance in almost every household. In south Indian cooking, anything and everything including gravies, dry curries, rice varieties, snacks, sweets etc mostly uses coconut in different forms at different stages of its maturity. Juice from the tender coconut is used as a refreshing summer drink and the flesh is scooped and eaten. Sometimes the flesh is blended along with the juice for a delicious drink. Mature coconuts are peeled, the shell is then cracked, and the flesh is then grated using a coconut grater, a handy tool designed specially for grating coconut. In the western countries, you might not be able to find the coconut scraper. In that case all what you can do it, place the whole coconut (Husk removed) on flame turning all sides for around 5 minutes. It works well on electric hobs as well. Due to high heat, the shell will loosen from the flesh and start to crack. Drain the coconut water off or drink if if you wish. Cover the heated coconut in a cloth and Crack open the shell using a rolling pin. Covering the coconut using cloth will prevent any mess that occurs while cracking the shell. The flesh can then directly be grated using our regular vegetable box grater and the flesh can be frozen infinitely.

Grated coconut in used in many dishes as it is to give a sweet bite. Mature coconuts are scraped for flesh which is then ground to extract milk which is used in many savoury dishes to impart a rich and sweet taste. It is also used in many desserts and puddings or payasams. It is also famous being used in cookies, tart and cakes. Coconut at later stage is sun dried where oil is then extracted from them and is used for everyday cooking and frying! Now for ease of use, you get coconut in all processed form - readymade coconut milk in cans, coconut in desiccated form and coconut powders that can be just mixed with hot water to produce coconut milk and even coconut cream. Freshly grated coconuts are also available widely in frozen form mainly in the Asian stores. All these processed form of coconut tastes good, but nothing would beat the fresh coconut taste. That’s just a general info for my non-Indian readers here. Here you go with yet another tasty rice preparation, which goes well with many vegetarian and non vegetatian curries equally.

South Indian Coconut rice

Serves 6

Ingredients:

3 cups Basmati rice (uncooked)

1 ½ cup freshly grated coconut

Salt as required

Water - to boil rice.

For tempering:

1/3 cup – ½ cup coconut oil

2 tsp Urad Dal

1 tsp Channa Dal (Bengal Gram)

1 tsp Black mustard seeds

2 pinches asafoetida

2 twigs curry leaves

4 whole dried Kashmiri red chillies, halved

15 Cashew broken or a handful of peanuts

Preparation:

1.Wash rice several times. In a large saucepan bring water to boil. Add salt and rice and give it a good stir to avoid forming of lumps. Keeping the lid open, cook rice till done. (You can boil water in a kettle, to ease up the process). Take the pan off heat and drain water off in a strainer or colander.

2. Meanwhile, Heat another large saucepan, large enough to accommodate all rice (you can use the same pan used for cooking to reduce washing up!). Add oil and when hot, splutter mustard seeds followed by urad dal, channa dal and cashew nuts.

3. When both dals and nuts start to take golden colour, add chillies and curry leaves and stir for few seconds. Add in coconut and stir well to coat all the tempered oil and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add asafoetida and mix.

4. Tip in the drained rice and mix well until the tempered coconut is evenly distributed all over the rice. Serve hot with any non vegetarian or vegetarian curries.

N.B: Make sure not to burn the lentils because that will impart bitter flavour to the rice.

Coconut Prawns with Spices

This is one recipe that I turn back to again and again when I am lost in thought on what to prepare for side dish! We, approaching the edge of being fully carnivorous, I have to come up with some non-veg side dishes to go with any vegetarian main course. This is one quick side dish that I prepare with some ready peeled prawns in the freezer. Very unexpected marriage of flavours happening in here, unlike the regular prawn preparations you may find in my blog and I have ever eaten. I found this recipe on pack of maggi coconut milk powder, made few lazy tweaks and here is the final outcome. Please refer to notes for the original notes.

Ingredients:

250g Cleaned jumbo king prawns

1 Tbsp oil (vegetable or coconut)

1 Large onion, grated (140g)

1 Large clove of Garlic grated

2 Dried Kashmiri chillies, chopped finely (optional)

½ tsp cumin powder

1 tsp paprika/Kashmiri Chilli powder

1 ½ Tbsp yogurt

Scant ¼ tsp cardamom, powdered

Scant ¼ tsp cinnamon, powdered

Scant ¼ tsp cloves, powdered

½ tsp crushed cumin seeds

2 Tbsp coconut milk powder
Salt - as required

Preparation:

1.Heat oil in a saucepan or frying pan. Add grated onion,grated garlic, chopped chillies, paprika or chilli powder and salt. Sauté until onions starts to turn golden.

2. Add prawns and curd. Mix well, cover and cook for around 8-10 minutes on medium flame until almost cooked.

3. Add coconut powder along with rest of the spice, stir well and cook for further 3-4 minutes until the gravy is almost dry and smothered in the sauce.

Notes:

1. The original recipe calls for pounding fresh spices and adding it at the end. If you are patient enough to pound the spices, roast 1 cardamom, 2 whole cloves and a small pieces of cinnamon stick and pound it fine. Add it at the end along with coconut instead of ready made spice powders. Freshly pounded spices give it a fresh aroma than the ready powdered spices.

2. Original recipe also doesn’t call for dried chillies. Adding dried chillies and chilli powder makes it really hot. So add paprika along with the dried red chillies or omit the dried ones as per your taste.