Beef Ularthiyathu and a Set of Awards!

I am a core fan of beef meat even though I don’t prepare many dishes with it. Back home, we normally have very few dishes with beef like Aana pathal with beef gravy, Beef porichathu to go with Malabar pathiri (a famous rice roti from Malabar region) which is a unique and popular combination, irachi ada or beef samosas and a simple beef curry. My favourite has always been the beef porichathu or the beef fry, the recipe of which I will post as I prepare it. Here is a simple yet an interesting recipe for beef; does not belong to Malabar, but quite a common preparation found in the central and southern part of Kerala. The curry is strongly flavoured with the spices and is much different from the Malabar recipes. The recipe is quite similar to my Mutton ularthiyathu recipe, but I played around by shuffling a bit with the ingredients.

Ingredients:

500g Beef cut into required size, small or big as preferred.

For marinade:

1 ½ Tbsp lightly roasted coriander powder

½ Tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1 tbsp minced ginger

5 large flakes of garlic, grated (1 heaped Tbsp)

¼ tsp turmeric powder

Salt – as required

To roast and grind:

1 – 1 ½ tsp fennel seeds

3 cloves

3 cardamoms

2 small pieces of cinnamon sticks of 1 inch length

1 tsp pepper corns

Others:

1 ½ cup sliced shallots (1 used ¾ cup onion and ¾ cup shallots)

1 large tomato

¼ - 1/3 cup sliced coconut (Thengkkothu)

3 twig curry leaves

3 Tbsp coconut oil (Vegetable oil may be substituted)

Salt-as required

Preparation:

1.Wash the beef well, marinate with ground coriander, Kashmiri Chilli powder, turmeric powder, ginger, garlic and salt for half an hour.

2. Heat a pressure cooker, add this marinated beef and cook on low- medium heat making sure not to burn the meat. When it is well cooked, turn off the heat. If there is lot of liquid released from the meat, turn the heat up and boil off the excess water until the meat is smothered in thick gravy.

3. In another sauce pan/frying pan, heat oil. Add sliced shallots, little salt and sliced coconut and sauté on medium heat until onions starts turning golden colour. (It may take around 15-20 minutes on medium heat, but it may vary on the pan and medium of heat used).

4. At this stage, add the gravy smothered meat, tomato,2 twigs of curry leaves and powdered spices leaving ½ teaspoon behind for the final sprinkling and mix well. Cover and cook for 4-5 minutes on low flame until it gets really thick. Keep sautéing until the curry is quite dry and starts taking a light blackish/dark brown colour.

5. Sprinkle the rest of spices and 1 twig of curry leaves and mix well.

This curry tastes better the next day, so you may prepare it ahead of time if you are preparing for any parties. Garnish with chopped coriander and sliced coconut. Can be served as a side dish for rice, chappathi, porotta, pathiris etc.

This post also comes with a set of awards from two of my fellow bloggers. Food lovers had shared this sunshine award. Thanks you dear.Another set of award including sunshine award is shared by Ayesha of lifetoday. Thanks u Ayesha.

The award also comes with a bunch of questions to write about yourself. I have done that part sometime back and yoou can see that here.

 

I would like to pass on these awards to the following fabulous bloggers:

 

Sarah of Vazhayila

Gulmohar of Collaborative curry

Divya Kudua of Divyascookbook

Maria of Mariasmenu

Pavithra of dishes from my kitchen

Nithya of 4thsensecooking.

Tina of  Kaipunyam

Parita of Paritasworld

Sailaja of Sailaja kitchen.

Orangey Palmiers and a Note of Thanks!

Palmiers or elephant ears are crunchy and flaky French pastries. These are made of simple readymade puff pastry sheets, rolled and sprinkled with sugar and then baked after slicing them to required thickness of your choice.These are just a breeze to make and tastes simply yum. As you see, it requires just 2-3 ingredients and varies what you like to flavour it with, savoury or sweet. Recently these heart shaped cookies were cooking on few blogs when I kept an eye on it just because of its simplicity. I made an unusual twist by adding the orange rind which gave it a zesty boost. You may simply make the original version by omitting the zest and using just plain sugar. The savory ones would make a lovely appetiser for large parties since it is so easy to make and will taste good.

Other variation that you may try instead of orange zest and sugar (I haven’t tried yet though):

1. Substituting orange zest by equal amount of lemon zest.

2. Sprinkling a bit if cinnamon instead of orange zest to get a lovely cinnamon flavour

3. Sprinkling cocoa along with sugar.

4. Sprinkling 3- 4 tbsp of grated parmesan to make a savory version.

5. Sprinkling ground nuts of your choice and sugar - (This sounds quite yummy.)

6. Spreading a thin layer of nutella.

7. A light spread of pesto..etc..

I came across some of the above on many sites, so you may try your versions or leaving it simply plain, just by adding sugar alone.

Here, I have used unrolled puff pastry which you need to roll. You can use the ready rolled pastry which makes the job even more easier, i.e you don’t have to roll the pastry if you are using the ready rolled ones and you can follow the same method given here.

Ingredients:

1 block of unrolled puff pastry (375g); (I used Jus-rol Puff pastry)

4 Tbsp granulated sugar + 2 ½ Tbsp for coating

2 tbsp finely grates zest of orange (A large orange’s rind)

Preparation:

1. Thaw the puff pastry block as per the packet instruction. But make sure that the pastry is cold when you roll it; for the ease of rolling, without the pastry sticking to the rolling pin. (Mine was not really cold so i had a bit of trouble rolling the pastry.)

2. On a clean work top, sprinkle 2 tbsp of sugar. Place the block of puff pastry on the sugar. Start rolling the pastry until you get a large rectangle.

3. Sprinkle another 2 tbsp of sugar all over and rub with hand to uniformly distribute it. Sprinkle the orange rind all over.

4. Now, make a marker on the centre of the rolled pastry. A light depression with your finger or a knife will do. Start rolling the pastry from the longer side until it reaches the centre of the pastry, where you have marked it. Roll the other longer side in the same manner until it reaches the centre of the pastry where it meets the other rolled end. When both rolled ends are next to each other, bring the one rolled side over the other. (See the pictorial representation). Press gently to stick the rolls together.

5. Cut the pastry into ¾ inch pieces and chill if for ½ an hour in the refrigerator. You will get about 20 – 24 pieces. Dip each sliced pastry in sugar (It will need around 2 ½ Tbs of sugar for coating.) until it is completely coated in sugar and place the sugar coated pastry on a cookie sheet lined with grease-proof paper, cut side facing down.

6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake it in the centre of oven for about 15 minutes until the bottom part is golden brown. Flip all the palmiers with a spatula, bake for another 5-7 minutes until golden. serve with tea.

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The note of thanks that I mentioned in the title was thanking my dearest friend Shabna, lovingly known as Shabbu. She also hails from the malabar region and She is one of the gifted freinds that I received through blogging. Shabbu is my regular reader, one of my strong inspirations and a sisterly friend. Shabbu is a non-blogger but She regularly tries my recipes, gives me feedback and sends me the pictures after she makes them. I have to apologize, she had sent me these pictures very long back and its a shame that it took me so long to post it up here. There were times when I just thought of dropping blogging and it was shabbu who kept encouraging me to keep going. Thank you shabbu and Sorry it took me so long to post your pics. Here are few of the foods she prepared from my blog:

Aromatic Rice Pulao :

 Chemmeen Muringavaal Curry (King Prawns and Drumstick in thick coconut gravy)

Malabar Chemmeen Biriyani (Malabar Prawn Biriyani)

Malabar Fish Biriyani

Meen Pathiri

Kumbalanga Curry (Pumkin curry)

Malabar Chicken curry

Thanks for Stopping by.......

Saba’s Almond and Pineapple cheesecake

This cheesecake is one of my treasured recipes. I have been making this much before I learned my basic cooking or much before anything that is posted on this blog. This recipe was given to me by my sweet sweet friend saba, and so the whole credit goes to her. This recipe falls into my favourite dessert list and it does the same for whoever tasted it. Now, if you ask me who Saba is, she is one of the best friends I met in the university - a lovely lady with an attractive character and is a great cook too. We cracked jokes, laughed so much and our no-boundary midnight talks over phone were all memorable. I just had a course with her during my university days and that was one of my most enjoyed courses. Even though we just had a single course together, we became so close to each other in no time. She is a gem of a person and is now a mother of a little princess. Saba started cooking much before I did and her foods are finger licking good. Her recipes are too good and the results are guaranteed to be perfect. This is one of the oldest in my recipe collection and one of the best recipes that I return to over and over again. Thank you sabah for sharing this wonderful recipe.

Saba’s Almond and Pineapple cheesecake

For the base:

20 digestive biscuits

3 large tbs butter

Filling:

450g canned Pineapple (Use 1 cup of the syrup from the can and ¾ cup of pineapple; not all of it.)

200 mls whip cream (double cream)

3/4 cup whole almonds

12-14 heaped tablespoons caster sugar depending on taste.

400g cream cheese.

3 teaspoon unflavoured gelatine

For the glace:

1 cup shop bought pineapple juice

1 ½ Tbsp cornflour

2 Tbsp sugar (optional)

Few drops of yellow food colouring

For caramelized almonds (appx. measurements):

Heat 4-5 Tbsp of sugar to a saucepan and heat until it stsrats turning deep golden colour.

15-20 whole amonds

Method:

1. Break the biscuits roughly and tip it in the food processor. Process until you get coarse crumbs or fine crumbs, just the way you like it. (It will be around 3 1/4 cups of crumbs). Melt the butter in a saucepan and add it to the crumbs in the processor. Pulse until well incorporated.

2. Line the base and sides of a loose bottom cake tin or spring-form cake tin with baking paper. You may use a clear pyrex dish as well. Tip in the biscuit crumb mixture and press with the back of the spoon firmly to make an even base. Refrigerate until you prepare the filling.

2. Mix gelatine in 1 cup of pineapple juice and heat on low heat until all the gelatine crystals are dissolved. Set aside until cool, but NOT set.

3. Grind sugar until. Grind almonds by adding few tablespoon of powdered sugar. (Don’t grind almonds without sugar; the oil from the almonds will make the mixture sticky and it won’t grind well).

4. In a blender, add cream cheese, double cream, cooled gelatine and pineapple juice, 3/4 cup chopped pineapples, sugar and almonds to a blender and blend until smooth. Spread this mixture slowly on top of the cooled biscuit base. Refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hrs or preferably overnight.

5. For making the glace, Add pineapple juice, food colouring, corn flour and sugar into a saucepan. Heat the mixture until thick. Let it cool slightly. Pour the glace over the cold cheesecake and spread with the back of the spoon.

6. Garnish with caramelized almonds and serve cold. For making caramelized almonds, Heat 4-5 Tbsp of sugar in a saucepan and heat until it starts turning deep golden colour. Don’t stir with spoon. When it reaches this colour, add almonds and stir well. Pour the almonds to a greased aluminium foil, separate the nuts using a spoon and set aside until cooled. Separate it and arrange on the glace.

Notes and tips:

1.Make sure you use the unflavoured gelatine for the recipe and NOT the pineapple flavoured gelatine or any other flavours. These are jelly pudding and it doesn’t work for this recipe.

2. Sabah has suggested to use Philadelphia cream cheese and Ell- n-vire (not sure of the spelling). You may use other brands of cheese and cream as well.

3. Add more or less sugar depending on the sourness of the pineapple. Normally 12 tablespoon is ideal. But if the fruit is sour, add 14 tablespoon or even 16.

4. Glace and nuts for garnishing is purely optional. I just made them to look appealing.

5. Arrange the caramelized nuts on top just before serving since caramel tends to dissolve as it comes in contact with the glace.

Thenga Varutharacha Kozhi Curry (Chicken in Sautéed Coconut Gravy)

This particular chicken curry is one common curry that is prepared in almost every home in Kannur but with slight variations in the amount of spices involved. This curry is normally prepared to go with Ari pathal or popularly known as pathiri which are thin rice pan cakes or rice rotis, neypathal, Steamed rice cake or our humble ‘Puttu’, plain boiled rice etc. It has quite lot of gravy so it's a perfect curry for gravy lovers. I din’t give accurate measures here so that you can play around with the ingredients to suit to your own taste. You can add them or reduce them to your liking. I sometimes add less chilli powder, sometimes add more and so is the coconut and other spices including fennel seeds. I love the smell of fennel seeds and the special aroma that it imparts on the dish, so I tend to add more of it usually. One thing I would like to mention is that since I have used fresh spices rather than ground ones, the flavour will be really strong. So add them carefully so that you don’t end up over-powering the curry with the spices.


Thenga Varutharacha Kozhi Curry (Chicken in Sautéed Coconut Gravy)

Serves 6-8
Ingredients:
1200 g Chicken, cut into medium size pieces
4 med-large onions chopped (4 cups, 500g)
9 large cloves of garlic minced (2 Tbsp)
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 ½Tbsp - 2½ Tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder
1 ½ Tbsp Coriander powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
4 small tomatoes chopped (1 ½ cups, appx. 250g)
1 ¼ cup – 1 ½ cups freshly grated coconut
3-5 cardamoms
4-6 cloves
3-4 small pieces cinnamon sticks (1 cm each)
½ tsp- 1 tsp Fennel seeds (Perumjeerakam)
1½ - 2 cups water
3 twigs curry leaves (Around 40 leaves)
2 chopped green chillies
2-4 Tbsp coconut Oil (Vegetable oil can also be used)

Preparation:
1.In a Large non-stick saucepan, heat oil. Add the chopped onions and salt and sauté until it starts turning golden. Add ginger and garlic and sauté for couple of minutes until raw smell goes off.

2. Add chilli powder, coriander powder and turmeric powder and sauté for few seconds until the raw smell goes off. If the mixture is too dry, sprinkle little water so that you don’t burn the spices.

3. Add in the chopped tomatoes, stir well, cover and cook on medium flame until the tomatoes are well cooked and are mushy.

4. Add chicken pieces and ½ cup – 1 cup water. Stir well. Cover and cook till chicken is almost cooked.

5. While the chicken is cooking, heat another frying pan. Add grated coconut, and all the spices (cloves, cardamom, fennel seeds and cinnamon). Dry roast it on low- medium heat until the coconut takes a golden colour. Grind these roasted coconut and spices using 1 ½ - 2 cups water to a smooth paste.

6. Add this to the curry along with curry leaves and the green chillies and bring to boil. Reduce the heat and cook for further 5 minutes until all the flavours are well blended.

Semiya Payasam (Vermicelli Kheer)

Semiya payasam or Vermicelli Kheer is one of the most easiest and commonly made Payasam aka Puddings in Kerala. These are simple to make and tastes delicious and is sure to please anyone who has sweet tooth. Whenever a celebration hits at home, then it would be a payasam day as well; any kind of payasam depending what people like. Ours used to be a large family and all have different tastes and liking. Some of us including myself likes ‘ Cherupayar payasam or Moong dal payasam’ and some likes this Semiya payasam. So my mom has to make both (not the same day though) to do some justice and stop the nagging of the kids. I have cooked this several times and never had a recipe of mine as such, just eyeball the measurements and add things as it goes. Sometimes ad condensed milk if I have it else add just sugar. Here is a recipe that I got from the Packet of the vermicelli and prepared it as such, apart from adding cumin and dry ginger powder. I saw it in another book and added a bit of it and I loved the flavour.



Semiya payasam (Vermicelli Kheer)
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:
½ cup cup vermicelli broken into 2 cm strips
¼ - ½ cup sugar (Start adding ¼ cup first and adjust according to your taste. I added ½ cup, i.e 8Tbsp)
3 – 3 ½ cups whole milk (I used semi-skimmed milk)
5 cardamom pods
¼ tsp dry ginger powder
¼ tsp cumin powder
2-3 Tbsp ghee/clarified butter
¼ tsp salt

Preparation:
1. Roast vermicelli in 1-2 tbsp ghee until light golden in colour; set aside.

2. Bring milk to boil in a sauce pan and add the fried vermicelli. Bring to slow boil, reduce the heat and cook it UNCOVERED for 10-15 minutes by stirring occasionally, until vermicelli is cooked.

3. Add sugar and salt and cook for further few minutes until all sugar is dissolved and the payasam has reached your required consistency.

4. Add crushed cardamom, cumin powder and dry ginger powder, stir well and bring to boil. Dotn boil for too long, just few seconds would be fine. Turn the heat off.

5. In a small pan, add the rest of ghee and roast cashew till golden. Fry the raisins in the same manner until it has puffed up. Add these fried cashews and raisins along with the ghee to the hot payasam. Garnish with some of the fried nuts and fruit or pistachios. Serve it warm or chilled.



Notes and variations:
1.The kheer normally tends to get thick as it cools down in room temperature or when chilled in the fridge. If it happens, just put the payasam back to heat. When hot, add little milk to the consistency you want, stir well and bring to boil again and adjust the sweetness if required. Alternately you can pour some milk and microwave it.

2. You might get roasted semolina from the Asian stores. If using roasted semolina, you may use that directly into the kheer without roasting.

3. You may add ½ can of condensed milk in step 3 and adjust the sweetness by adding more sugar.

4. You can also make saffron flavoured kheer By dissolving few strands of saffron in hot milk and add it to the kheer in step 4 instead of cardamom, dry ginger and cumin, but you may have to boil for couple of minutes to infuse the flavour.

5. You may omit dry ginger and cumin powder and add just the cardamoms.

Delicious Brownies for 2nd Blog Anniversary!

This month is full of celebrations at home. My hubby’s B’day, my son’s B’day and what else? My Blog’s second Anniversary! My blog turned two on 11th March, just a day after my hubby’s B’day. I wanted to make this a special post on 11th itself but I was all busy during these days, preparing something for my hubby’s B’day and had to go out of town to do some shopping as well. Since the major shopping malls are not near our apartment, myself and my son took a bus to the main town centre. It was his first bus ride and he thoroughly enjoyed it, me too.

I can’t just believe that I have been scribbling in here for 2 years!!I don’t know if blog was the reason, but my cooking has gone much beyond than what I thought I would be able to do. Lots and lots of experiments, trying out new ingredients that comes in everyday cooking, discovering new taste, learning new cuisine and trying to perfect each and every dish has all become part of a blogging routine. I thoroughly enjoy cooking and trying out new dishes every time. There has been many success and quite a few failures (one happened even today.) during experiments which has to be eaten (Not the failed outcome) by my poor hubby and son and sometimes friends who come over. Bless them all. Blogging can also be stressful at times, for no reason, as if we are preparing for an exam or so. Lot to think about; which recipe to blog next, what to type, how to write, how the pictures should be, it’s background and so and so, yeah, sounds like and international matter, right? I am definite that every blogger will be going through the same phase, thinking about blog matters every time apart from sleeping.



Apart from all that, blogging has gifted me a bunch of beautiful friends who has become so close to me over time. There is also a beautiful network of virtual friends who I am regular in contact with through comment section and sometimes orkut. I would like to thank each and every one including my readers for their encouragement and their appreciation through out and accepting me in the blogger’s world.

Now coming to the recipe, I have posted another recipe of brownies long back when then I promised to post brownies which uses cocoa powder. One of my readers ‘Faina’ had asked me for an easy dessert recipe and this one is for her. I found this recipe so easy to prepare; hardly took me any time. When I go for any recipes, I am always on the lookout for one that uses minimum amount of butter. I wanted to make a small batch of brownies, just to satisfy my chocolate craving. I followed a recipe from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mmm-Mmm-Better-Brownies/Detail.aspx. This was one with loads of great reviews from people. So, I made it over the weekend and took half of it to our friends place. They loved it so much that the whole stuff got over the same night. If i had kept it at home myself and my son would have finished the whole stuff by myself. We just could take our hands off the pan. I kept on pinching small bits from the corner of the brownie little by little just to realise that a huge portion has already been eaten! This time I dint add any nuts to the brownie because my son hates nuts in his cakes. You may add them if you wish. I wanted to add a bit of coffee granules in the recipe as well but remembered them only when I popped the pan into the oven!

Now,to check the doneness of the brownie, insert a skewer into the centre of the cake and you should be able to see little moist and sticky crumbs at the tip of the skewer. That is if you like your brownie to be fudgy and slightly chewy. I guess I like mine really underdone, so I might reduce the cooking time even further. The batter itself was so delicious:).



Ingredients:
½ cup plain flour
1/3 cup (5 Tbsp) Cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs (if small, use 3)
1/3 cup (50g)white chocolate, cut into chunks (optional)
1/3 cup (50g) dark chocolate, cut into chunks (optional)
½ cup (113g) butter melted
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
½ Tbsp vanilla extract

Preparation:
1. Preheat an oven to 175 degrees Celsius and line a 8 inch cake tin with baking paper. Melt butter in a sauce pan, on low heat. Once completely melted, add sugar and mix well. Let it cool completely.

2. Add vanilla extract and eggs and mix thoroughly using a wire whisk, just to breakup eggs and get a homogenous mixture.

3. In a separate bowl, sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Make sure there are no lumps.

4. Add this sifted flour mixture to the egg and sugar mixture. Mix well using a spoon.

5. Add the chocolate chunks and mix well.

6. Pour this batter onto the prepared tin and bake for about 30 minutes.

Notes:
1. Make sure you don’t add eggs to hot butter and sugar mixture; else you will end up having scrambled eggs!

2. You don’t have to use an electric blender to whisk and don’t over beat after the addition of eggs.

3. While melting butter, make sure you melt at low heat. High heat can burn butter.