Barely over a week left for 2010 to end and another new year to begin… fresh new dreams, new ideas to work on, perhaps some setbacks, then finding your feet again, broken resolutions, and maybe promises, and some prayers that will be answered. Ending another blog year with a personal favourite… so fresh… it has to be mint.

Ingredients
1 cup fresh mint leaves
1 1/2 cups fresh coriander, leaves, stems, all, chopped roughly
1 lemon sized ball of tamarind or juice of one lemon
1 medium onion, chopped roughly
1 tablespoon ginger, chopped
1 green chilly or 1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon sugar/jaggery
salt to taste

Method
1. Grind all the ingredients in your blender to a smooth paste.
2. Remove, bottle, and refrigerate. Enjoy over sandwich, rice, whatever!

Nayantara, my daughter loves collecting leaves, twigs, and grass… and from my own experience I can only say I know it will advance into collecting shells, stones, pine cones, tree barks, old bottles, beer coasters… its a long list. I think this sort of thing gets embedded in the genes. For the holidays… leaving you with some green love picked up by Nayantara! Here’s to peace, and sanity ♥

Generally speaking everyday Indian food is of the rustic sort, nothing fancy, and is made up of simple ingredients that are locally available, and are thrown together in various combinations with fabulous results. Chutneys fall in this category, Indians love their piquant, hot, sweet, tangy, and spicy chutneys. In villages everyday meals are often incomplete without some sort of chutney as an accompaniment to the daily fare. Take for example in Kerala, southern India, wet chutneys called chammanthi is a popular concept, and considering how easily these are available, coconut is the chief ingredient of these chutneys. Dried coconut is toasted over an open fire and ground coarsely with ginger, curry leaves, tamarind, and red chillies, seasoned with sea salt and coconut oil, this simple chammanthi is at the heart of  a simple village meal.

In Maharasthra, western India, dry chutneys are more popular and again here peanuts/groundnuts being abundant, a garlic and peanut chutney is quite popular. In Andhra, chutney podi (powder) is made with easily available lentils and pulses, again Tamil Nad is popular for its molaha podi (roughly translated as gunpowder), eaten with soft, steamy idli.

This dry chutney is similar to the simple garlic and peanut chutney Maharashtrians make. But for the record you must know, that I have improvised just a tiny bit. The chillies I have used are Kashmiri chillies, gives a fantastic, smoky taste and is not too hot at all. Do try this chutney, tastes great mixed with plain rice, sprinkled over bread or roti, with a dollop if ghee. You can’t get more authentically desi than this!

Ingredients for the Chutney

1 cup shredded coconut
4 to 5 kashmiri red chillies (kashmiri laal mirch)
1/2 cup skinned peanuts, toasted
1 teaspoon coriander powder
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon grated jaggery
salt to taste

Method

1. In a skillet, over medium low heat, toast the kashmiri red chillies. The chillies need to be toasted just short of it smoking, at this point add the chopped garlic and shredded coconut into the same skillet. Keep stirring and toast until the coconut turn golden brown. Take off fire and let cool, enough to handle.
2. Using the grinder option in your blender, grind together, toasted peanuts, garlic, coconut, kashmiri chilly, coriander powder and salt – all to a coarse powder. Check for salt, add more if needed.
3. Now add the grated jaggery and pulse a couple of times.
4. Store in an air tight container. At room temperature this chutney should last a couple of weeks at least, you could refrigerate it for longer storage.

My paternal grandfather, my achachan, was an excellent cook. I am sure if he were alive today he might be outraged at how some of the traditional recipes have evolved bearing no resemblance to their former selves. Achachan had no interest in farming – which was terrible for a household whose mainstay was agriculture… instead he wanted to cook. At some point in the 1930s he boarded a ship and cooked his way to Penang. Here he worked as a khansamah on one of the plantations until WW2, at which point he returned home to his village and set up a Tea Club (the café culture was yet to arrive).

Years later when my mother entered their household, my achachan apparantly found his true successor. And it is to her that he handed down his precious cookbook. Now torn at the edges, its delicate pages brown with age – it perhaps holds the secret beginnings of many tamil-malayali dishes we see today and some that have disappeared up with the chimney smoke.

In an attempt to resurrect these old recipes I have started trying them out in my kitchen. I try not not to improvise and to stay true to achachan’s cookbook, that way we get the idea of what the dish tasted like, back then. The language in the book is old malayalam and I do take a while to read and comprehend it, the measurements are according to old Kerala standards, so I am taking proportionate measurements to suit me.

So here’s Vazhakkai Puli Thuvayal from the good ol’ days. Thuvayal is like a chammanthi/chutney/dip. It essentially belongs to the Tamil kitchen, but I suspect pallakadan malayalis may also be familiar with the taste. The consistency is a bit like hummus, which most people are familiar with. Its really simple to make and I really liked it.

Ingredients
1 large vazhakkai/raw plantain
2, 3 whole dry chilly
1/4 cup urad dal
1 teaspoon tamarind
Salt to taste
Some hot water

Method
1. Char grill the plantain, till it looks cooked, should take around 10 min. or use oven to roast. Discard the charred peel of the plaintain and cube it.
2. In a pan, roast the whole red chilly and the urad dal.
3. Blend together the cubed plantain, roasted red chilly, urad dal, salt, and tamarind, adding a little hot water along the way, until you get a paste with a hummus like consistency.
4. Mix in some warm gingelly oil and have with rice, or use as a dip for chips. Interesting texture, nice taste.

Vazhakkai Thuvayal on other blogs - Cardamom – Vazhakai Thugayal

This post first appeared on my former blog: a vegetarian in the middle east.

Plantain

copyright 2010 eat.write.think

Puli Inji or Injipuli is a special relish or chutney that is traditionally prepared during sadyas (feasts). Previously when large family units lived together, preparations for the next days feast would begin the previous night itself. The feast itself would be prepared by the men folk, while women and children helped with the chopping, cleaning and so on.

Even now, particularly in rural Kerala, when families gather together during weddings one can enjoy this togetherness and anticipation of the celebratory feast yet to come. Sadya vibhavangal (dishes) never (and shouldn’t) vary in taste or sequence of servings. The sadya is always served on a plaintain leaf. Every dish has its own place when served, with rice holding the place of pride; portions of boiled morsels squashed with steaming stews and curries, consumed with an alacrity that can put city dwellers, with their spoilt eating habits, to shame. Along with the main dishes, like kaalan, olan, avial, sambhar, thoran, pachadi, kichadi, a portion of the leaf is reserved for the crispys – plantain chips, sharkara veratti (jaggery coated plaintain chips) and a variety of relishes and pickles – puli inji, ayiram curry, manga curry, or naranga curry – all finger licking good!

Puli Inji itself is an interesting amalgamation of tastes and textures, it gets its heat from the chillies, spiciness and flavour from the ginger, sweetness from jaggery, and tartness from tamarind. My grandmother was particularly partial to the puli inji and therefore during sadya cooking always a little extra would be prepared and bottled separately for everyday consumption, and muthy (as I affectionately call my grandma) would take exactly one teaspoonful everyday along with her lunch – “onnu thottu nakkan” (for a lick, she would say).

There are a few posts on various blogs about puli inji preparation, there’s one at Kitchen Mishmash which is different in its usage of fenugreek and urad dal, my recipe comes from my mother, so its the way my family has always made it, because the taste has never varied.

copyright 2010 eat.write.think

fills a 500 ml bottle

Ingredient
1/2 cup ginger, finely chopped
1/2 cup green chilly, finely chopped
2 cups tamarind extract (soak half cup tamarind in hot water, strain)
4 tablepsoons jaggery, grated
2, 3 teaspoon chilly powder
1 teasoon turmeric powder
2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 teaspoon mustard seeds
3 sprigs curry leaves
2 dried red chillies, broken
1/4 cup gingelly oil

Method
1. Boil the tamarind water along with salt, turmeric and the chilly powder, in a stainless steel stockpot. Once the water reaches boiling point, reduce to simmer.
2. Meanwhile heat gingelly oil in a saucepan – splutter the mustard and the red chillies, followed by the chopped ginger, green chillies and curry leaves. Mix well and fry till the ginger starts browning. Turn off the flame.
3. Pour the ginger mixture, the oil and all, into the stockpot and continue simmering till a thick consistency is reached.
4. Add the grated jaggery, taste, and adjust the salt or the sweetness accordingly.

Puli Inji can be enjoyed everyday, as a tangy accompaniment to simple meals. Hope the recipe made sense! The puli inji keeps well for a long time, but if you stay in the tropics refrigerating the bottle will help.

Green tomatoes – as a child, I thought they were a different plant altogether but over the years I wisened up to the fact that they’re just unripe or raw tomatoes.  Still, to me they are exotic, very different from their ripened selves – maybe the fact that they’re raw and hence younger lends them a reckless appeal [don't mind me that's just my pending mid-life crisis talking!]

Anyway, I bought a couple of kilos of green tomatoes and till I use them all, expect some green tomato recipes from me. The first being a chutney that keeps well for atleast a week in the refrigerator – it makes for a great accompaniment to a hot dosa, paratha, hot rice, dal and even as a sandwich spread.

Ingredients

About 1/2 kilo green tomatoes – washed and chopped

6 green chillies

a handful of fresh coriander leaves, washed and chopped

a tsp of mustard seeds

a biggish pinch of jaggery

salt to taste

a greedy handful of peanuts – roasted and skinned

Method

Heat a couple of teaspoons of oil and when it heats up, add the mustard seeds – when they begin to pop, add the green chillies and a few seconds later, the green tomatoes. When they are cooked [ dont over cook them] , pop them in your blender with the coriander leaves, jaggery , peanuts and salt. Don’t add any water. Blend to a nice chutney consistency.

Spoon into a bottle – I got two nice jars of this.

Variation The last time I made this, I used ginger and jeera instead of mustard seeds. That was great too [ yeah! how humble am I???]

Manga Mulagupottichathu or hot & sweet mango relish is a tangy accompaniment to a mundane everyday lunch. At my mum’s place chutneys, sauces and relish are regular stuff and are made routinely to jazz up simple meals. Often its seasonal and in the summers not a day goes by without some sort of mango chutney. Manga Mulagupottichathu is really simple to make and tastes excellent with ripe mangoes.

Ingredients
1 ripe mango
1 teaspoon chilly flakes
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Salt to taste

Method
1. Chop up the mango, the messier the better.
2. Throw in the chilly flakes, salt and coconut oil and combine.

That’s all there is to it, pour the relish over plain, steamed rice, mix with your bare hands and enjoy the taste of summer right before monsoon pounds the shores of Kerala.