Fish curry with fresh coconut milk

Hello again. Today's recipe is the fish curry with coconut milk. This is yet another post which was in the drafts. Just like any other Malayali, I am a big fan of fish curries and fry. I love both the ones with coconut milk as well as the ones without. The ones without coconut milk usually tend to me more spicy.

This is the fish curry I learnt from my mom-in-law and grandmother-in-law. When you have 2 mom in laws it can get a bit funny and weird sometimes in the kitchen :D what with both giving different instructions :P .... I used to be a bit worried as to who exactly to follow, not wanting to upset either of them. But I've learnt to balance them now :) My husband's grandmother has been quite an active person MashaAllah. But recently she has not been feeling that well... :(

This is a pretty simple and easy fish curry in which you cut and put all ingredients in a pot (I use earthen pot for making fish curry mostly). Let it all cook in the fresh coconut milk... after 10-15 minutes you'd get a nice slightly thick gravy. Add in the cleaned and cut pieces of fish. Fish cooks pretty fast. Hardly 5-6 minutes. Your fish curry is ready. And boy, does it taste good!
I usually do not do any tempering of curry leaves in the end. The curry leaves are added with all the ingredients.

But in this specific pic I did do a final tempering in coconut oil, small onions and curry leaves...

Fish curry is all about the different kinds of items you use to give the curry its tangy-ness. My mom in law uses both ripe and raw tamarind, Kudampuli (Gambooge), Irumban puli (Bilimbi) and Raw mango. Each of these give a different tangy taste and all taste excellent. What I use mostly here in Dubai is ripe tamarind or kudampuli. And tomatoes too add their own tangy taste. But the tomatoes we get in kerala are a lot more tangy than the ones we get here. So when my mom-in-law uses 1 small tomato there, I use 2 here.

I love this curry a lot not only because its so yummy, but also coz its extremely easy to make. Just throw everything in and let it cook :)

Now here's what you'll need to make this curry:

• Shallots - a hanful chppoed (I like adding a lot of this :))
• Tomatoes - 1 big or 2 medium (Like I explained above it depends on your tomato. Add whatever u feel necessary)
• 1  green chilly
• 1/2 tbsp turmeric powder
• 3/4 tbsp chilly powder
• Salt to taste
• 4 slices of kudampuli/ half a palm-full of ripe tamarind (Check taste.. do not over do on these if you do not like a lot of tangy taste)
• 2 cups coconut milk (made by grinding fresh coconut and water)
• Curry leaves a handful
• Fish of your choice (cleaned and cut into pieces)

How to make:

• Take a deep bottomed pan add in the shallots, tomatoes, curry leaves, the kudampuli/ripe tamarind, turmeric powder, chilliy powder, salt, coconut milk and also an extra of 2 cups of water.
• Let this mixture come to boil and then reduce flame and cook for 10-15 minutes until u can see the gravy thickening up. 
• Now check taste and then add in the fish. Fish cooks pretty fast. Let this cook for 5-6 minutes. Check the curry and switch off stove. 

That's it! Your fish curry is ready. You can put the curry leaves along with all the ingredients or else you could temper it in coconut oil and add in at the end after curry is ready. I personally find adding all in one go creates a lot less mess to clean up :D

Anyway, the choice is up to you. Try this and check out what consistency of the ingredients finally your taste bud loves. And if you do try this out, please comment below as to how it turned out. This is usually served with rice but I love it with putt too

Ok then guys... see you in the next post! Bye!

Spicy Pepper Chicken

Hello Guys!

I'm back after a 2 year hiatus. which I had devoted to my PG studies. And like my friend Riya said, now that its 'done and dusted', I can concentrate more on my blogs. Blogging has always been my passion. Cooking not so much though. Steffy and I had started this blog with the intend to keep us stay motivated to cook delicious healthy meals daily for our families. But as usual we let other things take priority :D

This one is also an extremely old post which I found in the drafts. At first when I saw it I was sitting and wondering, "How had I made this?" :D (Blogger should have more lively emoticons like whatsapp)

After a bit of searching memory through my old pics, I'm finally going to put down this recipe!
As the name signifies, this is a spicy recipe. So be warned...

Ingredients:

- 1 whole chicken, cleaned, cut into small pieces, without skin.
- 2 big onions, finely chopped
- 1 small sized tomato finely chopped
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1.5 inch ginger, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh pepper corns, slightly crushed
- 1/2 tbsp turmeric powder
- 1.5 tbsp coriander powder
- 1/4 tbsp garam masala
- 4-5 tbsp (or the quantity you prefer) Sunflower/Coconut oil.
   You can use any oil you would normally use for cooking.
-  1/2 tbsp lemon juice (optional, but it adds lovely flavour)
- Salt according to your taste
- Curry leaves a little less than a handful
- Coriander leaves for garnishing

How to make:

First: Pour 1 tbsp of oil into a deep bottomed pan. Put in all the dry ingredients and roast for 3-5 minutes and then semi-grind them. I usually make use of fresh ingredients for making the garam masala.

Next: Pour another 3-4 tbsp of oil into the same pan and add in the chopped onions, ginger, garlic and curry leaves when the oil is hot. Let it cook for a few minutes until the onion starts turning slightly brown. Now add in the tomatoes. Let it cook until it turns mushy and oil starts seeping out of the gravy. Then add in the semi- ground dry ingredients. Let it all cook for 5 minutes then add in the chicken, lemon juice and salt. Mix it all together let that cook for another 2-3 minutes then add in 1 and 1/4 cups of water. Mix it. Cover the pan and bring to boil. Then let it simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is well cooking. Check taste and add in more pepper or salt according to your taste. Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with ghee rice, chapati's or roti's...
And you should always remember, as with all cooking, we have to get the right taste that our taste buds prefer. So you can always play around with how much of an ingredient you actually want to put in to a food u r preparing.

Hope u guys try this out and love it as much as I did! Well then its bye for now...
Wait, there's this one thing... chatting in whatsapp has ruined my command over spellings. I am unconsciously typing in short forms. Do forgive me, as I have been doing that a lot in this post...

Till my next post then. Thank you so much for taking the time to go through this post!
Tataa!!

Chai Latte

I love chai and been trying to find many recipes for making the best Chai Latte!

This is my favourite one so far and thought i will share it with you guys.. :)

Ingredients

1.     2 1/2 cups water
2.     2 -3 black tea bags (depending on how strong you like your tea)
3.     3 whole cloves
4.     4 cardamom
5.     1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
6.     1" cinnamon
7.     1" ginger
8.     2 tablespoon honey

      For Latte (makes 2 cup)

1.     3/4 cup chai made above
2.     1 cup whole milk
3.     1 tablespoon honey
4.     pinch ground cinnamon

Instructions

In a saucepan, bring the water and spices to a boil. Once the water reaches a boil, turn off the heat and allow the spices to steep in the water for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, turn the heat back on and add the black tea bag and honey. Return to a slight boil and allow the tea bags to steep in the water and spices for 5 minutes. Remove the tea bags and strain the tea through a fine mesh strainer.

In a saucepan, bring the milk, honey, and pinch of cinnamon to a boil, stirring often. Once the sides of the milk begin to bubble, remove the pan from heat. Using an blender, blend the milk until it's frothy. Even if you avoid this step (if you are in a hurry or can't be bothered with) it tastes awesome!

Pour 3/4 cup of chai / tea in a mug. Slowly add the warm, frothy milk to the tea. Sprinkle the top of the chai latte with an extra pinch of cinnamon, if desired.

Notes

You can store the unused tea for later in a refrigerator. 

You can adjust the amount of honey depending on your taste. The amount I have used in this recipe is not very sweet.

Chatti pathiri (Chicken filling)

Admit it. We've all hidden our favourite food from family at least once...  😛

Hey guys! This delicious, mouthwatering and oh-so-amazingly satisfying food was first introduced to me by the lady who came to look after me & Ehsaan after my second delivery. I had delivered a week or so before Ramadan. So I got to try out quite a lot of wonderful snacks prepared by her for breaking fast for my husband and my mom (who had come along from Saudi to help me). This is like a mix of chicken samoosa, chicken puffs and eggs without all the excess oil of puffs.
It's soooo good I've made it quite a lot of times after that...

I make the filling with chicken. I dont like biting into onions so i cut them as small as possible before using it in the making the filling. No curry leaves either (again I don't like biting into them)
If you have chicken, big onion, maida, at least 3-4 eggs you're good to go...

This is how I made it:

Ingredients:

• Chicken cleaned and cooked in pressure cooker with salt and pepper and then shredded once its cooled down.
• 2 to 3 big onions finely chopped
• Half an inch chopped, crushed ginger
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped and crushed
• Pepper powder to taste
• Turmeic powder 1/4 tsp
• Garam masala 1/4 tsp
• 1 cup Maida
• 4-5 eggs
• Water
• Oil
• Salt to taste

I make the chicken filling the same as I would make for samoosas.

• Heat 2-3 tbsp oil in a sauce pan, add the chopped onions, crushed ginger & garlic
• Let that cook for a minute or 2 until you see them going brown. Do be careful not to keep the flame too high which would burn them easily.
• Add pepper powder, salt, garam masala and turmeric powder. Mix well
• Now add the shredded chicken. Mix well. Check salt and spice. Add salt or pepper if needed
• Cook for some 2-3 minutes on low flame and then keep aside.

Now there are two ways you can make the pathiri's/appam's one is the dough method and the other the batter method. I have only ever tried the batter one and as its so easy and tastes great I'm sticking to it.

• Mix the maida, water, an egg and salt into a medium consistency batter... not too thick nor to runny.
• now use a medium sized pan to make 8-10 appams. Cook on both sides
• This is going to be thin and soft.
• Keep aside...

Note: One thing you must keep in mind is the pan u are finally going to put all this in should not be bigger or smaller than the size of the appam. 

Now what I did was I cooked this on my stove in my normal deep bottom sauce pan which I use to make curry. I first greased the pan with oil. Took my first appam and dipped it in a bowl with beaten egg+ salt. The appam should be fully coated with egg. This becomes the bottom-most layer. My appams were just the right size for the pan. On top of the appam I added the chicken mix. And then appam and so on till I used up all the appams. The left over chicken mix i stored in freezer to be used later. Whatever beaten egg was left over I poured over the top which seals up gaps between layers.
Then I covered it up with its lid and let it cook for 5 minutes on high flame and then 10 minutes on low flame. Turned it over and cooked the other side too. You have to take cake not to burn this and also while turning in over...

And there you have it, its done!! The above pics are of 2 different times I made them. In the last 2 pics I sprinkled some dried mint leaves powder on top...

Do try this! You'll love it I'm sure :)

Masala Puffed rice

This is one quick snack to make at tea time. If you are a lover of Indian street food then I'm sure you already know and love this!

According to wiki, "Puffed rice is formed by the reaction of both starch and moisture when heated within the shell of the grain. Unlike popcorn, rice kernels are naturally lacking in moisture and must first be conditioned with steam. Puffed rice can be created by heating the stem-conditioned kernels either with oil or in an oven"

I, ofcourse, did not try making it, but used a store bought one to make my masala puffed rice.

Roasted it in a pan with 1 tbsp oil, a little chilli powder, salt and chaat masala. (If you want the yellow colour to it, add turmeric. Also adding curry leaves while roasting gives it a good flavour).

Add some chopped onion, tomatoes and mint leaves powder before serving...

Annnnd its ready. Goes great with with some hot tea or coffee :)
Enjoy! :)