Papaya Curry

Today’s recipe is that of a papaya curry recipe. While papaya is used in pickles or acharu here, a curry is not so common but my mother likes experimenting with her curries and this turned out delicious. This is also the dish I am sharing for Angie’s Fiesta Friday #2.

Papaya Curry

Time taken: 20 mins

Serves 3

Ingredients:

Papaya, half-ripe – 1 cup, chopped
Onion – ½
Capsicum/ Malu miris – 1
Fennel seeds – 1 tsp
Cloves and Cinnamon – 1 tsp, crushed powder
Crushed chillies – 1 tsp
Lime – 1 ½
Sugar – 1 tbsp
Low fat oil – 1 tbsp

Method:

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and lightly fry the chopped onion, malu miris and fennel seeds for 2 minutes.
Then, add the chopped papaya, crushed chillies and the crushed cloves and cinnamon powder to the pan, together with ¼ cup of water. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes.
Squeeze and add the juice from 1 ½ limes and the sugar to the pan. Mix well and cook for another 5 minutes. Add a little water if the liquid dries up before that.
Serve with rice.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Chickpea Fritters

Xīnnián Kuàilè!

Angie (The Novice Gardener) has started her blog event ‘Fiesta Friday‘ auspiciously on the Chinese New Year. So, Wishing you all a happy Lunar New Year and a wonderful party at Angie’s fiesta!

A Taste of Sri Lankan Cuisine’s contribution to the event is this snack recipe of my mother’s – chickpea fritters, which is a very popular snack both in Sri Lanka and India.

Chickpea fritters

Time taken: 30 mins + 3 hours (soaking time)

Serves 8

Ingredients:

Split chickpea/ kadalai paruppu – ½ cup
Chickpea flour – ½ cup
Wheat flour – ¼ cup (optional)
Onion – 1, chopped
Turmeric – ¼ tsp
Crushed chillies – 1 to 2 tsp
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Carom/ Omam seeds – ½ tsp
Salt
Low fat oil, for deep-frying

Method:

Soak the chickpea for about 3 hours.
Then, coarsely grind it, i.e. do not grind it to a puree or flour but rather half-grind it so that there are smaller bits of chickpea. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and make the fritter dough.
Heat the oil in a pan until it sizzles.
Pinch off a little dough at a time and drop it in the pan. Fry till the fritters are golden brown.
Serve with tea.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Garlic and Shallot Curry

Another garlic curry recipe of my mother, this time with shallots. For another version of a garlic curry, do check out the earlier post of the beetroot and garlic curry recipe.

Garlic and Shallot Curry

Time taken: 20 mins

Serves 3

Ingredients:

Garlic – ¼ cup
Shallots – ½ cup
Fenugreek seeds – 1 tbsp
Tamarind extract – ½ cup
Curry powder – 1 tsp
Salt, to taste
Coconut milk – ¼ cup
Sugar – 2 tsp
Low fat oil – 1 tbsp

Method:

Clean the garlic and shallots.
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and add the fenugreek seeds. Then, add the shallots and fry for a couple of minutes, before adding the garlic and frying further for a few minutes.
Add the tamarind juice, curry powder and salt to taste to the pan. Mix well and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the coconut milk and sugar to the pan and cook for another 5 minutes, until gravy thickens and a nice aroma wafts about.
Serve warm with rice or pittu or stringhoppers.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Cabbage Fritters

Today’s recipe is that of cabbage fritters.

In addition to checking out the recipe below, I would like to invite you to visit this post on one of my other blogs – Perspectives Quilt for a brief introduction about one of my books that can be freely downloaded today on Amazon Kindle.

Cabbage fritters

Time taken: 25 mins

Serves 4 or 5

Ingredients:

Cabbage – ½ cup, shredded
Onion – ½, chopped
Green chillies – 1 or 2, chopped
Crushed red chillies – 1 tsp
Chickpea flour – ¼ cup
Wheat flour – ¼ cup
Ginger – ½ tsp, crushed
Garlic – ½ tsp, crushed
Salt, to taste
Oil, for deep-frying

Method:

Mix all the ingredients, except the oil, together adding a little water to make the fritter dough.
Divide the fritter dough into 4 or 5 portions.
Deep-fry until golden brown.
Serve with rice or as it is.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Tomato and Potato Curry

Today’s recipe is a lovely tomato and potato curry, which my mother calls her tomatish potato dish. It is a simple and easy to prepare dish that you will certainly like.

Tomato and Potato Curry

Time taken: 30 mins

Serves 2

Ingredients:

Potato – 1
Tomato – 1
Onion – ½
Green chilli – 1
Crushed red chillies – 1 tsp
Ginger – ½ tsp, crushed
Garlic – ½ tsp, crushed
Salt, to taste
Low fat oil, for frying

Method:

Boil the potato and then, peel and chop it into smaller pieces.
Lightly fry the potato pieces and keep aside.
Heat a little oil in a pan and lightly fry the chopped green chilli, ginger and garlic. Add the chopped tomato pieces and crushed red chillies to the pan and continue frying for a few minutes.
Remove the pan from the stove and transfer its contents to a blender to grind it to a paste.
Transfer the tomato paste back to the pan and heat it over a low heat.
Add the fried potato pieces to the pan and salt, to taste. Stir well.
Serve the tomato and potato curry with rice or pittu.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Pongal

Happy Thai Pongal! இனிய தைப்பொங்கல் நல்வாழ்த்துகள்!

Tomorrow is Pongal for Tamils around the world. Pongal is a celebration that occurs annually on the first day of the month of ‘Thai’ (Tamil month equivalent to January) and is a harvest festival, traditionally meant to honour the sun. It is also the name of the key rice dish that is made to celebrate most Tamil festivals, but particularly its namesake festival.

I shared a simple recipe of the home-cooking version of Pongal in this post last August. Today, I also wanted to share some of the photos from one of our Pongal celebrations with the families in our apartment building a couple of years back as it is more of a community festival where people get together in the temple or courtyard, or as in this case – the car parking area. I was going to post this tomorrow on the festival day but as one of my friends has sent me a recipe of one of the snacks she makes for Pongal, I decided to post her recipe tomorrow. So, here’s the photo-story of Pongal making.

The kolam (designs made of rice flour paste) is first drawn. Within its boundaries, the traditional Tamil welcome is set up facing north, with the kuthuvillaku/lamps and the coconut with mango leaves placed in the kudam/pot

Setting up the Pongal pot facing the rising sun in the east

Milk (usually dairy milk but at home, my mother uses coconut milk) is added to the water in the pot

Everyone waits for the milk to boil over – this symbolically means prosperity for all for the coming year (‘Ponguthal’ means boiling over and is the word that festival name and dish derived its name from)

The rice is then added to the pot – a handful at a time by some of the elders, women and men, present.

After the rice is cooked, jaggery, nuts, raisins are added to the pot and stirred well. Finally, the pongal is ready to be blessed and served.

While Thai Pongal is an important Tamil festival for Tamils living around the world, it is celebrated differently in different countries. In Sri Lanka, Pongal is mostly celebrated as described above whereas in India, it is a three-day festival with a day dedicated for cows. A harvest day festival around this day is also celebrated across India and Nepal but called different names (Makara Sankranti, Lohri, Uttarayana, Magh Bihu etc.) in different regions and has different rituals.

Wish you a Happy Pongal!

Atta Flour Pittu

Pittu is a dish that my mother often makes for dinner. She generally makes rice flour pittu. One of the varieties that she occasionally makes is the atta flour pittu, the recipe of which is given below.

Atta flour pittu

Time taken: 25 mins

Serves 2

Ingredients:

Atta flour – 1 ½ cups
Coconut – 3 tbsp, freshly scraped
Salt – pinch

Method:

Roast the atta flour over low heat for 5 mins.
Remove from stove and add the salt.
While still hot, stir in water at room temperature until the mixture becomes coarse, small particles.
Add the freshly scraped coconut and mix well.
Steam the pittu for 10 mins.
Serve warm with any curry.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Spicy Cabbage Curry

As this blog does require recipes that I record of my mother’s cooking or sent in by others and I also wish to be a bit more active on my other blogs, I will be making weekly or bi-weekly posts rather than daily posts as I did in the first few months of this blog.

This weekend’s recipe is that of my mother’s spicy cabbage curry. If you prefer fried cabbage, try out the delicious cabbage fry or the cabbage and carrot fry recipes posted earlier on this blog.

Spicy Cabbage Curry

Time taken: 25 mins

Serves 3

Ingredients:

Cabbage – 1 ½ cup, shredded
Carrot – 1 tbsp, finely chopped (optional)
Capsicum/ Malu miris – 1 tbsp, chopped
Green chilli – 1, chopped
Onion – 2 tbsp, chopped
Fenugreek – 1 tsp
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Garlic – 1 or 2, finely chopped
Coconut milk – ½ cup
Curry powder – 1 tsp
Salt, to taste
Lime juice – 1 tsp
Oil – 1 tbsp

Method:

Heat a tbsp oil in a pan and fry the chopped onion, garlic, capsicum, chilli, curry leaves and fenugreek seeds for a couple of mins.
Then, add the shredded cabbage and optional carrot to the pan and continue stir-frying for around 5 mins.
Add the coconut milk, curry powder and salt, to taste and let the curry cook for around 10 mins.
Remove the pan from the stove and mix 1 tsp lime juice into the pan.
Serve warm with rice.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Steamed rice cakes

Wishing everyone a happy New Year! To start the Year on a sweet note, today’s recipe is that of steamed rice cakes.

Steamed rice cake

Time taken: 30 mins + 2 hours (for soaking)

Makes 6 cakes

Ingredients:

Rice – ½ cup
Urad dhal/ black gram flour – 2 tbsp, roasted
Coconut – 2 tbsp, freshly scraped
Sugar – 1 ½ tbsp
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Salt – pinch
Food colouring/ essence – optional

Method:

Soak the rice in water for about 2 hours and then grind it to make a batter.
Add the roasted urad dhal flour, scraped coconut, sugar, baking powder and salt to the batter. Mix well.
If you would like your steamed cakes in different colours, divide the batter into separate bowls. Add the different food colours to each of the bowl. Here, my mother used green and red.
Steam the batter for about 10 – 15 mins.
Serve warm with tea. You could serve some honey or jam on the side, should you like it more sweeter.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Jackfruit Cutlets

Today’s recipe is that of a cutlet my mother made recently. She likes experimenting with her cutlet mixtures and this time, she tried jackfruit and the result was delicious.

Jackfruit Cutlets

Time taken: 40 mins

Makes 4

Ingredients:

Raw, unripe jackfruit – 4 or 5 pieces
Onion – 1 tbsp, finely chopped
Chillies – ½ tsp, finely chopped
Pepper – 1 tsp
Fennel seeds – ½ tsp
Ginger – ½ “, finely chopped
Garlic – 2 cloves, finely chopped
Multi-purpose flour, for light batter
Bread crumbs, for rolling the cutlets
Low fat oil, for deep-frying

Method:

Boil the jackfruit with salt for about 15 to 20 mins.
Chop it and then coarsely grind it to get about ½ cup of the ground, cooked jackfruit. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
Add the finely chopped onion, garlic, ginger, chillies as well as the pepper and fennel seeds to the mixing bowl. Mix well. Divide the seasoned jackfruit mixture into four balls.
Make a light batter by mixing ½ cup of water with some multi-purpose flour.
Dip the cutlet balls in the batter and then roll in the breadcrumbs, before deep-frying till the cutlets are golden brown.
Serve hot with rice.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.