Mango Shake

The English word "mango" originated from the Malayalam word for it 'manga'. It is India’s national fruit and why not…India is the largest producer of mangoes in the world.

This summer (mango season) how can anyone go without a recipe with mangoes.. a perfect drink to beat the scorching heat outside. It is so easy that even kids can make them.

Kids usually love to enjoy them when topped with a scoop of ice cream. So here it is..

INGREDIENTS

Mango                          - 2 large

Milk                              - 2 cups

Sugar                            - 2 tbsp

Vanilla Ice cream           - A scoop in each glass

METHOD

Chill the mangoes and freeze the milk.

Peel, chop and blend mangoes in a blender or with a hand blender.

Add milk and sugar. Blend again.

Serve chilled in tall glasses with a scoop of ice cream.

I know you all are thinking why so many snaps :) Just shows that I am kind of enjoying Food Photography. Hope you all enjoy it too...

Rinku Naveen

Tyre Pathiri / Thick Flat Rice Bread Cooked On Cast Iron Skillet

I had earlier posted about Neypathiri. Here is a different pathiri /flat rice bread called the Tyre Pathiri. It is so called because it looks like a vehicle tyre(very thick).

Usually you will see a smaller version of this but this tyre pathiri is a Wyanad special.

It’s easy to make and yummy too.

It is cooked on large caste iron skillet usually on firewood. But as we do not have firewood I have made it on a gas stove.

INGREDIENTS

Recipe Source: My mom

Matta (Boiled Red) Rice – 2 glasses

Salt                                  - As required

METHOD

Soak rice for 2-3 hours.

Grind it with very little water in a thick consistency.

Add required salt.

Make a big ball of the rice paste. Place it on a banana leaf.

Now place another piece of banana leaf on top of this.

Now gently press it to make a round shape.

The pathiri is 1” thick and almost 5” in diameter.

Heat a cast iron skillet and place it on it along with the banana leaf.

Cook on low flame. Cover with a heavy round lid.(Preferably an earthenware lid)

As the banana leaf starts to brown turn it over with a spatula and cook on the other side.

When both sides are cooked place the pathiri directly on the skillet and let it become crisp on both sides.

Hold the pathiri upright with 2 wooden spatulas and turn it like a tyre to cook the sides.

Serve it hot with Kerala Style Chicken /Mutton curry/Veg Masala.

Carrot Halwa / Easy 4 Ingredients Carrot Halwa

The very famous Carrot Halwa...who hasn't heard of it. It is a traditional Punjabi dessert packed with loads of Vitamin A. Here is a quick and easy 4 ingredients recipe. Love the colour and taste of this halwa.

INGREDIENTS

Recipe Source: My mom

Carrots 8-10 medium

Almonds 5-6

Condensed Milk 1 can (400gm)

Sugar 3/4 cup

METHOD

Peel, wash and grate carrots.

Pressure cook carrots along with sugar on low flame. Cook without water (1 whistle).

Blanch almonds in ½ cup water for 5 minutes. Drain cool and slice them thin.

Add condensed milk to the carrots and let it cook till it gets fully absorbed (in an open cooker).

Garnish with sliced almonds.

Serve hot/ refrigerate for 1 hour and serve.

Tips:

You can add 1 liter milk instead of condensed milk. But cook in an open pan till the milk fully evaporates and the carrot is cooked.

Raisins / Cashews can be used instead of Almonds.

Fruit Custard

The best way to make kids have their daily dose of fruits is by giving  them a bowl of fruit custard. Its easy to make and ready in minutes.

INGREDIENTS

25 gm Vanilla Flavored Custard Powder
1/2 liter milk
6 tablespoon sugar
1 apple
2 small bananas
1 mango
1/2 cup pomegranate
1/2 cup chopped pineapple
1 glass water
Cherry for topping

METHOD

Measure 25 g custard powder into a bowl.
Add 1/4 cup milk from the 1/2 liter milk and make it into smooth paste.
Boil the remaining milk after adding 3 tablespoon sugar.
Remove milk from fire and stir in the custard paste.
Now place over low flame and let it cook for 1-2 minutes. Keep stirring.
Remove, pour into a bowl and let cool in the refrigerator for 15-20 mins.
Add sugar in a pan with water.
Boil and let cool.
Chop fruits fine and add to the sugar syrup.
When the custard is chilled add the fruits and serve with cherry topping.

Tips:
As the fruits are soaked in sugar syrup it can be refrigerated and used later. It won't get spoiled.
Add any fruits of your choice.
Reduce the sugar level as per preference.
You can refrigerate the fruits before using (about 1 hour). 

Crispy Chicken Cutlets

Chicken Cutlets are one of the best starters for a party…something that satisfies the craving for a light snack. It’s healthy and nutritious. The best way to make kids eat chicken and veggies.

INGREDIENTS
Recipe Source: My own

Cooked  Chicken – 500gm

Onion – 4

Green Chilly – 3

Ginger garlic Paste – 3 teaspoon

Chicken Masala – 3 teaspoon

Chicken Stock Cube – 1

Garam Masala - 1/4 teaspoon

Potato- 4 medium

Carrot – ½ cup

Coriander Leaves -¼ cup

Egg -2

Bread crumbs to coat (approx of 5 slices sandwich bread)

Oil to shallow fry

 Salt as required

METHOD

       Peel, wash and chop onions fine.

      Chop chilies very fine. (Slit chilly many times and then chop)

      Pressure cook potatoes and keep aside.

      Chop carrots very fine.

      Chop coriander fine.

Keep the bread in the freezer for ½ hour and then powder in a dry mixer roughly.

Heat oil in a Kadai.

Add ginger garlic paste and sauté for 10 seconds.

Add onions and sauté.

Add chilly and sauté.

Now add chicken masala, chicken stock,garam masala and sauté well.

Add carrot & simmer. Cook for 3-4 minutes stirring in between till it is almost half cooked.

Separate meat from bones and mince in a food processor/mincer.

Mix the chicken with the veggies and mix well.

Peel the cooked potatoes, mash them and add to the Kadai.

Add salt if required.

Make breadcrumbs.
Separate the egg yolk and egg whites.

Add the egg yolk to the mixture and mix well.

Keep the egg white to coat the cutlets.

Shape the mix to form a ball and then dip in egg white to coat on all sides.

Press lightly in the bread crumbs to form the shape of cutlets and coat on all sides.

Heat oil for shallow frying - about 5 tablespoons in a pan.

Simmer and keep the cutlets to fry on the sides of the pan.

Let it cook on low fire.

Fry on both sides till golden brown, remove and place it on absorbent paper.

Crispy golden brown chicken cutlets are ready!. Serve hot with tomato sauce.

Tips:
I used chicken from the chicken curry. In case you don't have that cook chicken with salt, pepper and some chicken masala in a pressure cooker.
You can use rusk instead of breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are softer.
It can be deep fried but I prefer to use less oil.
In case the mixture become too loose to shape add little breadcrumbs to tighten the mixture.
The cutlet mix can be refrigerated for about 2 days and used.
In case you want to make vegetable cutlets add french beans and peas instead of chicken and use vegetable masala/ a combination of 1 teaspoon Red chilly powder and 1/4 teaspoon turmeric.
If you want to avoid eggs coat it with oil before dipping in breadcrumbs.

Nadan Chemeen Curry/ Traditional Kerala Prawn Curry

Discover the Magic of Sea Food....

Traditional Kerala Style Prawn curry and rice is one of my favorite lunch. Living on the coastal belt of Kerala has made me an avid sea food lover. Here is a very tasty finger licking recipe for prawns..yummmm...

INGREDIENTS

Prawns	½ Kg small size
Ground Coconut Paste	1 ½ Coconut
Chilli Powder	2 Tablespoon
Turmeric Powder	½ teaspoon
Jeera	1 teaspoon
Ginger Garlic Paste	1 teaspoon
Ginger	1 inch piece
Tamarind	Size of a small lime
Curry Leaves	2 sprigs
Water	½ litre
Salt	As required

METHOD

Wash, clean and marinate prawns with 1 tablespoon chilli powder, turmeric and salt for ½ hour.

Grind the coconut into a fine paste adding enough water required..

Now heat a mud pot and pour the ground coconut along with little water.

To this add ginger, jeera, remaining chilly powder, ginger garlic paste, prawns, curry leaves, water and salt.

Add ¼ cup water to the tamarind and squeeze well. Pour this water into the curry.

Boil till the prawns cook.

Mouth watering prawn curry is ready. Serve hot with rice or chapathi.

Almond and Banana Smoothie

Even though it has been raining during the nights in Kannur, its really HOT  and humid outside during day time. So here is my COOL experiment for a HOT day.. a big glass of refreshing smoothie!!

Almonds known to be the small but MIGHTY nut had been considered too fatty to be a healthy snack. But recent research has shown that 90% of the fats are unsaturated - which is good news for all the health conscious and almond lovers. Almonds are high in protein, fiber, calcium, magnesium, potassium, vitamin E, and other antioxidants. And the best part is it is available throughout the year.

So let’s make a smoothie with almonds and banana and have an ENERGY EXPLOSION !!

INGREDIENTS

Serves 3-4

125 g  / 4 ½ oz  Whole blanched almonds

600ml                Low fat Milk

2                        Ripe bananas halved

1 tsp                  Vanilla Essence

6 tsp                   Sugar (Optional)

Ground Cinnamon for sprinkling

METHOD

Boil 1 1/2 cups of water. When it boils put the almonds in it for about 10 secs and remove from water.

Now remove the skin of the almonds.

Powder it finely in a food processor

Add milk, banana and vanilla extract, sugar to this and blend until smooth and creamy.

Chill the glasses.

Pour the smoothie into glasses and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Happy Cup Cakes

HAPPY  CUP CAKES

Happy Easter to all!!!  Today’s special is the traditional Vanilla Cup Cakes.

Whenever I see cupcakes, I remember the cuppy cake song…

You're my Honeybunch, Sugarplum,Pumpy-umpy-umpkin, You're my Sweetie Pie

You're my Cuppycake, Gumdrop Snoogums-Boogums, You're the Apple of my Eye.

Amy sang it so well. I feel this song holds good for cup cakes too. It’s so cute. Easy to bake yet so beautiful.

There has been a cup cakes trend in the culinary world. The number of flavors is just amazing!

This being my first try at making cup cakes, I wanted to stick to the traditional vanilla cupcake which has been my favorite since childhood. I still cannot forget the aroma of the freshly baked cupcakes which my grandpa used to buy for us as kids. How we used to relish every bit of it and would almost eat up the liners too. :)

Vanilla Cupcakes

Recipe Source: Ria

INGREDIENTS

All purpose flour	2 cups
Baking powder	2 tsp
Salt	½ tsp
Unsalted butter (room temperature)	½ cup
Powdered Sugar	¾ cup
Vanilla Essence	1 ½ tsp
Eggs	2
Milk	½ cup

METHOD

Sift the dry ingredients together 3 times.

Cream the butter. Add sugar in small quantities and beat with the electric beater.

Break the eggs in a separate bowl so that if spoilt it won’t spoil the cake mixture.

Add eggs to this mixture and beat for 1 minute.

Add a cup of flour mixture. Alternate it with milk and keep mixing with the beater until you finish adding the flour and milk. The mixture should be light and fluffy..

Preheat oven at 180 degree C for 10 minutes.

Line the cup cake mould with cup cake liners. Fill the tray till about 2/3 full.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Check with a skewer or toothpick. If done it will come out clean.

Remove from the tin immediately and let cool.

CUP CAKE DECORATION

INGREDIENTS

Unsalted Butter(room temp)	50 g
Icing sugar	50 g
Vanilla Essence	2 drops
Food Colour	as required

METHOD

Mix the butter and sugar well.

Add vanilla essence.

Add colour as required.

Tips

Cream the butter sugar mixture very well. Do not worry about over – mixing as it has to be mixed more than what you think it should be. The mixture should turn almost white in colour.

But when adding the wet and dry ingredients together do not over mix.

The top of cup cakes puff up in the oven and then flatten after a couple of minutes. So if you get flat tops, don’t worry you didn’t do anything wrong.

For the butter icing decoration the actual ratio of butter and sugar is 1:2. But I find this to be too sweet. You can adjust it as per your taste.

Ragi Rice Flour Puttu/ Combination Puttu/ Rice Flour Finger Millet Puttu

Puttu /Steamed Rice Flour cake is a famous Kerala Breakfast. But quite different from the ordinary puttu you all may have known/seen here is a healthier version of the Puttu- the Combination Puttu.Sounds good enough? :)

Ragi (Finger Millet) is well known for its health benefits. It is rich in Iron, minerals and protein.Finger Millets are tiny deep red grains with oodles of health benefits. And this puttu is an easy way to make kids have a healthy and yummy breakfast too!!

Rice Flour Ragi Puttu/ Combination Puttu/  Healthy Puttu

INGREDIENTS

Recipe Source: My sis in law - Nishna

Rice flour – 1 cup ( I used Malabar Puttu Powder)

Ragi Flour- 1 cup (I used Nirapara Ragi Puttu Powder)

Grated coconut – 1 cup

Water – 1 cup or as required

METHOD

Add salt to 1 cup of water. Sprinkle this water to the rice flour and mix till you reach breadcrumbs consistency. It should not be too dry. The right consistency is reached when you press little flour in your fist and it  forms a shape and not crumble off. Now take a separate bowl and mix the salt water with ragi flour.  Follow the same procedure. Now keep approximately 2 cups water to boil in the puttu maker. By the time the water boils fill the puttu candles. First add 1 tablespoon of coconut at the bottom then a layer of rice flour ( as in the picture) then again coconut and alternate it with ragi flour. Keep the Puttu candle on the steamer and steam the puttu (appox 5minutes). The steam will start coming out from the top of the puttu candle. Wait for 2 minutes and remove the candle from the steamer. Again wait for 2 minutes before you use a skewer and push the yummy steaming puttu to a plate. Serve this with ripe bananas-sugar-ghee combination or with Kadala (Brown Chickpea) Curry / other combination like Cherupayar curry/ Stu. For the non veggies puttu is a great combination with fish curry or even chicken curry!

Tips:
To make puttu flour at home:
Using raw rice: Soak raw rice for 1 hour. then drain away water well. Keep the rice in a strainer for some time so that all the water gets drained away. Then powder it in a dry mixer(no water at all). Then you need to fry the powder in a thick bottom pan. About 10-15 minutes till the vapor starts coming up and when you lift the powder with a ladle it should fall off easily and not stick to the laddle. But make sure you keep stirring.
Using boiled rice: With boiled rice  the puttu turns very soft. For this you need to soak for 1/2 hr max or only until the rice still breaks when u bite it. It should not get soaked more. Then dry it on a cloth. And follow the same procedure.

Chicken Fried Rice

One of children’s favorite – the Indo Chinese Chicken Fried Rice. This one has been a hit with kids and everyone at home. Once the ingredients are ready this recipe is an easy and quick one to prepare mainly on weekends when you do not want to spend much time in the kitchen.

Chicken Fried Rice   

INGREDIENTS

Basmati Rice                2 cups

Chicken                        ½ kg

Garlic                           1 pod (cut into small pieces)

Ginger                          2’ (cut into small pieces)

Onion                           2 large (cut into small cubes)

Carrot                          2 medium

Beans                           7

Frozen peas                  ½ cup (optional)

Spring onion                 ½ cup

Eggs                             4

Cornflour                      ½  tbsp

Pepper                         1/2  tsp + 1/2 tsp+1 tsp

Soya sauce                   6 tsp

Chilly sauce                  1 1/2 tsp

Tomato sauce               2 tsp

Oyster sauce                1 tsp (optional)

Salt                              as required

Vinegar                        5 tsp

Veg oil                         4 tbsp

METHOD

Cut chicken into small pieces.

Marinate chicken with corn flour, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 egg,1 tsp vinegar, 1 tsp Soya sauce and salt for ½ hour

Soak basmati rice for ½ hour and let drain

To cook rice boil 7 cups water. Add salt. When it starts to boil add the rice and drain when half cooked.

Heat vegetable oil. Add the marinated chicken and close lid to let cook on medium fire for 5 minutes tossing in between.

When cooked remove from fire and place on kitchen tissue.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a Kadai, add ginger garlic and sauté for 30 secs. Add onion and fry till translucent.

Move the cooked ingredients to one side of the pan and add eggs.

Add salt and ½ tsp pepper to the egg and scramble it.

Once done mix it with the other ingredients and sauté

Add vegetables, 2 tsp soya sauce, 2 tsp vinegar, salt and 1 tsp pepper.

Keep stirring till the vegetables are almost cooked.

With kitchen scissors or knife cut the chicken into small pieces after removing bones.

Add the chicken to the mixture and toss well. Check salt. It should be a little more than required so that when we add the rice it will be sufficient.

Now keep adding rice and mix well. Take 2 wooden spatulas and toss the rice and vegetable mixture.

Add the remaining soya sauce and vinegar.

Add chilly sauce, tomato sauce, oyster sauce.

Keep tossing for 5 minutes with spatulas on high flame.

Add spring onion and toss for a minute.

Remove from fire and serve hot with chilly chicken.