Prawns in Coconut Gravy

Ingredients:

        Prawns                                 --   ½ kg
       Drumsticks                          --    2 – 3 pieces ( Optional )
       Finely chopped onions   --   ½ cup
       Green chillies                      --   2 – 3
       Tomato                                  --   1 medium size
       Garlic                                      --   1 big clove
       Ginger                                     --   1 small piece
       Tamarind                              --    A small ball (walnut size) 
       Turmeric Powder              --   ¼ tsp
       Chilly Powder                     --   1 tbsp
       Coconut milk                       --   1 cup
       Mustard Seeds                    --   1 tsp
       Curry Leaves                       --   1 spring
       Oil                                             --   2 tbsp
       Salt                                           --   to taste

Preparation of Prawns Curry:
         Soak the tamarind ball in water.  Clean the prawns and keep it aside.
          
         Heat oil in a pan. Splutter the mustard seeds. Add the onions, tomato, green chillies, garlic and ginger. Fry until the onions and tomatoes are smashed. Add the turmeric powder, chilly powder and salt.
         
         Squeeze the tamarind and pour the juice into the pan. Once it starts boiling, add  prawns and the drumstick pieces.
           
        Add the coconut milk when the prawns are half cooked.
         
       Let the prawns get completed cooked. Garnish with curry leaves.
        
       Serve hot with rice / dosa / kappa puzhukku.
    

Next Review from CSN stores

Yeah.. this is the second time CSN stores chose me to do a review. Thanks to their marketing team :). last time, I got a few plates, cereal bowls, etc . They are really good and for sure, they are gonna cover my blog for quite some time. CSN stores is a continually growing online store and you can find everything from cheap bedroom furniture to fitness equipments to anything for any room in our sweet homes.

Do visit CSN stores and I am pretty sure you ll spend more than a day browsing there.

Banana Bread with Choco Chips n Nuts

Ingredients:

All purpose flour                    --    1 ½ cup

Baking powder                       --    1 tsp

Baking soda                             --    ½ tsp

Ripe Banana                            --    2

Eggs                                            --    2

Unsalted Butter                     --    ¼ cup

Powdered Sugar                   --    ¾ cup

Honey                                        --    4 tbsp

Vanilla Essence                     --    1 tsp

Cinnamon Powder               --    1 tsp

Chopped nuts                         --    ½ cup

Chocolate chips                    --    ½ cup

Preparation of Cake:

Prepare a 9” x 5” baking pan (I used an 8” x 4” pan and so you can see ears for my cake J) lined with butter and dusted with flour. Preheat the oven at 350 F.

Mix the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Sift the mix 4 -5 times.

Smash the bananas with a fork and keep aside.  

Beat the butter and sugar until they are well combined. Add the eggs one after the other, beating them until they are well combined.

 

Add honey, vanilla essence and the cinnamon powder. Beat to combine.

Add the flour mix spoon by spoon and keep on mixing. Make sure that the flour is mixed well in the mixture before adding the next set.

  

Fold in the smashed banana with a spatula. Then fold in the chopped nuts and the chocolate chips.

 

Bake in the preheated oven at 350 F for 35 – 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from the center of the cake. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes and the remove it on to a cooling rack and let it cool completely.

Pork Varattiyathu / Pork Roast

Ingredients:

Pork                                     --   1 kg

Onions                                --    2 medium onions

Ginger                                 --    1 inch piece

Garlic                                  --    5 -6 cloves

Green chillies                   --    5 -6

Turmeric powder            --    ½ tsp

Chilly powder                   --    1 tsp

Coriander powder          --    2 tbsp

Pepper powder                --    1 tbsp

Garam Masala                 --    3 tsp

Curry leaves                      --   3 springs

Coconut (thinly sliced) --   ½ cup (optional)

Mustard seeds                  --    1 tsp

Oil                                           --    2 tbsp

Salt                                         --    to taste

Preparation of Pork Varattiyathu:

Cut the pork into cubes and wash them atleast 5 – 6 times under running water.

Marinate the pork with salt and turmeric powder. Keep aside for 15- 20 minutes.

Add chilly powder, coriander powder and pepper powder let it cook in a pressure cooker. I cook it for around 5 -6 whistles. Do not add water as water will ooze out of the meat.

Grind the green chillies along with the ginger and garlic.

Add oil into a pan and splutter the mustard seeds. Add the thinly sliced onions and the ground mixture and fry until the onions are translucent. Add the garam masala and the sliced coconut and fry well.

 

Add the cooked meat with the excess water. Let it dry until the required gravy thickness is obtained.

Add the curry leaves few minutes before turning off the flame.

This goes well with parotta, puttu, chapathi etc.

Recipe Courtesy: Ajeesh mathew :)

Prawns Biriyani

Ingredients – Rice:

Basmati Rice / Jeera Rice     --   ½ kg 
Water                                            --   1 ½ measure of rice.
Lemon                                           --   1 medium
Cloves                                           --   3 - 4
Cardamom                                 --   1 - 2
Cinnamon                                   --   1 medium piece
Bay leaves                                  --   2 leaves
Ghee                                              --   3 tbsp
Salt                                                --   1 tbsp (Check the taste though)

Ingredients – For garnishing & layering:

Onions                                         --  1
Cashew Nuts                            --  ¼ cup
Raisins                                        --  ¼ cup
Garam Masala                         --  1 tsp
Coriander leaves                    --  A bunch
Mint leaves                               --  A bunch

Ingredients – Gravy:

Prawns                                      --  ½ kg
Turmeric powder                 --  ¼ tsp
Red Chilly powder               --  ½ tsp (I’ve added more green chillies)
Coriander powder               --  1 tsp
Finely Chopped Onions     --  2 – 3 medium sized
Green chillies                         --  6 – 7
Garlic                                        --  8 – 9 large cloves
Ginger                                       --  1 inch piece
Tomato                                    --  2 - 3 medium sized
Garam Masala                      --  1 tsp
Pepper                                      --  1 tsp
Coriander leaves                 --  A bunch (around 10 – 12 stem)
Mint leaves                            --  A bunch (around 10 – 12 leaves)
Oil                                              --  4 tbsp
Salt                                            --  to taste

Preparation of Gravy:

Marinate the prawns with turmeric powder, red chilly powder, coriander powder and salt. Keep it aside for half an hour.

Grind green chillies, garlic and ginger to a fine paste.

Heat oil in a pan and fry one finely chopped onion until its golden brown in colour. Keep it aside for garnishing. Then fry the cashews and raisins and keep them aside. (I did not use raisins as we are not big fans of it.) If you want to fry these in ghee do it just before frying the rice.

Fry the marinated prawns slightly. Do not over cook. Remove and keep aside.

Saute the left over onions in oil until they become translucent. Add the ground chilly mixture. Add the tomatoes, pepper powder & garam masala and cook until the tomatoes are squishy. Add water if required.

 

Add the fried prawns and chopped leaves. Cook it closed for 2 -3 minutes until the prawns and the gravy blends well. Make sure you have enough gravy for the biriyani. Keep the gravy aside.

Preparation of Rice:

Wash the rice thoroughly and soak in cold water for 25 – 30 minutes. Add 2 tbsp of ghee to a vessel and fry the drained rice for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, keep the water on another stove and let it boil. Add the boiling water to the fried rice. Add salt,cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and cardamom. Once the rice starts boiling, add the lemon juice (strained juice -> this helps the rice to be non-sticky).

Cook the rice with the vessel closed with a lid. Also stir in between to make sure that the rice does not stick on the bottom of the vessel. Once the rice is 80% cooked drain the water from the rice. Empty this into another vessel, preferably other flat vessel/plates and let it cool.

Mix the biriyani:

Spread 1 tbsp of ghee in a big vessel (Oven safe, if baking in oven). As the first layer, spread some rice in the vessel. Spread the chopped coriander leaves, mint leaves, garam masala, fried onions, raisins and cashews. Now, as the second layer; spread the prawns with the gravy. Continue the layering until you are done with a layer of rice and the garnishing at the top.

 

Cover this and keep in a pre-heated oven at 250 F for 15 minutes.

Serve hot with raitha, pappadam and chammanthi.

I would like to submit this for the Festive rice event hosted by Torview.

The Travel Ordeal….

Hi friends.. I am back after my GREAT trip and its hangover. Yeah, you should give stress while reading the letters in capsJ .  Thanks to all my friends for the Onam wishes. I saw many pics of Onam celebrations in Orkut/FB and they are just great. Hope all of you had a great time – Not like us J

So here is my trip summary. After the great confusion whether we would be able to go, we made it on Friday by noon and reached FL in 6 hours. That was a cool drive and we gave a small surprise to our friends, by reaching few hours earlier than what they expected.

The housewarming function was on Sunday and Saturday was THE BUSY day – Shifting, Arranging and of course Last minute Shopping.  Along with that we had plans for cooking – Yeah, Pal Payasam was the dessert as it was Onam. We started at 12 in the night and it went on till 3 am. Never knew it would take that long as we never had even tried to cook for 50 – 65 people. Then it was time for the pooja and we both did not literally sleep that night. Everything went great the next day and we were tired by noon. AJ  n Me took a break at 12 noon as we had plans to drive back, but as expected we were not able to open our eyes by the time we wanted to start and finally ended up staying there for one another day. AJ had his workstation carried along and he chose to WFH on Monday. It was not at all a compromise.. All of us were happy to extend our stay there :) We enjoyed the 3 days like anything.

Monday – Thiruvonam – THE DAY: We got up at 9 am  and to be frank I didnt even remember that it was Onam. We had lots of left over breakfast on the previous day, so did reheat some idly/vada and had them with chutney. Again lunch was some left over fried rice and curry. AJ could convince his manager and be OOO (Out Of Office) by 3 pm. And we started back to Charlotte by 4 pm.

I know that you would be thinking why I did write up all these as if I am writing a diary. No.. I am not that crazy. The story starts here…. We loaded the home address in the GPS and started our journey. The GPS calculated the destination time as 10:40 pm and we were pretty sure that we would reach by atleast 9:40 pm. The good road + light traffic + AJ’s driving skills – cops around = would  have helped us to achieve this.

But NO – the villain was our car tire. By 7.30 pm, we did feel the smell of heated rubber and had moved to the side of the road to check the condition of our tires. But all of them seemed to be perfect and so we continued. But by 8.00 pm, the car started slightly wobbling, it increased in minutes and finally a sound ‘ttoo’. The tire on the rear right was no more. We were on the right lane and so could easily move out of the moving tracks. At that point of time, we were like – ‘ Oh – this is just a matter of tire change’. AJ took out the spare tire, and the jack out of the trunk; But couldn’t find the jack lever and the spanner. Without those, how can we ????????

The option was to ring up the Highway Patrol or our Insurance company. We thought of trying out the HP as that sounded to be more prompt. AJ got the toll free number and dialed up. It was only when the customer service rep there asked about the location, we started looking around. We just knew that we have reached South Carolina and our GPS said that we are some 10 miles away from the next Interstate highway – I 77.  But which county, which city, or atleast the zip code – No idea – Then how could someone reach us to help…  The only sign board or rather a land mark was an advertisement of a hospital. But we managed to make them understand the location with what we had and also provided them the pole co-ordinates from the GPS. We called them thrice in an hour and  can you believe that we did not get any response yet L. 

We were fed up by 9.00 pm and then called up the insurance company. They agreed to reach us in another 40min. So that was another session of  patient waiting. In between, we saw a police car far ahead and tried to reach near him with the flat tire. We explained our situation and he asked if we want him to call the patrol service. AJ asked him the ETA and he said 45 min. and also asked us to call the HP if they didn’t reach on time. Hmm… It was 9.40 pm and we thought of ringing up the insurance/towing guys once again. We really got pissed off with the response L. The first customer care rep noted down the address wrongly and these towing guys  were approaching a different place L. Thankfully we saw an exit board near us, when we approached the cop car. So we called up the customer care service again and gave the right address, sadly they said its gonna take another 40 minutes. OMG !!!!!!!!!!!! The place was so deserted that it would take a minimum of 40 min for any help and the customer service guy warned us – “That’s a dead zone. So stay alert and be careful”

Finally the towing rep reached us by 11.00pm. Again.. He did not have the proper tools to change the tire, but somehow he adjusted with some other tools in his vehicle. We were so happy when he finished his work and paid him $10 as a tip.

But unfortunately, the spare tire was not in good condition (We had never checked the air,pressure etc before) and blew out in another 5 min. Ohhh.. What to do now???? We were 100 miles away from our place and it was late night. Moved into the rest area near by and called up our friends. Asked them to come over to help us – We need to wait for atleast 2 hours. The rest area was full of big trucks, no light and lots of people murmuring around and we did not find it as a safe area. The i-phone helped to find out a Subway + Gas Station near by in 2 miles and we slowly drove to that place. By the time we reached there, we were running on the rim and no tire L. That was a well lit place and we sat there happily with a cup of coffee and a lemon cake. Got the exact location from the store keeper so that our friends could reach there easily.

It was around 1.00 am when 3 of our friends reached and we were so happy to see them there. AJ had asked them to get 2 spare tires and the tools so that we can fix the car and drive home. As soon as they reached, we decided to change the tire. They took out the tools & tires, AJ started lifting the car with the Jack – The guys were like ‘Get set go…’  I was asked to sit safely in the other car. When they started their work, an African-American guy came to us and said he’ll do the work and he just needs $10. Our friends started to avoid him but he pleaded saying that he needs money to fill in gas in his vehicle and …… Then everyone said, “Ok.. Let him do it”. He was so drunk that he wasn’t able to hold the jack lever. Finally they gave him $5 and asked him to leave and the guys were back on work.

But again L, the spanner they had in their car wouldn’t  fit the nut of our car. So now what??? AJ and one of our friends decided to stay in a near by hotel and asked others to take me back home. It looked like everyone was more worried to keep me safe. AJ called up the insurance guys to see if they could help us again to tow the vehicle to the nearby hotel. They agreed to take the vehicle any where within 15 miles. But we need to wait for another 45 min. Ok… no other go..  It was late night and anyone who comes to the gas station was drunk and looked scary. Though I’ve heard lot of scary stories about the African-Americans, I was never scared on seeing them. But this time.. I couldn’t help.. People coming there could see the flat tire and we standing near the car looking sadly at it. That made evident that we were in trouble. People started coming over with offers like they would change the tires, they had spare tires etc.. The guys somehow managed to send them away, but they continued to roam around us. The other person to whom we gave money also came back.  Now with an American guy, may be thinking that we got scared of his ‘color’. My god.. we were like surrounded by “Helping Hands”.

Thankfully the towing person came in 30 min. By that time each one of us was scared and  the guys were scared to stay in that area for a night. So we asked the towing guy, if he could tow our car until our home and we would pay him the balance amount, from what the insurance would pay them. He was ready but was not authorized to go out of state, So he arranged his friend to help us– Again 40 minL.  Since we did not want to be in that area anymore, we asked him to tow our car to the nearest hotel, where AJ had decided to stay initially. We were like relieved to move out of that area and went to the parking area of the hotel. That was a huge parking lot with just 4 vehicles including ours and not a single person to see around and of course no light too. We didn’t want to stay there, so left our car there and everyone got into the other car and started roaming around. It was better to keep moving than staying stationary. Since we were kind of relieved, we thought of finding a rest area and getting fresh, Also we thought of filling gas in the car – So both together we decided to enter the nearest gas station.

We saw a gas station and a store inside, it was a well lit area with a few cars parked in the side and we were happy to see an Indian in the store. There was no other person around the station. We decided to go inside. We parked the car, 2 of us started filling gas in the car and rest of us were heading towards the store. It was then we noticed that the guy inside was waving his hands asking us to leave. His face was pale and we could feel the fear on his face. We started walking back, it was then we noticed few eyes popping out of the parked cars. OMG…………. we ran into the car and we were flying out of that station. I was literally shivering and I am sure each one of us were.

We decided to roam around and not stop anywhere until the towing guy reach the place. Wherever we go, We would end up in a dark area and we could see cars parked on the side of the road. Then we would come back to the highway. Each one of  us held our breath until the towing guy reached. He said it would cost us $400. Believe me that was the time when we really experienced – “Money was nothing compared to our life.” We would have agreed to him even if had charged $4000. We left the place and then took a coffee break only after entering North Carolina border. Finally reached home by 5.30am. That was a GREAT long trip.

I started writing this post the day we reached ie Tuesday. But was still in the hang over and couldn’t sit at a stretch to complete this. Tuesday – was busy searching a spare tire and finding out the proper tools from every car around us J , Wednesday – supposed to be a rest day, busy unpacking and discussions on the Onam celebration to be held on Friday, Thursday & Friday – Onam celebration & preparations (Shall post the sadhya items soon), Weekend – Trip to Raleigh to our cousin’s house for their baby boy’s Bday, Monday – Unpacking and rest, Tuesday – Back to cooking & my routine after a loooong time, Wednesday – Completed this write up.

I know that this is a long break from blogging and I have missed out many new recipes from my friends. I think I’ll be back to my own routine by next week (Long weekend coming up – Planning for a Niagara + New York trip) and shall be back to track from then J

Happy Onam

I wish a Happy Onam (in advance) to all my friends…. I am missing all the fun of flower carpet and sadhya, especially payasam and the great get together which we used to have at home. We, our friends here, are planning to shift Onam celebrations to our convenient day with a pot luck– yet to be decided.

We are travelling to Florida (hopefully – depending one AJ’s work – we were supposed to start now.. But he is still on a bridge line LL)  Will be back after Onam and so thought would wish you all before I leave….