Wonder how this vegetable got the name elephant yam. Now this is called chena in Malayalam. A very naadan taste is achieved in this recipe, where masala ingredients are roasted and ground. Replace yam with potato and make a potato masala curry. Ingredients400 gm – Chena/ suran/ elephant yam, cut to smaller cubes3 to 4 – Green chili, slit in center2”piece – Ginger, finely chopped2 medium size -
Me: ..yes…
Swapna: See..you have a bit of *nadan recipes ..
Me: yeah..
Swapna: While I specialise on bakes..
Me :true…
Swapna: Why dont we put them together?
Me ..merge our blogs, Swapna?
Swapna: not exactly!
Me:…..then?
Swapna: Put all our recipes together in one place and host them together. A complete list or recipes that would turn some help to a reader..
Me: Great Idea!! 
..gimme some time and I am up!!
*nadan – traditional
Above is a chat section from gtalk, which happened a fortnight ago.
If I hadn’t mentioned about my relationship with Swapna, well, here is it.
We hail from the same town and were class mates in College. I used to be so surprised by her presentation skills during our ‘practical cooking sessions’ and tailoring classes back in those days; her creativity and prefection in everything she did!
I remember rushing to her mostly after a ‘disaster’ with my cooking and taking notes explained in a patient way from her!
This patience explains her utmost skills in cross stiches and crochets in her lovely world of stitching which you would have surely come across and appreciated!
While I organised the recipe list, Swapna cheerfully worked with the template. As a matter of fact, she worked and still works harder on the same than me.
We enjoyed every moment improving it and are surprised to see the long, complete and varied recipes which gave way to this humble ‘Portal’ of ours!
Our Cooking Station is born!
Hope our baby cheers you up as it does with us too
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Cheers,
Bharathy
P.S- I am taking a month’s break from blogging. So you may find me inactive with no responses to comments and queries. Hope you would bear with me until I get back .
Hows the Easter preps going on? Waiting to break your lent & gorge on all the meat you could lay your eyes on, eh 
Here is an Easter special chicken recipe. Now if you ask me, why it’s called Easter chicken, I’m clueless. I got this recipe from my aunt, Tesschechy, during my last vacation. I was hunting for new recipes in her recipe diaries (btw, she has around 10-15 of such diaries) I caught sight of this one. At first glance, I thought it’s a bit complex & lengthy one, so decided not to cut & paste. But she convinced me that this is a must try recipe & she even made it for me to prove her point. She proved her point pretty well!
This recipe is something you wont cook on a daily basis. It’s a rich curry & the cooking time is a bit longer than the usual curries. So I guess it’s called Easter chicken, because it’s usually made on special occasions & whoever came up with the original recipe, made it on a Easter day Now, does that make any sense? People often say that my logical reasoning is weird, but I guess it works for me
Btw, I’m not very happy with this picture. I think I wasnt able to capture it well. Hey, did I tell you? We moved to a new apartment & here I’m yet to find a perfect place for my photo shoot. Also “somebody” decided to play around with my camera, so I ended up with all different settings. Now, I just dont know how to go back to the original settings. Too many things to figure out, sigh! Somehow blaming others for all things gone wrong, gives you immense happiness & satisfaction, what say ?
On another note, I’m so happy to share with you that this little space crossed the mark of 10,000 + page views per day. It was a great feeling & it’s all because of YOU. Thank You very much for your support & encouragement.
Here’s wishing you & your loved ones a Happy & Blessed Easter! May the risen Christ bless you with peace, happiness & prosperity!
One more thing, just because its called Easter chicken doesnt mean, you can make this only on Easter day. You can make it for any special occasion or make it on an ordinary day & turn that into a special one Btw, you can also check out the party menu here, if in case you are still undecided about the Easter menu.
Now, shall we go to the recipe?
Grind the ingredients (number 2) listed under ‘to grind’ label, with 2 tbsp water, to a fine paste. Take half of the ground paste & apply to the cleaned chicken pieces. Add salt also to the marinated chicken & keep it aside for half an hour. Meanwhile heat oil in a pan & add sliced onions & salt. Cook till it becomes golden brown in color. Remove half of the cooked onions to another plate & keep it aside. Add small onions to the onions in the cooking pan. Cook for a few minutes. Add tomato & cook till it becomes soft. Add non sour yogurt to this & mix well. Add remaining half of the ground masala & fry it till the oil starts appearing. Add marinated chicken pieces to this & mix well. Add 3/4 cup of boiling water & cover & cook the chicken.
Add cashew paste & the kept aside cooked onions to thick coconut milk. Stir well. When the chicken is almost cooked, add coconut milk mixture to the curry. Cook till the gravy becomes thick & the chicken pieces are coated well with the masala. The consistency of this curry is semi dry chicken, it has a pasty masala. Garnish the cooked chicken with boiled egg & fried cashew. Serve hot with pulao/ghee rice/appam/roti etc;
Notes: This curry is towards a spicier side, so please adjust the measurements to suit your taste. I used coconut oil for this recipe. If you want to make it extra special, you can use ghee.
Why not leave a comment? Quick, head on over to MariasMenu.com for more tasty, delicious and simple recipes! Remember to check out the Recipe Index to find some easy-to-cook dishes. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about MariasMenu!
Modaks / Modakams, as you know, are the sweet dumplings offered as ‘Neivedyam’ for Lord Ganesha.(err.. hope I din’t sound too formal) *cough *cough..
Well, now I can hear your asking, it’s not the time to make it, no Ganesh festivals around the corner and why this recipe here?
The reason is nothing else other than that I wanted badly to click and blog ‘a sweet’ with my new cam, first, and hide those guilty feelings pinging me for not blogging ‘something sweet and nice’ for the past week festivals. I simply watched and let go lazily the Telugu, Tamil and the Malayalam New year passing by the consecutive days celebrated with much pomp around my town and the blogosphere
I have already posted the step by step recipe for Steamed Modakams prepared for the ‘Chathurthi’.
This, as you see is the fried version which has longer shelf life and I feel a bit easier to make than the other one.
Fried Modakam (yields around 25)
For the dough:
Maida / All purpose flour – 1/4 kg or 2 cups
Soda bicarb. – 2 pinches (optional)
Water- enough to knead into a soft dough
Ghee- 1 tbsp
For the filling:
Freshly grated shavings from a medium sized coconut (measure)
Crushed jaggery – half the quantity of the grated coconut, loosely packed in your measuring cup.
Cardamom powder – to flavour
Ghee – Atbsp
Ghee / Oil – to deep fry
Method:
Dough:
Knead flour and water with soda bicarb to make a soft dough as for pooris. Addition of soda bicarb is optional. It lightens n crispens the shell with tiny bubbles once fried. You don’t have to let the dough standRoll out into small balls and spread into thin (as thin as possible) pooris.Cut them into perfect rounds with the mouth of a katori. Let not the size of the poori overflow once placed on the bed of your palm…..just for an idea
Filling:
Heat half the tbsp of ghee in a non stick kadai.Add the grated coconut and the crushed jaggery together.Sauté for a few minutes to melt down the jaggery pieces and steam off the water content. Mix in Cardamom powder.
Final assembly and deep frying:
Spoon a little of the filling in the centre or the poori and bring the edges on top by gentle gathers. Press and twist the top a little in order to stick the tip / secure the filling while deep frying. The Modakam should not be larger than a big gooseberry
Prepare the Modaks and spread a thin white wet cloth to prevent them from drying up. Heat ghee or oil in a kadai and fry few at a time till golden brown.
The Malayalam new year, Vishu is celebrated on the first day of medam masam (Malayalam month ) It generally falls on 14th or 15th of April. This year it’s on April 15th. Very early in the morning, i woke to light the lamp and then woke rest of the family to see the auspicious Vishukkani.Later in the day starts preparation for a small sadhya. This koottu curry is a combination of vegetables and
You are back home after a long day and have some left over rice or chappathis in your kitchen with no side dish, hungry and not so patient for an elaborate cooking, but lucky enough to have a fresh/ not so fresh cauliflower left in your vegetable tray, this would be one of the easiest dry accompaniment you may lay your hands upon. There is no hassle of slicing onions either, yet it tastes great!
Easy Cauliflower Stir-fry
Cauliflower, cut into small florets- 2 cups
To season:
Oil- 2 tbsps
Mustard seeds- 1/4 tsp
Turmeric powder- 1/4 tsp
Chilly Powder- 1/2 tsp (more or less acc to your spice level)
Pepper powder- 1/4 tsp
Garlic-1 large clove or 3 small, Crushed
Curry leaves / Cilantro
Salt- as needed
Wash the florets well and keep aside. Heat oil in a kadai, splutter mustard seeds, throw in curry leaves, add the florets and saute for a few seconds. Add the turmeric and chilly powders along with salt and 1/2 cup of water and close with a lid while it simmers. Here in TN, the vegetables cook a bit slow and so I needed 5 minutes to get them half cooked. Adjust the cooking time accordingly in yours. The florets have to get half cooked before you proceed to the next step, and that’s it!
The water would have used up or even if not, dont worry, add the crushed garlic (close, if there’s stiill some water at the bottom till evaporated) and lastly the pepper powder and toss well. ( you can also saute the florets for a longer time with some more oil drizzled. I didn’t do it as I was…yup, Impatient! )
If you don’t have curry leaves in stock and hadn’t added earlier, garnish with chopped cilantro.
Serve hot. You will never regret coming up this one and will end up making it again and again. Kids will enjoy this too!
Here is a sweet treat to celebrate Vishu. I think I’ve told you before..that we dont celebrate Vishu on a large scale. I try to make payasam every year and that’s the only special dish on Vishu day. However there is also another celebration for me on this day. It’s my parents Wedding Anniversary. Also it was my brother’s b’day on 12th April and one more good news is there…we welcomed a new member to our family this month. My cousin sis Ammu is blessed with a beautiful baby girl. So all in all, its celebration time
I had this payasam for the very first time around 2 months back, during my stay in Kerala. There was something special about my holiday this time. That was the first time I spent so much time with my Appa. All these years he was very busy with work and once he retired & became free, it was my turn to be busy. But this holiday we compensated for all the lost quality time. Since my Amma is still working, it was just the two of us during the day. Though we mostly ended up debating about almost every topic under the sun (at times, Sarasa checy came running from the kitchen wondering what’s all the commotion in the living room & another time our driver parked the car on the side road saying that he will drive only if we stop arguing..and what were we arguing about…ohh yeah Balakrishna Pillai, an ex Minister of Kerala being sent to jail, now you got a picture right ) we had so much fun. We went shopping together, dining out together & was even planning to go for a movie, but that didnt work out 
Usually when I’m at home, I try my best to be at least 10 feet away from the kitchen. Because when I’m on holiday, sweating up in kitchen is the last thing I wanna do . So Appa & Amma never had a chance to experience my cooking (except once and that’s another story). I decided to make Gothambu Payasam with a little help from Sarasa chechy, since it’s my Appa’s fav. He liked it very much & I was a happy girl. As I said, it was the first time I had this payasam. I’m a die hard fan of Parippu payasam and always looked down at this as a poor cousin of parippu payasam. But I was wrong. After all I’m game for anything with jaggery, coconut milk & ghee. How wrong can it be ? Since the excitement factor was too much when I made it at home, I completely forgot to note down the measurements. So I made it today again, just to give you the correct measurements & not because of my love for payasam. See I do take pains & make sacrifices for you
Here is a picture of broken wheat, just in case you are curious, how it looks like…
Wish you a very happy Vishu! Hope you celebrate it with your loved ones. Hope you like our Vishu Kaineetam.
PS: I’m free tomorrow, if you are making a Sadya & wondering whom all to invite
Here is the recipe:
Pressure cook the cleaned broken wheat with 4 cups of water. I cooked it on high flame for around 6-7 whistles. Keep it closed for 15 mins. Drain if there is any excess water. Meanwhile melt the jaggery with 1/2 cup water. Strain the melted jaggery. Combine the melted jaggery & cooked wheat. Add 2 tsp of ghee to this. Cook this mixture, till the melted jaggery is completely dried. Add medium thick coconut milk to this & combine well. Let it boil. When it attains a thick consistency, add thick coconut milk. Give a good stir & mix well. Add crushed cardamom also. Let it cook for 5 more minutes on low flame & remove from fire. Keep in mind that the payasam tends to thicken as it cools.
Heat 1 tsp ghee in a small pan & fry the bite size coconut pieces first, when it starts changing colour, add cashews & raisins also & fry it. Garnish the hot payasam with fried coconut pieces,raisins & cashews. Serve hot.
Notes: The color of the payasam very much depends on the type of jaggery used. I used coconut milk powder the second time. To make a cup of medium thick coconut milk, add 2 heaped tbsp of coconut milk powder to a cup of warm water. For a cup of thick coconut milk, add 3 heaped tbsp of coconut milk powder to a cup of warm water. You can increase or reduce the qty of ghee to suit your taste. Also before adding melted jaggery to wheat, make sure that wheat is cooked well.
You can check out the Sadya recipes here.
Other Payasam recipes:
Why not leave a comment? Quick, head on over to MariasMenu.com for more tasty, delicious and simple recipes! Remember to check out the Recipe Index to find some easy-to-cook dishes. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about MariasMenu!
I was all set to post a chammanthi recipe, like I promised here. But then with the celebration of Team India winning the Cricket World Cup happening all around the place, how can I just post a chammanthi recipe? So here’s a spicy beef fry recipe, to balance out all the sweet celebrations
I know you must be wondering why I’m posting a beef fry recipe again. I’ve already posted two beef fry/olathiyathu recipe. I dont want to sound like a marketing person saying this product is way different from the usual ones you have seen . But let me tell you, there is a DIFFERENCE, try for yourself & you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Also about the phrase “kallu shappu style” ….I’ve never been to a kallu shappu (toddy shop) or even the famous karimbinkala shappu family restaurant. Though kallu shappu is an unfamiliar territory to me, I’ve my connections to get the shappu recipe
Do you remember Sarasa chechy, my amma’s assistant? I got this recipe from her. Her husband is a cook in a kallu shappu. Though Sarasa chechy refuses to admit that her husband has any influence on her cooking style, I believe this beef fry has shappu style written all over it. So those of you who have “shappu” experience please do try this and share your feedback. Hey,that doesn’t mean others cant try this…
So go ahead, try this shappu style beef fry & spice up your victory celebrations
Please find the picture of shappu beef fry made by Ramya Rajesh, based on the above recipe. Thanks a lot dear
Here you go…
Marinate the cleaned beef pieces with the ingredients listed under marination (number 2 ingredients). Keep it aside for 15-20 mins. Add 2 tbsp of water to this & pressure cook till the beef is done(the cooking time of beef depends on the type of beef used). Keep the cooker closed for 20-25 mins. Open the cooker & if there is any excess water in the beef, cook till the water is dried completely.
Heat oil in a heavy bottom pan & add tons of curry leaves. Fry it for few seconds. Add the cooked beef. Give it a good stir. Cook on low flame till the beef becomes black in colour. If the beef appears to dry in between, add a little oil & continue cooking. It will take around 10-15 mins. Dont forget to give a stir in between. That’s all …the shappu beef fry is ready!
Notes: I saw Sarasa chechy using coconut oil very generously & I believe that’s the secret behind this lovely dark colour. So let loose your grip on the oil bottle for just once & enjoy this spicy treat Also please try to use crushed red chilli itself, instead of chilli powder. It gives a very different flavor to this dish. Try to use small onions (shallots)& please dont substitute it with onions, it will affect the taste. Dont forget to use coconut oil for this recipe, it’s a must!
Why not leave a comment? Quick, head on over to MariasMenu.com for more tasty, delicious and simple recipes! Remember to check out the Recipe Index to find some easy-to-cook dishes. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about MariasMenu!