Kaya Pola/ Mutta Marichathu - Plantain Egg Cake

                             

 

              Ramadan is around the corner and it's time to post some Ifthar dishes. Kayappola is an Ifthar dish from Malabar, which you can easily make with in a short span of time. No much plannings and preparations needed. Everything could be whipped up in a few minutes if you have ripe plantains and eggs at hand. And it only takes about twenty minutes in low heat on the stove top to get it done (Did I mention that you actually don't need an oven to prepare it?) Yep! All  you need is a stove and a sauce pan.. Go ahead, and make it today.. As it contains plantains and eggs, it's good for kids . They would love this soft n flavourful cake.Good to make as a tea time snack for kids.

Here you go...

Meen Pathiri (Steamed rice pancakes filled with fish masala)

                
            It has been a while since I posted any Malabar dishes. The fact that most of them have lengthy and intricate procedures make them victims of procrastination. Even, when the procedures are quiet simple, explaining it with the step by step pictures often proves to lose a lot of time. Hence, I have lots of malabar dishes photographed, yet not ready for posting in my draft.

     Actually, I hadn't attempted to make this Malabar dish by myself, though I have  had it many times. We have a newly opened restaurant in Kuwait, which is specialised in Malabar cuisine and we have become frequent visitors there, lately. Homely food is what they offers with that authentic traditional touch. While enjoying their Malabar specialities the other day, it suddenly struck me that it has been a long time since I posted any Malabar dishes on the blog. So I thought of sharing this Meen Pathiri, which is 'Malabari' in all essence and is quiet a winner as far as fish lovers are concerned.

    Basically, pathiri is a colloquial term in Malabar area for pancakes made by rolling out dough. They are usually made with rice flour or with the dough made my grinding soaked rice. There are also pathiris made with wheat flour like gothambu pathiri,moolapathiri etc. Meen Pathiri is made with two rice pancakes joined together and stuffed with spicy fish filling  and later on steam cooked to perfection.

    They are traditionally made by grinding soaked parboiled rice with grated coconut, shallots and fennel seeds. And the stuffing is done with fleshy fishes like king fish and mackerel. Here I made the pathiris the easier way using rice flour mixed with coconut milk powder and fennel seeds. I had some pomfrets in the freezer and made the filling with it.

     It was an instant winner in the family with Mr.KB commenting that it was high time I made something 'Ramzani'. Usually Meen Pathiri is made during ifthars and on such special occasions, back home. So this can be added to those 'must try' ifthar dishes, as the Ramzan is fast approaching...

The Recipe:

For the pancakes:
2 cups rice flour
2 tbsp coconut milk powder
1 3/4 cup hot boiled water
1/2 to 1 tsp fennel seeds(perum jeerakam), grounded
1/2 to1 tsp shallots(cheriyulli),grounded (optional)
Salt to taste

For the fish marinade:
5 -6 pieces of any fleshy fish like mackerel,king fish or pomfret
1/2 tsp turmeric pdr
2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt to taste

For the filling:
2-3 onions sliced
2-3 green chillies, slit
1 tsp ginger garlic paste( freshly made for more flavour)
1 large tomato, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric pdr
1 tsp kashmiri chilli pdr
1 and 1/2 tsp coriander pdr
1 tsp fennel seed pdr (perum jeeraka podi)
2 sprigs of curry leaves
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt to taste

Preparation:

    Wash and drain the fish properly and marinate it with turmeric powder,red chilli pdr, lemon juice and salt.Keep aside for half to one hour and shallow fry in a frying pan with cooking oil. Remove it from the pan; remove the skin and bones and shred them to small pieces. Keep aside.

Prepare the filling:

•  Heat oil in a frying pan and add the onions. Saute it till it becomes translucent. Add ginger garlic paste and saute until aroma comes out. Add green chillies and curry leaves and saute for a few minutes
• Add chopped tomatoes and saute until mushy. Now add the spice powders and saute till the masala becomes thick with very less water.Add adequate salt and check the taste
• Now add the shredded fried fish pieces and mix well.Keep it covered and cook in low flame for a few minutes to imbibe the flavour.
• Remove the masala from heat and keep aside

 

Making the Pathiris and assembling:

                                                         flour kneaded to soft sticky dough

 

                                                     the filling placed on the pathiri

 

                                             another pathiri placed on top and sides joined

 

                                                   steaming the pathiri

• Spread rice flour, coconut milk powder, fennel seed powder and ground shallots in a wide mouthed bowl and pour hot boiling water added with adequate salt, over it. Knead well into a soft sticky dough.
• Take a cricket ball sized piece of dough and place it over a parchment paper or banana leaves cut into squares. Place another parchment paper or banana leaf over it and roll out into a pathiri 1/2 a cm thick with a rolling pin or with the heels of your palm. Remove the parchment paper on the top carefully and place some filling on it and spread,leaving half an inch from the circumference.
• Make another similar sized pathiri and place it over the other, with the filling in between. Press down the sides with your fingers to join the two pathiris.
• Repeat the procedure with the rest of the dough. It makes about 4 meen pathiris
• Cover it fully with parchment paper or banana leaf and steam in a steamer until well cooked, for about 15 minutes.
• Remove from steam and peel off the covering. Serve after it cools down. Enjoy!

   

Tharikkanji/ Thari kachiyathu

                  

                  Ramadan is coming to an end and I haven’t posted an ifthar dish this season yet. Time is so scarce nowadays.. Hardly affordable. Still it would be a shame if I didn’t post the recipe of tharikkanji atleast. If you are a northern Keralite you would need no second introduction to this ifthar beverage.

                  The memories with this hot beverage drink at ifthars goes way back to the first Ifthar I can ever remember. It was a delightful accompaniment to almost all Ifthar evenings, back home. The comfort food which may not make you delirious with joy, but always was a food for thought. Something which could really change the dull forlorn ifthars into everything homely. I am not a maudlin of all persons but certain foods can affect you in a way that you think is really sentimental. Some pushes you into a euphoria and some turns out quite a fag.

                    I am not certain of to which category I would add this beverage to. Certainly the tag ‘comfort drink’, clicks right in place. After a long day at fasting, it would no doubt refresh you and energize you and keep you in fine fettle. The recipe is too simple; nothing to cudgel your brains and that made me make it the other day too..

Coming to the recipe..


Things you need:


(makes 4 cups)

Rava or fine semolina - ½ cup

Milk - 2 cups

Coconut milk - ½ cup

Water - 1 cup

Sugar - ½ cup / acc. to taste

Salt - a pinch

Ghee/ clarified butter - 2 tbsp

Shallots, sliced - 2 or 3

Cashew nuts - 50 g

Raisins - 50 g

Cardamom powder - ½ tsp

Method:

Mix the milk and water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Add the sugar and dissolve completely. Add the rava and cook in low heat, stirring continuously. When the semolina is well cooked add the coconut milk and salt. Remove from heat when the mixture starts to boil. Heat ghee in a pan and sauté the shallots until brown. Add cashews and raisins and sauté . Pour this to the beverage along with ghee and stir. Add the cardamom powder and serve hot. The drink should not be very thick. If so, adjust the thickness by adding adequate hot water. Enjoy!

Pazham Nirachathu / Stuffed Plantain

                Mom in law had sent a bunch of plantains which grew in the kitchen garden. I was on the eager wait to get them ripe. We ate the first batch, steamed and mixed with coconut milk. It is one of my hubby's childhood favourites. I hadn't decided what to do with the next batch, when my better half suggested, "you haven't prepared Pazham Nirachathu for us yet. Why not try it now?". So it was going to be Pazham Nirachathu, another Malabar Dish which is usually made during Iftars or on special occasions.

               Slitting the plantains and filling them proved to be challenging for me. When I had watched my mom do it, I had thought it to be too easy. But when I filled one slit and moved over to the other, the filling from the previous slit was slipping out. So I made only three slits in the plantain (Some people makes four) and was with  much efforts that I managed to hold everything in place until I covered the slits with the batter and deep fried them. And was really happy with the outcome. It looked like Pazham Nirachathu perfectly made and tasted quite the same... :)

              Pazham Nirachathu is almost similar to Unnakkaya which I had previously posted. But in Unnakkaya, steamed and mashed ripe plantain is used unlike in Pazham Nirachathu which uses the whole plantain as such. So it's easier to prepare Pazham Nirachathu than the other.

Here is the recipe..

Things you need:

2 medium sized ripe plantains
1 Egg
25 g Cashew Nuts, broken to small pieces
25 g Raisins
3 tbsp Sugar
1 tbsp grated coconut
1/4 tsp Cardamom powder
2 tbsp pure Ghee / Clarified Butter
2 tbsp All purpose Flower
1/2 cup of Veg. Oil

Method

1)   Beat the Egg with Sugar and keep aside.
2)   Heat Ghee in a pan and add the Cashews and Raisins and saute until cashews turn brown and raisins are puffed up. Add the grated coconut to this and saute for a couple of minutes. Then add the egg and sugar along with cardamom powder and saute with until the egg is cooked and granulated. Remove from heat and keep aside.
3)   Peel the plantains and make 3 slits on each of them length wise with a knife in such a way that the slits join each other at the center along seed part and stops just before the two ends of plantains.
4)   Now fill these slits with the filling previously prepared taking care not to over stuff them.
5)   Mix the flower with adequate water to form a thick batter. Using this batter seal the slits of the plantains until the filling is not visible.
6)   Heat oil in a wok and carefully fry the filled plantains in it until all sides are equally brown and done.
7)   Take out from the oil and drain on a kitchen tissue. Serve hot by slicing the plantains into small circles. Each circle will have three slits of filling on them.

Sending this to Charitha's A-Appetisers event.

Beef Cutlet

              There are many Ifthar dishes I had postponed posting due to unavailability of time... Ramadan is the month you cannot afford much time sitting before the computer and clicking away with ease. The mornings are spent with prayers and worships of Allah and the after noons are busy with preparing mouthwatering delicacies for breaking the fast. So I had withheld many dishes from posting last Ramadan hoping that I could post them later... Time just went by... and looking back I could see I had posted only very few of the Ifthar delights. It is almost time for the next Ramadan. The thought came just as my better half was commenting about Beef Cutlet and how he could wait until Ramadan to eat one... (Ssh... Beef Cutlet is his weakness... he never admits it... But I can see from the number of cutlets he gulps down that he enjoys immensely ;) )

              So I thought it's time to make some. There are two advantages, I can take the pics and he can have it to his fill. My mom used to make it mixed with mashed potatoes, green chillies, onions and minced beef and we used to enjoy it so much. When I was a boarding student at Thrissur we used to have beef cutlets from a small shop near to our school. I used to make up my mind that I would eat only one when I go there, but every time ended up buying two or three. They were so yummy... they just melted in the mouth. Taking one bite, I could see the cutlet was red inside. So I inferred they added beetroots in them. So back home I tweaked my mothers recipes with an extra addition of cooked and mashed beetroots in them and Hooray!! they turned out so much more yummy... Nowadays my mom too makes it by adding beetroots in them.

Here is the recipe....

Things you need:

250 g fresh beef, cut into small pieces, washed and drained
1 large onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 sprigs of curry leaves, sliced into small strips
2 green chillies, cut into small slices
1 medium sized potato
1 small beetroot / half a medium sized beetroot
1 tsp red chilly powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp garam masala powder
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 egg white
Coriander leaves (optional)
Salt to taste
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs or rusk powder
1/2 cup veg. oil

Procedure:

1) Cook the beef in a pressure cooker adding half teaspoon of red chilli powder, 1/4 tsp of turmeric powder, one tsp of coriander powder and adequate salt, until moderately cooked. Mince it in a mixer, after cooling and keep aside. You can alternately use minced beef and cook as instructed.

2) Cook the potato and beetroot with skin in a pressure cooker adding adequate water. After it gets cooked drain on a mesh and peel them. Then mash them in a blender or using potato masher and keep aside.

3) Heat one tablespoon of oil in a sauce pan and add onion to it and saute until transparent.Then add the garlic and green chillies and saute. When the aroma comes out, add the curry leaves, 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric powder, 1/2 teaspoon of red chilli powder, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper powder and 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala powder and saute. Then add the minced beef and saute for a couple of minutes. Add the mashed potato and beetroot and mix well adding adequate salt.

4) Take lemon sized balls from the mix and make round patties about half an inch thick with your palm and keep aside.

5) Beet the egg white in a bowl. Heat a deep heavy bottomed wok and add remaining oil to it. When the oil is well heated, fry the patties by dipping them in the egg white batter and then rolling them in bread crumbs. Using egg white instead of whole egg helps prevent the oil from frothing up. Fry until golden brown.

6) Remove from oil and drain on a kitchen tissue. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with tomato ketchup. Enjoy :)

         And I am off to Dubai on a week's vacation with family.. So next week will be a no post week. See you all with new recipes again, Insha Alla.. Till then.. bye. Take care..

Unnakkaya / Kayada (Banana sweet pocket fritters)

              Bananas have always been part of the culinary culture in Kerala.. especially in Malabar. Houses with out a couple of plantain trees were rare in the gone decades and hence there are many out standing Malabar recipes made with ripe as well as raw plantains.. The ripe plantain which is quite different from the various kinds of bananas seen world wide, is used both cooked and uncooked in preparations.. Those who are familiar with Malabar cuisine wouldn't need an introduction to Unnakkaya, the widely popular and delightful delicacy. It has lured a lot of loyal fans to it in the past and still rocks..

              Thinking about banana's nutritional extravaganza, no health nut can ever resist it. More than being a good source of fibres, potassium and vitamin C, it has all the 8 amino acids our body cannot produce itself.. Musing about the yum yum dish, I think I would rather have these amino acids every day even it be in excess ;) I should say my family shares my views.. ditto :)

             The only thing which push me into a dilemma is how to keep the banana adequately ripe for the dish. The recipe needs medium ripe bananas, that is.. with the skin just yellow and a little brown with no traces of green. It should not be over brown or over ripe too. If it is, you are sure to have a cooking disaster. If the banana is adequately ripe for the recipe, it would work like butter.

            When I got bananas with the 'so said' qualifications from the market last day, I had to give it a try immediately or it would go naughty right under my noses... Good thing that US Masala is hosting the Veggie/ Fruit a month event with banana , this time, earlier conducted by Priya.  I think I am luckily on time. So this Malabar delight goes off to the Veggie/Fruit a month event.

                                                      

Things you need:

     Makes 10 Unnakkayas..

3 medium ripe plantains
1     egg
25 g of cashew nuts, sliced into small pieces
25 g of raisins
2 tbsp of grated coconut
4 tbsp of sugar
4 tbsp of pure ghee/clarified butter
1 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp of cardamom powder
1 cup of vegetable oil

Method:

    Cook the ripe plantains with a little water or by steaming. Drain it properly.  Peel, seed and mash it with a pestle or potato masher until a smooth pulp is formed . Kneed it with hands until dough like with no lumps and keep it aside. Heat ghee in a pan and fry the cashews and raisins until brown.Add the coconut and 1 tbsp of sugar to it and saute in medium heat until the coconut becomes crisp. Remove from heat and keep aside. Beat the egg with the rest of sugar. In another pan heat coconut oil and scramble the eggs in it. Add cardamom powder to it and mix with the cashew raisin filling. Now oil your palm lightly and take a small portion of banana dough, about the size of a lemon and flatten it on your palm. Put a teaspoon of the filling on the middle of it and roll the dough into the shape of unnakkaya as shown in the picture. Smooth it out. Now heat a kadai with vegetable oil and deep fry the Unnakkayas until it turns brown. Drain on a kitchen towel and serve hot or cold.

                                                                                                 

Fattoush / Arabic Bread Salad

       Yet another healthy and delicious salad from the Middle East.. Apart from the vegetables and leaves, the addition of fried pita breads (Arabic Hubbs) make a twist in its flavour.. Infact more interesting than the addition of croutons.. If you have some stale pita breads with you, then cut it into small pieces and deep fry it in oil or toast it in the oven. Then add it to your salad and you have a delicious dish which is quite filling.. I am ignorant on the aspect of how this Labanese salad would have evolved. May be when somebody was preparing salad, they didn't have croutons with them and had some stale pita breads and they just might have experimented by adding pita breads. It's just a guess ;) The very first time I saw it in Arabic restaurants, I had an intuition that it might be awesome and it was.. Very much satisfying and relishable.. I came to know that it is an addition in Arabian Ifthar parties and befriended it with my other Ifthar dishes..

Coming to the recipe..

Things you need:

1 head of romaine lettuce, torn in pieces
A few Persian cucumbers or English cucumbers
A few tomatoes,seeded and  diced
A few radishes sliced
Green onions sliced
A hand ful of chopped Italian parsely and a hand ful of fresh mint
A green pepper diced (optional)
A large loaf of pita bread or 2 small pita breads
Olive oil for frying the pita breads

For dressing:

• 2 small lemons, juiced
• 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 2 generous table spoons of 'sumac' plus extra to sprinkle on pita bread slices.( 'Sumac' is a dried leaf powder which has a tangy flavour and available in Arab markets, used in some of the salads. It has a reddish brown colour)
• 2 or more cloves of garlic mashed in a dash of salt in a mortar. If this salt is not enough, you can add more salt in the salad according to taste.

Method:

1. With kitchen scissors cut the bread into thin square slices. Fry them in oil until crisp and brown. Take out from oil and drain on a kitchen towel. Immediately sprinkle sumac powder over it and keep aside.
2. Prepare all the salad ingrediants. Mix the dressing. When ready to serve, toss the salad with the dressing, incorporarte the fried pita breads and serve.

Kozhi Ada / Chicken hot pockets

  

                      It is the crispy, tiny delight of malabar... A nice snack to simply munch on or to go with tea. This sizzler which may be called 'the little brother of Samosa', is a celebrity in ifthars and family gatherings... Yes! you can make the bet! You wouldn't stop with one.. :)

The recipe..

Things you need:

To make about 30 'adas'

For making pastry:
All purpose flour or maida - 2 cups
Water    -    as needed
Salt        -   as needed

For the filling:
Chicken or beef with out bone - 250 g
Onion               - 1, medium sized , sliced into very small pieces
Ginger, minced  - 1 tsp
Green chillies     - 2, cut into very small pieces
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Garam masala powder - 1 tsp
Vegetable oil -  2 tbsp

Others:
Oil for frying  - 2 cups

Method:

Making the pastry:
Make a smooth dough with the flour and water. It should be harder than that for making pooris. Now divide it into small balls, the size of a gooseberry.Keep them aside by covering them in a clean clothe or cling film.
Prepare the filling:
Cook the chicken or beef adding adequate salt and a little turmeric powder. Mince it using a fork or blender and keep aside. Now heat a wok and add 2 tbsp of oil to it. Add onion and saute until transparent.Add the minced ginger and green chillies and saute. Add the minced meat and saute. Finally add all the spice powders and saute until the filling becomes dry and crispy.
Filling:
Take the dough balls and roll them out into thin circles. Keep a little chicken filling in the middle and fold into half moon shape.Join the ends by pressing with a fork.
Frying: 
Fry them in heated oil in a wok until golden brown.Drain on a kitchen towel and serve hot.

Chattippathiri

                  
                   Here the climate is doing somersaults.Visionaries say its due to global warming, which means 'by the man's missdeeds'.Well, I dunno up to what extend the carbon dioxide emission leads to global warming, or how early the polar ice belts would melt due to it, but all i know is it's pretty unusual that a whole week be humid in this part of land,making people crave for rains.It's either too hot or too cold here and the condition you call 'pleasant climate' prevails only for a couple of months, around feb-march, when you need not feel groggy while stepping out.The 'too hot' climate, you can do with,but the 'too hot and humid' climate is totally unbearable.The 'staying indoor poeple' like me doesn't have to confront the scorching sun or the gruelling cold, but I feel sorry for  those who have to work out in such extreme climates...


                  The air conditioner in our flat tactfully masks the outdoor climate from my knowledge,but it can't fool me always..Nowadays I know, when the humidity rises outside..whenever it does, our linoleum floor gives a damp to touch feeling, reminding me of the 'monsoon' in our home land..Yes, the monsoon...when it rains dogs and cats everywhere sending the pleasant coolness indoors and the damp feeling to your foot...I would rather curl up by the window with a book in my lap, looking at the raindrops,listening to their 'pitter patter' for years to come...It's such a nostalgic feeling, you could never do away with.Together with it comes the memories of my mother baking something in the kitchen bringing the sweet aroma driving into my nostrils...Yes, that's what I must do..bake something homely to fill that void in the heart..to do away with the 'far away' feeling...

                    And what should I bake..a bit different from the mundane stuff? Something to feel at home in the gloaming...?Yes! the layers and layers of glee my mother used to bake , and we children used to eat galore..Chattippathiri. It would make your ifthar evening special too.I grabbed my resources  and let it have a go..


              Things I needed:


1 cup all purpose flour
3 large eggs
3/4 cup water
25g cashew nuts, broken to small pieces
20g raisins
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp ghee
1/2 tsp cardamom powder
1 tsp kuskus or poppy seeds
Salt to taste
A round baking dish

Preparation:


 For the pancakes:


  Mix the flour and water thoroughly, until a semi thick batter is formed and no lumps are visible.(It should neither be too thick nor too thin)Add a little salt to it and mix well.Pour a ladle of batter on a heated griddle and make a thin pancake.The diameter of the pan cake depends on that of the baking dish  you use to make the chattippathiri.Make at least 6 pancakes in this way.


For the pourings:


Boil the milk and add sugar to it and dissolve.Cool it. When the milk is adequately cooled,add 3 beaten eggs to it and mix well.Do not over mix.Add cardamom powder.Keep it aside.


For the filling:


Heat 1 tbsp of ghee in a pan and add sliced cashew nuts. Saute until brown and transfer to a bowl.Now saute raisins in the same ghee and transfer to the bowl when they puff up. Pour the remaining ghee into the milk-egg mixture.

Procedure:


                   Brush the baking dish lightly with butter or ghee. Now keep a pan cake in it.Pour a little milk-egg mixture over it. Now add a teaspoon of cashew-raisin mix and spread evenly over the pan cake. Carefully keep another pancake over it. Pour the milk-egg mixture, and go on with the process until all pancakes,the milk and fillings are used up. Sprinkle the top layer with the kuskus seeds and more cashew nuts and raisins. Preheat the oven to 160C or gas mark 2. Now place the baking dish carefully in the central rack without tilting and bake for half an hour until done. The milk mixture must totally dry up to be done. Mine took almost 45 min. If you don't have oven, you can prepare it in a circular sauce pan with a lid by cooking in low flame. This malabar speciality was originally prepared that way on fuel wood stoves by keeping coconut husk embers on top of the lid to provide uniform heat from all sides.After it is done cool the pathiri and cut to slices and serve.Enjoy!
                     If you can do with a little more egg, you can add 1 or 2 eggs scrambled with sugar and cardamom powder along with the cashew and raisin fillings.This would make your chattippathiri more yummy but unhealthy. As for me..I have always been on edge while coming face to face with high calorie food.So I have skipped that 'scrambled egg' part :)

Holy month and a good old recipe

  Hearty Ramadan wishes to all my readers.

Ramadan is back..... the season of fasting followed by feasting......
While thinking about Ifthar's, what comes to my mind is the non ending array of pathiris (wafer thin rice pancakes) in its various stages of processing on the kitchen counter top in our family home with the women hovering around it with jokes and gossips... .The chicken curry would  be fuming in its pot over the stove, sending delicious aromas helter skelter, and the 'samosas'  and 'kozhi adas' sizzling in their abode and we children used to pray that the 'bank' (call for prayer to end the fast) be called early so that we all can have a share of these delicacies.


            In Ramadan mornings, kitchen is usually dormant with activities limited to preparing simple foods for the children or having a glass of water by the kids..........  It is the time when my kitchen goes to hibernation after a long year of perpetual cooking experiments. As I sleep the mornings off with a 'no worry',' no tension' demeanor, so does the kitchen, saving its fuels to light up a far too busy afternoon to meet up the hurry burry cooking buzz. It is just a lull before the storm. The dough need to be kneaded for the 'pathiris', the chicken to be cut, curry made, fruits to be juiced.... and the list of cooking chores goes on .......

          As a prelude to 'ifthar' specials, I decided to post something simple - a far less time consuming yet yummy affair. Yes, you guessed it right .'Kozhi Aleesa'. After almost a week of the same menu list I thought of making something different and after pondering over my lists, this is what I finalised. The rich soupy dish made delicious with whole husked wheat cooked along with chicken or mutton, would totally ward your fatigue away after a tiring day at fasting.



    

Chicken Aleesa

 







Vegetarian Aleesa



 

         Aleesa is a traditional dish of malabar, whose roots grows back to the Arab culinary, prepared by cooking whole husked wheat with coconut milk and seasoned with fried shallots and ghee.The non veg version is 'Kozhi aleesa' or 'Mutton aleesa', where you  cook chicken or mutton along with wheat.The vegetarian aleesa is usually served sweetened with sugar or jaggery,while the non-veg variety can be served either with sugar or salt.I prefer Kozhi aleesa served with salt because it gives it a soupy and rich taste.



        The recipe is simple..



    Kozhi Aleesa(Chicken Aleesa)

Things you will need:

1 cup whole or broken husked wheat, soaked

           (sooji wheat is the best)



3 cups of water

500g chicken

1 cup thick coconut milk

2 tbsp pure ghee

Salt to taste



Preparation:

        Cut the chicken into medium sized pieces.Wash and drain.Then cook the soaked wheat and chicken pieces along with 3 cups of water and adequate salt, in a pressure cooker or in a pot.Cook until the wheat is broken down and soupy and the meat easily comes off from the bones.It took almost half an hour for me in pressure cooker.Now remove bones from the meat and mix everything well.Boil the aleesa and add the coconut milk.Switch off the burner before it comes to boil.Adjust the salt if needed.

   Serve:

       Transfer the aleesa to the serving bowl,and make a pit in the center of it.Pour 1 teaspoon of melted ghee into it and serve hot.Enjoy yourself.. :)