PathoLi (Konkani Style dumpling with sweet coconut filling )

PathoLi, Konkani Style dumpling with sweet coconut filling
Coconut is the Mother Goddess of all Konkani cuisine. There would not be Konkani cuisine without Coconut. So when I read that Jihva event for month of Jan is on Coconut, I immediately decided to participate.

PathoLi is the Queen of Konkani cuisine, while Pathrode is the King, and offcourse Dalitoy is our Kuladeva. These three are a must for the Ganesh Chaturthi and other festivals where the food is the center of attraction.

Tiramisu

Its party time! Everyones is the holiday mood for Christmas and New Years. Whats a holiday without any dessert? So here my post for today-Tiramisu. Tiramisu is an Italian dessert with layers of sponge cake and coffee, topped with cheese.



My Friend Manisha had made this Tiramisu a few months back and I got to taste it and take home a big portion of it. It was delicious. I decided to post the recipe on my blog and saved some pictures of it. It was lying in drafts for a long time and whats the best time to post it than the Christmas Holidays.

2-3 packets of sponge fingers/lady fingers/marie biscuits
300 gm/10 oz mascarpone cheese, a mild Italian cream cheese
250 ml/8 fl.oz. whipping cream
200 gm/8 oz chocolate chips, preferably Hershey's
1 tbsp espresso coffee
2 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp icing sugar

Heat whipping cream in a sauce pan, dissolve chocolate chips till it melts completely. Set aside.
Beat cheese and icing sugar in a bowl and keep it ready.
Dissolve espresso coffee powder in a cup of warm water.

We will assemble the tiramisu in the baking pan/rectangular dish in which you want to serve the tiramisu. Dip the biscuits in the espresso coffee and lay it on the pan in 2-3 layers. Lay a layer of cheese and sprinkle cocoa powder all over. Lay another layer of biscuits, cheese and cocoa powder. Pour the whipping cream with melted chocolate. Chill it in the refrigerator for 4-5 hours. You can make it a day ahead.

Just before serving sprinkle a thin layer of cocoa powder on top.

The Layer Finger in the ingredients is not okra. Its like cake rusk available in the supermarkets. You can use Marie Biscuits from the Indian store instead.
Do not keep the tiramisu out of the fridge for long. The whipping cream layer may start to melt.

"Happy Holidays" & "Feliz Navidad" to everyone from me & Manisha

Pathrode or Patra Gashi & Usli

Konkanis do eat a lot of veggies and leaves that are unusual to the rest of the Indian community. That includes Bamboo shoots/keerlu, raw jack fruit/kadgi, bread fruit/jeev kadgi, kantola/pagiLa, special type of mushroom grown in Karkala-aLambe and much more. The leaves includes colocasia/pathrode paan, tere pan, maraLva paan, taikiLo, etc. I dont know names for these in any other language. These are not the recently acquired taste from Thai or Chinese cuisines, but they are the authentic Konkani delicacies. Konkanis are believed to be migrated from central Asia to Goa and then to the rest of the world. I personally think our ancestors must have been to Thailand/china or some part in South East Asia on the way! Our cuisine has so much in common with them. Having said so, today I would like to share a popular konkani delicacy today- Pathrode.

Pathrode is steamed colocasia leaves rolls stuffed with spicy rice and dal mixture. The leaves are knows are aloo/pathra in gujarati, 'Elephant Ears' to some, sold as 'taro leaves' in the Chinese supermarkets. You can buy taro roots from the Indian store and grow the leaves in your backyard. The plant needs good sunlight for a healthy growth. When not cooked properly they do itch and thats because of the needle like calcium oxalate crystals in the leaves. They are broken down on cooking. Read more here

10-12 colocasia leaves
1 cup rice
1 cup moong/green gram
1 cup coconut
pinch of hing
1 inch cube tamarind
12 roasted red chillies
salt

Soak rice and moong with enough water for 8 hrs or overnight. You could use 2 cups of rice or 2 cups of moong instead. But I like this half & half combination the best. Wash and drain. Set aside.
Grind coconut, roasted red chillies, tamarind into a smooth paste. Add hing and the rice and moong and continue to grind until its the lightly coarse like the idli rava. Do not use much water, keep it as dry as possible. Add salt and mix well.

Clean the colocasia leaves, and pat them dry. Remove the middle hard veins and any other hard of the leaves with a small knife or a peeler. Do not bother to leave the tender veins they will cook well.

On a clean surface, place the largest leaf upside down, spread the paste allover the leaf, place another leaf on top. Continue stacking up to 7-8 leaves.


Fold the edges along the length, spread the paste on the sides.



Roll the leaves. Tuck in the top corner to make the roll look perfect. Spread the paste between every folds.



Steam cook for 45 minutes. Better overcook then undercook. Actually they don't get overcooked easily. You can check by inserting a toothpick and it should pierce easily without the hardness of the leaves and should come out clean without any raw batter sticking. Let it cool down before you slice them into rounds.

Ways of Serving Pathrode
1. Quick and most adored way is to cut the patrode into rounds, pour a spoonful of fresh coconut oil.


2. Pan fry the rounds with a spoonful of coconut oil. Fry till the edges are crisp

3. Gashi Pathrode - Serve with any konkani coconut sauce curries or make gashi exclusively for pathrode as follows

Gashi is a coconut sauce. Make a smooth masala paste or maasolu by grinding shredded coconut, tamarind and roasted red chillies. Roast 1/4 tsp urad dal, 3-4 methi seeds, 1/4 tsp coriander seeds and add it to the paste and continue to grind for a minute. Boil the masala with little water and 1/2 onion chopped. Add the pathrode pieces to it and cook on low flame till the water evaporates and the gashi becomes thick.

4. Pathrode Usli - usually made with leftovers

Heat 3 tsp oil of oil, make a seasoning with mustard, urad dal, curry leaves, broken red chillies and onions. Fry till onion is golden brown. Add chopped pathrode, little salt and fry on low flame till ii becomes little crisp.

Check out similar recipes by Shilpa & Vee

Chana Masala

I grew up in a small town near Mangalore in a Konkani family. My mom always cooked authentic Konkani food. She never has garam masala in her kitchen, even till today. In fact, my mom hates the smell and taste of Garam masala, she finds it very strong and pungent. When I moved out of my town to pursue studies and career, I was introduced to a variety of north Indian and non Konkani dishes by my friends. It was amazing to learn so many new things and tastes.

My mom in law thought me a basic gravy with tomatoes using Garam Masala. She used to make egg curry with that recipe.

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All the pictures and contents published on Dalitoy are protected by the Copyrights law. You may not copy, edit or publish any content including the text and pictures without prior written permission from me.
All my work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License
Copyright © 2006-2007 Manjula/Dalitoy

Disclaimer
All the opinions expressed here are personal. I am not a certified nutritionist. Follow any instructions at your own risk.

Mangalore Buns

In Mangalorean cuisine, Buns is different from Bun. Its not plural form of Bun! Simply called as "Buns". It is a deep fried form of Sweet Banana Bread. Usually served for Breakfast with sambar or chutney on the side.

Barley Soup with Chunky Vegetables

I have planned to eat more healthy everyday. Why wait for Jan 1st when I can start it today? My plans is to cut down on rice and chapathi portions in half and to double the vegetables in my diet, include all varieties of cereal grains in the diet. I always loved to experiment with food to produce healthy recipes packed with nutrients without compromising taste. Here is the recipe for Barley Soup with Chunky Vegetables, which I did yesterday.

1/2 cup pearl barley
1 carrot
1 fennel
1 leek
1/4 capsicum
1/2 cup any vegetables of your choice
1 head broccoli/cauliflower
garlic salt/plain salt
fresh or dried herbs like oregano, basil, parsley, cilantro

Before I start with the recipe let me tell you more about the ingredients.

Barley is a cereal grain that is high in fiber and nutrients. It has more fiber than any other cereal grain. Most of the grains like rice and wheat are hulled and all the outer layer would have been removed before it comes to your plate. Barley too is hulled, but the nutrients left after milling is more than any other grain. Read more about barley on WHFoods.

Fennel on the left; Leek on the right

Fennel is the plant that looks like celery, but has a big pale green bulb at the bottom and celery like stalks on the top. The leaves resemble dill leaves. See the picture above. Very fragrant and add great flavor into the soup. Leek is like a giant green onion plant/scallion but is milder than onion. Leeks Lower LDL Cholesterol While Raising HDL Cholesterol. Read more about Fennel and Leek on WHFoods.

Lets start cooking now.
Cook barley in the pressure cooker with enough water to 6-8 whistles. Let it cook down.

In the meantime, Wash the fennel and leek. Separate out each stalks, wash each of it picking by hand and wash down all the dirt collected in them. Wash and Chop all the vegetables into chunks of 1/2 inch or smaller. You can transfer the content of the pressure cooker to a stock pot or continue in the same vessel to save on cleaning. Add carrot, fennel, leeks to the barley and cook on medium flame. You can add any more vegetables of your choice. When almost done, add capsicum and broccoli. Add dried or fresh herbs. Add garlic salt and pepper.

Serve hot with croûtons.

This chunky vegetable soup is a complete meal in its own.

Mooga Usli (Sprouted Green Gram Stir Fry)

Sprouted Green Grams are my all time favorites. It can be raw, added into salads, chats etc. Sprouted green gram gashi called kirlail moogan gashi is the festive side dish made during Mahalaya avamasya. Will post that recipe sometime in the future. My favorite recipe is the Stir fried and lightly cooked green grams.

2 cups sprouted green grams
3 green chillies
1 sprig curry leaves
1/2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp urad dal
pinch of hing
a tbsp shredded coconut, optional

Heat oil in a kadai, Splutter mustard seeds, add urad dal, slit green chillies, curry leaves. Add sprouted green grams, add little water and salt. Cook on medium flame. I cook it for just 5-10 minutes, I like mine crunchy. You can cook your desired consistency. Dissolve hing in a tsp of water and add. Optionally you can garnish with fresh coconut.

Serve it as a side dish or snack. I like it for breakfast too.

How to sprout?
Soak 1 cup of green gram/moong in 3-4 cups of water. Soak it overnight or for 8-12 hrs. Drain and rinse water 2 times with water. You can tie green grams in a wet thin cloth. I just spread it and cover in a wide pan. Let it rest for another day till the sprouts have grown.

Konkani Style Fish Fry

Fish Fry with rice flour on the right, rava fry on the left
The konkani style of making fish fry is very different from the rest. Most of my friends get surprised to find out that we use hing in fish! Its very unusual to use hing in any non-veg dishes. But some of the konkani sea food cuisines do have hing.

In the MangaLooru area the sardines/bootai-kannada/peDvo-konkani, macarel/bangude-kannada/raaju-konkani, pomfret/maanji-konkani, small white fish boLinjeer-tuLu/motyaLe-konkani are the konkani favorite fishes. These are the small fishes unlike salmon, catfish or seer. They are fried along with the bones. I am quite bored of pomfret, the only Indian fish found here in US. One of my freind told me that smelt fish is like motyaLe and I made konkani fish fry with it. It was delicious, similar taste as motyaLe.

Special care has to be taken to clean the small fishes. They have a lot of scales and the end result largely depend on how well the fishes have been cleaned. Most of the konkanis do remove the head and the tail while cleaning fish. So the fishes in my pictures are well trimmed.

cleaned fish
1 tsp chilli powder
1/4-1/2 cup rice flour or soji rava.
chick pea size hing
salt

Clean and cut fish. Sprinkle some salt and set aside for 30 minutes.

In the meanwhile, dissolve hing in little water. Mix the chilli powder. Add little salt. If you choose to use rice flour, mix that in and make a thick paste. Drain any water from the fish and add to the paste. Apply the paste to all the sides of the fish. Set aside for another 10 minutes.

If you have chosen to use soji rava instead of rice flour, spread some rava on the plate, take individual fish pieces that is already dipped in chilli powder and roll it in the rava and set aside. Do this with all the pieces. Set aside for 5 minutes. By doing this the rava soaks in a little sticking to the fish and will not drop into the oil when frying.

Heat oil in a kadai for deep frying. Fry the fish on both the sides till deep red.

Egg Curry

Unlike the other recipes for Egg Curry, this curry has a thin sauce with pieces of onion floating around. The only thickener here is tomatoes. The sauce is very common North Indian red curry sauce. As a kid, I always ate Konkani food, because my Mom is a all Konkani cuisine lady. But my Mom-in-law is open to all kinds of kitchen experiments, she is one who introduced me to a lot of non Konkani foods. This is her recipe for Egg Curry.

2 Hard boiled eggs, cut into halves
2 medium onion
2 tomatoes
1/2 tsp ginger garlic paste, optional
1/4 bunch cilantro

masala powders
1/2 tsp chilli
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp turmeric

for the seasoning
1/4 tsp jeera
1 sprig curry leaves

Hard boil eggs, cut them into 2 halves. Set aside.
Chop onions, tomatoes.
Heat oil in a kadai, add jeera, curry leaves. Add onions and fry till they are wilted. Add ginger garlic paste. Saute for a minute. Add all the masala powders and stir. Add tomatoes, cover and cook on a medium flame till the tomatoes are mushy and turn into a thick paste. Keep stirring so that they don't char in the bottom.

Add water to the desired consistency. Add salt, bring the sauce to rolling boil. Place egg halves on the sauce so that they float on the top. Garnish with cilantro on top. Put on low flame and cook for another 5 minutes.

Serve with rice.

Spanish Lentils / Lentil Soup

A few month back my eyes ran through a packet of whole brown lentils in the local produce shop. Being a health and fitness freak, I wanted to make some recipes with whole lentils. I tried making Indian dals and curries out of it, they were OK but never wanted to try it again. Later I gave up on it. Recently, my friend Manisha who is from Spain, gave me this recipe for Spanish Lentils. She says this is a gourmet food served in restaurants in Spain. Its usually served on the side of the Bread. Spanish paav bhaji!? So here it goes.

Spanish Lentils is very healthy, delicious and also very easy to make. It is somewhat between a soup and side dish. You can eat it like a dip for bread or simply eat it like a soup. The dish is loaded with fiber and veggies that just a bowl makes a complete meal.

The soup is made with whole brown lentils which are available in the local supermarkets. But you can also make this soup with whole masoor and or any other lentils from the Indian Store, but remember you need whole dals with the outer layer. Thats what makes it so healthy.

1 cup lentils
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
1 medium potato
1/2 bell pepper
1 tomato
1 carrot
2 tsp oil
pepper
1 bouillon cube or stock cube of your choice
1 tsp lime juice

Soak lentils for 30 minutes. Drain and set aside. Chop all the vegetables into cubes.

In a pressure cooker, heat oil. Fry onion and garlic for a minute. Do not brown them. Add all the veggies and fry for another minute. Add lentils, pepper and stock cube. Add water just enough to cover the lentils. Cook for 2-3 whistles. Adjust salt. Usually the salt in the bouillon cube is enough. Squeeze some fresh lime juice.

Serve with bread.

I used Knorr chicken bouillon cube. You can also use veggie stock cube or any other of you choice. More on bouillon cube here

Batate Song (Spicy Potato Curry)

Batate Song served with chapathi
Batate Song is the spicy potato curry very authentic to Konkani cuisine. Its usually made with rice and dalitoy, so that the blandness of the dal is well balanced with the spicy song.

2 medium potatoes
2 medium onions
4 red chillies or 1 tsp chilli powder
1 inch cube tamarind
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp oil

Chop onions into cubes. Boil whole potatoes, peel and chop into cubes. Soak tamarind in a little water, squeeze the pulp and discard fiber.
If using whole red chillies, roast them in oil and grind along with tamarind into a smooth paste.

Heat oil in a kadai/wok, splutter mustard seeds, add onion and fry till they are wilted. Do not brown the onions.
If you opted to use whole chillies add the chilli-tamarind paste.
If you opted for chilli powder, add the chilli powder to the onions and fry till aromatic. Add the tamarind pulp.
Add salt and 1/2 cup water, bring it to a boil. Add chopped potatoes and simmer on medium flame.

Serve with rice and dal or chapathi.

You may also add peas or cauliflower to the song. But authentic batate song has only onion and potatoes in it.