Mulik (Jack Fruit Fritters)

Its Jack fruit season! Jack fruits always make me nostalgic. I have sweet memories of childhood where my brother would climb the tree in our backyard to pluck the jack fruits and my sisters would be helping him. It was like a mini circus going on every day.

We put almost every part of the jack fruit tree to use. The young jack fruit used in curries, the seed is also used up. Sometimes the seeds are sun dried and stored for the winter. Once the fruits start to ripe first few weeks we would just survive on jack fruits. A few weeks later my mom would make Jackfruit idlis (muddo) and then comes the Jack fruit fritters (mulik). Even the leaves aren't spared. The leaves are cleaned, trimmed and sewn together with coconut leaf stalk to make a container in which idlis called (kotto) are steamed.

Eggless Dry Fruit Cake

I haven't been baking cakes and cookies for a while. But ever since I saw delicious, scrumptious cakes on Sowmya's Home Spices and Seema's Recipe Junction, I have been craving for those. I could not resist any further.

I had a cake recipe for the caramel cake popularly called as plum cake in South Indian Bakeries. These cakes do not have any plums in them! but that's they are called! The recipe I had was just a starter for me. It had eggs and loads of sugar and butter. I did my own substitutions

Kele Podi (Ripe Banana Fritters)

I love Thai food. When I first arrived in the USA, some of my cousins introduced me to the red and green Thai curries and since then I am hooked on to those. But I have not tried many of the Thai delicacies yet. Actually the Thai cuisine is very much close to the Konkani cuisine. We use bamboo shoots, jack fruits, bananas in the curries based with coconut sauce.

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

Kai Holige (narla ubbaTi)

HoLige is a flat sweet bread with savory filling covered in a bland covering. Kai Holige/Coconut puranpoli/narla ubbaTTi is a specialty in Mangalore, now MangaLooru. hoLige is same as obbaTTu; In MangaLooru kannada we call it hoLige, while the rest of the Karanataka calls it obbaTTu. In Konkani it is ubbaTTi. kai/tengina kai or narlu is coconut. The brahmins in MangaLooru always serve hoLige during the festivals/weddings or any special occasions.

kai hoLige

for the filling/hooraNa
2 cups shredded coconut
2 big cubes jaggery
2 tsp rice flour
2 pods cardamom

for the outer layer/kaNaka
2 tsp milk
2 cup extra fine rava/chiroti rava
2 tbsp maida
1/2 cup oil

To make the filling, grind the shredded coconut to a smooth paste without adding water. Make jaggery syrup in a kadai. To make the syrup first boil 1 tbsp of water and add jaggery to it. Keep boiling on a medium flame till all the jaggery dissolves and starts bubbling. Keep boiling for another minute, add the coconut paste and rice flour. Keep stirring till the mixture becomes hard and all the liquid is evaporated. Add cardamom powder. The mixture should have no liquid in it and be hard enough to hold the shape when formed into balls. Let it cool completely.

To make the outer filling, mix rava, milk, oil, maida to form a soft ball. Add water as needed. Set aside for 30 minutes.

making the kai hoLige; on the left-hooraNa or the filling, on the right outer covering or kaNaka

To make hoLige, divide the filling and the outer cover into equal number of portions. Form into balls. Let the filling be bigger than the outer cover. Roll the outer cover into small circle. Place the filling, fold all the sides and cover the filling entirely, like how you would do for stuffed paratas. Continue to roll into big cirlce, like a chapathi.

Fry on medium flame on a flat griddle without any oil/ghee. Cool and store in a air tight container. Stays upto a week.

Serve with a tsp of ghee on top.

A few months back when I did a research on how to make kai hoLige, I did posted a query on konkani recipes yahoo group and had got a few suggestions. This is the compilation of various tips given by the members there. Special thanks to Jaya V Shenoy, the author of well known konkani cookery book and Shilpa of Aayis Recipes

Churmundo (Wheat flour ladoos )

This is one of the all time favorite ladoos among the Konkani people. The ladoo is made of wheat flour and not maida. It has very little ghee in it, made dry and explodes into powder in the mouth. This was my elder brother AshokaNNas favorite ladoo and my paternal aunt used to make never ending dabba full of Churmundos for him whenever we visited her. You cant stop at one, believe me!

This recipe with the wonderful picture was sent to me by my jhaava, Nayana Shenoy. Jhaava in Konkani means husbands brothers wife. Husbands elder brother is called bhaiyyo. Nayana is a great cook. You will see many more recipes from Nayana in future.

Chana Besan - 1/3 Cup
Chapati Atta - 1 Cup
Powdered Sugar - 1 Cup
Ghee - 1/4 Cup
Cardamom Powder - a pinch

Seave besan and wheat flour separately and set aside.
Heat ghee in a pan. Add chana besan and fry on medium heat for about a minute. Add chapati flour and keep frying until you get a nice roast aroma. Remove from flame and keep aside to cool.
When completely cooled, add powdered sugar, cardamom powder and mix well.
Make laddoos by firmly squeezing a small portion of the mixture in the palm. Ghee may be added if the mixture does not stick together to form firm laddoos.

Store in air tight containers.

Apple and Avocado Fruit Salsa

You need
1 apple, variety of your choice
1 avocado
10-15 grapes
1 lime/lemon
1 jalapeno pepper
3 sprig cilantro
3 onions, could be green onion or any other

Wash and core the apple. Slice into small bite size pieces. Chop onion, jalapeno and cilantro.

Cut avocado into pieces. Here is an easy and clean way to chop avocados. Slit avocado along the center line of the avocado i.e all around the pit. Turn or twist the 2 halves in different directions. The upper half just pops out, leaving the pit in the lower one. With a single stroke beat your knife into the pit and twist it. The pit comes out with your knife. Now with a small knife make vertical and horizontal cuts on the pulp of the avocado when it is still inside the shell. Do not cut the shell. Spoon out the pulp, the small pieces fall out.

In a bowl mix chopped apple, avocado, grapes, onions, jalapeno and cilantro. Squeeze the juice of a lemon, add a pinch of salt. Fruit salsa is ready to be served. This recipe serves 2 people