Mahanandi

Popu rescues the dals and the curries from ‘bland’ hell. Simple technique, but it saves and uplifts them to spicy heaven. Almost all types of curries, chutneys, lentil preparations like dals, sambhars and rasams are enhanced by the addition of popu at the start or just before serving. The most common ingredients of popu or tadka are

1. Dried red chilli pieces (Endu Mirchi)
2. Garlic (Vellulli)
3. Curry leaves (Karivepaku)
4. Chana dal (Bengal gram, Sanaga pappu)
5. Urad dal (Black gram, Minapa pappu)
6. Mixture of Mustard seeds and Cumin (Avaalu+jeelakarra)
(listed according to arrangement in the photo above)

Popu or tadka (tiragamata) is toasting the listed ingredients in oil or ghee. Take oil or ghee in a small pan. The quantity ranges from a teaspoon to tablespoon for dals, sambars and curries. Heat to warm. Quickly add and toast curry leaves, dried red chilli pieces, garlic, chana dal and urad dal to red color. At the end add cumin and mustard seeds. When seeds start to pop, turn off the heat. Add the contents of the pan to the preparation. The quantity of above ingredients are usually a pinch, a dash, just few pieces and not much. All of them have excellent health benefits and popu or tadka provides a neat way to have them regularly through our meals. Multi vitamin pill everyday.

There are certain foods and occasions, where we avoid adding garlic. Examples are chitrannam (lemon rice),pulihora (tamarind rice) and daddojanam (yogurt rice) etc.

Fenugreek seeds (menthi),
hing or asafetida,
black peppercorn (miriyalu)

are also part of popu or tadka, but they are only added in a few, specific recipes.

To store all the ingredients of popu or tadka, every Indian kitchen has a spice box conveniently placed at hands reach in a kitchen drawer. And every Indian cook has her own way of arranging the ingredients in Popu dabba (spice box). Placing them all in separate little containers in one big box is not only convenient, but also saves lot of time by making the cooking little bit easy.

This is how I arrange my spice box:

Popu or Tadka Dabba (Spice Box) – click on the image to enlarge

So, do you own a spice box? How do you arrange your spice box?

Many Indian grocery stores carry ‘Spice Box’ or ‘Masala Dabba’. Depending on the box and containers size, the price varies from 10 to 20 dollars.

Curry leaves in Indian languages:
Assamese – no-ro-hxingo paat
Bengali – Barsunga
Gujarati – Mitho limdo,
Hindi – Meetha neem, Kari patta, Katneem, Bursunga
Malayalam – Kareapela
Marathi – Kadipatta
Oriya – Basango
Punjabi – Karipata, Karipatta, Bowala
Sanskrit – Girinimba, Suravi
Tamil – Kariveppilai, Karuveppilai
Telugu – Karepaku, Karivepaaku

For this week’s Indian Kitchen, it is “curry leaves”. This aromatic fresh herb is native to India and is an essential ingredient in “popu or tadka“. The leaves when lightly fried in oil or ghee, release wonderful fragrance and when mixed with rice or with dals, enriches them by their unique appetizing aroma and essential oils.

The curry leaves are in light green color when young and are usually added as whole to the cooking. The mature leaves are dark in green, and are usually teared into two or three pieces or finely chopped before adding to hot oil. For each recipe, the number of leaves I usually add varies from 4 to 10. Some recipes I blogged so far, where curry leaves are a must – 1.Coconut chutney 2. Chitrannam (lemon rice) 3. Sambhar, just to name a few.

If you live in a warm climate, it’s really easy to grow this small deciduous plant. Plant a mature fresh sprig branch or small seedling/offshoots in mineral rich soil, water it daily and watch it flourish into a fragrant, pretty neat plant. It needs sunshine and lots of it.

You can find packets of fresh curry leaves either in fresh vegetable section, or in refrigerated area of your local Indian grocery shop. Usually priced at one dollar a packet, even less during summer times. If you ask me, they are the best bargain, or the most over priced item:) one can buy in US. Fresh leaves stay fresh at least for two to three weeks, when stored in refrigerator, sealed in a plastic bag. When left opened, they dry out easily. Dried leaves can be used in cooking, but the flavor of fresh curry leaves is superior and irreplaceable!

More about curry leaves:
Curry Leaf Heaven
The Goodness of Curry leaves!
Curry Leaves, different names – Source

Six essential spices for Indian cooking.

Coriander Seeds, Cumin, Black Peppercorn, Cloves, Indian Cinnamon, Star Anise

Recipe.

Stone Mortar and Pestle
The big one, I brought it from Nandyala, India from my last visit. It’s weighed around 30 pounds both pestle and mortar combined. More about it here.
The small one, I bought it at Pittsburgh’s Ikea.

Sam, this is for you.

For this week’s Indian kitchen, I’m showcasing a unique Indian ingredient, “Ballari Coconut”. It’s a dried whole coconut, and the unique thing about it is how it is dried. Under hot summer sun, some selected whole coconuts are dried with coconut water inside so that the coconut meat can absorb all the coconut water while drying. This process makes the dried coconut very sweet. A completely different taste when compared to ordinary dried coconut, where the drying process is done after removing the coconut water.When cut into half (above image) and grated or powdered, Ballari coconut almost taste like sweetened, sugar added coconut flakes.

In our area, Nandyala (India), it’s called ‘Ballari coconut’. Because of the special process involved in making, it’s priced little bit high than the ordinary dried coconut. Due to high cost, it’s used mainly during special occasions like for preparing sesame laddus and as part of traditional ‘sare’ (care package) to married daughters from mothers etc.,

Are you aware of this type of dried coconut? If so, what do you call it at your place? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

it’s available in Indian grocery stores here in US. I saw it at Subji Mandi in New Jersey and also at Pittsburgh Indian grocery shop. Look for whole dried coconut instead of halved shells.

For more weekend food/herb blogging, check out Kalyn’s Kitchen.

Ripe guava:

It’s has been a while since we saw and had a ripe guava. 6 years to be exact. They were not in season during our trips to Nandyala. But we got lucky in Toronto, Canada. Local Indian stores were carrying this precious Indian fruit and the real miracle is at a reasonable price.

One of life lessons, I learned is, its not good for health to feel nostalgic about home foods. But this fruit with its incredible fragrance, with just right amount of ripeness brought out symptoms of nostalgia. Eyes misted, mouth watered, brain couldn’t get enough of its smell and heart wanted more… .I don’t know when I’d have a taste of guava again, but for now, I enjoyed the fruit, feeling nostalgically delirious.

This cherished fruit with unique taste and fabulous fragrance when ripe is called Jamapandu in Telugu and ‘Guava, Amrud, Koiya Palam, Perakka and Peyara’ in other Indian languages. Ripening process makes the fruit go from hard to tender and skin colour also changes, from a shade of green to a shade of yellow. We usually eat the whole fruit including the skin and the tiny seeds, when ripe. Just sprinkle some salt, to give that perfect taste of salty sweetness. Pleasant but not flashy, both in looks and taste -that’s how I describe guava.

I am glad I was able to capture the image of ripe guava for my Indian kitchen series. Even though I gave up the idea of hosting ‘Indian kitchen’ here on my blog (very time consuming), instead, I created a Flickr group to share images of Indian ingredients and utensils so that food bloggers and foodies who don’t have blogs, but interested to participate, can share images. It can also used as a group pool, so that whenever we need a photo of some kitchen thing, we can link to the image in Flickr set, instead of doing google or yahoo image search. If you are interested, join the group and share your images of Indian kitchen.

For this week Indian Kitchen , my project of creating online Indian glossary in images:

Bronze murukulu maker from India and Sawa 2000 Cookie press from Sweden – I use both to make murukulu(murukku) in different patterns and shapes.

Bronze muruku maker is available in Indian appliance shops here in US. Sawa cookie press, try Ebay or one of those kitchen gadget selling shops.

Swarna from Chennai, sent me via email, these two beautiful images of her kitchen gadgets for my Indian Kitchen series.

She wrote to me…
“Both of these given to me by my mother from Madras. The first one is a hand held coconut grater or scraper would be more apt and the second one is what we call “kuzhi paniyaram” vessel. Kuzhi means hole (literally) in tamil and paniyaram I suppose is the name of the dish. It can be made sweet or savoury. mostly we do the left over idli/dosa batter, chop a few onions, green chillies do the tadka and pour the batter into these moulds. The types of batter we can do is endless really, rava(sooji) combination, maida/jaggery/mashed banana- for a sweet paniyaram.”

Hand held coconut scraper/grater and Kuzhi Paniyaram (Ponganaala Pennam)

Thanks Swarna!

For this week Indian kitchen:

It is a stainless steel coffee filter for South Indian style, freshly brewed, chicory coffee

This week in Indian kitchen images ~ It’s Mandoline, Coconut Scraper, Idly stand, Tongs(Idukki, Pattakara), Idiyappam wood mold, Spice box and stainless steel Ghee holder.

From Nupur of One Hot Stove kitchen, comes this beautiful image of Mandoline or vegetable slicer. Low in price but a very handy tool in kitchen to cut, slice and to shred vegetables. Allure of home made potato chips is what made this tool, a must have thing in all our kitchens, I think.

Lera of Myriad Tastes sent me these two beautiful images via email. Coconut scraper to shred coconut from fresh coconut and idly stand to make idlis.

Shammi of Food In The Main showed us in beautiful images, how she makes idlies using the idly mould.

Mika from The Green Jackfruit sent this beautiful image of ‘Tongs(Idukki or Pattakara), a must have thing in an Indian kitchen to hold different kinds of hot vessels and also to prevent burnt hands. Very useful indeed.

Priya from Arkansas sent me via email, these beautiful images of Idiyappam wood mold and idiyappam batter(white dough), Spice box with a glass lid for holding various spices in one neat container and a traditional Indian stainless steel ghee holder.

Thank you Nupur, Lera, Shammi, Mika and Priya for sending these gorgeous images for “Indian Kitchen“.

I want to do this but with the current settings and features I have on my web site, it’s not going to work as I thought of doing. So I would keep the idea of creating an online ‘Indian glossary in images’ on hold, for a while. Currently I am working to make a detailed categories and subcategories in a new section on this website. When I complete my work on this, I will start asking for your help and participation again for ‘Indian Kitchen’.

You all have shown lot of enthusiasm in this project, I really appreciate your time and input. Thank you!

Saffron (Kumkuma Puvvu):

India, Kashmir, hard work, awe and reverence.. these are things that come to my mind, whenever I use saffron in my cooking. It is produced in Kashmir, India. Harvesting is slow hard work which needs delicate touch. Awe and reverence… because I use it only in personally important and spiritually special occasions. Bold in color, subtle in flavor, precious saffron brings an ethereal touch.

In traditional sweets like laddu and payasam (Kheer) is where I add saffron to my cooking. Example is ‘saffron infused sabudana payasam’ that I prepared, celebrating my own space on the Net, the onset of My blog, ‘Mahanandi’.

Part of my Indian Kitchen, more about Saffron ~ here and here.

Indian cuisine requires lot of ingredients and utensils which are unique to this style of cookery. When you try to find a picture or details of these ingredients on the Internet, you would seldom find any. This is especially true for some simple cooking tools like a wood masher (for preparing dal) or a spice box, vegetables like drumsticks etc.,

Wouldn’t it be great to share images of Indian Kitchen with the world? I know, I would be very happy to see images of this kind on the Net. If you are interested, join me and please post a picture of your Indian kitchen ingredient/utensil or a tool every Sunday or any day convenient for you. The item could be unique, common or anything in-between. On every Monday, I will add a link of your specific post on my website.

I thought of doing this, because it’s always a visual treat to find the images you are searching for. When these images are put on the net, search engines like Yahoo and Goggle would be able to show them for everybody’s use and ofcourse the main purpose of this fun, group project is creating an online Indian glossary in images.

All are welcome to show off their Indian Kitchen ingredients/things.

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Added on November 27th, 2005

I want to do this but with the current settings and features I have on my web site, it’s not going to work as I thought of doing. So I would keep the idea of creating an online “Indian glossary in images” on hold, for a while. Currently I am working to make a detailed categories and subcategories in a new section on this website. When I complete my work on this, I will start asking for your help and participation again for “Indian Kitchen”.

You all have shown lot of enthusiasm in this project, I really appreciate your time and input. Thank you!

Spinach (Palak, Pala Kura)

This green leafy vegetable is a must buy at least once a week, for me. Spinach dal and spinach curry are the most common ways, how I use this vegetable. Sometimes, when I am in a mood for fancy, restaurant kind of meal, I make the famous Palak Paneer. With rice, roti or as sandwich filler, I like my spinach.

For this weekend herb/food ingredient blogging –
It’s Time for Thyme at Kalyn’s Kitchen and 80th birthday party for her dad. Wow, congratulations Kalyn’s Dad and many more happy returns of the day!
Nature’s complete food – Dates at My Dhaba and also checkout Adarsh, the cute taste tester of My Dhaba.

Sam of Beck and Posh is requesting our prayers for Fred. Please send some goodwill towards her way. Thanks!

Fresh Cilantro (Coriander, Dhania, Kottimera):

Indispensable to my cooking, I can’t imagine preparing food without this herb. More about Cilantro – here and here.

For this Weekend Herb Blogging, it’s Curly Parsley at Kalyn’s Kitchen and Keerai(Amaranth) at My Dhaba.

Green Chillies ~ Perfect for stuffed mirchi bajjis

Recipe for Stuffed green chilli bajji is here.

For this weekend herb blogging, It’s Rosemary at kalyn’s Kitchen and her signatory, published recipe in Salt lake Tribune. That’s impressive.