Sukhiyan

This is no doubt one of my favorite snack. I never miss an opportunity to have these. Made it the other day, I couldn't stop until the last one was over.

Green Gram : 1 cup

Grated coconut -  1/2 cup

Jaggery - 1/2 - 3/4 cup grated

Cardamom powder - 1/4 teaspoon

All purpose flour / Wheat flour : 3/4 cup

Water - enough to make a thick batter with the wheat flour

Salt

Oil 

1) Boil the green gram with a little salt. Make sure it doesn't get mushy.

2) Mix the grated coconut, jaggery, cardamom powder and mix well with hand.

3) Now, mix it with the cooked green gram , using a spoon. You should be able to make round balls.

4) Dip it in the batter and fry them .

Enjoy them hot !!!!

Alfredo Chicken Boat

   

I had been waiting to try this recipe. It came out so good, you can fix this for dinner in 30 minutes and it will be gone in 3 minutes :-) . My kiddos & my husband praised me for every bite they took...so its a rewarding recipe too. We just finished having this for diner, trust me I haven't even done the dishes, I walked straight to the computer to write down the recipe before I forget.

So this is how I made it....

What you need to get started :


Chicken breast - 2 large
French bread - 1
Garlic powder
Oninon - 1 medium
Cream Cheese - 8 oz
Milk - 3/4 cup
Mozzarella cheese - 1 cup ( you can be generous if you want to, depends on ur heart ;) )
 butter - 2 tablespoons
Salt
Pepper
Parsley  -  to garnish


1)Cut the center portion out of the bread, like how you see in the pic. This portion that you cut out , you can eat it with the left over Alfredo sauce later.

2) Cook the chicken breast with salt and pepper, with 1-2 cups of water.Do not over cook it, it will become rubbery.

3) Once its ready, cut it into bite size pieces, not shredding, cut it into cubes.

4) In a pan, add a little ( 1-2 tablespoon ) butter, when it melts, add the chopped onion, when it becomes translucent, add garlic powder, the cream cheese cut into small cubes and let it melt, add the chicken stock to this so that the cream cheese won't get burnt.

5) The above, starts getting creamy, now add 1 cup of milk to this.And let the sauce get thick. Switch off.

6) Pour the above sauce into the boat. Top it with some mozzarella, and bake till cheese melts at 350 degree F. Garnish with some parsley.

7) You wouldn't have used all the sauce for the boat if you stuck to my measurements. So now you can enjoy the portion of the bread that you cut off in the beginning with this remaining sauce..

Next day morning, go for a good walk and burn 500 calories !!! 

Kappa & Aiyala meen Curry ;)

Kappa / Yucca /Cassava / Tapioca

I don't think there is anyone in God's own country who doesn't love this. Kappa in any form - kappa vevichathu, kappa puzhingiyathu, kappa chips... did I miss out anything?...hmmm. Anytime of the day, we enjoy it .

The other day when we went to the Kerala store, I saw some Aiyala meen and I had to buy some kappa to bring back some taste of Kerala .

How to make it....

Kappa  - 1 kg

Coarse  grind the following :

Grated coconut - 1/2 a coconut

Tumeric - 1/2 tsp

Shallots - 2-3

Garlic - 2-3 cloves

Green Chillis - 3-4

Cumin powder - 1/2 tsp

Salt - to taste

Tempering Optional :

Coconut Oil - 2-3 table spoons

Mustard Seeds - 1/2 tsp

Shallots - 3-4 sliced

Curry Leaves  - a large sprig

Coconut grated -  2 tbl spoons ( fry in oil till brown )

1) Slice the tapioca into bite size pieces. Boil a big pot of water, once the water starts boiling, add the sliced tapioca pieces into the water and let it cook well. Once the tapioca is cooked well, drain off the water, retain some of the moisture.

2) Add the ground coconut mixture into the cooked tapioca, while the tapioca is still hot cook, and mix well.

3) Let it cook in low flame for 4-5 minutes, so that the coconut mixture gets cooked and the raw taste goes away. Check the salt.

4) Tempering is optional. If you would like to,  add the tempering. 

5) Enjoy kappa hot with some fish curry 

Rigatoni with meatballs

Instead of the usual white sauce recipe, I just came up this recipe this morning when I ran out of lunch box ideas for my big K . I didn't make the usual white sauce because I did not have cream cheese at home. So with the heavy whipping cream in the fridge staring at me, I decided to make something simple with whatever ingredients I had and it came out good. Well Kiddos loved it and that makes me a happy mom ☺. 

Ingredients :

Rigatoni -  1 box

Heavy whipping cream - 1/2 cup

Pamersan - grated, 1/4 cup

Salt

Dry Basil leaves

Meatballs - 12 no.s

Ok so this is what I did....

1)Cooked rigatoni pasta with salt and drained.

2) To the hot pasta, added a tablespoon of butter and heavy cream 1/2 cup, added a 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan

3) Added cooked meatballs to the pasta. Gave a quick mix to coat the meatballs in the instant white sauce

4) Add some dried basil leaves.

Lunch ready for kiddos in 10 minutes. Happy children Happy Mom !!!

Flaky biscuits with chicken filling

This one reminds me of the chicken puffs I used to enjoy when I was in Kerala. Anytime I visited a Bakery, I always made sure to have one of these. Anns and Jocees were always my favorite, also enjoyed some from Best Bakery. Can't wait to eat some of those when I visit next time. 

You can try different fillings for these biscuits. I did it with chicken and this is how I made it.


Ingredients :

Onion - 1 small
Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 teaspoon
Red chili powder - 1/2 teaspoon
Tomato - 1 medium- chopped small
Hot Buffalo Sauce  - 5-6 splashes
Tomato Ketchup - 3-4 tablespoons
Chicken breast/thighs boneless - cooked with salt and pepper and then shredded
Cheese - shredded ( optional) [ I used parmesan, that was the only one I had]
1 Jumbo can of Flaky biscuit dough

Butter melted - to brush over the biscuits when its taken out of the oven.


Method:

Keep the cooked shredded chicken aside.
Saute the onions, ginger garlic paste in oil, until the raw smell goes.
Then add the chopped tomatoes and let them cook.
Add the sauces.
Add the shredded chicken and mix well.
Check the taste, adjust by adding salt or sauce to suit your taste.
Slice each of the biscuit dough in half and add the filling to it.
Follow the instructions on the biscuit can. Bake at 375 - 400 F for 15 minutes, till you see the biscuit is cooked.

Enjoy it hot.

Taking down christmas decorations is emotionally nerve wrecking for me for several reasons, first being the christmas hols come to an end and life falls back to normal routine...😢 , next reason, kids get older every year , thank God I don't age 😇. This time we had to open all the gifts by December 22nd, because my little K who is 3 would not stop rolling on the floor till I let her open the gifts five minutes after I put them under the tree...so, then, I let the other sweetie pies in the house open theirs too. Lesson learnt - next time definitely the gifts go under the tree only on 24th evening after she is gone to bed... so, this way the kids have gifts to open on 25th morning. 

The girls felt Santa was bored alone, so let Lissy and Sasha, their dolls give company to Santa 😉

(P.S. they know there is no Santa and he is not real, a good friend gave this guy to the kids and we just put him next to the tree to add some color ;) 

 So, what makes this " taking down christmas decorations " less painful and less emotionally stressful is eating some comfort food. :-), thats when I decided to try this one.

We also had some Ethekka Appam ( Pazham Poree/ Banana Fritters) and Cutlets to munch while taking the lights down ....