Palada Pradhaman

Pradhaman is a sweet dish in the form of a thick liquid. It is made with white sugar or jaggery to which milk or coconut milk is added and cooked for a long time. [Courtesy : WikiPedia]
Pradhaman is of various types, Jackfruit Pradhaman (chakka pradhaman), aval Pradhaman, Parippu Pradhaman, Palada Pradhaman (Ada Pradhaman) etc.. But for me , the favorite among them is Palada pradhaman:) I love this lovely Pradhaman to bits:) .

Let me give you a short description A short description about its original preparation from "The Hindu" paper on Internet : "What is Onam (the state festival of Kerala) without the Palada Pradhaman? Like the vibrant Malayali cuisine, there are several payasam varieties, but the royalty is the palada pradhaman. There are no shortcuts to making this fabulous dish. Its preparation time is anything between four and nine hours, depending on the quantity. The rice used is a special reddish variety which is washed, dried, and powdered. A paste made of this powder is spread on banana leaves, which are rolled and tossed into boiling water. Once cooked, the leaves are plunged into cold water, and the cooked rice spread removed, and cut fine. This is the ada. Today, thanks to technology and packaging, the ada is available is a dehydrated version, but is not a patch on the fresh, flavoursome original."

As mentioned in the article, nowadays, anyone can prepare this delicacy as we get the dehydrated "ada's" in the Indian stores. I made this recently and I never added any cream, just milk, cardomom, nutmeg and sugar and it was heavenly. Both of us finished it within few minutes of making it. Yumm I still remember the taste of the ada along with the sweetened milk. Mmm can't wait to make it again one of these days:) . Thanks to Priya , I came to know about the availability of Ada in Indian stores as I found the same type of Ada packet in her blog. I also followed her method of cooking Payasam in Pressure Cooker. But it can be cooked in any other vessel, the only thing is , it will take 1 to 2 hours of cooking. Pressure cooking fastens this process.

Here goes the recipe:

Ingredients:

Ada : 1/2 cup
Milk : 3 1/2 cups
Sugar : 1/2 cup or as per your taste
Cardomom powder: 1/4 teaspoon
Nutmeg : a pinch (optional)
Saffron (optional) strands : 2 or 3 strands



How its made:

Soak ada in boiling water for around 5-10 munites or until it is softened a bit but not lost its shape. In the pressure cooker , add milk, ada, and sugar. Pressure cook with the whistle for one whistle. Switch off fire, let the cooker stand like this for some time until all the pressure is released. Then open the cooker and on medium heat, start stirring the mixture, add cardomom powder and nutmeg powder and continue stirring. Stir for 5 -10 minutes or until the mixture starts to thicken.

Remove from fire and add the saffron strands and let it sit for around 5 minutes. Serve it hot or cold , I love it :)

This is my entry for Novel Food: Spring 2008 Edition hosted by Lisa of Champaign Taste and Simona of Briciole .

Shrimp Pickle

These days I was craving for Prawns. There isn't a place in Framingham I haven't searched for Prawns. Do any of you know where to get some nearby Framingham if not in Framingham? I had to satisfy with shrimps available here. I made shrimp pickle yesterday and it came out good.

I was inspired from RP's blog though I have made quiet a few changes in the ingredients. The sad thing about making shrimp or any other shellfish pickle at my place is that V cannot eat it as he is allergic to shell fish. But when he has his Beef chili, what would a not-red meat eater like me savor on? So to get even I went ahead with making this shrimp pickle. V did not even come near it, so I didn't have to worry about sharing it (hehehe I am just kidding, I was actually sad because he refused to even touch it :-(
Anyways, here is the recipe:

Whole Shrimp : 1 cup
Garlic : 6 cloves minced to thin small pieces.
For marination: Red Chilli powder and Freshly cracked pepper, salt, lemon extract : as required to marinate the shrimp. I didn't note down the measurements for these
Oil: for deep frying the marinated cooked shrimp

Powdered mustard seeds and fenugreek (methi) seeds together : 2 teaspoons
Chilly powder: as per your taste
Lemon extract : as per your taste
Asafoetida (hing) : a pinch
Oil: 1/4Th cup
Salt: to taste
How I made it:

Clean and devein the shrimp (I used the frozen shrimp, which had instructions to put the shrimps in hot boiling water until the shrimp thaws, before cleaning and deveining it). You can find the steps on this website for cleaning and deveining the shrimp. Add all the marinade on the shrimp and cook it without water on a pan on low flame. This is to make sure all the water is left from the shrimp. It just takes around 3 minutes for a cup of shrimp. Deep fry the shrimp in oil and keep them aside. Take 1/4Th cup of the oil in which the shrimp was deep fried into a pan under medium heat, add the garlic, saute it , add the fenugreek-mustard powder, chilly powder. Add mustard seeds. Wait until the mustard seeds splutter, and then lower the fire. Then add a pinch of asafoetida and saute until the raw smell of everything in the pan is gone, else the pickle will taste differently. Then add salt and the fried shrimp, mix it well, add the lemon extract (the original recipe called for vinegar, so I used lemon extract). Mix increasing the fire a little. After a minute, switch off the fire and transfer it to a dry glass bottle. Keep it open until the pickle is cooled. Cover it after it is cooled. I kept it refrigerated until I had it with my lunch, dinner, breakfast :-D Yes you have it as a side dish for breakfast,lunch, dinner :)

Homemade KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)

Well, here is something I relish when we have friends come over to our place. Its super easy, and the taste just keeps your hands hooked to the plate it is served on :D ...

Though I could not post this during the Superbowl season, I would definitly want to share it with you so that you can get ready to prepare it to cheer up the Red Sox :) (Yes I am from Boston, hence I am for the Red Sox :)


V was very happy and loved it lots. So I am looking forward to fry this soon another time as now we are on a vegetarian diet as of now (lets see till when it will last :D ) .

I learned quiet a lot of tips from the Food Network guys. Some of them I have incorporated in this recipe, such as the method of coating the chicken with the bread crumbs, flour and a very nice way to drop the chicken in the oil without having the chicken stick to the bottom of the vessel initially when it is dropped. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Chicken breast (or thighs) (skinless and boneless) cut into bite size pieces : As per your requirement

Marinade:
Chilli powder
Coriander powder
Garam masala powder
Freshly cracked pepper (Try not to substitute this with the store bought powdered pepper, it just takes away a lot of taste)
Ginger-garlic paste
Lemon juice (or extract) : a little to coat all pieces

Coating:

Wet coating: Egg wash or a loose paste formed with all purpose flour and water

Dry coating: 1 cup bread crumbs + 1/2 cup all purpose flour + (optional)2 tablespoons freshly cracked pepper
Method:

Clean the chicken pieces. Marinate the chicken for an hour. Prepare the dry coating by all the dry ingredients and transferring them into a Ziploc bag. I got this tip and many others from watching the Food Network people. The Ziploc bag is a good idea to store a lot of things which gets perished if not stored properly.

Take each chicken piece and cover it with wet coating and then and drop it in the Ziploc bag. After you put two or three pieces, zip the bag and shake it to coat the pieces. Then unzip the bag and transfer the rest of the chicken into the bag.
If you have too many chicken pieces, prepare the dry ingredients in the second zip lock bag and add the rest of the chicken pieces into the second bag.

Properly zip the bag start shaking it to coat all the chicken pieces, (believe me you don't need a bag full of dry coating to coat many chicken pieces because when you zip the bag and start shaking it hard (you can even shake it upside down without fearing any mess in the kitchen. Just make sure that the Ziploc bag is properly zipped). I guess you can do this even in a air tight container. I haven't tried it though. Store the Ziploc bag in the refrigerator to marinate the chicken pieces overnight with a good dry coating.


The next day, you find that the chicken pieces have got a really good coating. Don't try to shake off the excess bread crumb coating , off the chicken pieces too much. Remember that it was stored in the refrigerator to get a nice thick coating. Heat oil for frying in a deep frying pan. Now the next step is yet another tip I got, and that is when the oil is heated, hold the chicken piece to be fried with a fork, slowly dip the chicken piece into the hot oil, when the chicken is half way into the oil, with a knife slowly pull off the chicken from the fork to drop it in the oil. This sounds too many steps to just fry a chicken :) but believe me it makes things easier to clean and take care of later.


Fry the chicken evenly. It might take approximately 5 to 10 minutes minutes to fry a piece if you have not put too many chicken pieces in the oil at once. Also, smaller pieces tend to fry faster than bigger ones.


Once chicken is fried, drain them on paper towels or cotton cloth. Serve it with onion and tomato sauce. Tadaa ..you are ready for that fun evening with friends coming over or just enjoy it on your own :)