Adukku Pathiri

This is one dish I have been trying to perfect from the time I started cooking full time. Every ramdan I try this dish out and I fail. This ramdan, a childhood friend of mine told that, her sister-in-law makes this and it turns out great. She gave me the recipe and I thought, yet another recipe and started making it without any expectation of success in my mind. But what do you know, the adukku pathiri turned out great! This was the best one that I had made till date and I loved it. The layers of the rice paste and the meat in between is really just wonderful.

Ingredients

For the rice layers

1. Raw rice – 1 cup
   
2. Coconut – 2 cups (more you use the coconut, the softer the layers will get)
   
3. Shallots(optional) – 5-6
   
4. Fennel Seeds (optional) – a pinch
   
5. Salt – 1 tsp
   

For the Meat Filling

The meat filling can be made according to personal taste, but make sure it is spicy because, since the rice layer has no spiciness in it, the dish tends to get a little bland when the meat filling is not so spicy.

1. Beef (cooked with turmeric and salt and minced) – 2 cup
   
2. Onion – 1 big
   
3. Tomato – 1 medium sized one
   
4. Ginger garlic Paste – 1 tblsp
   
5. Fennel Powder - ½ tsp
   
6. Green Chilli – 2 or 3 (depends on how spicy your chillies are)
   
7. Chilli Powder – 1 tsp
   
8. Turmeric powder – a pinch
   
9. Garam Masala - ½ tsp
   
10. A handful of corainder leaves
    
11. Salt – to taste (I hate this quantity of “to taste” but I am a person who likes my salt on the more side, so I better not mention how much salt I put. So please bare with me and put the salt according to “your taste”)

Method
Rice layer

1. Soak the rice for about 3 to 4 hours.
   
2. Grind it along with the coconut till the consistency is very smooth.
   
3. If using the small onions and fennel seeds, grind it coarsely and add it to the rice batter.
   
4. Give it a stir and add the salt.
   
5. The batter should have a loose consistency, little bit thinner than the appam batter. You can add water to loosen it after the grinding is done.

* When grinding replacing the water with coconut milk will give a nice flavour to the rice layer. If using the coconut milk, the amount of desicated coconut can be reduced. The tinned coconut milk will do.

Meat Layer

1. Chop the onions finely
   
2. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onions to it and saute till it is a light golden color.
   
3. Add the ginger garlic paste and finely chopped green chillies to it. Saute it for a min or two.
   
4. Next add the coarsely chopped tomatoes.
   
5. Add all the powders except the garam masala to this. Keep stirring.
   
6. Once all the ingredients in the pan begins to come together, add a couple of tablespoons of water and let the tomatoes cook.
   
7. When this mixture begins to give out the oil add the minced meat to it with about ½ a cup of water. Stir it to mix and close the lid and cook for about 2-3 min. When the mixture looses almost all of the water add the garam masla, and the coriander leaves and cook for another 2-3 min while stirring. By this time the masala should be a little bit dry but with a bit of moisture in it (I hope you understand what I mean.

Putting it all together

Take a steaming pot or the Idli Thattu. Put about 2 glasses of water in it, now take a small metal bowl and keep it inverted in the water(this makes for a stand to put our dish on). Take out another metal vessel, baking tray or a glass dish which is oven safe and smear it with oil (make sure it fits in the steamer pot). Pour the batter in a thin layer and place it on the inverted bowl in the steaming pot. Let it cook for about 5min. Next put the meat filling on top of this and pour another layer of the batter. Cook that for 5 min and continue until you have finished all the batter. If you have meat left over, make some sandwiches later with it, so save it. Once you have finished layering, let the whole thing cook for 15 min. (Keep checking if there is enough water in the steaming pot, replenish it as the water reduces.) Take the dish out and let it cool. Once it is cooled, run a kife around the pathiri and invert it to a plate and serve.

Chembappam & Erachi Porichathu....(Fried Dumplings & Beef Fry)

This is my vellimma's (grandma's) recipe for the unexpected guests and Puthiyappilas (bridegrooms). Whenever there is an unexpected guest, I always remember my vellimma, tucking her saree palloo and setting out to get the ingredients. I would be sitting on the kitchen slab and watching all the proceedings. Everyone, would be running around trying to get the snacks and tea on the table.

My favorite place on this earth is my maternal grandma's house in a small town in Perinthalmanna, Kerala. I feel totally at peace when I am there. Me, being the first grandchild, I was always treated like royalty. When there is talk about memories, I always go back to Perinthalmanna, all my best chilhood memories lie there. Those 2 month vaccations were just awsome. But when the chance came for me to stay there and study for my Engineering, I cried, I cried a loot. I wanted to get back to the UAE. I missed UAE. Strange.......

This is a very very simple recipe... NO PRIOR COOKING EXPERTISE REQUIRED!!!!

This snack tastes the best with erachi porichathu(Beef Fry). Our kunjumol chechi(another important character in our household), makes the best beef fry.. My sister is a beef freak, her mouth waters when she smells the beef cooking in the pressure cooker. I have not mastered KC's beef fry, but I have my not so bad variation.

So for the Chemabappam recipe:

Ingredients

Rice Flour (the one we use for pathiri) – 1 cup

Eggs – 2

Coconut Milk/Whole Milk - ½ cup

Soda powder – a pinch

Salt – to taste

Method

Mix the eggs, milk, salt and soda powder. To this add rice four in small quantities and mix togather to form a thick batter. The batter should be like the batter for cakes. You can add more milk to get the right consistency. Now heat the oil, when it is piping hot, take the batter with your hands and drop it into the oil in the shape of water drops(messy way, I like it this way), you can also take it in a teaspoon and drop the batter into the oil by pushing the batter with another spoon (This will give another shape to the chembappam.)

That is all for the chembappam recipe.

This is the consistency the batter should have.

Let's look how to cook the beef. Lets see... I have,

Beef - ½ kg

Ginger –1” piece

Garlic – 8 cloves

Green chillies – 2

Red chilli powder – 1 tsp

Pepper – 1 tsp

(yes it is HOT!!!)

Garam masala – 1 tsp

Salt – to taste (I use lots of salt, so its better to use according to your taste)

Turmeric powder - ½ tsp

Corriander powder – 2 tsp

Put all these ingredients into a pressure cooker (its better to grind the ginger,garlic and green chillies) just mix everything togather with your hands. Put one or two sticks of curry leaves and close the pressure cooker and cook this for 3 whistles on high heat, and 2 whistles on low heat. Sometimes the beef gives out lots of water, that is the reason i did'nt mention any water addition, but you can always add a little bit of water if you think the beef will not give out any.

Once the cooker has lost the pressure and check if the beef has cooked. When its done,heat up a big frying pan or a wok and put in some coconut oil and let it heat up. Once the oil is hot, add 1 onion when it browns lightly add a handfull of curry leaves and just after that dump the contents in the cooker into this.

Caution: If there is too much water in the beef just take out the beef with a spoon and put it into the oil, and light up the pressure cooker once again and let the liquid reduce.

Let the beef fry in the oil on slow fire. Keep checking the gravy(if you have followed the cautionary notice!!), once the gravy has reduced, add this to the beef. As soon as the beef has come down to a semi gravy, fry form, switch off and add some more curry leaves.

The chembappam needs to be consumed when it is warm. It looses its taste when it is cold.