Patholi

Patholi is a traditional and unique recipe which is made in every Konkani household during festivals. We use turmeric leaves (haldi paan) for making this dish which gives  it a great aroma. The rice and coconut paste is spread on the haldi leaves and stuffed with jaggery and coconut mix. My mom used to make this for breakfast, but during Konkani festivals, this is generally served as a dessert.

If you do not have haldi leaves, you could also use banana leaves like I did in my dish. But then, since haldi leaves add a unique flavor & aroma to it, its best you use it if its available. 

Here is my mom's recipe of this great dish:

Recipe:

Ingredients:

For the outer spread:

Rice - 1 cup

Grated Coconut - 1 cup

Poha - 1/4 cup 

For the sweet stuffing (hoorn):

Grated Coconut - 3/4 cup

Jaggery - 1/2 cup

Cardamom - 2 (powder it)

Turmeric leaves - 10

Salt

For serving:

Pure Desi Ghee

Preparation:

For the outer spread:

1. Soak the rice overnight.

2. Next day, grind the soaked rice along with grated coconut and salt. The paste should be thick since we are going to spread it on a leaf, so add just sufficient amount of water that is required for grinding.

3. In the final round of grinding, mix poha and grind again into a smooth paste. Poha is added for softness. 

The outer paste is now ready. 

Next step - we will make the sweet coconut stuffing. This is called as hoorn in Konkani and is very delicious. (You need to make sure to finish making the patholi's as soon as the hoorn is ready else someone at house may end up eating only the hoorn and we end up with just the outer layer - just kidding. This often used to happen at my place where all of us used to attack the hoorn when we know its ready - yeah, believe me, its that yummy).

For the hoorn:

1. For the hoorn, take a pan, add grated coconut, jaggery, cardomom powder and keep mixing it on low-medium flame till it becomes a thick paste. If you have the hard jaggery cubes, like I did, then its best to melt it with some water in a microwave before adding it to the pan.

2. Once the mixture is thick enough, then turn off the flame and keep it aside. Let it cool down a bit.

The hoorn is now ready.

Now lets move on to making the patholi.

1. Take a haldi pan and spread it on a flat surface. I've used the banana leaf in my dish since I didn't find turmeric leaves here. And I used a chopping board to spread it since I didn't have a big taat (thali).

2. Spread the leaf with the rice and coconut paste first.

3. Next add the hoorn to the center and fold the leaf as shown it the pic below.

4. We will need to pressure cook these for 15-20 mins. For this, take some water in the pressure cooker, add a plate and stack these patoli's on that. Put the lid on and let it steam in low-medium flame.

5. Once it is pressure cooked, remove the leaf and serve it.

Patholi's are best eaten with dollops and dollops of pure ghee.

Karathe che Koshimbir

Bitter Gourd or Karela is called as Karathe in Konkani. Koshimbir is a Konkani and Marathi word for salad. So this dish literally translates to Bitter Gourd Salad. But don't get confused by the name- this salad in no way looks or tastes like the one you would normally have had. What I've seem to think of is that, in our cuisines, anything raw or partially raw side dishes are called koshimbir. At our home, we call a mix of all vegetables, salt and masala as koshimbir. In addition, if we mix vegetable in a coconut, onion, red chilly mix, then thats also called a Koshimbir. Karathe Koshimbir follows the latter recipe. This side dish goes very well with curd rice. You can also eat it with chapathi. Here's a delicious recipe from my mom-in-law. Hope you enjoy it.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Bitter Gourd - 2

Oil - 2 tsp

Grated Coconut - 1/2 cup

Onion - 1/2 (chopped)

Red chilly Powder - 2 tsp

Salt

Lemon juice - 2 tsp

Sugar - a pinch

Preparation:

1. Remove the outer skin of the bitter gourd and chop it into very small cubes.

2. Heat oil in a pan and fry the chopped bitter gourd.

3. In a container, add coconut, onion, red chilly powder, salt, lemon juice, a pinch of sugar and the fried bitter gourd and mix them with hand.

You can make this similar koshimbir with fried papad or with dry shrimps (my mom used to make this with dry shrimp during my childhood). For making with these, you can skip the lemon juice and sugar.

Shrikand

Shrikand is an Indian style flavoured yogurt which is very popular in Gujrati and Maharastrian cuisines. Poori with Shrikand is one of the very popular combinations. You can also eat Shrikand as a dessert. The credit for this dish goes to aayi and kaku.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Curd - 1.5 kg

Sugar - 1.25 cup

Cardamom - 4

Saffron - for flavor

Milk - 3 tsp

Nutmeg (Jaiphal) - very small piece

Muslin Cloth - to tie the curd

Preparation:

1. Tie the curd in a muslin cloth and hang it overnight so that the water comtent drips off.

2. Powder sugar, cardamom, jaiphal in a mixer and mix with the yogurt.

3. Mix saffron in milk and mix with the yogurt. Mix well.

Shrikand is ready to be served with poori or as a dessert.

Veg Curry puff

Making vegetable curry puff was always a mystery to me until recently when I was determined to learn it and get it right. Now it no longer feels like a rocket science. This is one of those very famous snacks that we used to crave for when we visited bakeries in India. And we never seemed to have enough of them. We find many versions of curry puffs with a variety of stuffings ranging from paneer to egg. Here is my version of this great snack with a potato & peas stuffing.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Potato - 2 

Onion - 1/2

Peas - 1/2 cup

Salt

Cumin Powder - 1 tsp

Coriander Powder - 2 tsp

Red chilly Powder - 2 tsp

Turmeric Powder - 0.5 tsp

Chaat Masala Powder - 1 tsp

Dry Mango (Amchur) Powder - 1 tsp

Puff Pastry Sheets / shells - 1 box (you can either buy this in store or make it fresh at home).

Preparation:

1. Boil potato in a pressure cooker. Once boiled, mash them and keep aside.

2. Heat oil in a pan and add chopped onions. 

3. Once the onions fry a bit, add peas and salt. 

4. After the peas are cooked a bit, add the masalas - cumin powder, coriander powder, red chilly powder, turmeric powder, chaat masala powder and amchur powder. Mix them well.

5. Then add the mashed potato to the mix. Mix it well and turn off the flame.

The mixture is now ready to be stuffed and baked to make veg puffs. I generally buy the puff pastry from grocery store - you can generally find it in the frozen section of the grocery store.

If you have puff pastry sheets:

1. Remove the puff pastry sheets from freezer and keep it in room temperature for sometime until its icy stiffness is gone (natural way of defrosting I say :-) )

2. Preheat the oven at 400 F for 10 mins.

3. Cut the puff pastry sheets into rectangles and once they are back to room temperature, you should be able to fold them easily and thats when you know the puffs are ready to be stuffed.

4. Once they are ready to be stuffed, place 1 spoon of the mixture on one side and then fold it. 

5. Place it in a oven friendly tray (we use aluminium trays) and let it bake for 25 mins.

If you have puff pastry shells:

1. Preheat the oven at 400 F for 10 mins

2. Once your remove puff pastry shells from the freezer, place them on a tray and bake them for 25 mins.

3. After that, remove the central portion with a fork and stuff you mixture in that and then place the center lid back.

4. Bake it for another 3 mins in the oven and they are ready.

This is best served with tomato ketchup.