In Tamil Nadu, pottu kadalai or roasted brown chickpea lentils are ground with grated coconuts to a fine paste to make a melt-in-the-mouth chutney. It is served with pongal, idli, vada and with all sorts of dosas. A breakfast dish without chutney and sambar is considered incomplete. In Kerala and Karnataka however, delicious chutney is usually…
Vegan
Vegan Coconut Smoothie – A drink of love (Gluten Free)
Would you like to hear a story? This happened over a couple of decades ago. A dozen girls, studying in high school, gathered at their tuition center at Calicut. Their happy faces indicated that they had no intention of attending tuitions that day. The elder sister of Rahianath, one of the girls in the group,…
Shallot Rasam – A simple Kerala pouring curry (Vegan + Gluten Free)
At my parents’ home at Calicut, comes a sprightly old lady named Maniyamma. She started to work as our house maid ever since I was 3 or 4 years of age. Though she is probably in her eighties now, she looks more like 50. Short and stocky, with a smiling visage, she even plays with…
Kadgi Chakko – A delicious Konkani side dish (Vegan + Gluten Free)
It is the start of the jackfruit season in India. Everywhere, millions of jackfruit trees are in celebration. While the younger trees bring forth just a few, the ancient matriarchs sometimes produce hundreds, covering their trunks and branches and even a few exposed roots with beautiful fruits. The fruits usually ripen in the months of April…
Kadgi Podi – Tender Jackfruit Chips (V+GF)
There were several jackfruit trees embraced by pepper vines in our land when we bought it more than 8 years ago. To add to their number, my husband planted around 25 different varieties of special, grafted jackfruit plants. To my delight, some of them have started to blossom now. This morning, he brought in a…
Mango Blossom Chutney (Vegan + Gluten Free)
Covering the courtyard of my ancestral home at Thalassery stands a huge old mango tree. Proud and tall, it produces baskets of delicious country papaya mangoes (also called popai ambo in Konkani and kappa manga or ko manga in Malayalam) invariably every year. During the ripening season which coincides with the summer holidays, we children used to run to the base of…
Hot and Spicy Vegan Cookies
Ever since we moved to this remote mountain village in the Western Ghats, every year on Christmas Eve, my family and I eagerly await the visit of Santa Claus and the neighborhood carol singers. The first year, a person was sent here in the morning asking us if we wouldn’t mind the children coming to…
Vegetable Macaroni (Vegan)
Whenever you think of cooking something for children, it is best if you can be a child at heart again, if only for a moment. The world of a child is magical – full of colors and lights, of attractions and fears, of greatly accentuated tastes and smells – a life of wonder and beauty….
Cherry Arrowroot Jam (Vegan + Gluten Free)
This year, the acerola cherry (Barbados cherries / West Indian cherries / Wild Crepe Myrtle cherries / Malpighia Emarginata) bush in our compound bore way too many juicy, red cherries. Even after making squash, syrup, curry and pickles, there were plenty left to spare. My husband brought in some freshly dug arrowroots. Seeing them, an…
Spicy Collard Nuggets (Vegan + Gluten Free)
Collard greens do not grow well in the hot climate of the Kerala coast. However, in the cooler mountain districts of Wayanad and Idukki, it is an entirely different story. When we purchased our land in Wayanad around 8 years ago, we used to visit every week to supervise the construction work of our home. We…