Traditional Kerala Beef Ularthu

Hey everybody!, Today or we can say from today i will be providing you with the recipes of traditional Kerala food. Before i indulge you into its culinary delights, i will give you a brief background about Kerala, the available food material and why its cooked the way it is. Kerala as most of the world know is called the "Gods Own Country". This land is located in the southern most end of India and has a very long coastline and so is abundant in coconuts. So needless to say that coconut is one of the main ingredient in many of its cuisines. The spices mainly used is pepper, coriander, turmeric, ginger, garlic, green chillies, and also couple of other spices like patta and grambu whose english names i fail to remember at this time. The oil used is coconut oil (Doctors these days say that it has a very low cholesterol level) or pure ghee dervied from cows milk. The cooking is usually done in earthen pots and cooked in a stove fire with wood.

I used only the traditional items to cook this beef ularthu (pepper beef).

I took about 200gms of beef (my wife sanctioned me only about 100gms but i snuck 100gms more), cut into nice small pieces around 2cmx2cm, and cleaned it throughly in fresh clean water.

I drained away water (do not strain the water from the beef) and put the beef into a earthen vessel into which i had put a small teaspoon of turmeric, two teaspoons of ginger and garlic ground to a paste and two teaspoons of coriander powder (took from the whole raw coriander fried it and then powdered), and a small teaspoon of salt. I mixed the items in the vessel and the beef until all the beef pieces were completely covered in this spicy mix. I kept this mixture closed in the vessel for about 30 minutes. During this time i took time to boil three glasses of water, onto this i put a half a piece of cut green chilly. I carefully then transferred the beef into this boiling water and closed the lid and waited till the beef was cooked to tender. This usually takes about thirty minutes (this time is taken because of the earthen vessels, which takes time to heat up), by this time most of the water in the vessel would have evaporated and only a quarter glass of water will remain, now add pepper powder about three spoons would suffice and then stir slowly till the water has completely evaporated now the beef pieces would have a dark black color, and will be dry. You can add a couple of curry leaves stem in the vessel and close it for about a minute. Viola its ready to serve. I have a photo that i took using my mobile which is unfortunately just 1.3 mega pixels only, so please bear with the picture as i have no other option. So we have the Kerala Beef Ularthu which is spicy and really traditional and made only with the real food material natively available in kerala. These days some people add onions and in some cases tomato. But folks those are additions which came into being only since the 1990's. This is real traditional one. So try it, and if possible use earthen vessels you will find the tasty difference. Boy i cant wait to eat it so bye folks. So see you all on tuesday with the traditional red fish curry.

So again folks do let me know some traditional kerala receipes, i am asking this since i am from central kerala and i know only the ones from here

Dream of being a chef

Hey there, this morning my wife woke up all huffy and puffy with fever and severe headache. This would later on in the morning turn out to be an ideal launch pad for my 'closet' desire to be a chef of my own 'naadan' restaurant.

Well for the beginning i thought why not try my hand with something simple and straight forward, that my wife can eat immediately so that she can take her paracetamol tablet (yes i love my wife).

There was a couple of packs of maggie chicken noodles with taste maker, and in the fridge there was some freshly cut carrots and capsicum (just my luck). I saw a small tin of desi ghee and viola a spark of an idea germinated. I put a tablespoon of the ghee in the fying pan, with the stove flame set to low, and dropped in the vegetables and added a pinch of salt and half a tablespoon powdered pepper (yes the black ones). As soon as the capsicum started going flaccid and the carrots started loosing their erection (oops no confusions here), took the pan of the flame and put the vessel containg 1/2 litre of water and set it to boil, as soon as the i took a cup of water and poured a couple of fresh eggs into the cup and just as it started to become solid, i strained out the water and put it into the frying pan which was still hot and stirred it till it mixed well.

Meanwhile i dropped the two packets of noodles into the vessel of boiling water along with the taste maker and allowed it to cook for a minute (maggie packet says cook for two minutes, dont it over cooks), and by then the water had almost become thick like sweet corn soup and i put out the flame and added the ingredients of the frying pan onto the vessel viola the dish was ready.

Needless to say my wife loved it along with black coffee, and i decided to try out some real native dishes from tomorrow (yes this weekend its going to be beef ularthu) onwards. Yes no more cooking of packed foods and only real foods. Sorry could not take the above dish photo. but expect the next dish pic this weekend.

Yeah i also invite readers to give me some traditional kerala recipes that a husband dreaming to be a chef of his own restaurant can try with confidence.