Cooking Is Easy

Pear preserve: Old fashioned preserved pears are so good topped over ice creams, puddings, or even on hot crispy buttered toast. We lived in a beautiful hill station named Coorg before we moved into this city. Unlike city, hills are wonderful place if you love fruits and veggies....and the cold weather!! Seasonal fresh fruits were a delight, pear is something which we used to get in abundance there. Pear is known as "sabarjelly" here in Kerala, and people just peel, slice and consume.....nothing much is done with it....but in the hills, pear is preserved for a year and to be used as toppings. I used to make bottles of this and store; but after moving into the city, I never got a chance to preserve fruits and store; mainly because you do not get it in bulk or it might be expensive. A few days back Homey got some pear from the fruit market....and my son suddenly remembered the preserved ones I used to make and he needed one....and was adamant!! So I took just 750 gms

Caramel pudding recipe;  a delicious traditional dessert with creamy caramel over silky custard. Caramel custard is my favorite pudding. All through my childhood, amma makes caramel pudding as a Sunday special.....achachen (my dad) love only this pudding...... 42 years of serving caramel pudding to him has made amma, a sort of an authority on caramel pudding recipe! Ah yes, like always this is amma's recipe. It is her signature, no-fail recipe. of caramel custard. Okay lets talk about this pudding!!  I used 4 eggs because amma said so  eggs are the show stopper here :)......it is needed to make the pudding silky-satin, and stand tall....and yes it will not crumble.....now you may wonder....won't this be eggy!!smelly!! I promise it won't....there wouldn't be too much eggy flavor! caramel flavor can do wonders!! Believe me!! I am using my steamer or appachembu as it is known locally to cook the pudding. While the pudding is steaming, it is import

How to cook corn in a pressure cooker!! and that too in 5 minutes!! a few shakes of salt and a smear of butter and it is ready to munch!! Here it has been pouring continuously for the past three days and pretty cold too....and munch'in corn is the next best thing to do in monsoons....I like grilled corn (on charcoal) more than boiled one...but my son just loves this...and this is something I make often. Pressure cooking is something I love, it saves time, energy and the nutrients are intact....I try to cook food especially biriyani and pulav in pressure cooker to save time!! Corn is known as "bhutta" in hindi and "cholam" in malayalam.....these days we get sweet corn also. This is a no recipe post!! Here is how I boil corn in the pressure cooker : Into the pressure cooker, drop in the corn, add water; almost half of the cooker. If you like salted corn, add some salt. Cover the cooker with its lid. After the first whistle, simmer the fire for 2

Meen peera; meen pattichathu is an everyday fish curry where fresh fish is cooked with fresh coconut scrapings, along with "kudampuli" or fish tamarind.....and lightly drizzled with fresh coconut oil. A very healthy curry so very country style a.k.a "nadan". Anchovies (netholi) and baby sardines (mathi)are aplenty during monsoon season, though small fish are best suited for meen peera pattichathu, sometimes I make with slightly larger sardines also (I cut them into smaller pieces) . Ammachi, my grandmother never used to grind the freshly scarped coconut for this curry; she used to say that ...put everything in the chatti (earthen vessel) and then simply mix everything with your hand....and that makes the curry taste better!! at least that is what Valiayammachi (my great-grand mom) used to tell her.....this has been in the family and 4 generations.... I am still making it as it was made by my great grandmother....I use earthen pan "meen chatt" t