Thattukada Beef Fry

For some reason Thattukadas (Road side eateries) always seems to have a special place in a lot of Keralite's heart. One thing I could say for sure is that we (me & R, and I think now my son too) has a special liking for Thattukada preparations. Don't know why, but the food there has a special taste that you would not find in any of the five star restaurants. Among our list of restaurants that we hop on, when visiting India, are a few Thattukadas too - one of the popular ones being Balan's thattukada and the special item there is the Beef Fry. I was thinking about Balan's beef today and had this urge to go ahead and give it a try. This is just an attempt to recreate the memories 'n taste and it came out good.

For Marination:

Beef	- 3 lbs
Chilly Powder	- 1 tbsp
Coriander Powder	- 1 1/2 tsp
Ginger Garlic Paste	- 1 tbsp
Fennel Powder	- 1 tsp
Turmeric Powder	- 1/4 tsp
Garam Masala	- 1/2 tsp
Salt	- to taste

Final Preparation:

Chilly Powder	- 1 tbsp
Ginger Garlic Paste	- 2 tbsp
Garam Masala	- 1/2 tsp
Pepper Powder	- 1 tsp
Salt	- to taste
Curry Leaves	- 2 twigs
Oil	- as needed to fry

1. In a pressure cooker, mix the beef with the rest of the ingredients for marination.

2. Pressure cook the marinated beef until it is 3/4 done (may be 2 whistles). No water is needed as there would be enough water coming from the beef.

3. Once the pressure is gone, open the pressure cooker and take one cup of the beef stock.

4. Heat another pan and pour the stock to it.

5. Add Chilly Powder, Pepper Powder and Ginger Garlic Paste to the stock and let it boil.

6. Add the beef to this boiling stock and mix well and let it cook. Add additional stock to this if the beef needs more cooking. Keep in mind we will be frying this too.

7. Check salt and add, if needed.

8. When the beef is almost dry, add the Garam Masala and mix well. Turn off the stove. If you want to avoid fried stuff, the beef can be eaten like this. It would taste great too.

9. Heat oil in a pan for frying and when the oil is hot, fry the beef in batches.

10. Once the frying is done, in the same oil fry the curry leaves and garnish the beef.

My son loved it so much that I had a tough time taking the picture!

Give Away Time - **CLOSED**

And the winner is Shabitha Karthikeyan of My Home Kitchen! Congrats Shabitha!

I am sure most of you have by now seen giveaways happening at a lot of blogs. I am one of the lucky ones who also got the privilege to do a giveaway sponsored by CSN stores to thank my dear readers out there. For those who do not know about CSN stores, it is comprised of more than 200 different shopping sites under the overall csnstores.com umbrella. Most of their sites are named for their primary product offerings or the styles they provide. CSN's product categories cover everything from cookware, ultra modern furniture, bunk bed-office combinations and fitness equipment to gaming chairs, grills, greenhouses and much. So for all your needs ranging from a corner TV stand, entertainment centers, rugs, house wares to home improvement stuff, you could visit that one place - CSN Stores. Now let’s get into what CSN has agreed to offer for my dear friends - you get to pick one from the below 9 choices:

Black & Decker Mini Pro Plus Food Processor

Presto Flip Side Belgian Waffle Maker

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Le Creuset 2-Quart Batter Bowl

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So what do you want to pick for your sweet space? Now let's get into the rules and requirements for you to enter this contest.

Rules

1. The contest is only open to US and Canadian Residents. For all others, if you have a friend/relative in US or Canada, you could always get it shipped to them.

2. The contest closes on May 12th at 11:59pm PST.

3. The winner will be selected using random.org and will be notified via email. Please post your email id as well, if you are not a registered blogger. In the event that winner does not respond back within 3 days after they receive the email a new winner would be chosen.

4. You could leave a separate comment for each one of the below activity: (Note: - The first 2 are mandatory to enter the contest)

1. Follow Thattukada publicly via Google friend connect and leave a comment under this post saying so. If you are already a follower, just comment so. (Mandatory)
2. Visit the furniture store under CSN umbrella - RacksandStands and leave a comment as to what you would love to have from there.  (Mandatory)
3. Tweet about this giveaway using the tweeter link below this post and follow me on twitter. Leave a comment with your tweet URL under this post.
4. Join Face book group - Thattukada and leave a comment about it under this post.
5. Add Thattukada to your blog roll and leave a comment about it under this post.

So you could leave a maximum of 5 comments and quintuple your chances to be the winner - please remember that the first 2 are mandatory for you to earn any additional entries.

Good Luck dear Friends! Happy Commenting!

Chilly Chicken

Chilly Chicken is one of our family favorites. Considering the fact that it is an Indo-Chinese dish, I used to think that it is a delicacy of the Chinese which we have altered to suit our taste buds. But now my realization is that it is purely an Indian invention using some of the Chinese ingredients.

If you search for a chilly chicken recipe on the web, you would get tons of them. And the interesting part is these recipes vary a lot in the way they are prepared. So I am assuming it tastes different to different people across the world. For us, the best chilly chicken we have had is from the restaurant "Open House" in Trivandrum. We have a list of restaurants that we would visit every time we go on a vacation to India and this is one of them. They do not have a lot of options on their menu, but their chilly chicken and paratta is one of the best I have tasted. So this is an attempt to recreate the "Open House" taste. The recipe is actually from my mom and I have tried to build on that. Not sure whether this is anywhere near the "Open House" taste, but it tasted good and we enjoyed it!

Coconut Oil	- 3 tbsp
Chicken	- 1 1/2 lbs
Onion	- 2 big (chopped)
Ginger	- 1/2 cup (chopped)
Garlic	- 1/2 cup (chopped)
Green Chilly	- 6 (chopped) - reduce depending on your spice level
Tomato Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Green Chilly Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Light Soya Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Dark Soya Sauce	- 2 tbsp
Corn Starch	- 1 tsp
Water	- 1 tbsp to 1/2 cup
Salt	- to taste

1. Heat oil in a pan. You could use refined oil as well.
2. When the oil is hot, add the onions and saute it until transparent.
3. Add the chopped ginger, garlic and chillies and saute until the raw smell is gone.
4. Add the chicken pieces to this. Chicken pieces should be almost cube sized. Boned
chicken would work best and taste best too. I used boneless this time though.
5. Immediately add the sauces - tomato sauce, chilly sauce, light soya sauce and dark soya sauce.
6. Mix everything well and add salt, if needed. Soya sauce has enough salt that you may not need anymore.
7. Let the chicken cook. Keep stirring in between.
8. When the chicken is done, check the amount of gravy in the pan. This would be water from the chicken, as we have not added any additional water to the preparation at this point.
9. Depending on how much gravy you need, use a tbsp to half a cup of water to mix the corn starch (could use corn flour as well) with out lumps. Add this to the pan and mix well.
10. Cook for 2-3 minutes and turn off the stove.

So if anyone reading this has had the "Open House" chilly chicken, make this and let me know what you think!