About My Husband

Prologue by my husband Sandeep 'mashoor'

"Basically I love food, not just to eat but love to do everything about food

To think, to read, to view, to listen, to smell, to cook, to serve, to imagine, to explore, to ‘dream’, to understand its historical aspects and different foods of different ethnic groups, to know science of cooking, to search hotels, restaurants offering good food; in short all about food

I was very thin long back. Although I belonged to well to do family in Thane, Mumbai (खाते पिते घर का) but I had not developed my ‘taste’. Later on my passion to learn Urdu took me to Qasim Shaikh who became my close friend. Qasim introduced me not only to Urdu literature but to many Muslim delicacies such as Biryani, Dabba Gosht, Reshami Kabab, Afalatoon and so on. He taught me to enjoy food in perfect combination of food items of complimentry taste. His company made me realize immensejoy even in small things such as eating curd and sugar at Brijwasi, Thane. He truely developed a ‘kahavaiyya’ in me.

Gradullay I travelled from just exploring in kitchen to have complete possession of kitchen. Women get this knowledge passed on by their mother and could easily know many referal tasks in the process. I did not learn from my mother but ofcourse observed her cooking. Observation, trial and error were the methods through which I became a cook. I relied on ‘Annapurna’ by Mangala Barve and eventually cookery shows, columns, blogs on internet, clips on Youtube, short cookery courses done after settling in Pune all contributed in this creative journey.

I enjoy cooking by all senses. My joy doubles if people like my preparation. This joy made me understand that I can ‘express’ through this. One of the forces behind this blog is ‘Preeti’ (wife is formal relationship but a closest friend of mine). Sometimes I used to publish snaps of my recipes on my facebook profile and used to get good response. But once Preeti published it under the title ‘My Husband’s Recipes’ and she got action packed response. Therefore she insisted on starting a blog by same name.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Neyyappam (नैय्यप्पम)











Neyyappam is a tasty sweet from South India. Neyya means Ghee and appam, we know pancakes. It is a common preparation in kerala and Tamilnadu. It is made on the occasion of ‘karhikai deepam’ celebrated on kartik pournima (full moon night in the month of kartik) Neyyapam is often given as Prasad especially in the temples of Krishna.

There are regional differences in the recipe of Neyyapam. I am giving here one quick recipe of Neyyappam from Kerala.

Banana is integral ingredient of Neyyapam. It makes neyyappam full of flavor.

Generally neyyappam are deep fried but it can be made in aappe patra and as such to make it little less heavy.

In traditional recipes, rice is soaked to make paste. But here we will be using rice flour to make it faster.

Ingredients

Rice Flour: 1 and ¼ cup

Ripe banana: two

Jaggery: one cup

Coconut: 1 tablespoon

Cardamom powder, cashew nuts and ghee

Heat ¼ cup water and add jaggery. When it starts boiling add coconut. Remove from the heat when it starts thickening and keep it aside.

Mash bananas, preferably in mixer, add cardamom powder while mashing the bananas.

If you like, add cashew nuts (broken) in rice flour and mix it well with jaggery. Before mixing please ensure that temperature of jaggery is normal. Mix it well clearing lumps in flour.

Heat the aappe patra, put ghee in the moulds and pour batter. Fry it well from both the sides.

In traditional kerala recipe, black jaggery is used. We can get it in kerala stores. But if black jaggery is not available, one can use kolhapuri gul or kanak gul powder but avoid yellow jaggery. Same with banana, its good if long yellow bananas from kerala are available. But if it is not, we can use the bananas we regularly get, but don’t use velachi keli for this.





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