Sri Lankan Egg Curry without Coconut Milk ( My Style ) ......

I absolutely love this egg curry or this Sri Lankan curry powder that I have used in this curry. This curry powder can be used for any curry you make. You can make this in large batch and it can be stored. 

I have added potatoes, but it is optional. You can enjoy this with hot steamed rice... 

For the wet paste... 

1 Onion chopped 

1 Tomato chopped 

6 Garlic cloves

1 small piece ginger

Method

Grind all the above ingredients into a fine paste. 

For Sri Lankan Curry Powder....

Ingredients

5 Whole Red Chilies

2 tbsp Coriander Seeds

1 tbsp Cumin seeds

6 Cloves

6 Pepper Corns

2 Cardamom

1 stick Cinnamon

1 tbsp Rice

1/4 tsp Fenugreek seeds

1 tsp Fennel seeds

1/2 tsp Mustard seeds 

Handful of Curry Leaves

Method

Dry roast the curry leaves in a pan and keep aside to cool. In the same pan, dry roast all the whole spices and allow it to cool. In a grinder, add all the roasted ingredients including curry leaves and grind to make a powder.Store it in an air tight jar.

For the Egg curry...,

Ingredients 

6 Eggs boiled 

2 Potatoes cut into big chunks 

1 Onion sliced 

1 Tomato cut into wedges

Few Curry Leaves

Few Coriander leaves for garnishing 

1/2 tsp Tumeric powder

1/2 tsp Chilli powder

1/2 tsp Pepper powder 

1 tbsp Sri Lankan Masala

1 Dry Red Chilli slit

1 tsp Jaggery 

1 tsp Tamarind paste

Salt to taste 

1/2 tsp Fennel seeds

1/2 tsp Mustard seeds

1/4 cup Oil 

Method 

Take a wok. Add oil. Let it heat. Fry the potatoes until light brown colour. Keep it aside. Give a slit on the boiled eggs. Fry the eggs till light brown in colour. Keep it aside. In the same oil, add the mustard seeds, fennel seeds, and dry chilli. Let it crackle. Add the curry leaves and sauté it for few seconds. Add the onion and sauté it till light pink in colour. Add the wet paste, stir and cook it for 2 minutes. Add the chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt, Sri Lankan powder and pepper powder. Stir and cook for 2 minutes. Add the potatoes, stir and add 4 cups of water. Cover and cook till the potatoes are cooked. Add the eggs, tomato, tamarind paste and jaggery. Stir and cook for another 3 minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves before serving. 

P. S. Water can be added as per your requirement. 

Dutch Speculaas Cookies.....

Speculaas cookie is a type of spiced short crust biscuit, traditionally baked on or just before St Nicholas' day in the Netherlands that is 5th December, In Belgium it is December 6th and around Christmas in Germany. Speculaas are thin, very crunchy, caramelized, slightly browned and, most significantly, have some image or figure (often from the traditional stories about St. Nicholas stamped on the front side before baking and the back is flat. 

Traditionally speculaas are made by pressing the dough into a mold before baking in the oven. Using a springerle rolling pin (a rolling pin with a pattern carved into it) is an easy way to impress a shape into the cookies. If you don’t have a speculaas mold or a springerle rolling pin, you can just use regular holiday cookie cutters to make festive shaped cookies instead or just roll them out, and cut them into squares with a knife. While baking the whole house is filled up with aroma and makes you feel like holiday season.

Net source ...

Ingredients

2 cups All Purpose Flour 

1/2 cup  Butter

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 tsp Cinnamon powder 

1/4 tsp Nutmeg powder

1/4 tsp Clove powder

1/4 tsp Dry Ginger powder

1/4 tsp White pepper powder

1/4 tsp Cardamom powder

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence

2 tbsp Curd 

Method 

Take a mixing bowl. Beat the butter and brown sugar together till fluffy. Scrape the sides with a spatula and add the vanilla essence and curd, beat it well. Add all the spice powder and beat it. Add the flour and the baking powder. Beat it again and knead it until all the ingredients incorporates well and forms a dough. Sprinkle some flour on the platform. Place the dough on the platform. If you using the springerle rolling pin then roll the dough out into 1/2 inch thick sheet with a plain rolling pin. Dust the springerle pin with flour then roll over the dough, pressing it firmly to make a 1/4 inch thick cookie dough, with imprint. Cut the dough along the springerle grid lines with a sharp knife or pizza cutter and place the cookies on a baking tray.If using a cookie cutter, roll the dough out until 1/4 inch thick with a plain rolling pin and cut out cookies and place on the baking sheet. Bake it in a preheated oven at 170 degrees celsius for 20 minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before enjoying... 

Recipe adapted from Irvin Lin

Eggless Non alcoholic Super Moist Rich Christmas Fruit Cake.....

As Christmas arrives my memory runs down through those beautiful moments of my life where I stayed for so many years, a place where you could hear Christmas tune flowing in the air. Adult and children from different parish would walk down the road singing carols. There would be romance in the air. so nostalgic..... Every household would make sweets and cakes.... The aroma of baking would be everywhere. All the main roads and  Gaothans would be decorated and lite up with colourful stars and lights. Food and drink would flow in parties along with the music and dance. More over fun to attend the midnight mass with friends. 

One of the must in the menu is the fruit cake. The dry fruits are soaked in alcohol for many weeks before makingthe cake, but today, I made a cake without eggs and alcohol... which was equally good in taste. 

Ingredients

3/4 cup Raisins chopped 

1 cup Trutti futti

1/2 cup Red Canned Cherries chopped

1/4 cup Lemon Candy Peels chopped

1/2 cup Cashew nuts chopped

400 ml  Orange juice

1/3 cup Honey

3/4 cup Oil

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp All Purpose Flour 

1 tsp Baking powder

1/tsp Soda bicarbonate 

1/4 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Mix spices powder  ( 2 pinches of Cinnamon powder, 2 pinches of Nutmeg powder, 2 pinch of Ginger powder and 2 pinches of Cloves powder) 

1/4 cup Club Soda or Drinking Soda 

Method

Pre heat the oven at 160 -180 degrees. Mix all the dry fruits, orange juice and honey and keep it over night in the fridge. Take the soaked dry fruits and drain the juice out. Keep the juice and the dry fruits separately. 

Take oil and sugar. Beat it well till both the ingredients are well incooperated. Take the dry fruits and the cashews and mix it. Sprinkle 2 tbsp of the flour into the dry fruits and mix it. Now take a cup of the juice. Add the juice into the oil and sugar mixture little at a time along with the remaining flour, baking powder, soda bicarbonate and salt and beat it. Add the mix spice powder and the dry fruits into the batter and gently fold in the batter. Add in 1/4 cup of the club Soda and gently mix it. Now take 2 mould of 500 grams. Grease the moulds. Add the batter into the mould. Fill in 3/4 of the size of the mould. Bake it for 45 to 50 minutes at 160 - 180 degrees. Insert a tooth pick and check. Cool the cake completely and then slice it. 

Eggless Christmas Cookies...

As Christmas is just round the corner, I wanted to share this colourful eggless cookie recipe which I had made 2 years back before having a blog. The Christmas tree cookie presentation idea was taken from Sandra Denneler. This is an excellent idea for decorating your table for Christmas parties. 

Ingredients

1/3 cup Powdered Sugar

Or 

1 cup Sugar Free Natura

1/3 cup Amul Butter

1 tbsp Curd

1/4 tsp Baking powder  

1 cup of All Purpose Flour and 1/3 cup of Almond powder

1 tsp Almond essence (or whatever essence you prefer)

2 Perk Chocolate bars

Melted Chocolate for sticking the cookies

6 different Food colours

1 cup Sugar (Displaying your Cookies)

Method

Beat the sugar with butter, curd and essence. Now combine all the dry ingredients together, and then gradually add them to the sugar-butter mixture. Split dough into 6 equal portions and keep a very small portion for the star.Add food coloring to each of the dough balls until desired color is achieved. Take 2 lime size portions from any of the coloured dough. Keep them on a plate. Similarly take another 2 portions from another colour dough. This portion has to be little smaller than the previous portions taken. Keep repeating. The portions keeps decreasing in size as we take different colour dough. The yellow colour dough can be cut into a star for the top. Flatten the dough balls. First place the bigger size cookies on the greased baking tray. Start with baking at 170 - 180 degrees for 3 minutes in a pre heated oven. Then remove the baking tray from the oven and add the next smaller size cookies, bake it for more 3 minutes. In the similar manner, keep adding the cookies and baking it for next 3 minutes. So the total time for baking will be 20 minutes.Cool of the cookies completely. Cut a full-sized perk  bar in half. Get the 2 halves together and stick it with melted chocolate. Take a plate. Add the sugar for display into the plate. Add melted chocolate on top edge of the perk bar to secure the bottom cookie. For more stable trees, keep adding melted chocolate in between each cookies layer as you stack them. Stack the largest cookie in the bottom, graduating to the smallest size on the top. Add the star cookie on top. Take the leftover dough and roll it into a sheet and with the help of a Christmas cookie cutters cut out different shapes and bake it at 180 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. Enjoy them during Christmas.

Chushi Pitha Kheer

Chushi Pitha is traditionally made during Paush Sankranti. This is a Bangladeshi sweet dish. There many types of Pitha made during this season with the new harvested rice and date jaggery which is made during this winter season. Chushi Pitha or Chutki Pitha or Chui Pitha has to be made in advance as the small rice dumplings are made first and then sun dried. It is time consuming to make them so the traditional method is becoming extinct. Now a days the dried rice dumplings are available in the market. 

Traditionally it is made with Gobindo bhog rice flour or Basmati Rice flour. The dough is made by cooking the flour in hot water and then kneading it well. A pinch of the dough is taken and then shaped. There are many traditional and faster ways of making it, but since I being a Prabasi Bangali (out of the state), I am not very acquainted with all the methods.  The dumplings are sun dried and it can be stored. These are used to make Chushi Pitha Kheer. To make the kheer date jaggery is used as it is the season for this jaggery. Milk is boiled and reduced and sugar and date jaggery is added to the milk, it stirred till the sugar and jaggery is dissolved. The dumplings are fried in ghee and added into the milk and cooked till the milk has slightly thickened. 

Here I have mixed the flour and salt together and add hot water to the flour. I have mixed it and microwaved it for 30 seconds. Then kneaded it in to a dough... 

For the Chushi Pitha

Ingredients

1/2 cup + 1 tsp Rice Flour ( Gobindo bhog RiceFlour / Basmati  Rice Flour )

Salt to taste

Hot water as required

Method

Take bowl.  Mix 1/2 cup flour and salt. Add little hot water at a time and mix it till it forms a wet dough. Microwave the dough for 30 seconds. Let cool down a bit. Knead it well for 5 minutes.  Cover the dough and keep it for 5 minutes. Sprinkle some flour on a platform. Take a small pinch of the dough and roll it into a ball. Keep it on a platform and with the help of the heel of the palm,  gently roll it from the edge and make it into a oblong shape. Then turn the dough and using the heel of the palm, roll it from the edge. It is pointy at the edges and thick in the centre. Follow the same process to make the other dumplings. Sprinkle some flour on them and sun dry. These can be stored in a jar and kept until Chushi pitha payesh is made out of it.

Chushi Pitha Kheer

Ingredients

3/4 cup Chushi pitha

1 1/2 liters Milk

3/4 cup Date plam Jaggery grated

3 tbsp Sugar or more as required

1/4 tsp Cardomom powder

Pinch of Salt

Few Raisins

Few Broken Cashewnuts

1 tbsp Ghee

Method

Take a heavy bottom pot. Let the milk simmer, stir it occasionally.  Meanwhile take a pan. Add ghee and stir fry the Chushi pitha till light brown in colour. Keep it aside. As 1/4 cup of the  milk reduces, add the sugar, cardamom powder, salt, jaggery, raisins and cashwenuts. Stirring the milk occasionally, dissolve the jaggery. Add the chushi pitha and keep stirring it as it should not form a lump. As the milk thickens, switch off the flame and let it cool. If you feel that the chushi pitha has absorbed the milk, then please add some more milk and stir it.

P .S. Some times due to the jaggery the milk curdles. So in that case if you are not sure of the jaggery, it is better to melt the jaggery with little water and then add it to the milk.