Happy Deepavali / Diwali to Everyone

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Coconut Chutney

1 cup grated fresh coconut

2-3 green chillies - minced

2 tablespoon yogurt

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

2 teaspoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons melon seeds

4/5 curry leaves

1 tablespoon oil

Combine the yogurt, coconut and minced chillies in a bowl. Heat the oil in a small pan, when hot, add all the seeds and the curry leaves (cover) and let it pop, when the sesame seeds are brown, add the whole lot to the coconut mixture. Stir to mix and serve.

Chilla

Ingredients

1 cup gram flour
1 cup yogurt
1/2 cup warm water
2 cloves garlic – minced
½ inch ginger – grated
2 chillies - minced
2 spring onions – chopped finely
2 table spoons chopped coriander
Salt to taste

Method

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl, add the yogurt and mix, to make a smooth paste

2. Add the water gradually until it has a consistency of pancake batter. Beat until smooth.

3. Leave aside for 1 hour.

4. Beat again and add garlic, ginger spring onion, chilli and coriander leaves. Mix well.

5. Heat a pancake pan, spray some oil in it. Pour 1 ladle of batter and spread it evenly. Flip it over when cooked on one side and cook the other side. Repeat the same with remaining batter. Serve hot with coconut chutney.

Makes about 10 in a 7 inch pan

Vitumbua

The other week, one of my anon readers asked me to make vitumbua. Vitumbua is a Tanzanian dish, made from rice flour, coconut, yeast and cardamon. When made well it is fluffy and literally melts in your mouth.

Ingredients

2 cups finely ground rice flour

2 tblspn plain white flour

2 tblspn fresh grated coconut (available frozen in most Asian stores)

1 400 gm tin coconut milk

½ cup hot water

1 tspn dry yeast

½ cup sugsr

½ teaspoon roughly ground cardamom seeds

oil

Method

1. Mix rice flour, grated coconut, and the coconut milk and hot water to form a thick paste. The temperature should be equivalent to body temperature.
2. Add the sugar, cardamom and yeast and mix well.
3. Cover and leave over night
4. Next day mix thouroughly
5. Instead of using the vitumbua karai, I used an appam pan which I have previously used to make ponganalu.
6. Heat the appam pan, plan a drop of oil in each pan, pour in the batter so that the pan is ¾ full.. Cook for 2-3 minutes, and flip the vitumbua, this is quite tricky, but gets easier with practice.
7. Cook the other side and repeat until all the batter is finished.

We had them for breakfast this morning. They can be served with a kuku paka. Recipe to follow. There is a good recipe at Aly's website.

Tumbua Ndizi / Gonja or Sweet Plantain Fritters

Recently I had a request for this dish from one of my anonymous readers. Tumbua Ndizi is a typical East African dish, Ndizi means bananas in Swahili.

In Uganda we had 4 kinds of bananas

Matoke: Green (raw) bananas which never ripen to yellow, the flesh is mainly carbohydrate, and although when ripe it is sweeter, it can not be eaten uncooked. When cooked the flesh become soft, it is a bit like potato.

Gonja, are sweet cooking bananas, when cooked they do not become soggy and soft like ordinary bananas. When very ripe they are black on the outside. They can be cooked in coconut; nyrial wara gonja, just fried or fried in batter (tumbua)

Ndizi was what we called the ordinary dessert banana

Menvu are small dessert bananas, about half the size of normal bananas, very sweet, these are the bananas I grew up on. They were always there, along with pawpaw (papaya). To get back to the tumbua ndizi - here is how you make them

Ingredients

4 ripe gonja / plantains
1 ½ cups self-raising flour (plain flour with 1 ½ tspn baking powder)
2 tbspn Sugar
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup coconut milk (tinned is fine)
Roughly ground cardamom
Oil for frying

Method

1. Make batter, using flour, cardamom, sugar, milk and coconut milk. Cover, and then leave an hour.

2. The batter should be thick enough to completely coat the banana.

3. If it is too thin, add more flour, if it is too thick add a little milk.

4. Peel the plantain, cut into 3 / 4 pieces, cut each piece into 2/3 horizontal slices.

5. Dip each piece of plantain in batter, making sure they are well-covered, and then fry in hot oil until golden.