Coconut Egg Curry - South Indian Style [Anda Curry]

Who doesn't enjoy a delicious lightly spiced flavorful coconut based egg curry? Egg is one quintessential breakfast food loaded with proteins- liked and consumed by all - good thing being a lot of vegetarians also consume it and are known as Eggetarians 😆  Eggs are the most nutritious food on the planet! There is no doubt about it! On top of everything else, they are also cheap, easy to prepare, go with almost any food and taste awesome.

Egg Curry from coastal southern regions of India is made using garam masala and coconut as its main ingredients. I have tried hard to get that exact taste like my mom's, but its tough 😊  I am close to it and have made my peace with it. ✊

I feel restless when I dont have eggs in my refrigerator. I have to stock it up as soon as I see around dozen left. Boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, puffs, egg burji, omelettes, french toast, cakes etc- thats how Eggs are consumed in a healthy and regular basis in my household. It comes to my rescue when I am short on meat at home or for that matter even veggies. There used to be this famous jingle in India- Sunday ho Ya Monday Roz Kaho Ande 🥚 ... a good one indeed :)

 Back home Eggs are treated like a second class citizen 😂. No kidding, when I am chatting with my Mom and if I ask her- "what did you cook for dinner?" There is a sigh in her tone when she says.. just made some egg curry- followed by WHY that decision was made ---like didn't have time to get chicken OR no good variety of fresh fish was available in the market OR due to bad weather she was not able to go get fresh veggies etc etc. So you see what I am saying- justification on why egg curry was made ... 😛

Where as for me here - Egg curry day is like a celebration :) My son is thrilled as he is an ardent and loyal fan of eggs. My husband is neutral - he doesn't enjoy coconut curries so much ...yeh go figure 🙄 ! and Me- full focus on getting the curry taste right just like my Mom's... so its a fun affair.

As a kid, my sister and Mom loved full boiled eggs in the curry whereas me and my Dad loved fresh broken eggs in the curry. Till this date that has not changed. Separate 2 broken eggs always go in my funky-licious Egg Curry/Anda Curry! 

I do not know anyone around me that dislikes eggs. I have a cousin who couldn't eat it due to allergies and I used to feel so bad for her. While growing up my younger cousins gang loved my version of  Plain Omelette. My mom and aunts used to make us omelette loaded with onion/tomatoes/veggies which most of them did not like it then 😁  The same ones that we relish like crazy on Cruises now- 😎

Anyways, Lets get started with the recipe:

Please feel free to modify ingredient quantity as per your taste for spiciness and thickness of curry!

Ingredients:

4 boiled eggs + 2 fresh eggs

3 tbsp oil

1 big onion finely chopped

1 tomato chopped

1 tsp each ginger and garlic paste

salt as per taste

Masala Paste:

1. 5 cloves
2. 1 cardamom
3. 3-4 black pepper
4. 1/2 inch cinnamon
5. 1/4th tsp cumin seeds (jeera)
6. 1/4th tsp sesame seeds 
7. 1/4th tsp poppy seeds
8. 3 tsp coriander seeds
9. 7-8 red dry chillies [adjust as per your taste]
10. 1/2 cup grated coconut + 3 tsp dry grated coconut
11. handful of cilantro leaves
12. 1/4th tsp turmeric

Preparation:

• Roast ingredients from 1-9 in a tsp of oil for few minutes till its fragrant and put it in a blender.
• In the same pan roast coconut  till it is slight brown in color on low heat and then add it to the blender. Add turmeric , cilantro and make a paste by adding water sparingly. Keep aside.
• In a wide mouth utensil heat oil, add finely chopped onions and saute till light brown. Add ginger garlic paste and saute further till the raw smell goes away. Add tomatoes and cook till everything comes together. 
• Now pour the ground masala paste and mix everything nicely. Bring it to a boil. Let it simmer for few minutes. Adjust water and add salt.
• Add the boiled eggs in the curry. You can lightly score the eggs from top to bottom with a knife or you can even lightly roast it in oil with garam masala powder [or chili pwd and turmeric pwd] before adding to the curry, or cut in halves and slide it in the curry- choice is yours! 
• Once the curry starts to simmer again - slowly break the remaining 2 fresh eggs and slide it in the curry. Leave it alone for 5-8 mins on low-med flame till the eggs are done. You can give it a light handed stir in between.
• Enjoy it with rotis or just plain rice or jeera rice. It super yum!

njoY! happY cookinG!!

Your feedback is important to me. If you have tried any recipes from Pinch of Swad, feel free to share with us.

You may also like Egg Biryani, Halloween Pizza Mummies, Chicken biryani

Health Benefits:

Incredibly nutritious food! In fact, eggs are pretty much the perfect food. They contain a little bit of almost every nutrient you need. Whole eggs are among the most nutritious foods on the planet, containing a little bit of almost every nutrient you need. Omega-3 enriched and/or pastured eggs are even healthier. Eggs are high in cholesterol, but eating eggs does not adversely affect cholesterol in the blood for the majority of people. Eating eggs consistently leads to elevated levels of HDL (the "good") cholesterol, which is linked to a lower risk of many diseases. Eggs are among the best dietary sources of choline, a nutrient that is incredibly important but most people aren’t getting enough of.

Source: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-proven-health-benefits-of-eggs#section11

Mande (Mandige / Chowde)- Sweet Dish

Mande or Mando is a very simple and an authentic Konkani sweet dish usually prepared during the festival of Diwali, Chaturthi and Weddings! It is a deep-fried flat poori (bigger in size) which is folded like a handkerchief and a generous dose of confectionary sugar mixed with sesame seed is sprinkled on the top. It is a melt in the mouth treat! It is sweet, rich and crunchy! Has a pure look to it as it is white in color and looks so divine!

I call it my handkerchief dessert :) because of the way it is folded and stored. Various regions in Karnataka and Maharashtra know this sweet by various name like Mande, Mandige, Chowde etc.

Try it this Diwali and enjoy it with your family!

Here is the Mande recipe or Chowde recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour (Maida)
• 2 tsp ghee (clarified butter)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp cardamom crushed
• 2 tsp pistachios crushed
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds roasted
• 1 tbsp dry grated coconut roasted (optional)
• pinch salt
• water to knead the dough
• oil to deep fry

Preparation:

• Make a dough by taking maida, add warm ghee, salt and mix everything by rubbing with your hands. Add water 1 tbsp at a time and knead a hard dough. Keep aside for 15 minutes covered.
• Make a mixture of confectionary sugar, cardamom, pistachios and coconut. 
• By taking a small portion of dough, make balls and roll out a disc of 5-6 inch diameter using a rolling pin. It should be thin and not thick disc. 
• Heat oil in a frying pan, work on a med-high flame, else the mande will soak oil while frying. Fry it just like you would fry a papad. The color should remain white. Small bubbles appear on the surface indicating they are cooked. If kept for a longer time, they become stiff and cannot be folded.
• Take it out on a paper towel and immediately sprinkle sugar mixture on the mande, by making use of spoon fold it once and sprinkle more sugar on it. Now make one another last fold and sprinkle sugar mixture again. Leave it to cool down. You can store it in an airtight container for good 1 week. 

njoY!! happY cookinG!!

Notes:* While frying the Mande poori see to it that it doesn't fluff like poori, in order to get a flat poori try making marks on the rolled disc with a fork and then slide in the oil. Fry on med-high flame. Do not fry too much that you get brown color.

Fried Modak

Modak is considered as a favorite food(nevaidya) of Lord Ganesha and all his bhakts(devotees) love to prepare it on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi or any other festival/days related to HIM, like sankashti. It is a stuffed deep fried ball with a modak shape (shaped like Kisses Hershey's: my mom says modak chocolates even to this day :P). It is stuffed with coconut and jaggery mixture!

Mostly every house in Maharashtra will have this as an offering in front of the Ganesha Idol. It is given to all the guests who attend the aarti (pooja) as a prasad (offerings).

Now coming to an interesting story, who knew one day I would start blogging about food! My first post was way back in 2003(maybe?) and it was none other than MODAK recipe on bawarchi.com, if anyone remembers that site. I had searched for the recipe of modak in vain and had not found one (ya can you believe that? I remember getting steamed modak recipes but not fried one's) I finally got it from my mom [Well, my Mom has no concept of measurements, she knows only eyeballing... was tough for me to understand her eyeball measurements :)] I gotta mention, if not for this blog, I would be falling in the same category of eye-balling lol. I somehow managed and the modaks turned out great! I had then sent my recipe to www.bawarchi.com thinking that it would help others who were in the same boat as me! Till recently the recipe was available on the internet, but not anymore :( Maybe they purged the data or something.

So in a way, this is a very special recipe!

One other thing, an interesting game is played while making modaks during the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. My aunt usually did this ritual. One has to make modaks in odd numbers like 5, 11, 21, 51 etc (any offering to Ganesha must be in odd numbers). While stuffing the modaks, add extra salt or extra sweetness in one of the modaks and when you serve, keep all the fried modaks together. Whoever gets that odd modak is considered lucky and will have a fantastic year ahead :) Some silly fun to look forward to. But now when I think of it, maybe it was a trick to make everyone eat the modaks haha (smart MOMs :))

Bappa Morya: Let us take a look at the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup All purpose flour ( or 1/2 cup wheat flour, 1/2 cup all purpose flour(maida))
• 1 tsp semolina (rava) - optional
• water to knead 
• salt as per taste
• 1 tbsp oil

For filling

• 1/2 cup grated fresh coconut (can use dry coconut too)
• 1/2 cup powdered jaggery
• 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
• 1 tsp sesame seeds (roasted)

For frying:

• 1 cup oil or ghee

Preparation:

• Add 1 tbsp of warm oil to all purpose flour. Mix it very well with your fingers in the maida. 
• Add salt and water little by little to make it a very stiff dough.
• Keep the dough aside for about 10-15 minutes, covered.
• Heat jaggery and coconut together till jaggery melts and forms a uniform mixture with coconut. Add the roasted sesame seeds in the mixture. It smells great.
• Remove from heat and add cardamom powder. Mix everything together.
• Now make the modaks, take small balls of the dough, roll it into small puris (3-4 inch diameter disc)
• Place 1 tbsp of stuffing on the disk(puri) and bring the edges together towards the centre making folds. Seal it at the centre giving a shape of modak.
• Heat oil and deep fry the modaks on medium heat till all sides are brown. Take it out with a slotted spoon and place on paper towel to drain out the excess oil. Let it cool completely before you store it in air tight container.

njoY!! happY cookinG & fryinG!!

Notes:*- You can use whole wheat flour too, to make modaks, but when you use all purpose flour you get flaky, crunchy and perfect modaks.

Happy 70th Independence Day to India!

I cannot describe India in just 5 lines here on my blog! Today she celebrates 70th Independence Day and has come a long way! 31 States, 1618 Languages, 6400 Castes, 6 Religions, 6 Ethnic Groups, 29 Major festivals and one Country! 

India sits on layers upon layers of history, with each layer contributing to the present in some strange way, adding to our rich culture and spirit of tolerance. This is a land where many of the great religions of the world were born. It is the land where foreign influences of the past, Persian, Greek, Chinese, etc were welcomed and assimilated. In theory, India is “secular,” but in many ways, she is a Hindu land, with her 30 crores deities:) But it is the land where, for the better part Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, and Jains can live in absolute freedom. All religions are free by law to preach and propagate their beliefs. 

It is a land of every possible form of contrast—a clash of colour and a cacophony of sound. She is wealthy. She is poor. She is highly educated. She is illiterate. She is cultured. She is wretched. She is finicky about cleanliness and rules. She is utterly filthy. India is extremely corrupt and bogged down by bureaucracy, chaotic and crowded. Cricket is a religion and Bollywood stars are worshipped.

The way this great giant of a country rouses herself every morning and functions amidst all this chaos belies explanation. When so much of money is siphoned off due to corruption, from government projects, why do the bridges stay strong and why do the buildings not collapse? Why, with the chaotic roads, the accident rate is not higher than in other countries. I think God Himself must love India very much.

Salute to her and may she be blessed with greenery, no-smoke, peace inside out!!

Recipe:

Shown in this post are the colors of Indian Flag: 3 bottles of glasses with orange roundels, lime roundels and mint, and ginger with blueberries! Washes down the acidity and helps you keep your body cool in hot summer days aiding in digestion and losing weight!

njoY!! happY independencE!! :)

excerpts from courage to tremble.