Kudam Puli/Gambooge (Garcinia Cambogia)

This is Kudam Puli belonging to the Mangosteen family. It is known as Garcinia Cambogia or Gambooge. 

 It is often mistaken for kokum. Kokum (Garcinia Indica) also belongs to the same family but it is dark red to purple in colour.  Kokum is used mostly in Maharashtrian and Konkan cooking while  Gambooge is used in Kerala cooking.This variety is green which turns yellow when it ripens. This is a very important ingredient in Ayurvedic medicines for weight loss. This also aids in digestion.

 I can vouch for its weight loss properties. I used to cook fish curry with this daily and used to roll the gamboge inside my chapati and have it daily. Yes, it did help me reduce my weight. 

During summer, hundreds of fruits are produced from a single tree. This is plucked when ripe and halved. The outer cover of the fruit is sundried for a day or two.

 

These are then smoked till dark. See the picture below.

Once it is smoked to perfection, it is rubbed with oil and then stored away for later use. It stays fresh for a very very long time.

 It is used as a  sour spice, as a substitute for tamarind for making fish curry and sometimes while making bitter gourd and colocasia too.   

The picture below is the dried rind. This has to be washed properly before using it for cooking. Thats because it is sundried and smoked- ofcourse, possibilities of dust and even stones in between the rinds are
there. So again, wash properly!!!

The washed gamboge is then soaked in warm water for a few minutes and then added to the curry along with the water.

The picture below is travancore style fish curry made with Kudam Puli or Gambooge (see the black rind in the curry?)

For my little ones... Vegetable garden back home...:)

These are pictures I took back in my hometown. To be precise, at my parents backyard. Recently I was going through the holiday pictures and suddenly the thought occurred to blog about it mainly for my kids. When they can read this, it will be fun and of course knowledge regarding the growing process of these plants that are grown in their grandparents kitchen garden. I've included what I know and what I've read about these plants from here and there which includes the  Wikipedia  as well. :)

So my dear little ones, this is for u....

This is a banana tree. Well, I don't know if you can call it a tree, coz  its not sturdy like trees. Its more like a massive stem on which a bunch of banana grows. After that, the stem dies and usually (more often than not) offshoots develop from where the old stem is cut off. 

This is the banana heart or the inflorescence. Each Banana tree or the stem produces this infloresence. It has many petals(bracts) and flowers in between each bract. The inflorescence(both the petal ad the flower) is used to make thoran.

The banana fruits develop from these hearts in a large hanging cluster made up of tiers. Each cluster can have 3- 20 tiers.

The ripe bananas can be used to make delicious banana jam

and that is the most tastiest jam on planet earth (made using my grandmom's(your great grandmom) recipe)

This is a variety of banana known as plantain. This is a staple where I (we) come from. we make chips out of the raw plantain like in the pic below.Get the recipe here

 we also make mezhukkupiratty  like this

 or like this   :)

Then we steam the over ripe ones for breakfast.
and we batter fry ripe ones as a tea time snack 

like this

and call it Ethakka Appam

Then, the skin of the raw plantain is used

to make this delicious Tholi Thoran  

And do you know that we dont even spare the banana leaves. Well, u know what all we do with it. We use it in place of aluminium foil. We use it to pack lunch or to serve lunch (instead of plastic plates). We also use it to wrap while baking (pollickuka) like in the pic below

and it is tied with vazha naaru or the banana stem

and when done, it looks like this- Karimeen Pollichathu

or we even use as a wrap

 to steam food like this

and the end result is this. This is Ela Ada

And this is the jackfruit. :) Ripe and fallen off the tree.

  It is called Chakka in malayalam and there are mainly two varieties, Varikka and Koozha. Varikka Chakka is the better variety of the two. :)

This is varikka chakka

and this is Chakka Halwa made out of the ripe jackfruit.

and here is delicious Jackfruit Chips made out of raw jackfruit.
and we make Kumbilappam

 or steamed Jackfruit cakes like this

Then here are the cucumbers or vellarikka

The plant is a creeping vine which bears edible fruit when ripe.

and what do we make with it? Well, we use it in sambar

or vellarikka moru  curry.

And this is raw papaya. It is a tree like plant with a single stem. The ripe papayas are very tasty and it is believed that it aids in weigh reduction. Ripe papaya paste is also used a face mask as it is believed it has anti ageing properties. There is an old wives tale that if pregnant women eat papaya, then they will have a miscarriage. Dunno how far it is true but Ive read somewhere sometime ago that there is a scientific explanation to it. So better safe than sorry!!!

and we make Thoran  with the raw papayas

and here is Achanga Payar or the string beans. My favourite variety of beans.

and delicious thoran can be made out of this

and here is how the Thoran looks

and this is Spinach from our backyard

and the best cheera thoran on earth, made with Mysore cheera or the Velicheera. Ofcourse, it has a high nutritional value, rich in antioxidants has most of the vitamins and also very rich in Iron.

Now to Brinjal. This is my favourite green variety.

which if stir fried, looks like this and tastes awesome.

and this is pavakka from our backyard

 what else, but thoran again!!!! :)

This is pineapple from Merry aunty's and Joy chayan's (Very good friends of Appacha Ammachy) garden

4 Pineapples from a single pineapple. That was the first time I ever saw something like that!!!

and we make  jam with it like this...

And do you know we have our own cashewnut tree?  The nut is attached to the lower portion of the Cashew apple. The Cashew apple is either yellow, orange or reddish yellow in colour. When the fruit is raw, you can take the nut and eat just like that... its soft and chewy and ofcourse delicious. But when the fruit ripens, the outer kernel of the Cashewnut becomes hard, like the picture below.

 At this stage, dont dare to open it and eat it... yes, the liquid in this shell is DANGEROUS!!!! it will cause burns.
 You have to sun dry it for some days and then heat these nuts over an open fire (the dangerous liquid is drained, that way)
This is how it will look at this stage....

 When it cools, you can shell it.... :)

That was a long post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed keying in just for u both, my lovely lovely kids.... :)