This recipe won the runner-up prize in the IndiBlogger MasterChef India 2 contest ! 🙂
The competition was about unique preparations and was judged by the MasterChef judges Vikas, Ajay and Kunal!
Happy! Very happy 😀
(Edited – 21-02-2012)
Pasta is something which I like a lot. I like it in the salads, soups, sauces … and when I was thinking about making some experiments last week, the first image that flashed in my mind was a bowl of pasta in white sauce.
I have a weakness for the white pasta sauce, but this time there were no butter, cheese, garlic or flour. What I used instead were –
Ingredients
Coconut Milk
Sattu
Coconut Milk – 3 cups
Sattu – 3 teaspoon
Black Mustard Seeds – 1 teaspoon
Dry Chili – 2
Curry Leaves – 10 – 15
Chopped Green Capsicum – 1
Chopped Chicken – 1 cup
Boiled Pasta (Macaroni) – 1 cup
Chopped Chicken
Dry Chili, Black mustard seeds, Curry Leaves
Soybean Oil (Use Coconut Oil if you are adventurous 🙂 )- 2 tablespoon / 6 teaspoon
Salt to taste
Yes. A full blown South Indian Pasta! But what do we call it? I searched the internet for sometime and came to know that in Malayalam Kera means Coconut or Coconut tree and Paalu means milk (disclaimer : I do not know any of the Carnatic languages and hence if these words mean something else then please let me know. I would be happy to correct the name under such circumstances). And like our Payesh (Bengali rice pudding) becomes Payasam in Tamil, Pasta became Pastam. So the final name is now Kera Paalu Pastam 🙂
After assuring our fusion will have an experimental name let us go through the procedure –
1. Boil the chopped chicken and keep aside. Keep the stock.
2. Boil the pasta with a pinch of salt and keep aside.
Chopped Green Capsicum
3. Blend the sattu in coconut milk so that there are no lumps and keep aside.
4. Put the oil in a vessel and heat it.
5. Add the black mustard seeds, dry chili, curry leaves (about 8 – 10) together and the coconut milk once the seeds start to splutter.
5. Add salt to taste.
6. Add the chopped chicken. Keep stirring until the gravy starts to dry out.
7. Add the pasta and keep stirring. Add a little chicken stock if the gravy dries out too much.
8. Garnish with rest of the curry leaves and chopped capsicum. Serve hot.
Kera Paalu Pastam
Believe me, it was as tasty as it looks and I liked the new pasta sauce completely 😛
What is sattu? And with no chicken would it taste good?
Hi Kusum,
Sattu or Chhatua are ground powders of pulses and cereals like horse gram (chana dal), green gram, jowar, wheat, oat, barley, etc. (From Wikipedia). It’s an Indian food consumed mainly in Bihar and Jharkhand, though not limited to that areas only.
You can try it without chicken. Also if you are a vegetarian, you can substitute chicken with small chunks of soybean 🙂
Congrats
[…] is my second experiment of cooking pasta with an Indian sauce. The last experiment was quite successful and this time too I am going with a white sauce and […]
[…] This is my fourth recipe of Indian pasta this weekend and fifth for this blog. The pasta were Kera Paalu Pastam (Coconut Milk Pasta), Stuffed Penne Pasta With Yogurt Chicken Sauce, Balle Balle Spaghetti and Pasta Malai Curry With […]
Oh man this looks awesome I love foodds with coconut milk – I am so going to have to try this – YUM! thanks for sharing – 🙂
What a very interesting recipe! I’m not familiar with Sattu and I haven’t used Mustard seeds in cooking yet, but I’m sure I can find a place around there that sells them. Thanks for sharing!
Congratulations on winning the runner up prize! Like you, I love pasta and have a weakness for white sauce too. 🙂 This looks like a really yummy one. Don’t know where I can find sattu here though.
I like that they use macaroni pasta and the coconut milk would be a good flavoring. This looks tasty.
I love pasta, especially carbonara, i sent this post to my wife and told her to try making it.