Pappad Chammanthi is a traditional styled innovative side dish prepared from fried pappad, coconut and other spicy ingredients. The tasty dish goes well with rice for noon day meals. When you are out of stock and you want to relish something special, then this is your dish. You require just a few minutes for the dish. For spiciness, either you can use chilly powder or the full dried chilly. For moderate spiciness you can prefer Kashmiri Chillies. The red chilies add some heat and smoky flavor to the chutney. This Kerala style Pappad Chammanthi also makes a good accompaniment with South Indian tiffin snacks like idli, dosa, chapathi etc. Chammanthi is very common in Kerala households and this is a tasty traditional variant that requires minimum ingredients. The juices and flavors from the fresh coconut comes out beautifully when ground in the traditional way. Very little water is added to grind this chutney, just enough to bring all the ingredients together. This is a thick coconut chutney and no tempering is added to it. You can discover a well detailed recipe here.
Cut pappadam into small pieces, heat oil in a Cheenachatti and fry the pappadam pieces properly in the hot oil. Keep the fried pieces separate. Pappadam can also be fried without cutting and at the time of grinding the chammanthi, they can be crushed and ground with other ingredients).
Heat some oil in the Cheenachatti/Frying pan and add chopped ginger, shallots/onion, curry leaves, tamarind, red chilli (for getting good colour for the chutney, we can prefer dried Kashmiri Chilli) and stir the mix well for about 5 – 10 minutes in low flame.
After 5 – 10 minutes, add the grated coconut and required quantity of salt into this mix and stir it further. When colour of the mix turns into golden/brown, put off the stove and keep the mix aside for cooling. Then grind this mix along with the fried Pappadam pieces and 2 – 3 tsp of Water.
When the mix/ingredients are ground properly, take it out from the mixer/grinding stone, add 1 – 2 tsp of coconut oil and stir it well.
The delicious chutney can be garnished with Curry leaves and fried Pappadam powder.
written by
SobhaKesavan
Myself, Sobha Kesavan, a retired Accountant in a MNC based in Delhi, where I was staying for 26 years. Afterwards, moved to Bangalore and stayed there for about 4 years and then shifted to my native place ( in Thrissur district), Kerala, along with my husband. My two sons and both daughters-in-law are working out of Kerala as Software Engineers.
I have immense passion for gardening and have been doing it since my stay in Delhi and most of
the ingredients (vegetables) used in my recipes are home grown. I am interested in cooking mostly North Indian and South Indian cuisines. The recipes shared in pachakam.com from my end would definitely tickle your taste buds.
I will be always looking forward for your valuable feedbacks or suggestions as there is always room for improvement.
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