Tapioca/ Kappa puzhukku or Yuca, a Kerala recipe

This is another staple I have seen in my mom's kitchen in my childhood days. My mother, I remember cooked tapioca in many different ways and we had it with either fish curry or chicken curry, along with rice of course, and sometimes even with coconut chutney that was freshly ground and rolled out from the grinding stone.

Ingredients needed:

1:  Yuca/ Tapioca/ Kappa                        :  2- 3 pieces

2:  Coconut shredded: 4 tbsp

3: Dry red chilly: 3-4 no.s

4: Curry leaves: 1-2 sprigs

5: Mustard seeds: 1 Tsp

6: Urad dhaal: 1 Tsp

7: Turmeric Powder: 2 tbsp

8: Oil, coconut preferred
   but any edible oil will do: 2 tbsp

9: Salt  : to taste

Method:

Yuca has to be really boiled twice to get the natural toxin that this root contains totally out of it.

So, after cleaning the yuca off its outer coverings (the brown and the thick white or pick layer beneath it), cut the Yuca/ tapioca into cube-shaped pieces and thoroughly wash them and put aside.

Take a fairly large pan with a deep bottom and fill it with water and start boiling it adding some salt and turmeric powder to it. Into this water put all the yuca pieces and let it boil. Now take the pan from the stove and drain the water completely from the yuca and again fill it with fresh water and boil again adding some salt and turmeric. By the time this water boils, the Yuca should be cooked into soft pieces. Drain the water completely and put aside.

To garnish, take another pan and heat it up and then add the oil into it. When the oil is heated up, add the mustard seeds and let it splutter. Then add the urad dhaal, the red chillies as pieces, the curry leaves and then the coconut. Stir all of these for a while and add some salt before mixing in the cooked Yuca. Mix it all very well together and check for salt before serving with fish curry or chicken curry.

                                                Red Hot Fish curry