Beef Groncu

This beef recipe ended up as a hit with our guests over the many fish preparations by my sis, mom, wife. Thought its best to narrate it too; especially if some poor man wants to impress his roaring wife (and vice-versa)

Stuff Required:

1. 1 kg fresh beef cut to small pieces
2. cooking oil (us Keralites prefer coconut oil) for caramelizing the onions.
3. 10-12 green chillies cut in length, then midway.
4. Two handful of curry leaves [make it four if your hand cannot hide an egg ]. We need lots of this.

For cooking the beef :

5. 1.5 table spoon vinegar
6. 1.5 table spoon red chilli powder
7. 0.5 table spoon turmeric powder
8. 1.5 table spoon coriander power
9. 0.5 table spoon pepper powder
10 Salt to taste

11 A cup of water

12. 3 onions chopped to small pieces
13. 4 onions cut in length.
14. half table spoon of whole mustard

[just realized that I appear to use the table spoon quite a bit; but then it does serve the purpose]

Start cooking :

Mix items 5 - 11 in a pressure cooker, then cook the beef for 5 - 6 whistles. Heat the cooking oil in medium size kadaai. Put in the mustard and when they pop add the onions (item 12) to it. Stir in low flame until the onions turn medium brown (should take 20-25 minutes).

Add the cooked beef from the cooker, straight into this. Put on medium flame and cook for another 20-30 mins. Towards the end of this routine, we want to crush the beef using a heavy spatula until the beef ends up as strands.

Turn to low flame, add in the curry leaves, green chillies and the onions (items 3,4,13). Mix the entire stuff for around a minute (and not too long). The core idea here is that we don't want the chillies, onions, curry leaves to over-cook.

Turn off the flame, close the kadai and leave it for 5-8 minutes. We need to wait for the flavor of curry leaves and chillies to spread through the beef.

Serve with rice and enjoy the comments :)

Now for the name - GReen chillies ONions CUrry leaves - Groncu.

A human trap that works - learn it from the authorities

May 11th 2009:

Haven't seen or for that matter heard of a human trap as good as this one. The trap in concern - the 6ft deep pits dug into the median running through old madras road, Bangalore. The entire 5-6 km stretch of the median has been dug with a series of 'man holes' presumably for the electric/light poles which should soon stand tall (see pics below). The problem here being that some of these pits are precision aligned with the zebra crossing, waiting for a accident to happen for that poor pedestrian.


I was such an unfortunate pedestrian. While crossing this road in the middle of the night, running for his life from the approaching trucks and buses, thought for a moment that it was safe at the median. Alas NO! The authorities (BDA/NHAI/BBMP ?) had different plans for me. What laid straight ahead of the zebra crossing at the median was a perfect pit build to order - the entire width of the median was dug deep. I went straight in, heads et al :( . Took a moment to realize that I was 6ft deep in a hole, in the pitch of the night. Thankfully my climbing skills from teenage helped me jump back onto the road when there was no approaching vehicles. That should have been a sight for some of the car drivers - a man coming out from deep under with a laptop on his back.


Cannot imagine what would be been the situation if it was a small kid instead of me - would have remained there until another pedestrian came (fell?) through?


That medicine shop fellow at Big-Bazaar had some pity on my plight and offered water to clean up & some anti-septic for my minor bruises.

Strangely all those pits lay there as it is for further two more weeks without any warning signs before the light poles finally made its way into them. Sub kuch chaltha hai (everything goes OK) here in India.


Concerned authorities , please put up some signs at these pits the next time.



Copied to
1.) Commissioner BDA (com@bdabangalore.org)
2.) Chairman BDA (chmn@bdabangalore.org)
3.) PRO BDA (pro@bdabangalore.org)


Content also available at http://crosswaves.blogspot.com/2009/05/human-trap-that-works-learn-it-from.html