Wash meat, drain and cut into 4-cm long, 1-cm wide strips.
Place in a pressure cooker with scant ½ cup water, and cook under pressure for 30 minutes.
Open cooker and add spice powders, salt, curry leaves, ginger, garlic, green chillies and onions.
Bring to boil, lower heat and add coconut milk. Simmer over low heat for 2 minutes and remove from heat.
Heat oil for tempering in a small and sprinkle in mustard seeds. When they start sputtering, add shallots and curry leaves, and fry till shallots turn brown.
Pour contents of pan into curry, mix well and serve with rice , appam , puttu or idiappam.
Variation: The same recipe can be used to make hard boiled egg or chicken mapas, in which case there is no need for pressure-cooking. Duck’s eggs are preferred to chicken eggs, since after being hard-boiled, they weather the cooking in the gravy well.
