Bread Pakoras

Its been a very hot summer this year and almost everyday I have been trying to make something chilly like smoothies & lemonade as thirst quenchers. With extreme heat, we have been avoiding outdoors mostly this summer. I try making a few new snacks whenever I have some time in the afternoon and I now look forward to making them everyday since they don't require a lot of thought and could be pretty satisfying for a mini meal. I try to keep it healthy as much as possible like Yogurt parfait, Fruit medley, Fruit muffins etc.

Today, for a change I tried a hot and savory snack - Bread Pakoras. This is a great snack when you have those few extra slices of bread that you don't want to waste. And a  great tea-time snack too!

For the Batter

• Gram Flour (Besan) - 1 cup
• Rice flour - 2 tbsp
• Chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
• Baking soda - a pinch
• Salt - as required

 For the Stuffing

• Bread Slices - 6 (White or Wheat, medium size)
• Potatoes - 1 large
• Chopped vegetables - 1/2 cup (Peas, Carrots, French beans - mixed)
• Ginger - 1 tsp (finely chopped)
• G.Chillies - 2 (finely chopped)
• Cumin seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Corriander leaves - a hand full (finely chopped)
• Salt - as required
• Green chutney (Optional) - 1 tbsp (store bought is fine)
• Oil to deep fry

Procedure

• Boil the potatoes, peel and mash them. Set aside.
• Boil all other vegetables together, drain and save the water, mash the vegetables slightly with a laddle.
• Add the mashed potatoes to the vegetables and mix well.
• Now add salt, ginger, g.chillies, cumin seeds and corriander leaves and mix well to make a thick stuffing.
• Make 6 medium sized balls out of this mixture and arrange it on a plate.
• Heat oil for deep frying.
• Prepare the batter by mixing all ingredients given under batter along with some water. The batter needs to be a little watery and not thick.
• Transfer the cooked water from the vegetables in a wide bowl.
• Take a bread, cut off the crusts and quickly dip the slice in the vegetable water. The slice should be fully wet, but not over soaked.
• Place the wet slice flat on your palm, use the other palm and squeeze out the excess water.
• Spread the green chutney on the bread and then place a vegetable ball on the slice. Cover it with the slice and seal the top. To make it easy, I usually use a round shaped cookie cutter and cut the wet slice to a round slice - this is easy to cover and seal the stuffing. If not, you can still make it with square slices and remove the excess bread left at the top while sealing.
• Dip it in the batter and deep fry it in oil under medium heat until golden brown.
• Repeat it with all other slices and drain the excess oil in a paper towel.

Serve hot with sweet chutney and hot tea!

Chicken Sliders - A Party Favorite..

I very much enjoy the free samples given away at the food stores. Those little treats taste so good that sometimes I get too tempted and buy them. But when I make the same dish at home it somehow it doesn't taste the same to me. Especially, burgers. I have tasted mini pieces of veggie and chicken burger patties in the stores and used to love the flavor and juicy texture. I buy them right away but when I try the same product at home, there is something missing. Probably its just my speculation, but there's some magic to the tiny bites given at the store. After several tries, I just gave up buying the patties and just enjoy the samples for a moment and leave the place.

I've never made burgers from scratch at home either as I'm a little intimidated in the process of making the burger patties. But when my brother-in-law made this awesome burger for New year 2011, I realized its not that intimidating and actually its quite fun to make burgers. He really made it with lot of passion giving attention to even minor ingredients and it was all worth it. It came out awesome and was a big hit in our party. The specialty is the unique stuffing insie the patties. It turned out to be very flavorful with a soft and juicy texture. Thanks to him for this delicious recipe! He mentioned that this recipe is a combination of two recipes, the “Inside Out Burger” and the “Jalapeno sliders” from Food Network's website and modified to give an Indian twist.

Ingredients

• 6 slices turkey bacon, cut into bite size pieces (you can substitue with green bell peppers)
• 8 ounces mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
• 2 pounds ground chicken or lamb
• 1 large Shallot, chopped fine
• 1.5 teaspoon cracked black pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
• 4 ounces Monterey pepper jack, cubed
• 12 mini burger buns
• 2 tablespoons olive
• 2 jalapenos sliced, for serving
• 1 cup creme fraiche or mayonaise
• 8-10 curry leaves, chopped fine

Procedure

• Place the bacon in a large saute pan and cook until crispy, about 5 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and reserve 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat in the pan.
• Add the mushrooms and cook until caramelized, about 5 minutes. Set the mushrooms aside to cool in a bowl.
• In a large bowl, combine the ground chicken, curry leaves, shallot, black pepper, salt, and Worcestershire. Separate the mixture into 10-12 equal portions. Divide each portion into 2 separate patties.
• Combine the cheese into the cooled mushrooms and bacon mixture. Take 1 patty and top with a few ounces of the filling.
• Place another patty on top and pinch around the edges to make sure that the filling is totally covered. Make the rest of the patties the same way.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Over medium-high heat, heat a large skillet with oil.
• Once hot, add the burgers and cook for 2 minutes per side. Place the pan into the oven and cook for 4 to 6 more minutes for medium burgers. Alternately, you could cook the burgers on the skillet itself for 7mins each side or till they are cooked.
• Lightly spread creme fraiche on both sides of buns. Place burgers in middle and pick it with a jalapeno.

You can enjoy these mini burgers as appetizers in any party.

Onion Pakoras - Onions at its best!

I would say street cooks are magicians. With just a few basic cooking essentials like a griddle and a deep-fryer they come-up with delicious meals or snacks! Its interesting to me when I watch them assemble their mobile kitchens, and within a few mins they are all set for making some of the best street foods. Street foods give identity to any place. My home town Madurai is also famous for street foods as I had mentioned in this post.

No one wants to get sick, but avoiding street food means denying yourself an essential part of the food experience :) Onions Pakoras are one of those street-side snacks that I enjoy anytime. While I was working in India, there used to be a few road side tea-stalls closer to my office. Many evenings we used to take a walk to those stalls to hang out with friends and enjoy these hot & crispy onion pakoras with a glass of tea. Sometimes I take masala vadas, but mostly would stick on to onion pakoras. They are served in banana-leaf over a plate with coconut chutney on the side. Hmm, yummy! Especially on a rainy day! Those are some of the nice-to-remember days, athough now I can't believe that I never fell sick eating those street side foods that often!

With that said, ironically, I rarely try making onion pakoras (though I make onion bhajjis often) at home until recently, when I thought I will give this a try. I searched for the recipe through various sources and finally came up with this recipe from mixing different steps from different recipes for onion pakoras. It was perfect and came out very close to those road-side pakodas. So easy and simple!

Ingredients:

• Sliced red onions - 2 cups
• Grated ginger - 1 tbsp
• Chilli powder - 1.5 tsp
• Soaked cashews (soak for 5 mins) - 2 tbsp
• Chopped curry leaves - 1 tbsp
• Finely chopped cilantro - 2 tbsp
• Lemon juice - 1 tsp (optional)
• Gram flour/Besan - 1 cup
• Rice flour - 1/2 cup
• Baking soda - 1 tsp
• Oil - 1 tbsp
• Oil - to deep fry

Procedure:

• Mix the sliced onions, ginger, cashews, lemon juice, a little bit of salt, chopped curry leaves and corriander leaves in a bowl. Set aside.
• In another bowl, mix the gram flour, rice flour, chilli powder, baking powder, the remaining salt and 1 tbsp oil.
• This recipe hardly requires any water to mix, as the onions release a lot of moisture when mixed with salt in the first step, and also because we are adding some oil in the second step.
• Now add the onion mixture to the flour mixture and sprinkle little bit of water to make the mixture to a binding consistency. The consistency should be in such a way that the mixture can bind and stay together if we make balls. This is different than bhajji consistency.
• Take a portion of the mixture and drop it bit by bit in the oil - don't have to make them in round shape.
• Drain them and place them in a paper napkin.

Serve hot with green chutney or sweet chutney!

Buffalo Chicken Cheese Balls with Blue Cheese Dip!

Knock, Knock.. Is anyone out there?? I'm slowly trying to enter into my blogging world again after a long break! Its like getting into your own house after 2 months. Getting familiarized with whats new around me, what have changed during my absence etc. So, what did I miss these last 2 months? Looks like a quite a few of my blogger friends have also taken a summer break! Hope they are having a great time! Other than that, I think I missed quite a few interesting events hosted by some great cooks, and ofcourse also saw some great posts, lovely recipes with those glorious pictures... hmm, I sure did miss my blogging, and I'm glad to be back!

Hope everyone is having a great summer! Trying to get back to routine after my parents departure, but its so hard for me to come back to blogging after a long break! So many things to talk, so many recipes to post, but hard to jump on to my routine after a break. Trying to catch up with all of your yummy posts as well. It may be slow, but I'll catch up for sure.

I must say that this break has been a much needed break! With family around, its natural to switch to a different routine. Definitely busy, but not as crazy as my regular routine. Didn't have to rush my daughter to school, which is a big relief. Didn't need to rush back from work either to pick her up. I was able to catch up with my long pending movies :-), spent some time with mom shopping around, enjoyed eating a lot of my favorite dishes from mom's cooking, had some great trips to some nearby places and attractions, and yeah, had fun Camping too! Before I could realize, summer is almost gone now. I have one more vacation planned for next week for this summer, which is making me feel better. Just not yet ready to get back to the Fall routine.

When mom was around, kitchen time was shared with her mostly. She made a lot of my favorite dishes and I could smell some of my childhood familiar aromas in my kitchen after a long time. Need to work hard for the next few weeks to get rid of those extra pounds that I absorbed from mom's cooking :) I also learnt quite a few new recipes from her as well, will be posting them one by one soon.

Alright, I think I'm back to the grind. Here is yet another exciting recipe, Buffalo Chicken Cheese Balls! I got this yummy picture from my sister and brother-in-law. They tried it a few weeks back after they watched it in a cooking show and wanted me to give it a shot as they just loved it. I had asked for the photo and recipe from my Brother-in-law, as I thought of posting this great dish here when I actually didn't have time to make my own dish for sharing. And here it is, after a month! I haven't tried this yet, but the picture was so convincing that I'm going to love it no matter what and I can't wait to try these myself. The combination of chicken and cheese sounded so rich and delicious. Oh also, the blue cheese dip sounded like a classic side for the chicken balls. This could be a great appetizer for any parties, I bet. Here are the recipes, If anyone happens to try them before me, don't forget to let me know how they came out!

Buffalo Chicken Cheese Balls

Ingredients

• Rostierre chicken (1 whole)
• Buffalo sauce (1/4 cup)
• Grated sharp cheddar cheese (1 and 3/4 cup)
• Coarse black pepper ( 1tsp)
• Couple bunch of scallions
• All-purpose flour (1 cup)
• Eggs (3, beaten)
• Bread crumbs for crunchiness (2 cups)

Procedure

• Remove the skin and bones from the chicken and place it in a bowl
• Break the pieces into as small pieces as you can (close to shredding it, but with hand). This is a not a 1 minute thing.
• Add a qtr cup hot buffalo sauce, pepper and cheddar cheese Slice the scallions finely. They are for flavor and colorMix all the above.
• Make small balls from the mixture. The cheese and the hot sauce will keep them bonded.
• Grab 3 dishes, for flour, egg and bread crumbsAdd the balls to the flour to just get a coating (just roll them with your finger tip). Shake off the extra flour Dip the balls in egg and roll them on the bread crumbs to get an even coating.
• Deep fry in oil at 350 deg for about 2-3 mins. Remove them when golden brown.

Creamy blue cheese dipping sauce

Ingredients:

• Blue cheese (you could use Danish or Maytag too) - 1/2 cup
• LemonMayo - 1.5 cup
• Black pepper - 1 pinch
• Salt - 1 pinch
• Diced garlic - 1tsp
• Hot sauce - a few drops
• Worchestire sauce - a few drops

Procedure

• Break the Blue Cheese with your hands if you want.
• Add the pepper, salt, garlic to the cheese.
• Squeeze a half piece of lemon juice
• Add the mayo, and mix well.
• Now add a few dashes oh Wochester sauce, and a little hot sauce for some extra heat.
• Mix well and you are done!

Nariyal Puri (Puris with a spicy coconut filling)

Friends share a lot of things.. news, food, clothes, shoes and ofcourse recipes! Lately, I have been hearing a lot of recipes from my friends outside this blogging world. As if I don't have enough recipe collection obsession (from cookbooks, internet, blogging), I now have another new list of recipes heard from friends, which is also growing rapidly. Looks like if I have to try all these recipes, I have to cook three times a day for several months! But I'm sure thats not going to stop me from exploring new recipes in my kitchen as and when I have time.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you should be knowing by this time that I'm not a big fan of time consuming cooking. I should tell you that a lengthy cooking process and I have a very troubled relationship. While I love to eat and enjoy the end-products that come out after a lengthy cooking process, the mere idea of a prolonged cooking process, chokes me. Don't know why, but I'm too impatient to have frequent walks to the kitchen and watch it like a hawk and wait for a long time between each steps. Those super complicated steps like separating the eggs, folding the whites etc. just haunt me. I really want to be one of those people who can be really patient and innovative and try some slow-cooking recipes and with all those nice decorative & presentation skills, but it just isn't going to happen. After all these years, I know myself pretty well.

So, going back to my long list of recipes-to-try, whenver I decide to pick from my recipe list, my first choice would be to try something rather simple and quick. This is one such easy and yummy recipe that I got from my good friend. She had mentioned that she got it from Sanjeev Kapoor's recipes and that she herself tried it for the first time. If you are reading this, dear friend, thanks for sharing such a wonderful recipe and sorry for taking such a long time to try it. I should say this is one of the yummiest snacks I've ever had and I fell in love with this snack the very first time I tasted it. The coconut stuffing was too good and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Ingredients:

• Rava - 2 cups (unroasted)
• Shredded coconut - 1 cup
• Besan/Gram Flour - as required
• G.chillies - 4 small
• Corriander leaves - a hand full
• Oil - for deep frying.

Procedure:

• Soak the rava with as little water as possible. You can start with 1 cup of water and mix it, and then keep sprinkling more water until everything is wet. Leave it for 2 hrs.
• Meanwhile, prepare the stuffing. Mix the shredded coconut (fresh), besan, g.chillies, salt and corrinader leaves until it forms a thick mixture. You should be able to make balls out of it.
• After 2 hrs, knead the rava well and make it into a dough. If required, you can add some chapathi flour and make it to a puri dough consistency.
• Make small balls with the dough, roll them to small circles, add the stuffing mixture, close the circle and make a ball of it one more time. Roll them into small puris and deep fry in oil.
• Before serving, sprinkle some chat masala and a pinch of chilli powder on the top. Serve with green chutney or sweet chutney.

Enjoy!

Italian cheese bread

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Right after I posted my previous entry, I came down with a nasty cold and cough. Perhaps it was the sudden drop in temperature in our area and obviously a flu season too. Everyone in our family took turns to share their cold with each other. I was glued to the tissues for quite a few days and then passed it on to my daughter as well. Its been an exhausting two weeks. Apologies for not visiting all of your blogs, I'm sure I missed some great recipes. Hoping to catchup slowly in the next few days.

With no energy left, the last thing I wanted to do was cooking, so nothing to post as well. We've been pretty much managing with some simple home-made food and by doing take-outs. Finally, since last weekend I am slowly into my normal routine. This is a quick snack that I made last weekend. Its my daughter's favorite and she loves the cheese in it. I learnt this recipe from an Italian cookbook and I've heard a lot of good comments about this dish whenever I make it for a potluck party as an appetizer. It uses authentic and simple italian ingredients, and doesn't require any visit to a speciality store. I make it often as a tea-time snack for the weekends especially when we are in that "munching" mood.

This entry goes for Meeta's La Cuciana Italiana event , Hima's Sunday Snack Event, Sangeeth's Eat Healthy-Calcium Rich Event as well as EC's WYF - Salad/Starter/Soup event.

Ingredients:

• Bread loaf - 1 (I use the italian herbs loaf that also has some poppy seeds on it)
• Butter - 2 tsp
• Italian herb seasoning - 1 tsp
• Mozarella cheese (shredded) - 1 cup
• Salt and pepper - as required
• Garlic - 3 large cloves minced
• Crushed red pepper - 1 tsp (Optional)

Procedure:

• Microwave the butter and minced garlic for a min.
• Cut the bread loaf into 1 inch slices.
• On each slice, first apply the garlic/butter mixture, then sprinkle some salt and pepper above.
• Then spread the shredded cheese and finally garnish with the italian herb seasoning. Bake the slices for 5-10 mins in a 350 degrees temp or until you see the top portion turned golden brown.
• Serve hot after sprinkling with some crushed red peppers (optional).

Baby Corn Pakoras with Ginger coffee

I love lunch time. To me it's more than just about food. I usually skip breakfast in working days and tend to take an early lunch... and so, I always wait for lunch hour. Also its a great excuse for me to take an extended break from work and chit-chat with friends, while getting recharged with some great food. In summer it gets extra special for me as I take a leisure walk around my office building enjoying some fresh air right after my lunch. It greatly refreshes me to handle the rest of the day. So, I never skip lunch hours even if I'm extremely busy at work. While getting the work done is important, I feel that certainly there should be some break time to just refuel myself, so that I am more productive for the rest of the day. While writing this, I remember a friend of mine who used to work with me in my previous office. During lunch time he would grab his lunch box and drive to the airport which is about 10 mins drive from our office. He then finds a spot outside the airport from where he can watch the planes take-off and land while having lunch! It used to be his favorite time of the day! He wouldn't miss it no matter how busy he is at work. He said he enjoys that a lot as his own private time. I used to admire his habit and was quite impressed the way he was creating a "mini-vacation" time everyday just for himself.

Things were different in India though. Back in India, my favorite time used to be coffee break instead of lunch time! May be perhaps, I used to have home-made breakfast before leaving to work, so I wouldn't starve until lunch. Mine would be a quick lunch most of the time. I worked in India for a few years before moving to the U.S, and we all friends at office used to enjoy going out for a short coffee break! There were plenty of snack shops/coffee shops around our office, and we used to enjoy hot and fresh onion pakoras, samosas, veg. puffs etc with coffee. To me that was a good fun time with friends. I miss those good old days.

Well, about this recipe now.. I made this over the weekend while we were mostly in a mood to munch. A very quick snack if you happen to have some baby corns in your fridge. It came out great and was a perfect snack for the evening. We enjoyed the pakoras with "Sukku Malli Coffee" - coffee spiced with ginger and corriander. I love this coffee and I used to have in India on road-side coffee shops. A very healthy drink made of dried ginger powder, corriander seeds powder and jaggery. Its known to help digestion.

The recipe goes for the Rushina's Pakora Event and this picture of Sukku Malli Coffee goes for Jai & Bee's Click Event.

Ingredients

• Baby Corns - 20
• Ginger/garlic paste - 2 tsp
• G.chillies - 1 (optional)
• Maida/All purpose flour - 1 tbsp
• Corn flour - 1 tbsp
• Besan - 1 tbsp
• Chilli powder - 1 tsp
• Baking powder - 1/4 tsp
• Salt

Procedure

• Mix all ingredients in a bowl by sprinkling water little by little. Mixture should be thick and stiff. Should NOT be watery like bajji batter.
• Deep fry in oil.

Serve hot with chutney or ketchup.

Fish Rice Cakes

Apparently, we all socialize. Especially, after moving away from home, socializing becomes part of life. We meet people, hang out with friends, attend parties, mingle with people from different culture, which gives so much exposure about many things. Food is definitely one of them. I recently read this saying somewhere: Food is not about impressing people, Its about making them feel comfortable. How true! To me, the flavor and taste is what makes me comfortable. Obviously the presentation is what draws our attention towards it, but ultimately taste is what makes it a winner. Ofcourse there are people who are experts in both presentation and cooking as well. In fact, I do know someone like that in my close knit friends circle. I just admire her passion for cooking and also her presentation skills. You give her even a burnt Roti, she will give it an artistic look on the table. I wish I had those skills. Its still a dream for me and I'm hoping one day I'll become better in both! A big hope!

As part of our weekend socializing, I had a couple come in for a tea party today, and I had planned to offer them a few appetizers. Fish rice cake has been in my to-try list for a while. This is yet another recipe that I got from my sister! But this time its from my other sister who lives in India. I've been lately hearing a lot about her awesome fish recipes those she's been mastering for a while. Mom was praising about her fish cutlets and fish fingers that she had made when she recently visited my sister's place. Since then I was tempted to give it a shot and was all set after discussing the recipe with my sis over phone. Recipe sounded too enticing and I couldn't wait to try.

So, when I had invited a couple for a tea party, this fish cakes sounded like a perfect match for an evening tea. Not too heavy, yet not too light either. I had already tried this recipe last week in smaller quantities as I just wanted to get the hang of it and I didn't want to mess up in front of the guests. To be honest, Cutlets are very tricky for me. I have messed them up sometimes, well.. many times :) Somehow, they disintegrate or collapse when I fry them and I was almost about to give up making them. Then after reading a few cookbooks, I learnt that the binding ingredient has to be exactly in the right proportion, and that's the tricky part. Sometimes a complex thing sounds so simple after its explained! This recipe uses rice as the binding agent and I was very cautious in its proportion, and it came out perfectly fine during my trial version as well as during the actual party. Yummy and thanks dear sis for this great recipe, my friends just loved it!

This entry also goes for Eat healthy - Protein Rich hosted by Sangeeth.

Ingredients

• Tuna/Sardines in Oil - 2 cans (you get it in all grocery stores, the cans are flat and rectangled). Or you can also just steam cook a tuna steak (or any fish) and mince them finely. Make sure it comes to about a cup after mincing.
• Onions - minced - 1/2 cup
• Ginger - 1.5 inches
• Garlic - 2 medium cloves
• G.Chilly- 1
• Fresh dill leaves - minced - 1 tbsp
• Chilli powder, corriander powder, cumin powder - 1 tsp each
• Turmeric and Garam masala powder - 1/2 tsp each
• Lemon juice - 1 tsp
• Cooked left over rice - 1 cup

Procedure

• If you have a food processor, toss in the onions, garlic, ginger and g.chilly and give it a run. This will perfectly mince the ingredients as required. Otherwise, you can chop all these ingredients very finely.
• Mash the cooked rice so that they are out of shape. I actually ran this also in food processor separately.
• Heat oil in a pan, add the minced ingredients and fry until onions turn golden brown.
• Add dill leaves and fry for a min. You will get a nice aroma. Now add all the spice powders along with salt and fry in medium heat for 4-5 mins.
• Then add the fish, some oil from the can and fry it in medium heat for 3 mins.
• Transfer the contents to a wide bowl. Add the rice and lemon juice and mix it well to a dough consistency. Add and adjust salt.
• Make your desired shapes for cutlets and shallow fry on a pan with oil.

Serve hot with chutney or ketchup.