Evening snack – Page 7

Mix Vegetable Cutlet:

February 9, 2017

Exam time and kids were craving for Mangalore style cutlets, like the ones you get in Pabba’s ice cream parlour in Mangalore. My daughter asked me to prepare that same chutney as well. Finally tried my hand in this combo and succeeded. Everyone at home liked and asked me to blog about this yummy snack from Mangalore.

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Ingredients:

Potato – 3

Beans – 10

Carrot -1

Beetroot – 1 small

Green peas – ½ cup

Onion – 1 big

Green chillies -5 to 6

Curry leaves – 2 springs

Garlic – 5 to 6

Salt

Garam masala – 2 to 3 tsp (according to taste)

Bread slices – 2 to 3 (whole wheat is fine)

Coriander leaves – 2 table spoon (chopped)

Seasoning: Oil – 2 table Spoon, Mustard – 1 tsp, urad dal – ½ tsp, chana dal -1/2 tsp.

Slurry :– All purpose flour – 1 table spoon and little water

Bread crumbs- to coat

Oil –for deep fry the cutlet

Method:

Wash all the veggies, chop beans, carrot and beetroot into bits.
Make potato into 4 pieces and cook all these in pressure cooker with sufficient water by adding frozen green peas as well.

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Cook this for one whistle and switch off the gas.
When pressure relieves, open the lid, drain the water and keep the veggies aside.
When it becomes cool peel the potato skin and mash.
Chop onions, garlic, chillies and curry leaves.

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Take one kadai; add seasoning ingredients one by one from oil, when it is hot add mustard, then urad and chana dal.
When dal becomes red, add chopped curry leaves, garlic, chillies and onions and fry until onion becomes little brown.

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Now add cooked veggie, mashed potato, Garam masala, salt, powdered bread slices and mix nicely until it becomes like a mass.
Add chopped coriander leaves and mix nicely. Check for salt and adjust.
Now take one cookie cutter, fill the mix to give a shape or make round patty and arrange them in a plate and refrigerate for one hour OR you can keep this in a freezer for 10 minutes while preparing other patties and can proceed.(It will help the patty to firm up a bit)
Make maida (all-purpose flour) slurry to dip these patties. It should be little thinner than Dosa batter.

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Remove patties from the fridge and dip one by one in the slurry and roll this in a bread crumbs and this is now ready to deep fry.
Heat oil in a kadai, when it is hot, drop these patties one by one and fry until it is brown. Remove from the oil, drain the excess oil and serve this with a mint – coconut chutney and tomato sauce.

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Will post the chutney recipe in my next post 🙂

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Note:

-You can use whole wheat bread as well.

-You can use the drained water in making curries, Rasam’s or soups.

– If you are using dried peas, please soak it and cook separately in cooker.

– I use Nayak’s brand Garam masala to give authentic taste and is available at all Mangalore stores in Bangalore.

Chikki from ellu bella/ Energy bar from left over sesame mixture:

February 2, 2017

Makara sankranti festival is over and you may have left over Ellu Bella which you got from your near and dear ones during distribution to each other.Usually there will be no takers for this after two days of festival. Even I had some left over sesame mixture and tried this Indian Chikki or energy bar from these power packed ingredients.This mixture usually has lots of sesame seed, which is a high iron source, peanuts, coconut bits etc.

Ingredient:

Left over ellu bella mix – as much as you have

Sugar – 3 to 4 spoons (What I took)

Butter – 1 table spoon

Cardamom powder – ¼ teaspoon

Method:

Separate Sugar blocks as well as jaggery chunks from the mixture.

Take one thick bottomed vessel; add all these jaggery and sugar chunks as well as extra sugar with butter.
Heat this by constant stirring, until it becomes caramelized liquid.
Immediately mix in the rest of the sesame mixture and cardamom powder mix nicely to coat caramel liquid uniformly.

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Spread this on a clean kitchen counter or butter paper laid baking tray and press this nicely till it is uniformly flat.
You can use either pav bhaji masher or roti belan to press this mix.
Make a mark when it is hot by using sharp knife.
When it is cool, store this in an airtight container.

Til Chikki /Indian Sesame Brittle:

January 13, 2017

Makara Sankranti and Sesame/Til seed are very much associated with each other. Every year my kids look forward to having their favourite Chikki on this auspicious day. This time I wanted to make a different type by enhancing its nutritional value by adding other ingredients too. Finally came up with this recipe.

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Here I have taken one big water tumbler as a measuring cup.

Ingredients:

Peanut: 1 cup

Sesame seed – ½ cup (white and black mix)

Sunflower seed -1/2 cup (de-skinned one)

Roasted gram – ½ cup

Almond – ½ cup (slice or chunks)

Cashew bits – ½ cup

Desiccated coconut – ½ cup

Sugar – 2 ¼ to 2 ½ cups ( if light sweet, add 2 1/4 cup otherwise, add more)

Ghee/clarified butter – 2 tablespoons

Cardamom powder – 1/2 tsp

Method:

-Dry roast peanuts, remove the outer skin and make halves.

-Now dry roast sesame seeds, Sunflower seeds, Roasted gram, almond chunks, and Cashew bits one by one and keep aside. For roasting, you can use a stovetop method or microwave.

-When it’s a little cool, add desiccated coconut, cardamom powder and mix nicely. Keep it aside.

-Take one rolling pin and apply little ghee and keep aside.

-Now we have to make the caramel by adding sugar and ghee in a thick bottomed vessel/tawa. Keep this on a stovetop, heat it until it attains liquid form and becomes light brown in colour. This is caramel. (Please refer to the below picture for stages to attain light brown colour)

-Without wasting any time, mix in the nuts and spread this on a wooden plank or on a clean kitchen platform. Use ghee applied chapati rolling pin (belan) and spread this mixture nicely till it is uniformly flat.

-Leave this for 5 minutes. Take one knife and mark, cut it into the desired shape. After it cools down completely you can store this in an airtight container.

Chikki Preparation by Using Jaggery: (Ratio should be 1 part of dry fruits: ½ part of jaggery)

–Follow all the steps precisely like Sugar added chikki. You can omit or add any ingredients according to your wish.

Instead of Sugar, take grated jaggery, loosely fill the cup and measure, by using the cup in which you are taking the ingredients.

-First, take the jaggery, put water, ghee. Heat the solution and strain. If any sediment or tiny particles, it would go away, and the final result would be perfect.

-Then start boiling, until it reaches the frothy, thick. At this stage, pour one drop of the liquid in a small cup of water and check. It should come together, like a crystal and you should be able to break it easily.

-If it is not yet ready, it will come(extend) like a chewy thread. You will not be able to break it.

-If it is ready, pour all the roasted dry fruit, mixed and kept into the solution. Switch off the gas. Give a stir, spread, and follow all the steps like a sugared one, which I have dealt earlier.

-Enjoy all the goodness without a pang of guilt.

NOTE: -I would suggest the usage of Sugar for the first-timers. It is foolproof and easy.

-After a couple of trials with Sugar, you would be knowing about the stages and gradually shift to jaggery.

-Here, I have taken round, organic ball jaggery, made into chunks by using the stone pestle.

Gingerbread cookies:

December 26, 2016

My daughter wanted to bake gingerbread man cookies for this Christmas and she was asking for the recipe of the same. I finally gave her a recipe with the ingredients which were available in our pantry.Now I will handover this post to my daughter, who is 15 year old 🙂

Hi all, I am Vinushree. I really wanted some gingerbread cookies this year, and we made this unique version of gingerbread man cookies- but as women. I just wanted to bring out women empowerment. Just kidding, we didn’t have the cookie cutter for a man ;). This was very fun to make and an easy process. Please enjoy.

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Ingredient:

All-purpose flour – 3 ½ cup

Cinnamon powder – 1 ½ tsp

Ginger powder – 1 ½ tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Baking soda- ¾ tsp

Egg -1

Jaggery syrup – ½ cup

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Cooking Butter – ¾ cup

For Icing:

Cooking chocolate – 4 squares

Nutella – 2 tbl sp

Icing sugar – ½ cup

Vanilla essence – ½ tsp

Milk – 2 tbl sp.

Method:

Mix all the dry ingredients by using wire whisk, like flour, cinnamon, ginger, salt, baking soda and keep aside.
Beat butter and sugar by using stand mixer. When it is done, add in egg, jaggery syrup and beat nicely.
Add dry ingredient and make dough into 3 parts and keep this in a fridge by wrapping in a cling film cover or in a zip lock separately.
Keep this for one hour and remove one of the dough parts from the fridge and keep this outside for 5 minutes.
At the same time, pre heat the oven at 170 degree C and line a cookie tray with butter paper.
Now roll the dough by using Chapati roller, by dusting some flour into ¼ inch thickness and by using cookie cutter and bake this for 12 to 14 minutes.

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After it cools down, make the icing.
Take one microwave safe glass bowl, put icing sugar, chocolate, Nutella, milk and vanilla. Microwave for 1 minute and mix nicely. If it is melted and perfectly blends, start dipping those cookies into it and decorate with any sprinkles. Otherwise heat chocolate mixture for some more time and proceed.

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Dry them in air for one to two hours, and then store them in an airtight container.

Christmas Fruit cake:

December 21, 2016

The day before yesterday, my daughter V asked, ‘Amma, everywhere I can feel the Christmassy atmosphere, why haven’t you made anything? Please make a plum cake.”

Immediately, daughter A said, “No need to do that grrrrrrrrrrr, It has raisins; I don’t like raisins in any baked goodies. Make Red velvet instead of plum cake.”

Finally, mamma came up with this win-win cake for both –

This cake has no booze or fruit juice, or raisins.

Ingredients:

Dry fruits to soak – 1/2 to 1 cup (dried cranberries, tutti-frutti)

For the Caramel:

Light brown sugar – ½ cup

Water – ¾ cup

Butter – 1 tsp

For the Cake:

All-purpose flour – 1 ½ cups ( you can take whole wheat flour + all-purpose flour as well)

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Dry ginger powder – ¼ tsp

Cinnamon powder – ¼ tsp

Cardamom powder – ¼ tsp

Pinch of salt

Eggs – 2

Light brown sugar – ¾ cup

Melted Butter – ¾ cup

Fresh Orange rind – 1 to 2 tsp (grated)

Caramel – ½ cup

Dry Nuts – 1/4 cup (cashew and almonds)

Method:

-Make caramel in a thick-bottomed vessel. Heat sugar and butter until it melts; lower the heat, add water, mix nicely, boil, and add the dry fruits.

-Here, I took dried cranberries and tutti-frutti. Soak the dry fruits for 2 hrs.

-When you are ready to bake the cake, drain these soaked fruits, separate the caramel and fruits and keep them aside. This caramel can be used while mixing cake batter.

-The next step is the preparation of the cake batter –

-First, we will mix all the dry ingredients, from flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger powder, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, and salt, in one bowl and dry mix using a wire whisk.

-Drop all the dry fruits like soaked and drained dry fruits, chopped cashews and almonds

-Once again, mix the flour nicely and keep it aside. This is the dry ingredient mixture.

-The next step is- to preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

-Line the cake tin in which you want to bake. I have used a bread tin over here.

-Next, we should make a wet ingredient mixture. Break the eggs, beat them properly, and mix in butter, caramel, sugar, and grated Orange rind. Beat all these together until the sugar dissolves.

-Take one wooden spatula, fold it in the dry mixture, and make a uniform batter of wet and dry ingredients with a very light hand. Don’t overmix this.

-Now pour this ready batter into the lined cake tin, sprinkle some cashew and almond chunks, and bake this for 40 to 45 minutes or until done at 180* C. Enjoy this fruit cake this festive season!!!

Green Peapod Pakoda or Pakora:

December 15, 2016

What do you do with nutritionally rich Peapods after removal of green peas? Usually people throw them away and it is less commonly consumed. Last year, my sister introduced me to snap pea Crispi’s. I liked the taste and wanted to include this treasure house of nutrition in our diet. I tried using them with our regular Indian pea pod a couple of times, and failed to achieve the result. While chewing, the fibre used to hinder us from enjoying the dish, after a couple of failed attempts, I came across This Site in which she has mentioned how exactly we should peel the pod, after removing the peas. Once again, I tried with very little quantity and succeeded. Everyone in my family liked it and asked me to share this recipe. It was so tasty and peapod’s natural sweetness and flavour was the highlight of this pakoda.

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Recipe in detail –

Ingredients:

Peapods – as required

Oil for deep fry

For batter:

Bengal gram flour /Besan – 1 cup

Salt

Green chilli – 1

Red chilli powder- ½ tsp

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Chopped Coriander leaves – 1 tsp

Cooking soda – a pinch

Method:

-Separate fresh and green peels (pods) while opening, to collect green peas.

-After this, peel off the inner membrane (which will not cook and it is fibrous too)

-How to remove inner membrane: take one of the ends, fold in and pinch inwards and slide your thumb beneath and remove the glossy membrane and separate. If membrane breaks in-between, try from the other side.

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-Discard inner membrane and use outer green cover to make pakodas.

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-Wash these peels and drain, keep aside.

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-Prepare pakoda batter by putting Besan, salt, chopped green chillies, curry leaves, coriander leaves, cooking soda and water; batter should be like Dosa batter consistency.

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-Now heat the oil in a kadai and when it is hot, drop pea pods one by one after dipping into the batter.

pic-4 -Fry in a medium heat and when it is done, remove these into a tissue laid serving plate.

-Enjoy these pakodas with hot cup of tea or coffee.

Bonda Soup:

November 30, 2016

I am a hard-core fan of “Bonda Soup”. It is very soothing to have in winter evenings. Usually this is an after lunch snack at most of the Darshini’s in Bangalore.

Bonda soup is nothing but Fried Black gram dal fritters or uddina vada which is soaked in Ginger and pepper flavoured dal.

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For this, we have to make Bonda at first:

Ingredients:

Urad dal – 1 cup

Salt

Green chilli -1

Coconut pieces – 1 table spoon

Curry leaves – 1 spring.

Method:

-Soak Urad dal for 1 to 2 hours. Grind this smoothly by adding little by little water at interval. Add salt.

-Batter should be smooth and fine. Usage of grinder will yield perfect batter. If you are using mixer grinder, you can use chilled water for grinding, so that batter will not become hot while grinding.

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– Add chopped curry leaves, green chilli and coconut bits.

-Keep oil in a kadai, for deep frying.

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-When oil becomes hot, make small round bonda’s, fry this in a medium heat and keep it ready.

Next we are making the Soup.

Ingredients:

Toor dal – ½ cup

Green gram/Moong dal – ½ cup

Green chillies -2

Ginger – 1” piece

Salt

Hing – ½ tea spoon

Turmeric – ½ tea spoon

Curry leaves – 1 spring

Cumin – 1 teaspoon

Black pepper – 1 teaspoon

Seasoning: Ghee – 1 teaspoon, mustard – 1 teaspoon, Cumin – ½ teaspoon, Red chilli -1, curry leaves – 1 spring.

Method:

Take both the dals ,Wash and cook this in a cooker

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-Cool completely and churn this cooked dal by using hand blender or mixer jar.

-Now Take one vessel ,pour this dal, add salt ,turmeric ,one spring curry leaves ,hing ,chopped green chillies ,ginger juveniles.

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-Take one pestle and mortar, crush pepper and cumin and add this powder too.

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-Boil it nicely, until green chillies are cooked.

-Add seasoning by putting ghee, mustard, cumin, red chilli and curry leaves.

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-Now Soup is ready.-To serve, you should take one serving bowl; Keep couple of Bonda’s and pour one or two ladle full of Soup, garnish with coriander leaves, and serve.