evening snack

Millet Choco chip cookie:

July 18, 2017

Millets are a very good alternative to normal All-purpose flour or whole wheat flour in gluten free baking. You can’t even recognize the core ingredient. It is gluten free as well as high in nutrition too.

When I was trying out some recipes for 2017 Millet calendar, I dished out a couple of recipes, which has turned out super tasty, and at the same time, healthy too.

At first, I tried Chocolate based cookie and it tasted good and here is the recipe-.

Ingredients:

Mixed millet flour -1 cup

Ragi flour – ¾ cup

Cocoa powder – 2 tbl sp.

Salt – ¼ tsp

Baking powder – ¾ tsp

Baking soda – ¾ tsp

Egg -1

Sugar – ¾ cup

Butter – 100 gms

Curd – 2 tbl sp

Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Choco-chip – 2 tbl sp

Powdered sugar – to roll the dough.

Method:

-Put all the dry ingredients- flours, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and soda, Choco chip in one bowl, mix nicely and keep aside.

– Take another bowl and put butter and sugar, beat until sugar dissolves and butter becomes smooth.

-Add in egg and beat, add vanilla essence, curd and beat until batter is smooth.

– Now add dry ingredient flour mixture and make cookie dough by mixing like Chapati dough.

– Take one round spoon and make uniformly sized ball, dip in a sugar powder and arrange in a lined baking tray.

– Bake this in a pre- heated oven at 170º C for 12 to 14 minutes or until base becomes light brown.

-When it is done, remove and cool. Store this in an air tight container.

Note: This measurement yields around 28 cookies of this size.

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.

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.

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.

bonda

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.

bonda-soup

-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.