Aaloo Tikki

A quick evening snack item prepared with potatoes and green peas. There are few variations of this dish, and I love to keep the preparation simple.

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1. Potato - 2 medium sized
2. Green Peas - 1/2 cup
3. Red chilli powder - 1 tablespoon
4. Salt - to taste
5. Garam Masala - 1 teaspoon
6. Corn Flour - 2 tablespoon
7. Oil to cook

Preparation:
1. Boil the green peas in required amount of water.
2. Grate the potatoes to thin strings.
3. Mix the potatoes and peas with the other ingredients (except oil) and rest for 10 minutes.
4. Make small patties with the mixture.
5. Heat a shallow pan and place the patty in it and start cooking. Add required amount of oil around the patty.
6. Turn the patty and cook both the sides until it turns golden brown.

Serve it hot as a snack accompanying tea/coffee

Channa Chat

Channa - also known as Garbanzo beans/ Chickpea is a very good source of fiber, iron, protein. This helps lower cholesterol and improve blood sugar levels. So this is a great food for diabetic patients. This can also help to reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease and certain cancers when eaten regularly. There are numerous recipes that can be made with this rich protein content. This recipe is a very simple evening snack. It was a very pleasant Saturday evening, when I made Channa chat along with Curd vada for our snack. This was a wonderful combination.
Pre-preparation : 6 hours
Preparation time : 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1. Channa dhal - 1 cup
2. Onion - 1 medium sized
3. Tomato - 1 medium sized
4.  Salt - to taste
5. Tamarind chutney - 3 tablespoon
6. Coriander chutney - 3 tablespoon
7. Chat powder - 1/2 tablespoon
8. Coriander leaves - for garnish

For Tamarind Chutney
1. Tamarind extract - 50 ml
2. Sugar - 2 tablespoon

For Coriander Chutney
1. Coriander leaves - a bunch
2. Green chillies - 3
3. Cumin seeds - 1/2 tablespoon

Preparation:
1. Soak Channa for 6 hours and pressure cook it with little salt for 3 whistles.
2. Finely chop onions,tomatoes and coriander leaves.
3. Mix sugar with the tamarind extract and heat it for 2 minutes to make tamarind chutney.
4. Grind Coriander leaves, green chillies and cumin seeds to prepare the coriander chutney.
5. Add 3/4th of the chopped onions, salt, chat powder to the cooked channa and heat it for five minutes.
6. Remove it from heat and add tamarind and coriander chutney and mix it well
7. Garnish with chopped tomatoes, remaining onions and coriander leaves.
Channa chat is ready to eat.

Note:
1. You can make small, crispy poori with wheat/maida and break into small pieces and add to this chat.

Curd Vada (தயிர் வடை/दही वडा)

Curd vada can be had as an appetizer, side dish in a meal or as an evening time snack with tea/coffee. This dish is very easy to prepare and becomes more tastier as the vada soaks in curd for atleast 4 to 5 hours. If prepared in excess, you can refrigerate this dish for 2 or 3 days and eat.
Pre-Preparation: 1 hour
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
1. Urud Dhal - 1 cup
2. Green chilies - 4 finely chopped
3. Ginger - a small piece (grated/crushed)
4. Pepper - 1 tablespoon (crushed)
5. Curd - 2 cups
6. Salt - to taste
7. Oil - to fry
8. Mustard seeds
To Garnish
1. Grated carrot
2. Coriander leaves
3. Red chilly powder
4. Plain Kaara Boondhi

Preparation:
1. Soak Urud dhal in water for 30 to 45 minutes and grind it without water.
2. Meanwhile beat the curd in a big bowl with little salt, crushed ginger and green chillies.
3. Heat one tablespoon of oil and add mustard seeds. When it splutters, add this to the curd and close the bowl
3. Add required amount of salt and half of the green chillies and mix it well.
4. Heat oil in a deep fry pan. Take small amount of the batter at a time and make round vadas and deep fry them in oil by turning the sides until it becomes crispy and golden brown.
5. And now this is the important and secret step to get a very soft curd vadai. When you take the vada out of the oil, DONT directly add it to the curd, instead just soak it in a bowl of hot water for less than 30 seconds and then transfer it to the curd. This will make the vada easy to soak in curd and gives it the softness.

When you are ready to serve the vada, garnish it with a pinch of red chilly powder, grated carrot, coriander leaves and boondhi.
Note:
1. You can optionally use tamarind/coriander chutney per your taste.

Gobi Fry

This is a simple recipe to make yummy and tasty Gobi fry. I call it as my version of Gobi Manchurian :) I prefer to make this whenever i run out of the required sauces. This dish can be served as a snack by itself or accompany with any rice variety.

Preparation Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
Gobi (Cauliflower) - 1 Cup
Corn Flour - 2 tablespoon
Maid Flour (All purpose flour) - 2 tablespoon
Red Chilli Powder - 1 tablespoon
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tablespoon
Curd - 2 tablespoon
Lemon juice - 1/2 tablespoon
Salt - to tasate
Oil - to fry
Onions - 2 medium size
Garlic - 5

Preparation:
1. Take half of a normal sized cauliflower and separatet the florets and wash them in hot water.
2. Add corn flour, all purpose flour, red chilli powder, ginger garlic paste, curd, lemon juice and mix it well and set it aside for 30 minutes.
3. Heat oil in a pan and deep fry the cauliflower florets until they are golden brown.
4. Heat 3 table spoons of oil and fry onions and garlic until it becomes golden brown, then add the fried cauliflower to the mixture and cook for another 2 minutes.

Tasty Cauliflower is ready to eat.

Onion Pakora

There are different versions of recipes for this snack, and here is a simple and quicker way of doing it. Preparation time is lesser than 10 minutes.

Ingredients:
1. Onions - 2 finely chopped
2. Besan Flour - 6 tablespoon
3. Rice Flour - 1 tablespoon
4. Red chilly powder - 1 tablespoon
5. Salt - to taste
6. Oil - to deep fry
7. Curry leaves - optional


Preparation:
1. Mix all the given ingredients except oil with required amount of water. Prepare the mixture to a semi solid consistency.
2. Heat oil in pan. Now add the mixture little quantity at a time and deep fry it till it becomes golden brown. Use hands to add the mixture to oil and make sure to separate the onion rings when you drop it in oil to get a good crispness.
Hot pakora is ready to eat.

Spinach Pakora

Spinach is considered to be rich source of iron and also has a high calcium content. It is good to have steamed spinach to get maximum of all its minerals and vitamins. But since most of us dont prefer to take greens, this preparation will help you get the nutrients from the green to some extent.

Ingredients:
Besan flour - 1 cup
Spinach - finely chopped a bunch
Salt - to taste
Red chilli powder - 1 tablespoon (or) Green chillies - 5 finely chopped
Rice Flour - 2 tablespoon
Oil - to fry





Preparation:
1. Mix all ingredients except oil with required water. Do not add more water, the mixture should be consistent to make round balls.
2. Heat oil in pan and make small balls of the mixture and deep fry in oil till it becomes golden brown.
Hot Pakora is ready to server. Serve it alone or with ketchup or mint chutney.
You could use any other greens or onions to make Pakoras.

Pav Bhaji

This is one of my favorite recipes. Prepartion of this recipe is made easy by the readily available 'Pav bhaji masala' available in any indian grocery store. I use Burger buns as substitute for Pav.

Ingredients:
Pav - 8
Butter - 4 tablespoon

For Bhaji:
Potato - 1 medium
Carrot - 1 cup finely chopped
Beans - 1 cup finely chopped
Peas - 1/2 cup
Onion - 1 medium finely chopped
Tomato - 1 medium finely chopped
Chilli powder - 1 tablespoon
Pav Bhaji masala - 2 teaspoon
Salt - to taste
Butter - 2 tablespoon
Oil - 1 tablespoon
lemon juice - 1/2 tablespoon
Coriander leaves - finely chopped for garnishing
Onions - 1 medium finely chopped for garnishing

Preparation:
1. Boil all vegetables (potato,carrot,beans) in little water with little salt and drain water completely.
2. Heat oil in pan and add onions and fry till it turns golden brown.
3. Add tomatoes and fry well. Add chilli powder and salt and mix well.
4. Add the boiled vegetables and smash the mixture well.
5. Add pav bhaji masala to the mixture and mix thoroughly and add little water and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes till the water evaporates and the bhaji is perfectly cooked.
6. Add lemon juice and mix well.
7. Garnish it with chopped onions and coriander leaves.
8. Heat a tava and spread butter and toast Pav on both sides.
9. Serve it hot with Bhaji.

Yummy yummy pav bhaji is delicious to taste.

Vegetable puff

Vegetable puff is one of my favorite snack. But it had been a long time since I ate it and recently I found that the preparation of the puff is very simpler with the frozen pastry strip available in most of the grocery stores in US. I managed to get the pastry puff strip from Wal-mart ( found it in the frozen section) and tried this for the first time. Active preparation of the snack is around 30 minutes but make sure you bring the pastry strip to room temperature before you could use it(which generally takes 45 minutes to 1 hour). My husband and myself enjoyed the taste of the hot vegetable puff on a friday evening.



Ingredients:
1. Pastry puff strip
2. Vegetables - 2 cup This can be a mixture of vegetable of your choice finely chopped. I prefer to have carrot, beans,potato,onion, peas
3. Cumin seeds - 1 tablespoon
4. Turmeric powder -1 teaspoon
5. Red chilli powder - 1 tablespoon
6. Coriander powder - 2 tablespoon
7. Ginger garlic paste - 1 tablespoon
8. Garam masala - 2 teaspoon
9. Salt to taste
10. Oil
11. Coriander leaves




Preparation:
1. Finely chop the vegetables and half cook them in a pan by sprinkling handful of water and closing the lid.
2. Heat oil in a pan and add cumin seeds, ginger garlic paste, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, coriander powder and garam masala and saute well.
3. Add the boiled vegetables and saute for 5 mins and allow it to cool.
4. You can make the puff in any shape you like, but i prefer rectangles. Cut the strip into rectangular pieces in length of your desire.
5. Take a little vegetable mixture and place it on one half of the strip and close it with the other side. Use water to seal the edges so that it doesnt open when baked in oven.
6. Bake this in oven at 450 degrees for 6 minutes.
Hot and fluffy vegetable puff is ready to eat.

Note:

I am yet to explore the alternative when the puff strip is not available. I will post it after I try it. Also variations can be made in the stuff with chicken or some sweet mixture with coconut and sugar.