Gobi (Cauliflower) 65

Gobi (Cauliflower) 65 is a popular street food in South India. I've read various interesting stories on the reason for the addition of the number 65 to the dish, but am not sure if any of them is true. Most street vendors add red food color to achieve the bright red color that the dish is associated with and serve it hot in paper plates or newspaper squares.



What you need:
Cauliflower - 1 small , separated into medium sized florets
Oil - for deep frying

For the batter:
Corn flour - 1/2 cup
All purpose flour - 1/3 cup
Rice flour - 1/3 cup
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp
Tandoori masala - 1 tsp
Kashmiri chilli powder - 1 tsp
Coriander
Curry leaves
Salt
Water

For tempering:
Oil - 1 tbsp
Green chillies - 2 or 3, slit lengthwise into two
Curry leaves - a handful

Take the cauliflower in a large pan. Pour boiling water over it. Add a pinch of turmeric powder and a pinch of salt, cover and let it stand for 5 minutes. Drain off all the water and keep aside.

Mix all the ingredients for the batter into a smooth, slightly thick batter. Add in the cauliflower florets and mix well to coat all the florets with the batter evenly.

Heat oil for deep frying in a pan. Add the florets, a few at a time and fry until reddish brown. Remove on to a kitchen towel. When all the florets have been fried, fry them again in hot oil in batches, to give them an additional crispiness. Set aside.

Heat the oil for tempering. Add slit green chillies and curry leaves to it and saute over a low flame until the chillies just start to brown. Add in the fried cauliflower and mix well.
Serve with ketchup or a little bit of chaat masala sprinkled on top.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM

Air fryer aloo tikki and aloo tikki chaat

The newest toy in my kitchen is an air fryer. I dithered over the purchase for a long time, and finally, last month, decided that I should it buy one. The husband and I have been experimenting with various dishes that we would normally use a lot of oil for,  and so far, all the experiments have been successful. Today's aloo tikki is made with minimal oil in the air fryer and it turned out nice and crisp on the outside and soft on the inside - just the way a good tikki should be.
Once the tikkis are made, they are topped with green chutney, spiced curd, sweet tamarind chutney, chopped onions and sev. This makes for a great starter or snack.

What you need:

For the tikki:
Potato - 4, boiled, peeled and mashed well
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Red chilli powder - 12/ tsp
Amchur powder - 1/2 tsp
Chaat masala - 1/2 tsp
Garam masala - 1 tsp
Salt - to taste
Corn flour - 1.5 tbsp.

Mix all the ingredients to a smooth dough. Oil your hands well and roll out small golf ball sized pieces of dough and flatten them into tikkis. Brush some oil on both sides of each tikki.
Preheat air fryer to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes.
Place the tikkis in a single layer in the air fryer basket. Cook at 360 degrees for 12 minutes (6 minutes on each side).
If you do not have an air fryer, you can shallow fry the tikkis in a pan, adding about a teaspoon of oil around the tikkis and cooking them until they are well browned on both sides.

For the green chutney:
Cilantro - a small bunch
Green chilli - 2
Juice of half a lemon
Salt
Grind all the ingredients to a smooth paste along with a quarter cup of water.

For the spiced curd mixture:
Yogurt/curd - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 1/4 tsp
Salt
Cumin powder - 1/2 tsp
Whisk all the ingredients together till smooth.

To assemble:
Place two tikkis on a plate. Top with generous helpings of curd, green chutney, tamarind chutney, finely chopped onion and sev.
Serve immediately.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM 

Kanda Poha - a traditional Maharashtrian breakfast dish

One of the things I miss the most from my days of living in Mumbai is the street food. From vada paos to pani puris to idlis and dosas, everything was available on the streets and I used to absolutely love it. I was a frequent traveler on the infamous 'Mumbai local' while I lived there. The morning scene outside my destination station was always the same. A few local women with large steel dabbas would set up shop outside the station. Hot idlis with chutney and sambar, vada pao and kanda poha would be ladled out of these steel dabbas into paper plates. The taste of the poha that they used to serve is something that still lingers on in my mind. Though I make poha often, I feel that the one sold on the streets was so much better.

What you need:
Poha/aval/rice flakes - 1 cup, heaped
Oil - 1 tbsp.
Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
Urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Onion - 1 medium, chopped fine
Green chilli - 2, minced
Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped (optional)
Ginger - a small piece, julienned
Peanuts - a handful
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Juice of half a lemon
Coriander - finely chopped, for garnishing
Sugar - a little (optional)
Sev - a handful (optional)

Take the poha in a colander. Run cold water over it and wash it well. Let the water drain out completely. Wash and drain again. Let it stand for five minutes.

In a pan, heat some oil. Add the mustard seeds and urad dal. When the mustard seeds pop, add green chilli, ginger and garlic. Fry well. Mix in and roast the peanuts.  Add onions and saute over a low flame until translucent. Add turmeric powder and the drained poha along with salt. Mix well. Stir in the lemon juice. Sprinkle some sugar(less than 1/4 teaspoon) over this if you would like. I feel that the sugar really adds to the taste of the final dish and that is how it is served in Maharashtra. Garnish with chopped coriander and a handful of sev.
Enjoy with a hot cup of coffee or tea.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM

Kathi rolls

A quick and easy meal on the go, an evening snack, an interesting way to use up left over rotis - any of these descriptions would fit a kathi roll perfectly. Called Frankie in Mumbai, a kathi roll is a medley of vegetables and masalas wrapped inside a flaky roti. Though I have eaten these in restaurants where the outer covering was made of all purpose flour/maida, I have tried to make my version healthy by using whole wheat rotis.

What you need :
Roti/chapati/parotta - as many as needed
Chaat masala
For the filling : (This recipe makes enough filling for 7 rotis)
Potato - medium sized, one - peeled and diced
Carrot - 1,chopped
Capsicum - 1/2, chopped fine
Onion - a small one, chopped fine
Green chilli - 1, minced
Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 tsp
Beans - 8, stringed and chopped
Tomato - 1, chopped
Oil - 2 tsp
Garam masala - 1/2 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Juice of half a lemon

Corriander/cilantro - a little, chopped fine
Salt - to taste

Steam cook the potato, carrot and beans.
Heat oil in a pan. Add the green chilli, and chopped onions. Saute until pink. Add ginger garlic paste and saute for another minute on low flame. Add the chopped capsicum and tomato. Cover and cook over a low flame until the capsicum is cooked yet crunchy. Add in the cooked veggies, turmeric powder, garam masala, red chilli powder and salt to taste. Mix well and heat until any excess moisture evaporates. Add lemon juice and garnish with chopped corriander.

To make the roll:
Spread a generous helping of the filling on one side of the roti.
Sprinkle some chaat masala over it and then roll the roti in such a way that the filling is wrapped inside.

 Place a few rolls seam side down and drizzle some ketchup or chutney over it if desired.

This is my second post for Week 3 of Blogging Marathon #47 under the theme Cooking from the menu card of a restaurant - the restaurant of my choice being Puranmal.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 47 

Aloo tikki chole

January is a special month for us for many reasons. For one, it is the beginning of a new year and so, a time for renewed beliefs and hopes. It is also the birth month of the little girl and she starts planning her birthday right from January 1st. Everyday, she adds people to her invitee list and comes up with ideas for possible dishes on the menu.
This aloo tikki chole chaat is something that is filling, looks good and tastes good too. Crisp and perfectly cooked potato patties topped with a spicy, warm chickpeas curry and then layered with chopped raw onion, cilantro, sev and a tangy chutney. What's not to love about it, eh?



What you need :
For the tikki :
Potato - 4, medium sized, boiled, peeled and mashed
Bread - 4 slices
Salt - to taste (Please resist the temptation to add onions, cilantro, garam masala or any other condiment)

For the chole :
Kabuli chana/white chick peas - 1 cup (soaked in water overnight)
Onion - 1, chopped
Tomato - 2 , chopped
Ginger - a one inch piece, chopped
Garlic - 4 cloves
Black peppercorn - 4
Clove - 4
Cardamom - 3
Chole masala - 2 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Oil - 2 tbsp
Salt - to taste

For serving:
Onion - 1, chopped very fine
Corriander - chopped fine
Tamarind-date chutney
Sev


To make tikkis :
Dip the bread in water. Squeeze out all the water and add it to the mashed potatoes. Add salt. Mix well and shape into patties. Shallow fry on a tawa drizzling a little oil over the patties until well browned on both sides.
 
To make chole:
Pressure cook the chick peas until soft.
Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan. Add the black pepper, clove and cardamom. Fry a little and then add chopped ginger, garlic and onion. Saute till onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook till they soften.
Let this cool and then grind to a smooth paste.
Heat the remaining oil in a kadai. Add the ground paste, turmeric powder and the cooked chick peas. Add salt and chole masala. Reduce the heat and let it boil for 15-20 minutes or until the chole thickens.

To serve:
Arrange two tikkis on a plate. Pour a generous helping of chole on the tikkis. Top with some chopped onion, corriander, chutney and sev.

This post is part of the Blogging Marathon under the theme Combo dishes. Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 36
This is also my 7th post for Blogathon 2014, a daily blogging event for the month of January. 

Dabeli masala

The variety of street food that is on offer in India is mind boggling. Each state has its own kind of street food - something special that is only available on the road sides and not in fancy restaurants.
If you happen to be in Bangalore, do take some time out to visit Thindi Beedhi which is in VV Puram. It is a street dedicated to food. The name literally means Food Street. You will find huge crowds thronging the small street on weekends, vying for dosas, super soft idlis, chaats, badam milk and sweets. There is a chaat shop here that I really like. The dabelis in this shop are always in huge demand.
Dabeli is a street food from the state of Gujarat. It literally means pressed. With potatoes, sweet and sour chutney, spicy chutney, pomegranates and sev stuffed into burger buns, this is nothing short of a delightful explosion of flavours. The potatoes are cooked with a dash of special dabeli masala, which is the recipe that I have for you today. (Recipe source : Tarla Dalal)

What you need:
Red chilli - 1
Corriander seeds - 1 tsp, heaped
Cumin - 1/4 tsp
Clove - 5 or 6
Cinnamon - a medium sized piece

Dry roast all the ingredients in a kadai over a low flame for 2-3 minutes until the spices turn reddish brown.
Let it cool and then powder in the small jar of your blender.

This makes a small quantity, just enough for a single use.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#14

Kerala style porotta - Step by step pictorial

Nope....it is not a spelling mistake. We are not talking about a paratha here. Nor is it called barotta. If you want to say it mallu ishtyle, please say po...ro....tta. In some parts of Kerala, it also goes by the name parotta.
A parotta is a layered flatbread usually made with maida and lo.....ts of time and patience. If you plan on visiting Kerala, please do try this out from a thattukada. A thattukada is God's own country's version of a fast food joint. It is simply a food cart on wheels and the food served is fresh, hot, made to order and always delicious....as long you don't really ask questions to find out where the water is from and how well the plates are washed.
As long as I lived with my parents, I didn't visit a thattukada......simply because thattukadas operate only at night, and at that time, you don't see girls/women standing around these places and eating. So, even though we had one very close to our home and I was always tempted by the tantalizing smells, I have never gone there. The place would always be crowded with mundu(dhoti) clad "gentle"men. This changed when I moved to a different town for my higher studies and started living in a hostel. One of the first things I did is visit a thattukada at night. The sense of freedom and daring I experienced is something that cannot be described with mere words. To date, the best parotta and peas curry I have had is at these thattukadas.
I tried recreating a healthier version of parotta using multi grain flour instead of maida, and the result was good, though I missed the camaraderie of my hostel mates and the luxury of having someone else make this for me.

What you need:
Multi grain flour - 2 cups, heaped (Can be substituted with maida(APF)/whole wheat flour)
Oil - 3tbsp+1tsp+1tbsp
Salt
Water

Mix together the maida and salt. Add water little by little and knead into a smooth, pliable dough. Add 3 tbsp of oil and knead well. Rub one tsp of oil all over the dough to prevent it from drying out. Cover and let it stand for atleast an hour.
Take 1 tbsp of oil in a flat/shallow plate.
Pinch out a ball of dough. Flatten it slightly between your palms and then roll it out. Do not dredge in flour while rolling. Instead,dip your fingers in the oil and spread it over the rolled dough and continue rolling it out. The idea is to S-T-R-E-T-C-H the dough as much as you can and make it as thin as you can. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle at this point.

If you look at the pic above, you will see that the counter top is visible through the rolled out dough. That is how thin you have to roll it out.
Next, we start folding the dough into pleats from one end to the other. It is similar to making pleats on a sari.The picture will explain how it is done.

After the pleats are made, start rolling the pleated dough into a ball, starting from one end.

Once rolled, keep it covered until all the dough is rolled up similarly.
When I had rolled up all the dough into balls, I kept them on the plate in which I'd taken oil so that the oil wouldn't be wasted, plus, my dough wouldn't dry out.

Now, take one ball at a time and flatten it out into a thick circle.

Heat a tawa. Cook both sides of the parotta on it, until it develops brown spots on both the sides.
Once you have cooked a few parottas, hold them between your hands and crush sideways. Do this gently, as our aim is only to separate the layers, not to break the parotta into pieces.

Serve hot with peas curry.

Ragda Patties for Blogging Marathon #5

I can't believe that I've wasted all these years of life without making this. I can't stop raving about how lip smackingly and tongue tinglingly good it was. What am I talking about??? Ragda patties, of course. A famous street food from Mumbai, I have eaten this at restaurants (the best being at Kailash Parbat, Chennai), but never knew that it is so easy to make at home. Ever since I read Nupur's post(lo.....ng back), this has been on the back of my mind. I have made absolutely no changes to her recipe and I am glad I didn't because, in Nupur's words, this truly is an explosion of flavours.....and I couldn't have done anything to make it better.

What you need:
For the patties:
Potatoes - 4 medium sized, boiled, peeled and mashed well
Bread - 4 slices
Salt - to taste
(Please resist the temptation to add green chillies/corriander/garam masala to this.)

For the ragda:
White peas - 1 cup, soaked in plenty of water overnight
Onion - 1 medium sized, chopped fine
Ginger garlic paste - 1 tsp
Tamarind extract- from a small gooseberry sized pieced soaked in just enough water to cover it.
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Corriander powder - 1/2 tsp
Cumin powder - 1/2 tsp
Red chilli powder - 1 tsp
Jaggery - 1 tbsp
Salt - to taste

For the garnish:
Onion - 1, chopped fine
Corriander leaves - chopped fine
Sev
Tamarind chutney

To make patties:
Dip the bread in water. Squeeze out all the water and add it to the mashed potatoes. Add salt. Mix well and shape into patties. Shallow fry on a tawa drizzling a little oil over the patties until well browned on both sides.

To make ragda:
Cook peas with plenty of water in a pressure cooker.
Heat some oil in a pan. Add the chopped onions and fry on a low flame till well browned. Add ginger garlic paste and mix well. Stir in all the powders and fry for a minute. Now add cooked peas, 2 cups of water, tamarind extract, salt and jaggery. Cover and let it simmer on a low flame for 15-20 minutes or until the gravy thickens.

Putting it all together:
Arrange two patties on a plate.
Pour a generous helping of ragda over it.
Top with chopped onion, corriander leaves, sev and tamarind chutney.
Dig in!!!

Notes:
The ragda tastes great by itself and can be served as a curry with puri/roti. As it can be made within 30 minutes, this is my first post for Blogging Marathon #5 themed on Curry in a hurry under 30 minutes.
I must give a shout out here for the Fun Foods brand of Imli Sauce (which I bought at Nilgiris). It has just the right balance of tanginess, sweetness and spiciness and kicked up the taste a notch.

Check out the Blogging Marathoners doing BM#5 along with me  Curry in a hurry under 30 min: Aarthi, Divya, Me, Jayasree, Kaveri, Pavani,
Seven Days of Indian Sweets:Gayathri, Priya Suresh,
Seven Days of Microwave Meals: Monika,
Seven Days of Regional Specials: Cool Lassi(e), Harini, Vaishali, Suma
Seven Days of Colorful Dishes Kid's Special: Kalyani
Summer Coolers: Kamalika, Srivalli