Vada Pav

The sound of those two words together, like that, make my mouth water… Being a 'Mumbaikar' I guess I have been trained that way :)

Ingredients:

For filling:
2 potatoes boiled, peeled and roughly chopped
asafoetida (hing)
Cumin (jeera)
Mustard seeds (rai)
Udad dal
Green chillies
Garlic crushed/ chopped finely
Curry leaves
Tumeric
Salt to taste
Oil (for cooking and deep frying)

For batter:
Gram flour
Salt
Water
Hot oil

"Bread":
I used medium sized dinner rolls. These tend to be slightly sweet, but I lucked out.

Chutneys:
1) Mint chutney
Mint leaves
Cilantro
Green chillies
Roasted cumin powder
Rock/ pink salt
Salt
Lime juice
Blender

2) Sweet tamarind chutney
This recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-tamarind-chutney/

Directions:

Chutneys
- Blend all ingredients of green chutney in a blender. Use as little water as possible to speed up blending process
- Follow recipe link to prepare sweet chutney.
- These can be prepared in advance and store in the fridge (or freeze in batches for long term use)

Vada
- Heat oil in a pan. Add asafoetida, mustard seeds and udad dal. When these crackle add cumin seeds, curry leaves, garlic and green chillies. Saute for a minute.
- Add potates, tumeric and salt. Mix well, cover and let "cook" on medium high for 2-3 minutes.
- Set aside.
- Once slightly cool, tightly shape mixture into golf sized balls = 'vada'

Batter
- Mix gram flour, salt and water to make a thick paste (consistency of a brownie batter/ cake)
- Heat a little oil (1Tbsp for every cup of flour) in a pan and add to this paste. Mix well.

Cook
- Heat oil for deep frying.
- Coat the vada with prepared gram flour paste
- Deep fry until vada is golden brown.
- Place on a paper towel to drain excess oil.

Assemble
- Slit the dinner roll half (refer to pic below)
- Use green chutney on one half and sweet chutney on other half of cut bread. Use as much or as little as you want, per taste.
- Place vada in between the two halves of bread.
- Optional: stir fry some semi-hot green chillies in oil, add salt and serve on the side.

Serve hot!!!!!!

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Whats for dinner tonight you ask? It is a comfort food kinda night for me....

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/italian-mac-cheese-210700191.html

Mac and cheese it is, italian style :)
Of course with a side of greens; Swiss chard that i will saute in olive oil with some onions, salt and pepper). I am trying to minimize my non-vegetarian intake, just coz, but hey cheese = protein, right? So i think  this will be a balanced meal :)

And P.S: this guy Fabio Viviani is good (http://fabioviviani.com/).
I have not made a lot of his recipes but they look ah-mazing! And if you watch his videos on yahoo.com he has some great tips....

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Here is how it came out… half eaten….delicious!!

Spicy Potato Curry

This is a perfect recipe if you want something quick, hot and spicy! With fall just around the corner, I know I will make more of this. Goes well with rice, chapatis (or bread).

You will need:
1 large onion, diced
1/2 inch ginger, julienne
4-5 cloves garlic, rough chop (optional)
2 sprigs curry leaves
2  med tomatoes, diced
2 medium potatoes, cut in 2 inch cubes
1-2 green chillies, rough chop
asafoetida (hing) to taste
mustard seeds (rai) to taste
cumin seeds (jeera) to taste
red chili powder to taste
garam masala to taste (optional)
1/2 tsp tumeric
1-2 tbsp oil
coriander for garnish
Pressure cooker

Cooking instructions:
- Over medium heat, heat oil. Once hot add asafoetida powder, mustard and cumin seeds. Let crackle. Add curry leaves.

- Add ginger, garlic, onions and green chilies. Saute until onions are golden brown.

- Add tomatoes, tumeric powder, red chili powder and garam masala, mix well. Saute till oil starts to seperate from the solid ingredients (2-3 mins). this indicates that spices are cooked well.

- Add potatoes and cover with water. Add salt to taste.

- Cover pressure cooker with lid and let cook (2-4 whistles, depending on quantity and your experience).

- Garnish with coriander. Serve hot over rice or with chapatis.

If you dont have a pressure cooker, you can boil potatoes seperately in microwave (usually takes 5 mins) then add to the masala/ curry base at the end. I usually make mine without garlic, and it tastes just as good. To me this is almost like potatoes in rasam.

Disclaimer: The quantities listed are just a guess-timate (Usually I just add stuff as I go without paying attention to qty :)


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Veg Manchow Soup

This may not be an "easy" recipe but it definitely is a happy one! Just takes a lot of prep work before cooking, so I cheated and used my food processor to pulse all vegetables which makes it not as pretty as this video, call me lazy :)

So here is the recipe, good old Sanjeev Kapoor :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xhald5AiM8

Couple variations to this recipe:
1) Instead of tofu and fried noodles I added crispy fried chicken strips. I made these quickly by marinating thinly cut strips of chicken with salt, pepper and lime juice while prepping for the soup. Lightly dust them with flour and shallow fry in oil.

2) You could substitute any meat in this soup. Just adjust the seasonings accordingly.

3) For vegetarians, adding beans or meatball/ chicken strips soy substitutes would also work great.

4) This could also be a great noodle soup if you add some boiled noodles instead of fried.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

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