Sweet Potato Cutlet

Sweet Potatoes are in abundance this season and in keeping with the year's resolution to eat what is in season, I picked up radish leaves for sarson ka saag and sweet potatoes to make something sweet.The Sarson ka saag and the way we ate it for three days is another story I will reserve for later. The sweet potatoes however lay forgotten among the potatoes. I found them looking almost forlorn when I was skimming the vegetable basket to see what to make as a quick snack for the evening hunger pang. I decided to quickly boil them, season with some chat masala and make a snack. When I shut the cooker, I realized that I had another 10 minutes to kill until they were cooked. So that's when the boiled sweet potato idea turned into sweet potato cutlet idea.

If you have the ingredients at hand, it is super easy to make. I had a cabbage and I added about a quarter of it to increase the bulk and also since cabbages tend to get this really crunchy texture when roasted. Since all the ingredients are cooked, I did not shallow fry the cutlets but roasted them on a thick bottomed tava with very little oil. It takes some patience to fry it this way. If you want, you can add a little more oil and shallow fry it. While it was getting done, I snacked on a little bit of the cutlet dough topped with curd, bhujia and green chutney. Let me show you how I made the Sweet Potato Cutlet.

Preparation Time: 10 Minutes
Cooking Time: 10 Minutes (for sweet potatoes) + 15 Minutes
Makes 6 cutlets

Ingredients for the Sweet Potato Cutlet

Oil - 4 tbsp
1/2 tsp ajwain or carom seeds
A pinch of hing
2 medium sized sweet potatoes
1 small onion chopped
1/4 cabbage chopped
A few sprigs of coriander chopped
1 green chilli chopped
2 pods of garlic crushed
1 inch ginger crushed
salt to taste
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp chilli, coriander, cumin powder each
1/2 tsp chat masala
1 tsp rava or semolina
1/2 tsp gram flour

Recipe for the Sweet Potato Cutlet

Peel and roughly chop the sweet potatoes and pressure cook them until soft. While it is getting done, chop up your cabbage, onion and coriander. In a mortar, crush the ginger, garlic and green chillis.

In a pan, heat 1 tbsp of oil and add the carom seeds and hing to it. Then add the onions and fry. When it starts browning, add the crushed masala from the mortar. To this add the cabbage and fry nicely till all the aromas rise up. Now add the dry spice powders - turmeric, chilli, coriander and cumin.

Sprinkle some water and fry until the vegetables are done. While they are getting done, mash the boiled sweet potatoes. Add the onion-cabbage mixture to the sweet potatoes. Allow it to cool for a few minutes. Top with some chaat masala and coriander and mix well. The chat masala already has some black salt in it. Taste the mixture and adjust the salt.

Mix well so that all the spices get uniformly mixed and you have a dough like ball at the end.

Divide this into 6 small balls and flatten them. Place your griddle on the flame on medium heat. Grease it well with 1/2 tbsp of oil. Mix the semolina and the gram flour on a plate. They will be used to coat the cutlet. Normally, only rava or bread crumbs are used. Gram flour helps it bind and that is why I added a bit of it. Run the cutlet on both sides on the rava-gram flour mixture.

Dust off the excess coating. Now place them on the heated griddle and patiently let them roast.

Brush some oil on both sides and roast them on the tava. Let them brown on both sides. Once they are done, serve hot with some green chutney or tomato ketchup.

Lemon Ginger Rasam

There are days when you  have a heavy evening snack and don't really feel like cooking or eating anything heavy for the night. On such days, we do not just settle for good old thayir sadam ( rice and curds), but also have this light and refreshing lemon ginger rasam alongside. The fresh flavors from both the lemon and ginger make it really appetizing even during times when you are feeling under the weather. Instead of garnishing the rasam with coriander leaves, I add the coriander stalks from the "hybrid dhania" that we get here.

The stalks are not tender enough to use in curries or gravies. But it can be used in this rasam since it will be crushed in the mortar. The lemon ginger rasam is really light on the stomach and the juices of lemon, coriander and ginger will help you digest your food much better. What's more, it is so easy to rustle up that it figures on my menu at least once in a week!

To make the rasam, I do not use too much of toor dal. Instead, I use more of the toor dal water. So what I do is that I pressure cook a cup of toor dal with a pinch of turmeric. Then pour 1 and half cups of water into the dal container and give it a swish. Then remove the water separately, along with two tsp of the cooked toor dal. I reserve the rest of the toor dal to make dal the same day. Or it keeps well in the fridge for a week, you can use it on any day you are making a dal or sambar. Once you have this dal water mixture, it takes just five minutes to put together this rasam. Lets see how. 

Preparation Time: 5 Minutes

Cooking Time: 15 Minutes

Ingredients of Lemon Ginger Rasam 

1 and 1/2 cups toor dal water 

2 tsp of cooked toor dal 

1 green chilli, slit lengthwise

1 inch ginger grated or chopped

juice from 1/2 lemon 

2 tsp of chopped coriander stalk

salt and sugar to taste

oil for tempering

4-5 curry leaves

1/2 tsp mustard 

1/2 tsp cumin seeds or jeera

a pinch of asafetida

Method to prepare Lemon Ginger Rasam

Cook about a cup of toor dal and add a cup and half of water to it. Now gently swish the water with a ladle and separate it out from the dal. Take two tsp of the cooked dal and mash it well. Add it to the dal water and set it aside.

In a mortar, crush the ginger and coriander stalk together coarsely.

Now bring one cup of water to a boil on medium flame. Slit a green chilli and add it to the water, along with the coriander-ginger paste.

Once it comes to a rolling boil, add the toor dal and water mixture. Add to it salt and sugar to taste. This is a sweet-sour rasam, hence the need for the sugar. Also, sugar enhances the flavor of ginger.

Prepare the tempering by heating oil, add to it the asafetida and mustard. Once the mustard starts crackling, add the curry leaves and jeera. If you like your rasam spicy, you can add some coarsely powdered pepper to the tempering. 

Now pour the tempering on the rasam. Turn off the heat. Adjust the salt and squeeze in the juice of half a lemon into it. 

That is about it! Enjoy it with steaming hot rice or drink as is as a soup. It is refreshing and light on the stomach. 

Under 15 minutes Beans Carrot Poriyal

I love the beans and carrot combination in curries, gravies and rice preparations, especially because of the color. I make this quick poriyal on the day I do my grocery shopping - when the veggies are fresh from the market. I normally cube all the carrots and slice the beans small, use some for the poriyal and freeze the rest to use it up on one of the days of the week. That way, any cooking with these veggies gets done really fast.
So what goes into this poriyal? Nothing much actually - just the veggies, some seasoning and grated coconut on the top. I make this coarse powder out of roasted jeera and pepper in small batches lasting a week which i sprinkle on top of this poriyal. The powder can also be used in the tadka for rasam to make it hot and peppery.

Preparation Time: 5 Minutes
Cooking Time: 10 Minutes

Ingredients 

1 cup carrots, cubed
1 cup beans, sliced in small rounds
1 tsp of cumin-pepper powder
2 tbsp of grated coconut
salt to taste

for the tadka:

1 tbsp of oil
1 sprig of curry leaves
2 red chillies
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
 a pinch of asafetida

Method

Chop the veggies fine and take them in a microwave safe bowl. Sprinkle some water on it.

Now, microwave on high for 2 minutes. This will help in semi-cooking the veggies. In the meanwhile, heat oil in a pan and wait for it to get hot. Throw in the mustard seeds followed by the curry leaves, red chillies and hing.

Once the mustard starts spluttering, add the microwaved vegetables to the pan and mix well. Sprinkle some more water if needed and cover and cook for 5 minutes on medium-high. Remove the cover, add the salt and on high flame, let the curry roast until almost dry for another 2 minutes. Now sprinkle the coconut and cumin-pepper powder from the top.

Toss it well. That is it! Done in 15 minutes flat! Serve it hot with either roti or rice. If it is rice, you are going to need a dal or sambar on the side. I served my carrot beans poriyal with phulkas and it made an awesome combination.

P.S. Sending this as my entry to Healthy Veg Side Dishes event hosted by Nandoo and Priya

Under 15 minutes hakka noodles

There are days when there is very little left over from lunch and I am either too lazy or too caught up with other things to whip up the whole roti + dal/vegetables and raita dinner. On one such days, the husband asks me, why don't you ever make hakka noodles? Well, maybe because I have never made it before, maybe because the sight of the over oily hakka noodles at the restaurants got to me and I was plain not interested in making it. But seemed like it was something that he liked. So the next supermarket visit involved picking up a packet of Chings hakka noodles and a bottle of soy and green chilli sauce each.

When I went through the procedure, I was in for a nice surprise. There was hardly anything to the recipe. And now I make it often, on my lazy days and we happily follow it up with some curd rice and complete the meal. So here is how I make Hakka Noodles in less than 15 minutes. It will take you lesser time if you don't skimp on pots and pans. I do all the cooking in the same pan which doesn't let me do parallel processing.

I make it with very little oil. You may call me a killjoy, but I like it this way. Eaten hot, you won't notice the difference.

Ingredients

1 cup of veg - carrots, beans, spring onions, cabbage, capsicum, chopped lengthwise
1 packet of hakka noodles
salt and pepper powder to taste
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of green chilli sauce
2 tbsp of oil

Method

Clean and chop the vegetables lengthwise. I microwave vegetables like carrot and beans for a minute since I don't like them too raw in the noodles.

Next, in a pan, heat 1 tbsp of oil and add to it the onion (i used the onion from the spring onion) and capsicum. You can add minced garlic to this if you want. On high flame, saute this well. Add to this the microwaved vegetables and stir.

In the end, sprinkle the chopped spring onion shoot from the top. To this, add the soy sauce and green chilli sauce. Mix really well. All of this is done on really high flame. Turn off the gas and remove the vegetables in a bowl.


In the same pan, heat sufficient amount of water and cook the noodles as per pack instructions. I add some oil to the water itself to prevent the noodles from sticking. Cook on high flame. It takes less than 2 minutes for them to cook. Turn off the gas when they start frothing up.

Strain it in a colander, run under some cold water to stop the cooking process and add another tsp of oil on it and mix well with your hands to prevent it from sticking. Now, in the same pan, take your prepared vegetables.

Add the strained noodles to this and toss well on high flame. Season with some salt ( the soy sauce already has enough salt and we cooked the noodles also with some salt, so go easy on it) and white pepper powder. Serve hot!