Burger with hidden talents....

Ok this post has been sitting in draft section for so long.... its ridiculous. I mean how hard can it be to write few words about the recipe I am going to post. Well .. ummmm .. very hard because I have been always blank whenever I got down writing it!!!! The thing is ..... my family love their bird :-) . So you can guess burger at my place means a chicken affair.  But I wanted to try something vegetarian that one day......I guess it was over dose of  "the bird"! Its really a struggle to get my kids to eat their portion of veges..generally it stops at second bite. But what do they know.. I am the mom and quite devious at hiding the veges ;-)

Well I remember this idea from my sister, where she inserted cheese piece in chicken patty. Same idea .... vegetarian affair. Lots of vegetables sauted dry then mixed with potatoes to make thick patties. Hide your cheese somewhere in the middle and be  surprised !!!

Now lets get to the process, shall we?  

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Onion fritters...rainy day snack

I was going to post something else today... but it was such a perfect day for onion fritters (pakora) and cutting chai. It had been raining alot since yesterday. On such days, I just want to curl up under a blanket with a cup of cutting chai and hot garma garam pakoras with chutney...yummmmmm! Reminds me of the street food I used to have back in college. Saving myself from the rain and running inside dhabba to get a plate of garam bhajiya.  Fritters, pakora, bhajiya all means the same thing - after all whats in a name? Onion fritters are basically very thinly sliced onions just covered in gram flour, deep fried in oil on medium to get the crispiness. There that neatly sums up the entire post LOL!! If you can visualize what I am talking about.....you needn't read any further :-)

I learnt the sweating technique of onions way back from Tarla Dalal's newletters. It has never failed. I have never had to add water to incorporate gram flour. Amount of gram flour may seem less but its enough to coat the onions to make a crispy layer when deep fried.

In case you have been scratching your head over "cutting chai"....let me demystify it for you. In Mumbai and around that...tea is usually served in  small glass filled half way - cutting-(the cup into half)-chai. It could be flavoured usually with green  cardamom, very milky and sweet. Perfect companion for our bhajiyas :-)

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Easy peasey banana bhujiya

Whenever one thinks of banana, immediately this yellow   guy comes to mind.  Easiest food to eat and requires no cooking. But its a different story with raw bananas or plantain. It was pain peeling it... something I didnt even think about when its dishes were made back home. Hmmmm... I should have paid more attention  - bad bad ...LOL!!

Anyways, once that struggle was over,  it was breeze after that. I really like eating banana bhujiya and was reminded that I liked eating this when my sister made it one day on my recent trip to her house. Hows that for forgetfulness !!! So when I saw it in store, I had to try it out - came out totally yummylicious. It was so easy to make and thats best part...well after the taste. Next time I am going to be bolder and try out banana kofta.

One thing, you  need to use quite a bit of oil to get that crunchy surface. But I decided to compromise on the crunchiness factor instead. Go ahead use more oil ....fried stuff never ever tastes bad ;- )

Oh yes I used locknlock products - from start to finish. I made the bhujiya in myLocknLock ceramic frying pan, served and stored in my Zen&Lock ceramic container. Its really pretty and light weight... You can check it out in the pictures below.

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Z for Zebra Cake!

I am a relatively new cook and surfing food blogs has become my latest pass time. There are so many ideas out there.. it mind boggling!! During this blog cruising, I came along Passionate About Baking. Its one helluva blog, I have to say. More than the content, the pictures pop out straight away. There is a lot I need to learn about food photography. And the cakes... ooooooh cakes Deeba makes. Hey that rhymes!! It makes you want to eat them right from the pictures. She is an awesome photographer ( I would be blind to say otherwise ) and a great baker. There are some more recipes there that I am definitely going to try like Roasted Garlic Focaccia and  Kathci Biryani


Anyways, I was looking around for some simple yet different cake to bake for my husband's birthday. Google.....links......and blogs later, I came upon this zebra cake. Its a regular cake, just different looking! Perfect for S.... he likes the old fashioned home baked cakes. And the stripes would definitely interest my kids.

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Simple and delicious complete meal !!

Guilty pleasure.. what is that? I dont know and I dont care to know at the moment. Baked vegetable can't be guilty pleasure! It has all colors of vegetables full of vitamins and essential nutrients and cheese - excellent source of calcium, protein and phosphorus. Nope its just not that. And such an easy dinner to fix. 30 minutes from start to finish..now I am sounding like Rachel Ray !!

Today my meal consisted of vegetables in Béchamel sauce and scrumptious mushroom-spinach toast. What is this Béchamel sauce? .. you ask. Oh its just a fancy French name for white sauce....it just sounds way cooler. This sauce is made of  flour-butter roux. I can almost hear you... now what the heck is roux!!! Well another French name for flour cooked in butter. I tell you, these French cooks make even simple stuff sound so fancy and scrumptillious. Along with baked vegetable, I made mushroom-spinach cheesy toast that was a breeze to make. Simple yet delicious.  I'll get on with business now, I am sure you're itching to do it too.

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