Sunday 1 March 2015

Vegetable Cutlets

Shallow frying is good or bad for health, I still don't have a right answer.(P.S. Opinions required). I usually go for deep frying, but yesterday I decided to try out a starter that would be shallow fried. I came up with an idea of vegetable cutlets. A teaspoon of oil for each cutlet I fried. By the end I was like the amount of oil used is perhaps the same, in fact poor deep frying technique is blamed much more than it really deserved. Still as all say I too hope shallow frying is a better technique with confusions in my mind. It was Mr. S b'day the other day on February 27. I wanted to prepare a full course meal at home which included, veggie cutlets as starter, chinese noodles, pulav and raita as main course and a fruit custard as dessert. This vegetable cutlet was something I wanted to have here in blog, but these days I just can't afford to pay time here and hence a little less regular blogger. Having tried late night, couldn't do any photography as it calls for natural day light else needs flash and natural food color is just suppressed, hence yesterday I have tried it out yet again and I got a thumbs up from DH and well was blessed with good day light for my humble not so great food shoot. So some good free time, food styling and photography during the afternoon.

Still remember the days when my father who is a Govt. employee, transferred from one place to another and we poor kids had to learn languages of the states he would travel and live for 4-5 years. Thus not becoming master of one instead jack of all trades ;) Then we used to travel to native in trains and that means we all get a chance to eat cutlets. We all used to love it so much. Remember munching them with friends too when we had gone together for coaching for the technical exams to south Kerala. This is something which we don't get otherwise in any restaurants so easily as a starter. So all such cute memories flashed by as I prepared them. Moving to recipe.

Ingredients:
Potatoes-5 medium sized
Carrots-2 medium sized
Onions-1 finely chopped
Green chillies-5-6 finely chopped
Coriander powder-1 ½ tsp.
Red chilly powder- ¾ tsp.
Turmeric powder-½ tsp.
Aamchur powder/Raw mango powder-¼ tsp.
Cumin seeds-¾ tsp.
Salt to taste
Maida/All purpose flour- 1 tbsp.
Water as required( few tbsps. )
Bread crumbs-around 2 cups, or a plate full to roll on
Oil to shallow fry

Recipe:

  1. Steam cook the vegetables namely chopped carrots and whole potatoes.Peel the potatoes and along with chopped cooked carrots mash them and add salt to taste, coriander powder, red chilly powder and mix well.In a pan add a tsp. of oil and when hot add cumin seeds, as they splatter add chopped onions and saute well. 
  2. Followed by that add green chillies, turmeric powder and salt just enough for the onions.Add the mashed mixture of vegetables in previous step to it, raw mango powder and mix well so that the mixture is well cooked with all spices in it.
  3. Now take it off the heat and let it cool down completely.
  4. To prepare patties out of the cooled cooked mixture,take a small amount of the mixture in your palm.
  5. Shape them in the form of patties.
  6. Set them aside till you are ready with the next set of preparations.
  7. In another bowl add maida/all purpose flour, water and a little salt and prepare a thin condensed milk texture batter just enough to coat the patties.
  8. Dip the patties one by one in the batter.
  9. In a plate filled with bread crumbs, place the dipped patties.
  10. Coat them well on both sides with as much as required covering the patties entirely with the breadcrumbs. (I made use of store brought bread crumbs)
  11. Place a pan with a tsp. of oil to get heated.Shallow fry them one by one.
  12. Fry till they are light brown on both sides and have a fully cooked crisp outer covering.Enjoy them with ketchup or any chutney you would like.











Notes:

  1. You may use store brought bread crumbs or prepare them at home by roasting breads on both sides in oven and crushing them in a dry mixer to get bread crumbs.
  2. You may use many other veggies like cooked beetroots, beans, green peas and so on along with potatoes and carrots.


Enjoy the dish! n don't forget Eat and Eat little MORE.. :)

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