“Non- Fried” FALAFEL

🥙 Non-fried FALAFELS from my Appe pan!

Is there anything that an ‘Appe pan’ cannot do???

Not really 😁  These non-fried protein rich falafels came out great in the Appe pan. We wrapped them in wraps along with salad, sliced onions, tomatoes and cilantro chutney for a delicious dinner 😋

🥙  Recipe: 

1) Grind the soaked chickpeas along with cilantro, garlic, green chilies and cumin. Use minimum water as needed. Squeeze some lemon juice and mix the falafel batter. Keep in refrigerator for 1 hour. Add salt and mix again. 

2) Heat the appe pan. Brush with oil. Add spoonful of the falafel mixture. Can add few drops of oil on the sides. Cover and cook on low-medium till golden brown. Flip the falafel and cook on the other side. 

3) Serve hot wrapped in pita/ wraps along with salad, sliced onions, tomatoes and sauce/ chutney of your choice. 

🔆 More falafel recipes : 

http://my-kitchens-aroma.blogspot.com/search/label/Edamame?m=0

 

CHANA SAAG (Chickpeas and Spinach Curry)

Mid-week health and mood booster ☺️😍

“CHANA SAAG”

🔅 Recipe: 

1) Pressure cook soaked chickpeas and keep aside. 

2) Purée spinach into thick paste along with garlic and with minimal water. 

3) Sauté finely chopped onion with oil and cumin. 

4) Add 1 tsp ghee and 2-3 tsp whole wheat flour to the sautéed onion mixture and sauté till slightly golden. 

5) Add Kitchen king Masala, Red chili powder, turmeric, ground black pepper and sauté for few seconds 

6) Add cooked chickpeas, salt and very little water. Cook for 2-3 mins

7) Add the spinach-garlic purée, 2% milk to adjust consistency, little sugar. Cook for 3-5 mins. 

🍀☘️ Fresh green tip: 

Do not overcook the spinach curry! The color should be retained fresh green. Do not cover tightly with a lid. Let the steam escape. Steaming longer turns the spinach color to dull/ brownish green. 

Serve hot along with Chapati/ Naan/ Rice and little ghee 😋

 

TilGul Poli / Gul Poli / Sweet Jaggery Flat Bread

 

Mission Gul Poli Accomplished!!! 

Traditional recipes can be intimidating. I had never tried making Gul Poli. The trips to India in December would always treat us with mom-made delicious Gul Poli as well as some packed for the journey back ...and so we never made it after coming back here in January. But this year is different. No travel to India and no mom-made Gul poli :(

So to statisfy the cravings and to take us back home to enjoy the super delicious Gul poli, decided to give it a try! Phone calls with mom and few friends provided some great tips and tricks to accomplish this mission succesfully 😊 To make things tad bit simpler, I used the Udipi Jaggery Powder instead of grating the Gul (Jaggery) to make the Poli. The Poli's came out great in terms of taste, texture and color. I could have rolled them out a bit thinner, but that was just me being novice. 

Recipe (This makes about 12 Gul Polis)

Dough:

3 Cups Whole wheat flour

1/4 cup Besan roasted till brown in 1 tsp ghee

3 tsp hot oil

Warm water

Sweet Filling:

2 Cups Udipi Jaggery Powder

1/2 cup Sesame seeds (white Til ) roasted till golden brown

1/2 cup Besan roasted till brown in 2 tsp ghee

2 tsp Cardamom powder

1/2 tsp Nutmeg powder

Method

Dough:

1) Roast the besan in ghee till golden brown. Let it cool. Mix the whole wheat flour, roasted besan and massage with hands till all besans crumbs are broken. Add hot oil. Mix. Add little warm water at a time and knead into a dough. Dough should be stiffer than chapati dough. Keep the dough covered with wet cloth for 1hr. After 1 hr, knead the dough again with oiled hands and make large marble sized 24 balls. Keep the dough balls covered with wet cloth till ready to use.

Sweet Filling:

1) Roast the besan in ghee till golden brown. Let it cool.

2) Powder the roasted sesame seeds. Add the roasted besan and Jaggery powder to the mixer and blend till well combined and the mixture starts to come together. Add the cardamom and nutmeg powder and mix.

3) With oiled hands divide and press the mixture into 12 equal sized balls. The oil in the sesame seeds and roasted besan should help with the binding.

4) Roll out 2 of the dough balls into small pooris. Sprinkle some flour on the roling board to avoid sticking. Place the sweet filling mixture ball in the center and gently press to break it and spread it to cover almost the entire poori, leaving little space on the sides.

5) Place the second poori on top to make a sandwich and gently press the poori with palm of your hands to make the jaggery mixture and dough stick together. Do not seal the sides.

6) Gently roll out the two pooris stuffed with the sweet filling into a poli with a rolling pin. Sprinkle some flour as necessary to avoid sticking. Remove the excess dough on the sides with a dough cutter. (Like the one used for Shankarpalis)

7) Warm a non-stick pan on low flame ( On  Scale of 1-10, 10 being the hottest, I kept the flame on 3 to roast the Gul Polis. Roast with little oil/ghee on both sides till golden brown. The Polis will be soft when you roast them due to the jaggery melting, but will become the correct texture on cooling.

8) Serve the Gul Polis warm/ room temperature with Ghee and Saffron milk.

TilGul Ghya Goad Bola!

Dark Chocolate and Almond Scones

 Holiday Baking is in full swing!! Every break/vacation,  I promise myself to create a new recipe and upload it on the blog site. This winter break it had to be something sweet, chocolatey, and baked for the Christmas holidays! 

So here are the dark chocolate and almond scones that we enjoyed baking together as a family today. They are perfect textured (the little ones did a great job of massaging the butter onto the flour to get the perfect crumbly 'scone' texture 😍) are mildly sweet, and have slight nuttiness from the almonds. 

Ingredients:

2 and 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour

3/4 cups Granulated sugar

1/2 cup thinly sliced almonds

1/2 cup dark chocolate Hershey's cocoa powder

1/2 cup heavy cream/ whole milk

2 and 1/2 tsp Baking powder

6 Tbsp Unsalted butter (very cold)

1 egg

1/4 tsp salt

2-4 (70% chocolate) squares for the top drizzle

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 375F.
2) In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, salt, cocoa powder, baking powder.
3) In a small cup, beat 1 egg. Keep aside 1 tsp ( for egg wash later). To the rest of the egg, add heavy cream/milk. Mix together.
4) Cut the cold butter into small pieces and combine with flour- sugar mixture. Use fingers to blend the butter into the flour. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs. ( Little pieces of butter should be still seen in the mixture). Add the sliced almonds.
5) Add the egg-cream mixture to the flour. Stir until combined. Do not over mix.

6) Knead the dough lightly on a floured surface. Make 3-4 large balls. Roll out each ball of dough or pat the dough into a circle. About 1 and 1/2 inches thick. Cut into 6 or 8 wedges like pizza.

7) Place the scones on a lightly greased baking sheet. Keep them apart. They will spread a little while baking.

8) Mix together 1 tsp egg and 1 tsp milk. Beat together. Brush onto the scones to get a 'shiny' appearance on baking.

9) Bake at 375F for 15 mins or until lightly browned.

10) Let them cool completely before taking them out from the baking sheet. 

11) Melt the chocolate squares and drizzle the melted chocolate onto the completely cooled scones. Store in an airtight container.

Enjoy the sweet crumbly Scones flavored with dark chocolate and textured with almonds😋 Happy Holidays!!!

Baby Red-potatoes and Pearl-onion Butter Masala

 

One of the items on my to-do list for this week's Fall break was to whip up a New recipe and write it up on the blog site (http://www.thesizzlingpan.com/). Mission accomplished! 😊 Made this super delicious creamy curry with 'Butter masala/Makhani sauce' and Red baby potatoes and tiny pearl onions. 

For quite sometime, I had wanted to make this curry with baby potatoes and pearl onions. I remember my mom making similar curry back in Pune when I was a kid, though she made it with different style of curry. This kind of creamy sauce works great for this curry and made an extra special lunch treat for everyone served along with Parathas and Ghee Jeera rice.

Recipe:

10-12 baby red potatoes, washed

1 cup pearl onions (I used frozen pearl onions)

Butter masala /Makhani sauce:

2 medium onions sliced

2 medium tomatoes chopped

3 cloves garlic

1tsp grated ginger

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tsp Ghee/ Butter

2 tsp MDH Shahi Paneer masala

1 tsp red chili powder

1 tsp sugar

Cumin, cinnamon stick, Big Elaichi, Kasoori Methi, salt, oil

1) Saute the sliced onion till golden with little oil, Add tomatoes and saute till cooked and slightly browned. When cooled, make into paste with little water, ginger and garlic.

2) Saute the above masala with cumin, cinnamon, elaichi, Shahi paneer masala, red chili powder for few mins till thick on some oil.  Add the milk and cream. Mix and cook further for few mins. Add salt, sugar and crushed kasoori methi. Finish by topping with ghee/ butter.

3) Pierce the baby potatoes on all sides with a knife. Put the baby potatoes in a microwave safe bowl with some water. Microwave for 3 mins to cook partially.

4) Saute the partially cooked potatoes with some oil/ butter. Add the pearl onions and saute gently (make sure they don't break)

5) Add the Butter masala/ Makhani sauce to these sauteed potatoes and pearl onions. Add little water/milk and boil for few mins till potatoes cook fully, but not mushy. Check with inserting a knife to check the 'done-ness' of the potatoes. Finish with more butter/ ghee and kasoori methi.

6) Serve hot along with Naan/ Chapati/Parathas and Ghee Jeera Rice. Enjoy! 😋

Designer Uttapams and Idlis

Designer Uttapams and Idlies 😛 dressed up in very warm summer flowery theme! 

Used Idli batter with 1/2 Brown rice and 1/2 Basmati Rice to make these. The vegetable designs made these look extra special and beautiful! 🍀🌻🌿🌸

1) Spray the Idli pan with oil spray. Or use 
Non stick pan for uttapams. 

2) Arrange the vegetables in Idli stand - I used carrots, cilantro, onion, tomatoes. Put batter on top of the vegetables for idlies. The batter needs to be little thick than usual and laddled carefully. Steam for 15-20 mins like usual. Remove the idlies carefully after completely cooled. 

3) For uttapams, place batter first, spread into thick uttapam. Then arrange the vegetables. Add few drops of oil on the sides. Cook covered till slightly brown on bottom side. 

 

Designer idlies and Uttapams are ready! 😍

••• Full Brown rice Idli/ Dosa recipe:
http://my-kitchens-aroma.blogspot.com/…/brown-rice-idlis-an…

Paneer and Zucchini Roll-ups

“Paneer-Zucchini Roll-ups”

These grilled roll-ups make a perfect summer appetizer...are amazingly delicious...and look stunning! 😋

Heighten your zucchini experience by bundling up either paneer or chicken in thin strips of zucchini and then grilling them on a grill or a skillet.

*** Paneer version:
1) Cut paneer into medium cubes. Marinate for 30 mins with a marinade of thick yogurt, Tikka masala powder, red chili powder, turmeric and salt. 

2) Make zucchini strips with veggie peeler

3) Wrap the marinated paneer cubes with zucchini strips and secure with a toothpick.
4) Grill on griddle/ skillet/ grill with oil spray - on horizontal surface and also vertically till slightly browned.

Serve hot along with lemon slices. 😋

*** Chicken Version:
http://my-kitchens-aroma.blogspot.com/2009/12/appetizers-chicken-zucchini-roll-ups.html?m=1