I have always looked at meat balls in a sauce and wanted to create the same exact vegetarian or vegan version of it. So here goes:
Ingredients for the spinach balls:
1 cup of spinach finely chopped
1/2 cup potato cooked really well
Spices- turmeric, salt, cayenne, garam masala or curry powder, coriander and cumin seeds crushed-all 1/2 teaspoon
Rice flour- 1tablespoon
Oil for frying- any
Preparation:
Take a big bowl, add all your spices and mix well, add chopped up spinach and toss then throw in the well cooked potatoes and mix with your hands to make a dough. Let it rest in the fridge for a half hour. Once you take it out prior to frying them add 1 tablespoon of rice flour and mix well again. Rice flour gives you that golden brown surface.
Take a frying pan, add oil and you could either deep fry if you like it really golden brown or you could shallow fry and it still tastes delicious.
Ingredients for the Sauce:
Onions- 2 large chopped
1 tsp Ginger garlic paste or 1/2 inch of fresh ginger and 5 cloves of garlic
Green Chili- 2
Tomatoes- 4 diced
Oil
Salt to taste and 1 tsp of turmeric powder and curry powder
Preparation:
Place a pan under medium flame and saute ginger garlic in 1 tablespoon of oil and as soon as garlic starts to turn golden, throw in chopped onions, green chili’s and diced tomatoes along with the spices and salt and let it cook down with a lid to a pasty consistency. Blend this to a sauce with 1/4 cup water and cook for another 5 minutes until simmer and then transfer the spinach balls.
I belong to the Southern part of India and we make a lot of traditional dips otherwise popularly known as “Chutneys”
in the Indian food culture. One can play with this idea and make so many variations of chutneys once you have a basic understanding of making a chutney.
I have picked 3 of my best Chutneys for you—-
1) Coconut Chutney
Toast 1/2 cup of fresh or frozen but thawed coconut in a pan under medium flame with 1 teaspoon of coconut oil with chopped green chili, 2 teaspoon of roasted Bengal gram lentils and salt to taste. Blend in a food processor or blender to turn into a semi smooth paste.
Garnish with Cilantro, mustard seeds and curry leaves.
COCONUT CHUTNEY
2) Tomato Chutney
Take a pan under medium flame and add 1 teaspoon of coconut oil, 1 cup of chopped tomatoes, 1 teaspoon cumin seeds,
1 teaspoon of red cayenne/ chili powder, 1/2 inch of grated fresh ginger or paste, 3 garlic cloves finely chopped and sauté with 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric powder and salt to taste and blend to a fine paste. Garnish with mustard seeds and curry leaves.
TOMATO CHUTNEY
3) TRADITIONAL “THOGAYAL” OR LENTIL CHUTNEY WITH COCONUT
For this chutney, you need 2 teaspoons of Black gram lentils or Black Lentils – although its called black gram these lentils are white on the outside with black seed inside -its called ” Urad dal” in the Indian food culture. You also need 1 teaspoon of Split chickpeas which is yellow in color. Toast both these in a pan under low flame with a teaspoon of coconut oil. Add 1/2 cup of coconut- fresh or frozen grated thawed- and toast with salt and 2/3 fresh red chilis. If you don’t have fresh red chili substitute using cayenne powder. Throw all of this in a blender and grind with as little water as possible. I also add a small piece of fresh tamarind. If not available you can add a teaspoon of lemon juice for acidity. In my household growing up this was one chutney that was never garnished and was gobbled up before it got to the table:)
TRADITIONAL NAME “THOGAYAL” OR LENTIL COCONUT CHUTNEY
Please join me and the very talented Chef Marcus Repp of Landsdowne Resort by signing up for a Couple’s Cooking Class on February 10th at “The Great Room ” at
LANDSDOWNE RESORT
44050 Woodridge Parkway,
Leesburg, Virginia 20176
Please contact 703-729-8400 for more details.
Please sign on Event Brite. Cost: $15 (After Evenbrite fee, customer pays $17.89).
I wanted to invite everyone to my cooking demo @ Williams Sonoma at the Short Hills Mall, NJ on 10/28 from 2 to 5 pm. I am going to be showing you how to cook up some quick and healthy horderves in no time ! Also, I am going to be using the ATHENS MINI PHYLLO SHELLS! With the holiday season around the corner- you will be amazed as to how quickly you can come up with fancy horderves using Athens Mini Phyllo shells in no time and impress your guests!!!
http://www.athensfoods.com/
I wanted to thank everyone for making it to the event! I had a fantastic time cooking as always and I hope that all of you who came in had a great time tasting my food as well. I also promised a lot of people that I would post my recipe so please look up Savory Phyllo Shells with Onion Tomato Chutney, Goat Cheese and Cilantro under the Recipes section.
Initially Chef Laura Edwards had requested that I come early and start my demo at 12 pm and wrap up by 2pm due to the impending hurricane warning. But thanks to all of you who came by today- I was at the store cooking up my chutney and filling my fillo cups with chutney and goat cheese up until 4.00pm. I was forced to stop since I ran out of my most ingredients then:))) else would have loved to stay till store closing lol!
I am sure a lot of you were amazed to see how quickly you can come up with a tasty healthy yet delicious horderves using the ATHENS MINI PHYLLO SHELLS.
It took me less that 15 minutes to make the Savory Phyllo Shells with Onion Tomato Chutney, Goat Cheese and Cilantro and to be honest I had both kids and adults come back to pick more than one from my tray!!!!which I was very glad about.
What I noticed was that not many were aware that the ATHENS MINI PHYLLO SHELLS bake within 3 minutes into crispy light pockets of heaven. I guess all the kids that walked in today became huge fans of the phyllo shells and I had a lot of moms asking me where they can purchase them. I had an availability list printed out so everyone knows where to get them from and its available in the freezer aisle of most supermarkets.
Please email me @ curryliciousme@gmail.com if you cannot find it and I shall email you the availability list.
So here are some pictures from the event today. Hope you enjoy.
A lot of people were interested in taking some cooking lessons from me, some were interested in catering for parties , some in kids cooking classes and a lot of them were up for Girls Night Out Parties! So please email me @ curryliciousme@gmail.com and I can definitely work with you to organize any of these classes or parties at very reasonable costs!
Thanks much again to all !
Please tune in to my blog for future events and more recipes!
Have you heard of heaven on earth?????? This dish of mine exactly feels like “heaven on earth”. Growing up as a child, my “PAATI” (nana/grandma) struggled to make me and my brother to get to eat fruits!!!!!! So she used to make this dish and it would be gone in one second:) Just like that…..
Fortunately or unfortunately:) History repeats itself. So I make this yummylicious dish for my kids as a snack (and guess who shares their snack????)and they wipe the plate clean and I mean CLEAN!!! Please try this with your kids and let me know if it worked???and I PROMISE IT WILL:) You can also serve this as a dessert if you are entertaining. Add a scoop of COCONUT ICE CREAM on top and its out of the world!!!!!! Also, if you have not-so-ripe bananas this recipe will sweeten them up and is a great way to use them.
This is how I make it:
I chop up my bananas into thin mini slices and throw in a pan not too hot with a tad bit of clarified butter in it! Trust me guys, these are small cravings and my blog always screams out Moderation so a little doesnt hurt. You can also add olive oil and I add some brown sugar and let it caramelize on a low flame for about 10 minutes. You dont want to burn the sugar so keep the fame low.
And you have Heaven on a plate! I plate mine with some basil leaves and sweetened coconut flakes- Delish!!!! Enjoy!!!!
