Potato Cheese Balls

Potato and cheese together? What a heavenly combination it can be was the thought that came into my mind when I saw this recipe on some cookery show. I wanted to give it a try for a long time and got a chance to make it for potluck at VJ's office and it was one of the hit dishes that day. I had to make it in bulk, so did couple of trial runs and it turned out well all the times. Prajju loved this a lot, he calls them "kekako ball" :P. I have been teaching him to call it potato, he is still trying to pronounce it right. But I love the way he says kekako :-) .

Ingredients

Potato - 3
Cheese - 5 small cubes
Corn flour - 1 tbsp
Garlic cloves - 3, grated
Green chilli - 1 or 2, thinly sliced
Bread crumbs - 1/4 cup (bread crumbs made out of 2 breads)
Oil - 1 tsp for sauting
Oil for frying
salt, pepper powder as per taste

Yields 4 or 5 balls

Method

1. Boil and mash the potatoes. Set aside
2. Take the corn flour in a bowl, mix little water and form a thin batter out of it.
3. Heat oil in a pan, add the grated garlic and green chillies and saute for a minute. Then add the mashed potatoes, salt and pepper and give a stir. Turn off the stove. Allow to cool down a bit.
4. Divide the potato mixture into equal portion, take one ball and stuff it with a small piece of cheese in the center and cover from all sides. Roll them in between palms to get a ball shape. Do this for all the balls.
5. Now, take the cheese stuffed potato ball, dip in the corn batter and roll in the bread crumbs. Make sure it is well coated with the bread crumbs. Do this for all the balls.
6. Heat the oil for frying in a pan. Check if the oil is hot enough and then fry them until golden brown. The potato balls will not take much time to be fried. They will be done in seconds.  Drain in a paper towel and serve hot with tomato ketchup!!

 Tips

1. The corn flour batter should be very thin, if it is thick the outer layer will peel of while frying.
2. You may have to wash and dry your hands each time you feel the potatoes are sticky and if you don't get a perfect ball.
3. Make sure you do not break the bread crumbs coating when you turn the balls from side to side or else the potato and the cheese may ooze out of the ball.

Mixed Veg Raita

Ingredients

Curd - 1 cup
Onion - 1 (small sized)
Tomato - 1 (small sized)
Cucumber - 1
Capsicum - 1/2
Carrot - 1 (small sized)
Green chilli - 1, sliced thinly
Cumin powder - 1/4 tsp
Red Chilli powder - 1/4 tsp
Corriander leaves, mint leaves, curry leaves - few, finely chopped
Salt as per taste

Method

1. Beat or whisk the curd, add all the vegetables and salt.
2. Garnish with cumin powder, red chilli powder, corriander leaves, curry leaves and mint leaves. You can also stir in them along with the vegetables so that all the flavors get along well.
3. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

Chilli Parotta

Chilli Parotta is the best option to transform your frozen parotta's when you don't feel like making a better accompaniment for it. This is a very simple and easy dinner recipe. The actual way of preparing this dish in restaurants is to deep fry the parotta's and then to toss them along with the vegetables and sauce. I definitely not gonna deep fry or toss them. My way of preparing is to prepare the paratha in the tawa, cut them into pieces, prepare the sauce and then mix the parathas with this. Do not forget to serve this with any kind of raita or atleast curd for its spice level :-) Adding lime juice just before serving helps suppressing the spiciness too. Try this out and I am sure you will definitely like it!!

Ingredients

Parotta - 2 nos
Onion - 2, chopped
Tomato - 1, sliced finely
Capsicum - 1/2, chopped into thin strips
Garlic - 4 cloves, chopped
Green chillies - 3, slit lengthwise
Coriander leaves - 2 or 3 tbsp, chopped
Red chilli powder - 1 tsp
Coriander powder - 1/2 tsp
Garam masala - 1/2 tsp
Fennel seeds - 1.2 tsp
Chilli sauce/tomato sauce - 1 tbsp
Oil - 1 or 2 tbsp
Salt as pepr taste

Method
 
1.  Cook the parotta's until golden brown and cool down. I clicked these pictures when I prepared this  dish for a potluck. So I had used more than 2 parottas.











2.  Cut them or tear them into bite size pieces.

3.  Heat oil in a pan, add the fennel seeds once it splutters, add the garlic and onion and saute until it turns transparent. Then add the capsicum followed by tomatoes and coriander leaves saute in high flame for a minute. Usually they toss them in high flame to get the nice flavor. If you are not comfortable with tossing, just saute them in high flame.
4.  Lower the flame to minimum and add red chilli powder, coriander powder, garam masala, tomato sauce and the salt. Fry until the raw smell goes off. Add the sliced parotta pieces and mix well. Turn them evenly so that the masalas and the parottas mix together well.
5.  Add some more coriander leaves for garnish, switch off the flame, keep covered for few minutes allowing the flavors to blend together. Usually chilli parottas prepared at home tastes good only if we allow them to sit for few minutes giving them some time for all the flavors to blend together. Drizzle some lemon juice at the time of serving. Serve HOT with any raita!!

Note :

• You can add vegetables like cooked peas, grated carrots or grated cabbage along with this to make variations.
• If you don't want these parottas to be very spicy lessen the amount of chilli powder as per your taste
• You can also add some soya sauce and spring onions to this and give a chinese touch to this recipe
• You can also prepare chilli chapati following the same steps above except for replacing parotta with cooked chapati.

Mysore Pak

I was not a great fan of Mysore Pak. VJ loves them and he used to prepare it for any special occasion. As I am not a big fan of it I did not show much interested in learning the recipe. But when I happened to taste the Sri Krishna Sweets mysore pak, the smooth and soft, ghee flavored sweet started attracting me. When my interest on food started growing I wanted to give a try on mysore pak too. When I saw the quantity of ghee used, as usual my brain started warning me and I reduced the quantity a bit. The result was a hard and rock shaped mysore pak, but still it tasted in its own way. That's the lesson learnt. A soft and melt-in-your mouth mysore pak needs lots (loads) of ghee!! This Diwali, when I was thinking of preparing any sweets, my mom and sis asked for a mysore pak. Hence my second attempt was a no-compromise version. And yeah, now I got it right and perfect :-)

Mysore pak is an easy, yet tricky sweet to prepare. Conflicting right? Yes, that is how this sweet is. You have to be very cautious while preparing this. This sweet would get its perfect shape and taste in a matter of 10-15 seconds. If you miss that, you will end up with a hard and dry mysore pak. It's all about learning the correct techniques for a perfect mysore pak. I will try to list out every bit of my learning. Hope this will make your effort much easier.

Ingredients

Besan flour - 1 cup
Sugar - 1 1/2 cups
Water - 1/2 cup
Ghee - 1 cup + 2 tbsp

Method

1. Grease a plate or tray with ghee and keep aside.
2. Heat 2 tbsp ghee until smoky and mix this with the sifted flour. This helps to remove the raw taste of besan flour and gives a nice aroma. Mix the besan flour gently using a spoon so that the ghee spreads evenly across the flour. Now sift this and set aside. This helps avoiding any lumps while mixing the flour along with the sugar syrup.
3. Prepare the sugar syrup. In a wide bottomed pan, add sugar and 1/2 cup of water, boil on medium heat until one string consistency. That is, when you touch the syrup and stretch between your thumb and index finger, a string will be formed. Or place a drop of the syrup in a bowl containing cold water and the drop should be firm like a ball rather than getting dissolved. 
4. Now add the besan flour to the sugar syrup stirring continuously, mix until smooth, there should not be any lumps. Make sure the heat is medium at all times.
5. Start adding the ghee slowly using your left hand while you stir constantly with your right hand. Add one or two table spoon of ghee to the besan-sugar mixture, it sizzles, shows holes in the mixture and absorbs all of them. Now again add one or two tbsp of ghee and follow the same steps until you finish adding all the ghee. By this time, the besan will start leaving the sides, will start changing color, a nice aroma will be coming and will be a frothy mixture with lot of holes.
6. At this point immediately turn off the flame and transfer the mixture to the greased tray, wait until warm and cut into desired shape. Allow to cool down completely before transfering to its container. 

Tips

• Always keep the flame in medium for the right consistency.
• One string consistency is a must, if you add the besan mixture before one string is formed mysore pak will be like halwa.
• Stirring constantly is very important or the besan-sugar mixture will get a burnt smell.
• Turn off the flame only when the color changes and it starts leaving the sides. Even if you turn off the flame few seconds before it is done, mysore pak will be sticky and you will not be able to make pieces out of it.
• Make this sweet only when you find sufficient time. You cannot do any parallel works while preparing this sweet as you need both your hands for adding the ghee and stirring continuously.