Palak Pakora and Pudina Chutney

It was a rainy day and wanted to eat garam garam (hot) pakoras and drink hot chai (tea). I was planning to make onion pakoras, but my husband suggested to try palak pakora. So I tried it out and it turned out to be mouth watering.

Palak Pakora

Ingredients
Palak (Spinach) - 2 cups
Gram flour
Onion - 1 small chopped into small pieces
Ajwain seeds (Carom seed)










Salt
Green Chillies - 4 chopped
Chat powder - (optional)
Coriander (Cilantro)- chopped
Oil for frying

Method:
Wash and chop spinach small. Mix all the ingredients except for Gram flour and oil. Add gram flour little by little till you are able to mix it like a paste. You can add water if required. Heat oil in a pan and deep fry the pakoras till light brown. Enjoy!

Pudina Chutney (Mint)
Ingredients:
Pudina - 1 bunch
Onion - 1/2 small
Green Chillies - 3
Ground Nut - 12 pieces
Tamarind - small piece or Pomogranate seeds (anardana) 1 spoon
Salt - as per taste
Sugar - 1 tsp

Method:
Mix all the above ingredient and grind it roughly by adding water as per the required consistency.

Tips:
1. Ajwain has lot of medicinal values. More
2. Pudina(Mint) is good for digestion and also serves as a mouth freshner

Vada Pav

On a rainy day, in a dull weather, you cannot go out and are stuck at home. One of the hot snacks, that comes to your mind is vada pav. I still remember those college days when we used to go to Joshi vade wale in front of Balgandharva, Pune, India. The mouth watering hot vada pavs was one of my favorites. In Atlanta, we miss all those small tapari's and the fun of going out and eating Indian food. My husband one day came home and said, feel like eating vada pav. So I thought why not give it a try. So with all my enthu started to search the net for the perfect recipe and ended up taking a mix of recipes on all the websites. It turned out to be yummy. I was successful in tangling his taste buds and he said "very close to what we used to have in Pune".

Ingredients
Potaotes - 4
Ginger - 1/2 inch
Garlic - 2-3 flakes
Green chilli - 5
Curry leaves - 10
Mustard seeds - 1/2 spoon
Turmeric powder (haldi) - 1 spoon
Salt
Besan (Gram flour) - 5 table spoon
Red chilli powder - 1/2 spoon
Chat masala - 1 tsp
Coriander leaves - 1/2 cup
Oil for frying
Pav or bread


Method:
1. Grind ginger, garlic and green chillies together into a paste.
2. Peel and mash boiled potatoes.
3. Add ginger-garlic-green chilies paste, coriander leaves, and salt to it.
4. Then take 1 teaspoon of oil in a kadai. Add mustard seeds. As soon as they start spluttering, add turmeric powder & curry leaves. Add the mashed potatoes & mix it properly.
5. Make small flat balls of this potato mixture by pressing in your palm.
6. Now add some salt & turmeric powder to the gram flour . Mix it together. Add some water to make a thick batter without any lumps.

7. Heat some oil in a pan. Dip the balls in gram flour and deep fry till golden brown. Fry some green chillies
8. Slit the Pav keeping the base intact & spread Garlic Chutney. Place the vada into it. Eat it with the fried green chillies mixed with salt.



Tips:
Garlic chutney or groundnut chutney is readily available in Indian stores. It can also be made at home. Add some sweet tamarind chutney to give it the sweet and spicy taste.