Saturday, April 5, 2008

Quali-fried Snack!




As a school kid evening snack was as important as lunch, breakfast or dinner. Rather they were of higher importance coz most of the time we never knew the snack for the day. And there is nothing like a great snack and tea at evening after a tiring day in school. Most of the time it would be carry over from breakfast like left over puttu resteamed with additional coconut grated …Else it would be second show running of the dosa or idli’s…Anyway we were not a big fan of those as we had more fascination for bakery items. Some times it would be the butter bun or the bakery bread that we called as Bormo bread…Till date I have no clue where we got that name from. Maybe it is just the name of a bakery or some silly names we created ourselves.

Talking of bread, reminds me another incident which happen in the early 90’s...It was my first trip to Bangalore or infact our first trip outside Kerala barring the Velankanni trips...A incident which my cousins untiringly make fun of me even today.

My dad’s wallet got stolen during a bus ride and we realized it when we got down somewhere near Utility Towers…We had planned the great Indian family shopping trip that night. I heard Dad telling Mom that he lost around 1000 bucks... Considering that those times I was not used to hearing that kind of princely figure and I was more familiar with 20 or 50 paisas or at the most 10 rupees, I assumed that the 1000 bucks was all that dad had. I mean the entire wealth/savings/investments/capital etc.etc. Dad had. I was flabbergasted and stunned and sad that night, that on the way back to our place a very emotionally choked me declared to Appa and Amma…

’Nammakku inniyum vela kurunjaa roti medichu jeevikaam’.

Remember I was dead serious when I told this and I don’t remember how they reacted to it...But this incident reached all my relatives and cousins…and once in a while when they see me or talk over phone they joke....’Hello Chekku…evide nammal vella kurunjaa roti medichaa jeevikunnei’. It has been probably 20 years since it happened and still!! ;-(

Coming back to evening snacks, the crowning glory would be the puffs, which would be eaten with such immaculate care. I used to finish the cover layers first leaving the last but one layer and the crunchy meat inside. Making sure that I elaborately showed and moved it around in my brother’s line of sight before enjoying it. And on special days or if Amma was not tired after work, we would have banana fry or sugians.I can keep telling about my fav evening snacks.

Well coming to the point the other day I was reminded of all these memories and suddenly it stuck me that it has been ages since I had a tea time snack desi style. For about a year and half it was just tea and maybe some chocolate buns / cakes or croissants. . I was getting real bored of them.

Last Saturday I thought of re-living a tea time snack moment...freshly cooked and Indian.
I opened the fridge and saw this huge cauliflower. It was just a week before we had a great laugh at home when my roomie bought cabbage thinking it was cauliflower. I asked him where are the florets…

He said in remarkable confidence...’those are inside…’

So I peeled one layer of cabbage leaves and asked him.

‘Now where??

That’s when he got suspicious but still quite sure…

‘You gotta take one more layer out…it might be there somewhere inside’

After the second layer I couldn’t bear not to laugh and had a good timing making fun of him abt that.

Cauliflower was a favorite vegetable of mine back home. It was not exactly coz of the taste. But coz it was rarely bought at home…I thought it was good because it was scarce.

So that Saturday afternoon I was inspired to make cauliflower pakodas to over come the years of fascination for that vegetable. And since I love the taste of fried onion, I thought lets make it a bilateral pakodas…So here it goes.

Cut the cauliflower into smaller florets and clean it.
Cook the florets in water along with a pinch of salt until they are like 70% cooked.
Drain out the water and keep the cauliflower aside.
Slice like 4-5 large onions, a dozen green chillies and add it to the cooked cauliflower.
Add two tea spoons of ginger garlic paste, 2 teaspoon red chilli powder, 1 teaspoon garam masala, sufficient salt and a bunch of curry leaves to it.
Mix the entire stuff allowing the masala to be coated evenly over the veggies.
After sometime add 1-2 cups of gram flour and a pinch of turmeric to it and mix everything with hand.
There is probably enough moisture from the cooked cauliflower to get a thick batter of the entire mix. Otherwise add more water but make sure the consistency is even and the masala’s evenly spread out. Add salt again if required..
Meanwhile pour oil in a frying vessel and allow it to heat up.
Take a small lump of the batter and drop it in the frying pan. Turn it around and fry evenly until it is golden brown.
Taste this sample vedikattu and add more spice if necessary to the remaining batter.
Now you can fry the rest of the mix pretty fast in set of 6-7 pakodas depending on the size of your pan.

This snack goes very well with the 4 o clock tea on a lazy Saturday evening and goes very well with a beer too…



And the chef had a hearty snack that weekend!! :-)

20 comments:

Dhanya said...

You sinned again n my mouth is already watering.. Next week my snack is this for sure :)

జేబి - JB said...

Translation for the sentences please!

silverine said...

vella kurunjaa roti"

So sweet! I lived in mortal fear of my dads wallet being stolen because I thought the same thing i.e he carried all he had in it. It never happened even though he kept it in his back pocket and has walked up and down pocket adi zones in Blr :)

I have tried this recipe...got it from a friend! Came out really well.

mathew said...

@Dhanya
oh am feeling like sanjeev kapoor..hahaha..but seriously this snack is good..Hope it comes better than what I made.

@JB
’Nammakku inniyum vela kurunjaa roti medichu jeevikaam’ means 'We will now survive our life forward with cheap roti's'..sort of loses the meaning when translated..

thanks for dropping by.

@Anju
After that stealing episode my Mom although she lived in Bangalore in her younger years seems to have a cut down to size image of the city…Everytime I visit Bangalore it is often accompanied with a Wallet sooksichonam warning.

And thanks for endorsing the pakodas…its quite easy to make isn’t…

జేబి - JB said...

thanks for the essence. My mother tongue is Telugu. So, I can understand a little bit.

Seema said...

LOL i cant stop laughing at that searching for the cauliflower florets inside the cabbage...ghosh u guys must have enjoyed that!
The stuff looks yummmmm :)
Ithu oru innovation aanu nu aanoe paranju vannathu ;)

VIDYA said...

:o u ACTUALLY looked for caulfilower inside cabbage???

yummmmyyy pakoda!

Deepti said...

That looks nice!!! So any TV offers?( to host cookery shows!!)

Nanditha Prabhu said...

Chekku! that was a nice one....
i remember sitting in class room and dreaming of what amma would have cooked for evening snacks...
any ways , u need to be applauded for trying out all this....eeee sideleekku valla sthala maattam undooo....? so that we can visit for these evening snacks...:)

anN-series said...

hello hello....this 'gobee fry' was a standard at all those bachelor parties of uncles where we as children wud sneek into the 'drinking room', pick up snacks(fried sausage, mini cutlets too) and scoot....
i remember evening snacks rather it was dinner for us at 5pm! we wud eat and then rush out to play...those were the days!...and bakery bread is one of THE things to die for in kerala..i hvnt found bread taste that good even in bread eating nations!!!...

emlric eroth said...

haha! mistaking vegetables-i relate to very well.
Also,since i'm partly unemployed at the moment,vella kuranja roti it is...!!
;)

xtremely_insane said...

mmmmm....looks good...very good...

Preeti Shenoy said...

Yum yum--i just had dinner and am drooling.I make cauliflower bhajjas often too--recipe is slightly diff from yours.
BTW, you got me thinking about those delicious egg puff and veg puff from Best bakery in ernakulam.The guy used to bring it in a cart that he pedaled all around the town, around 3:30--4:00.Used to wait for it when i went to visit my folks.
and what a sensitive kid you were--that incident really moved me.

Anonymous said...

The pakodas look great! Wanted to ask you the translation for the punch line.Just read it here.Good one.Doesnt look like you will live down that incident soon :)

mathew said...

@Seema
Oh I still make fun of him when I get the chance…you should have seen the embarrassed expression when he realized it was not a cauliflower..and this is a innovation.no on has made a cauli-onion pakoda..hehehe…there is only cauli pakoda or a onion pakoda!!! ;-D

@Vidya
NOT ME!! My roomie..

@Deepti
Let the kids get a chance..phew.. ;-P

@Nanditha
Oh if I ever come to USA ..I would be attacking the house of those excellent food bloggers..;-D
I too used to think about the evening snacks at school..

@Ann
No veg starters at our parties..hmmph.. ;-D
Yeah bingo with bread…I like the one we get home than the French ones..

@Dipika
High fives..vella kurinjaa roti association is formed here.. ;-D

@xtreme
Danke ..danke..

@PS
Best bakery in kottayam is where I have been to..and they simply rock..!!

@Homecooked
Thanks a lot..that is great to hear from a proper cuisine blogger.. :-)

Mishmash ! said...

’Nammakku inniyum vela kurunjaa roti medichu jeevikaam’ so sweet of u !! So u were a 'nice guy ' from childhood itself, huh ? :)

And ur roomie and cabbage episode.....heightssss :))

Btw, for the time being I will take this golden beauties but once ur amma comes, we need authentic kottayam achayan-achayathi recipes :)

Shn

Anphy said...

the post reminds me of a snack(sum kind of pakoda,i was too small to remember) my appachan used to make and which he had very aptly named as "injeem venam" for very obvious reasons :D

Oye Bubbly... said...

looks really yummy.. my mom always used to make a huge variety of them. Now i'm really hungry sitting in office watching such yummy pakodas :)

mathew said...

@Mishmash
hahaha..I was simply worried of existence back then..
and yeah..am actually trying to experiment my recipes on my parents..;-P

@Anphy
heheh..nice name for that..
and thought my favourite tea time snack would still be banana fry!

@Oye bubby
thanks for droppin by..Do try this out at home..I think it aint that bad after all..;-P

നിലാവ് said...

Tried this pakoda yesterday evening...and my husband said "thanks to Mathew" as he ate. He was so sure that I got the recipe from your blog!! :)