Our favorite snack Samosas

"The most popular"  snack of India is definitely samosa and also considers as oily/unhealthy too. But ofcourse that does not stop us from eating samosas. I still remember when I was living in delhi with my husband , we used to have lot of samosas. Every evening while returning back from office I used to buy four samosas , two for each , to have with our late evening tea. And the result obviously started showing on us with increase in weight, some unnecessary health issues etc etc. And then we stopped eating samosas totally.  Recently I saw a home-made samosa post of a friend in an online food forum where I am a member also, I just could not stop my temptation. Made almost 3 batches of samosas. The husband and my girl loved it a lot. Home-made samosas are definitely higher in rank of health and hygiene. I made few with potato onion stuffing , few with peas/matar stuffing and few with chocolate stuffing. CHocolate stuffing ones were the girl's top favourite. That was actually an idea I got from Chef Shipra's show in foodfood channel. Undoubtedly a great one. Moreover that was a baked version so no guilt of having excessive oil etc

Try these samosas in your kitchen to have as your evening snacks or as breakfast too.

Below ingredients measurements should give you approx. 12-14 samosa. So out of this I made samosas with the three different stuffing as mentioned.

Ingredients:

Maida/All purpose flour: 1/2cup
Whole wheat flour: 1/2 cup
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Baking powder : A pinch
Black cumin seed/shahi jeera: 1/2 tsp
Refined oil/ghee: 1 tbsp
Sufficient water to make a soft dough

For the filling:

Potato filling
Potato: 1 medium sized peeled, boiled and mashed roughly
Onion: 1 small sized chopped
Green chillies: 1-2 chopped
Coriander powder: 1/2 tsp
Chat Masala: 1 tsp
Cumin powder: 1/2 tsp
salt to taste

 

For the peas filling ,
Peas (store bought pack): 1/2 cup soak the peas overnight and pressure cook till soft
Onion: 1 small sized chopped
Green chillies: 1-2 chopped
Coriander powder: 1/2 tsp
Chat Masala: 1 tsp
Cumin powder: 1/2 tsp
Salt to taste

Chocolate filling:

Any dark chocolate of your choice: 1/2 cup roughly chopped
Sufficient quantity of honey for the glaze
Pistachio: 3-4 chopped finely to garnish

Refined oil : 2 tbsp. for preparing the stuffings and required amount of oil for deep frying the samosas

Method:

Make a soft dough with the APF, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, shahi jeera, oil/ghee and sufficient amount of water and let the dough to rest for 5-10 minutes.

for the potato stuffing:
In a kadhai/pan, heat oil . Add the onion and fry till translucent. add the chopped green chillies, salt of the dry masala and the mashed potatoes. Combine them well and fry for about a minute or two and put off the flame and allow this to cool.

For peas stuffing: same method as used for the potato filling above.

With the prepared dough, take out small portions and make balls out of them. Roll these balls to small sized round pooris and cut with a knife through the center of the rolled out poori.

 

with a brush or with your finger tips, on the straight edge of the sliced poori, apply some water and give the basic shape of the samosa as shown in the picture below. Now join the two ends bringing the watered edge on top of the plain edge as shown in pic below. Press the edges well, so that they get sealed. It will now look like a cone. Make sure that the edges should be joined very well so that the stuffing does not come out while frying

.

Now stuff the prepared samosa cone with your fillings of either potato/peas or the chocolate. Seal the edges by pressing with your fingers . I gave a detailing by pressing the edges with a fork. Repeat the same method for rest of the balls.

Heat oil in a deep kadhai/pan . Fry the samosas on both the sides till its golden brown in colour in low flame. Remove from oil and keep them in a tissue paper so that the extra oil can be soaked up.


For the baked version:

Preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius. Grease the baking tray with some oil/ghee. Place the samosas on the baking tray and brush some oil on the samosas. Now bake them at 180 degree Celsius for about 15-20 minutes or till you get a brown crust on the samosas. Take them out of the oven and allow them to cool down on the cooling rack. Arrange them in a plate. Take some honey in a small bowl, dip a brush into the honey and apply that on the samosas. Now sprinkle the chopped pistachios on top of them and they are ready to be served. Don't miss the sight of melting chocolates coming out of the samosa.

Serve hot with tomato ketchup/tamarind chutney/coriander chutney and enjoy with your evening tea. Chocolate stuff samosas you can have with your tea/coffee. Your kids will definitely going to love this sweet version of samosas.

 

My first ever experience with gorgeous Red velvet cupcake with cream frosting

How beautiful the red velvet cake is !! I love the rich chocolate-flavour, sponginess  of the cake & its distinctive reddish colour. . As the husband's birthday is coming so this time I don't want to order a cake from outside. So tried this last night on a trial basis hence went for 5 cupcakes instead of a whole cake. It came out pretty well as expected. Baking is super fun for me and specially with  the frosting /icing stuff.. just love doing that.  This time with the cup cakes I could not do the layering with frosting part which of course a basic original red velvet cake should have but planning to do  that for his birthday cake.

This one is not my recipe of course. I referred this link http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/southern-red-velvet-cake-recipe.html. but had made some minor variations in case of quantities of ingredients. One more thing I dropped is the cream cheese. Some how I find the cream cheese very heavy and don't like the taste. So I used only cream for the frosting part.

Ingredients:
For the cake:

All purpose flour/Maida: 1 cup
Powdered sugar: 1/2 cup
Eggs: 2
Baking powder: 1/2 tsp
Baking soda: 1/2 tsp
pinch of salt
Cocoa powder: 1 tsp
Buttermilk: 3-4 tbsp.
Vegetable oil: 5-6 tbsp.
Vanilla Essence: 1 tsp
White vinegar: 1/2 tsp
Red food colour: 1/2 tsp (I used powdered one)

For Cream frosting:

Fresh Cream: 100 ml (I used amul cream only as I did not find any heavy cream nearby. But for frosting it is always better to use heavy cream)
Powdered sugar: 4 tbsp.
Butter: 2 tbsp. melted in room temperature
Vanilla Essence: 1 tsp

Method:

Preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius.

Sift the APF/maida, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat the egg and mix oil, buttermilk, vanilla essence, vinegar, food colour very well. Now into this fold the dry mixture of APF/maida until everything combines well and make a smooth batter.

Now pour the batter into the cup cake moulds. (I used silicon moulds hence no greasing was required). Keep the moulds on a baking tray and bake them at 180 degree Celsius for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick/fork comes out clean while inserted.

Let them cool in a wire rack and de-mould.

For the frosting:

In a bowl ,take the cream. Add sugar, butter  & vanilla essence . With the help of a balloon beater , mix them well with medium to high speed until they reach a little fluffy texture. This would take you about 10-12 minutes or so. I know its quite a task with the balloon beater, so if you have an electric blender/beater, nothing like that. Once it is ready, keep in the refrigerator till it is bit stiff.

Now put the cream in the piping bag and decorate your cup cakes with the frosting with different nozzles of the piping bag, top it with a cherry and enjoy.

If you are going for a whole cake, you can slice  the cake horizontally with a sharp knife into two halves and spread evenly the cream frosting on top of one half and place the other half above it. Again cover the top with the remaining cream frosting. Keep in the refrigerator for some time and then take out, slice and enjoy.

 

Healthy Bread Dahi Vada

I love dahi vada like many of you do. A popular Indian chat, prepared by soaking fried vadas in thick dahi. And whenever I get a chance to eat this delicious chaat, I never refuse to . But the hard-work required for making the vadas by soaking the dal overnight and then making the batter for the vadas is what makes me re-think every time I thought of making them at home. Then I saw this version of dahi vada made of bread first on a food channel and I found it super easy and super healthy too as there was no deep oil frying required here. Tried and tested in my kitchen yesterday when I wanted to have something spicy but keeping the calories in mind. Do check this very easy to assemble recipe and also try in your kitchen as evening snacks.

Ingredients:

Bread: 4 slices (I use brown bread. you can use white bread as well and quantity as per your servings)
Curd: 4-5 tbsp. add few drops of water and beat it. Add salt, cumin powder and mix
Tamarind chutney: 1 tbsp. (mine was home-made, you can always use store bought)
salt to taste
Chilli powder: 1/2 tsp (depends on your taste. I used 1/2 tsp as my home-made tamarind chutney was already spicy enough)
Cumin Powder: 1 tsp
Chat-Masala: 1 tsp
Fresh chopped coriander as required
Sufficient water to soak the bread slices

Direction:

Take water in a bowl and soak one bread and press them with your hands to squeeze the water and give ball shape out of it. If you want you can flatten the balls between the palms of your hands to give a circle shape or vada like shape. Repeat the same for rest of the slices.

Now arrange the vadas in a serving bowl and top with the beaten curd. Garnish with chilli powder, tamarind chutney, chat masala & chopped coriander.  Keep in the refrigerator and serve chill.

Is not  that so easy ? Yes it is this simple. Do give your feedback if you try this recipe.

Kathali Chapa or kordoi - a snack popular in Assam

A popular snack of Assam , this kathali chapa (looks like the flower champa) or kordoi pitha is a delicious one for sure . We prepare this specially during our festival bihu. Easy to prepare, crunchy , crispy snack to have with your hot cup of evening tea. This pitha/sweetmeat or snack is also called as kordoi pitha as it is made exactly like a star fruit , which in Assam is called kordoi.


Ingredients:

Flour/Maida: 1/2 cup
pinch of salt
Refine oil: 2 tbsp
Baking soda: 1/2 tsp.
water to make the dough
Refine oil for deep frying as required

Method:

Make a very soft dough with the flour, salt, refine oil, baking soda. Rest the dough for about 10 minutes.

Now divide the dough into equal portions and make small balls and roll out the with the rolling pin like we make pooris.

With a pointed knife make long slits as shown in the above picture. Take the puri and press the top and bottom with your fingers.

DO it for rest of the portions.

Heat oil in a kadhai/pan. Deep fry the kathali chapas/kordoi pithas 2-3 at a time till they turn out golden brown on both sides on low-medium flame. Repeat the same process for the rest and keep them on a tissue paper.

Your delicious & beautiful kathali chapa/kordoi pithas are ready to be served. This can be stored in air-tight containers for several days.