Healthy, Delicious and so much fun

I have always been intrigued by the food blog events, and so decided to look up an interesting one for my first food blog challenge. Taste & Create, hosted by myamii of “For the Love of Food” is unique, and turned out to be tons of fun. Instead of coming up with a theme, myamii pairs you up with another blog. Then you need to pick up a recipe from your partner’s blog and re-create it.

My partner for the month is Joanna from Joanna’s Food. She creates yummy heart-friendly dishes with almost no processed foods or saturated fat. I was sorely tempted to try out one of her beautiful bread recipes. But yeast scares me. And so I settled on her favorite Mount Athos Chickpea Patties, part of the diet of the Mount Athos monks.

My recipe took much longer since, unlike Joanna, I started from dried chickpeas not tinned. Soaked them overnight, then boiled till soft. Blitzed the chickpeas in the blender with chopped onion, coriander, a couple of cloves of garlic and plain flour. I omitted the egg, and instead added a slice of wholewheat bread soaked in water plus salt and pepper. Mixed everything to make a dough, then shaped it into thin patties and fried it in olive oil.

The resultant patties had the feel of falafels so I decided to use my leftover pita bread for a sandwich. The green layer at the bottom is alfalfa. Then I added the patties, and a few cherry tomatoes. All of it topped by the traditional Indian topping for chickpea dishes : yogurt and tamarind chutney.

My one liner : Healthy, yet delicious - what more could you ask for!

Comments

Joanna said…

Good idea to leave out the egg - I'll try it next time I make these ... you're right, they're very much like a falafel

Joanna

March 14, 2008 at 7:29 PM

Biswajit said…

looks and sounds delicious...

March 16, 2008 at 12:34 AM

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o

Bombay Foodie

Search This Blog