Coconut-Beet Balls

Pre-Diwali weekend is lonely with hubby away for an extended business trip. "Cooking therapy" comes to the rescue to combat the loneliness! 

Here's a slight twist to the conventional "coconut laddoos". When you have a beet root sitting in your fridge, urging you to use it before it shrivels away, you cannot help but listen to its plea! And that's how it went into this laddoo recipe! 

The only addition is the first step of sautéing the beet in some ghee. The rest is your typical condensed milk laddoo recipe. The end result is prettier and yummier, the nutrients from the beet is a sweet bonus! 

Ingredients:

1 medium size beet-root grated in a food processor

3 cups dry unsweetened coconut+ 0.5 cup for rolling 

1 can of condensed milk

Half cup chopped mixed nuts

2-3 tsp ground cardamom 

1 tablespoon ghee

In a heavy bottom sauce pan, sauté the beet root in ghee on medium heat until it gets soft (about 5-10 minutes). Mix in the coconut and the condensed milk and cook on medium heat till the water from the beet evaporates and everything comes together nicely (about 15 minutes or less depending on the quantity). 

Turn off the heat and transfer the mixture in a separate bowl. Add the chopped nuts and cardamom and mix well. When cooler, roll into even sized laddoos and roll each laddoo in the coconut. Refrigerate and enjoy! 

Vegetable Cutlets with a healthy twist

Don't we all have a "love-hate" relationship with left-overs? They are life-savers for crazy weekdays, and yet you hear those complaining little voices go, "This again!!" I absolutely value left-overs because it's my hard work and precious time and ingredients. However, being a foodie myself, I like variety in my meals. A lot of my creations stem from left-overs. 

What could you cook up with a day old vegetable masala khichdi (made using brown rice instead of white) and Baingan Bhartha sitting in the fridge? Eureka! "Cutlets"! 

The only prep I had to do was boil and mash one medium size potato to mix with my existing left-overs. Here's the recipe-

Ingredients-

4-5 cups of masala vegetable khichdi

1.5 cups of Baingan bhartha

1 medium mashed potato

Aamchur powder to taste 

Chopped cilantro

1-2 tspoon canola oil to shallow fry

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl mashing along the way until it can be shaped into even cutlets. Put some oil on a heated griddle and shallow fry the cutlets on both sides until you see the nice golden-brown color. 

As you can see, I have used minimal spices in my recipe as my ingredients were adequately seasoned with onions, garlic, ginger, garam masala. Happy to share the recipe of the 2 main ingredients, just message me with a request. 

"Paties"/Cutlets are very dynamic because they can be served as an appetizer or eaten as a main course with green chutney/ketchup and a bowl of steaming vegetable soup like we did today. Alternately, they can be used to make sandwiches/burgers between 2 slices of buns/breads and green chutney/cheese or in a pita pocket in lieu of falafel balls. They freeze well in ziplock bags and come in handy after thawing and heating in the Toaster-oven-grill (microwaving will affect the texture). 

Happy cooking and happier eating, dear friends!