Wednesday, October 28, 2015

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!