Aloo Rasedar

This is a dish that my husband has always praised. It used to be served at his college, and so has always been associated with good memories. However, I wasn’t very familiar with UP cuisine, and wasn’t able to search this recipe out. Recently though, my husband came by the name, and I was finally able to re-create this dish!

Aloo Rasedar

This is a typically UP dish, and does not use onion or garlic. It makes a great side to parathas or puris, and is easily prepared.

Ingredients

• 4 medium potatoes/aloo
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 1 inch ginger, finely chopped
• 2 tsp turmeric powder
• ½ tsp red chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin/jeera
• 1 tsp coriander powder/dhania powder
• 1 tsp dry mango powder/amchur powder (optional)
• ½ tsp garam masala powder
• 1 tsp salt

Method:

• Peel and boil the potatoes till they are very well cooked and can be easily crumbled.
• In a wok, heat some oil and add the jeera and dhania powder.
• add finely chopped ginger and saute for a half a minute on low flame.
• Add the chopped tomatoes, chilli powder, turmeric and braise till the tomatoes are completely cooked and mashed.
• Mash some of the potatoes and add along with salt and mix well.
• add water and braise till it reaches the consistency you want. The gravy will come from the mashed potatoes and tomato mix.
• Here you can add dry mango powder/amchur powder and garam masala. Keep braising till the gravy comes together.
• Add chopped coriander leaves for garnishing.

This gravy is best served hot. Since it doesn’t really take very long, its a perfect breakfast/dinner dish.

Aloo Bajji with Green Chillies

The credit for this dish goes to my mother-in-law on her recent visit to our house for Dussera.

As part of their usual ritual of getting us all the lovely vegetables available in Andhra, and not so easily available in Bangalore, they got us some lovely green chillies ideal for bajjis. Unknown to everyone, I’d managed to procure some myself on a recent visit to Chikpet. SO it was mirchi overload at home! 🙂

On mahaNavami, part of the menu included vadas. But the DH and I had earmarked that particular dish for VijayaDasami. So it was aloo bajji that became a part of the menu.

Owing to the excess of mirchis at home, my ma-in-law decided to use that as the base for the batter, instead of the usual red chilli powder. The result was quite interesting!!!

Ingredients:

• For the Batter:

• 1/2 cup besan
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 8-10 bajji mirchis
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of cooking soda

• 2 large potatoes, peeled
• oil for deep frying

Method:

• Grind the chillies to a fine paste.
• Mix all the batter ingredients and add water till it becomes a thick batter, thick enough to coat the potatoe slices. Make sure there are no lumps in the batter.
• Using a slicer,cut the potatoes into fine slices
• heat oil in a deep wok for deep frying
• Dip the slices of potatoes into the batter and drop into the hot oil. The bajji will puff up a bit if the batter is mixed right.

Serve hot! The green chillies in the batter give a more subtle taste than the red chillies. So the final result will tease the senses with the taste without the spicy heat.

 

Vegetable Tikki

This was an experiment we tried today at home. We’d made bread sandwiches for breakfast this morning using potato vegetable. But some of the vegetable got left over. We weren’t sure what to make of it. one option was to add tadka later in the evening to have with dosa.  This evening tiffin was supposed to be aloo tikkis. So ma-in-law and I decided to make our own version using the leftover vegetable.

Ingredients:

• Leftover aloo kura (https://teluguveggie.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/puri-aloo-kura/) without the lemon and tadka
• 1 cup maida (or as per amount of veg left). Approximately 1:1 ratio
• 1/2 tsp chilli powder
• additional boiled potatoes if needed
• Juice from 1 lemon
• Oil for frying

Method:

• Set a wok with the oil to heat. The oil should be enough for shallow frying, not deep-frying
• Mix all the ingredients while the oil is heating. That way it will stay dry, and become soggy.
• Make into smallish  balls and pat into neat shapes
• Lower slowly into the hot oil, and shallow-fry till brown-ed on both sides
• Take out and set on a tissue to wipe off excess oil

Serve hot with a nice cup of chai/coffee. 🙂