Potato patty and Pita bread sandwich

I have been a bit lackadaisical in posting. There were too many things, in my mind and otherwise, which needed attention. Now, I felt, it is high time I posted at least a couple of more posts. The next few weeks will again be busy, but I will try to post at least one or two more. After all, I don't want to miss Sunshinemom's FIC (Food in colour) event being held at Aparna's My Diverse Kitchen this time and the colour being orange. I even know what I want to make for it. Just hope I get time for it.
Now to this sandwich. I made these sandwiches last year on two following days as a midday snack and ate them all on my own and how I enjoyed it. I still remember it clearly. (OK, I also made them for my family but don't rememebr much about it. LOL!). So, on seeing Bay Leaf's Bread Mania I serched though my pictures collection that it has become and found these sandwiches and here they are:


Ingredients:
1/2 Pita bread
2 potato patties*
2 slices of tomato
a few arugula leaves, or any other sald leaf of choice - washed and pat dried
a few tbsp coconut-groundnut chutney
salt and black pepper (or chilli pepper) to taste

Method:

• prepare the patties* and other ingredients
• cut the pita bread into half and loosen both sides by inserting a knife in the middle carefully
• brush with very little olive oil (or butter) on the both the outer sides and toast on a cast iron pan till they get nice brown spots on each sides
• arrange the sandwitch and eat with the chutney in the sandwich or separately, like I did
• Bon Appetit!

*To make potato patties I mashed boiled potatoes with sesame seeds, finely chopped onions, grated ginger and spices like roasted cumin powder, ground coriander seeds, black salt, salt and chilli powder. I made good sized round balls, flattened them down to make round shaped patties and roasted them in a frypan in little oil till both the sides were browned.

I would ideally like to give a more precise recipe, but this is all I can do right now and post my recipe finally.
So, here it comes, Sindhura, my Pita sandwich just for you! :)
Check the event details here at her blog Bayleaf.

Zucchini Bread

Last weekend I realised that I had a packet of fresh bakers yeast which waas getting old and I needed to use it to make something or I may have to throw it away. So, I decided to make something with Zucchini and since I also got to know about the World Day of Bread, I thought it fits perfectly.
And how perfect it fit...! The bread was just perfect, it rose perfect, it smelled perefect, it looked perfect (well... almost!), and it was a perfect dinner for us, which we -sunny boy, hubby and me - enjoyed with some butter and my home made tomato-apple-onion chutney, which I had made on the same day. Now my list of jams and chutneys which I want to post about is getting bigger, but somehow I am just not getting the time for it. But, I plan to do it this month for sure.


Now coming back to the bread, I used a recipe from the book I talk about a lot. These were just guidelines for making a bread with vegetables, but good enough for me to be able to make my own proportions and I was happy that it turned out good. And I must say that I had actually planned to make a whole wheat version, but when I started collecting the ingredients, I realised that I had no whole wheat flour anymore, but enough of type 1050 and 550. So, I thought " well....that's even better", as that was like a guarentee that the bread will rise well. But, I will try it out with whole wheat flour too.

Zucchini Bread

Recipe from "Backen Köstlich wie noch nie (GU)"

Baking temp. : 200 °C (180 °C Convection oven)
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Proofing time: about 2 hours in total
Baking time: 40-50 minutes**

Ingredients:

300 g wheat flour type 1050
200 g wheat flour type 550
1/2 cube (21 g) fresh yeast
1 tsp sugar
50 ml lukewarm water
200 g Zucchini, grated coarsely
1 tbsp coriander seeds, freshly ground
1 tsp cumin, freshly ground
1 level tsp salt
150 ml yoghurt or buttermilk


Method:

• Mix both the flour types in a deep bowl and make a deep well
• Add the sugar in the well and crumble the yeast over it and mix with sugar
• Wait for 3 -4 minutes before adding about 50 ml lukewarm water to the yeast
  
• Dissolve the yeast gently with the water, sprinkle with some flour
  
• Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and keep at a warm place for 15 minutes
• Add the remaining ingredients unless using buttermilk, add it slowly, and mix everything quickly and knead throughly
• When using buttermilk, add it in small portions while kneading the dough
  
• Make a round ball in the bowl, cover again with a kitchen towel
  
• Let it rise at a warm place for an hour or until the dough doubles in volume
• Punch it down and and knead it again throughly and place in a rectangular bread tin or simply over a baking tray
• Let it rise again for about 30 minutes
• make a few slanting cuts or one long cut on the bread surface
• brush with some olive oil
• Place in the preheated oven at 200°C (180 °C Convection) and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes**

** If the bread is baked in a bread tin, then bake for 50 minutes or
if put directly on the baking tray, for 35 - 40 minutes

As I already said, it was a delicious bread and we enjoyed eating this warm bread that evening fully and on the following days as well. And this is by far the best bread I have made so far. The crust was so good to bite into, which surely got the good flavour from the olive oil which I used quite generously on the bread. But, my journey with bread baking has just begun, which can only get more interesting. And I'm looking forward to some more experiments.

This is my entry to the event World Bread Day being hosted by Zorra of 1x Umrühren bitte.



Update: by mistake I had published the post yesterday itself while I wrote the post. So, if you were here just aroud that time and were wondering then I'm sorry for the confusion!

Wholewheat bread, another trial

...and it was the most successful one I have had so far. The bread was soft inside, just the way it should be, but the crust was a bit too hard. But, this was surely one time where the results, partly expected, were so good that you actually almost enjoyed the crust in the thinly sliced bread sandwitches I made, or when eaten with my home made jams. Yes, it was so thoroughly enjoyable.
It was partly expected, because I used equal amount of type 550 to the whole wheat unlike in my previous efforts, like here, any many others which I haven't posted here (waiting for the prefection to take place...!) where the amount of wholegrain flour or the type number was much higher.
But, still this was surely not bad at all. I just have to figure out how to prevent the crust from getting too hard. I think I baked it for too long. Or was it the temperature?....Or did I brush too much of milk on it?.... does that make the dough hard?....... No idea. But, next time I'll be more watchfull of the time I keep the bread in the oven. And the temperature too!
But, as I said, we enjoyed eating a healthy bread whose pleasure was added by the wonderful garnishings of jams, cheeses and once the corn-potato pattie -sandwitch which I made. The Rucola (Arugula in English) leaves and the red onion (not so matter-of-factly available here, but in season now) in the corn-potato patties sandwitch made it taste superb! Now, I'm sorry for not posting a picture of these, these were gobbled up so fast that I just didn't get theopportunity to take pictures. Infact, I was happy that at least I could take one picture with my home made jams, whose recipes I'll be posting soon.
Now, this recipe is actually a mixture of different recipes from my cookbook. Though I'm beginning to feel that I need to buy a good book on bread baking.
Ingredients:

Starter:
100 ml leuke warm water
1 packet (1 cube; 42 g) fresh yeast
1 tsp sugar

400 g whole wheat flour
400 g Type 550 flour
1 cup shredded flax seeds
2 tbsp salt (amount can also be reduced to make it not too salty)

400-650 ml leuke warm water
milk to brush the surface of bread once in the baking pan

Method:

• crumble the yeast in a bowl and mix with the sugar and add the water to it to mix gently and keep asie for 15 minutes.
• mix together the flours and flax in a deep bowl
• make a well and add the starter in the middle and adding small quantities of the remaining water knead to make a soft dough. Be careful not to addd too much especially at the end.
• Let it proof, covered, in a warm place (* see note below) untill it has almost become double the size - about 2 hours.
• Punch it down after that and divide into two portions and put one in a bread pan and with another just form a round or oval loaf on the baking try and let both the loafs proof (rise) again for 45 minutes
• Preheat oven to 220 °C (I did it with convection, therefore at 200°C), and bake the breads: the loaf in the pan for 50 minutes and the one on the tray for 35 to 40 minutes

I used my bread pan and one small pan which I bought for my son, as I prepared it with him together, and with the rest I made a round loaf. So, now you know why the bread slices on top look so small, as they are the ones from my son's pan. They looked really cute! And I finished off my breakfast with these cute and heavely slices of bread with two different mango pineapple jams (recipe will follow soon!)

*Note: For those living in cold climates, to let the dough rise at a "warm place "I usually switch on the oven at 50 °C, the minimum temperature possible, and switch it off after 10 minutes or so, before I put the dough inside. Cover the dough in the bowl with a kitchen towel.

Now this recipe goes to the WBB event: Grains in my Breakfast , an event initiated by Nandita of Saffron Trail and being hosted this month by Aparna at My Diverse Kitchen.

Puri Aloo: Indian fried bread with spicy potato curry

Puri Aloo. Just the name of it makes my mouth water. The memories of the lovely street food of Uttar Pradesh and many other places where we accompanied our parents on pilgrimages. The steaming hot puffed balls of puri and daal-katchauris, fried at many places in ghee, and the flavours of spicey mathwan aloo ki sabzi. Served with hot mixed- or mango pickes and Indian style onion, tomato and cucumber salad. What else can you ask for! It was total bliss for me and my sisters as children. We enjoyed these meals to the full. My mom made them at home too, though on occasions like some festivals which we always looked forward to, not only becaue of the food , but the food was always the big attraction!

It is summer time here and I had been wanting to fullfill my craving for fried Indian food, be it pakoras or puris before the summers are over. I have made pakoras already this summer and now it was time to make puris as well. As in the winters you can't open the windows like you can now and none of us at home like the fried and oily smell in the house, which is not healthy either. I had bought a bottle of sunflower oil just for this purpose and kept it aside, so that I can be spontaneous enough for frying. But, somehow my craving for it wasn't as big.
Not until I saw these beautiful puris on Jai and Bees Jugalbandi and the lovely combination with aloo bhaji , or mathwan aloo as I know them from my home. And the use of nigella seeds in the puri and the idea of kneading the urad daal into the dough was as great. Now, why spend hours filling the katchauri when it is that easy to make them so delicious. I knew, I had to make them that very day. I guess, had it not been for Zlamushka's monthy event, I would have probably never noticed this recipe.
Their recipe called for soaking the urad daal for some time, but I had no time for that, as it was already afternoon. But then, I remembered that my sister had told me about her making urd daal katchauris by grinding the skinned urd daal in her coffee mill which had turned out great. So, I had my solution to the problem.

So, here it goes, my version of the lovely recipe from Jugalbandi which I modified slightly as it was required and partly on a whim...

Ingredients:

Urd daal Puri:

1/2 cup skinned black gram, ground into a fine powder with a coffee mill /dry grinder
2 cups whole wheat flour or whole wheat atta ( I used whole wheat flour and whole grain missa atta* in the ratio 2/3 and 1/3)
1/5 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds, ground
1 tsp ajwain (as a replacement for nigella seeds, which I don't have right now and couldn't find them locally here)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 pinch red chilli powder
water

* whole grain Missa Atta: whole channa (with skin) and whole barley in rougly 2:1 proportions, My father got it grounded from the local mill right in front of him, got them double packed in small packets and gave them to me before we left India.

Method:

• mix all the ingredients for puri thoroughly
• add water slowly and knead into a stiff dough and keep aside for 20 to 30 minutes
  
• heat about 600 ml of oil in a wok or deep frying pan for frying the puris on high heat, reduce to about medium-high later, if required
  
• In the meantime make small round balls out of the dough
• flatten them with your fingertips using some oil and roll out round, uniform and thin puris with a rolling pin and using drops of oil when required on a clean and smooth surface
  
• deep fry in hot oil and take out with a skimmer and let drip on two layers of kitchen roll before serving
• Eat when still warm
• If made in advance, store in an airtight container and warm slightly before eating on a pan or in the microwave for a few seconds

How to get the puris right :

• If the oil is not hot enough, the puris will not puff up.
  
• To promote a uniform puffing of puris, keep the skimmer on top of the puri in oil as soon as it comes up on the surface, especially when using a ceramic or electric cooktop.
• turn it around as soon as it puffs up and take out after a few seconds
• if the oil is too hot the puris will become brown too fast
• here a video on making puris at about.com

Mathwan Aloo (Aloo Bhaji):

4-5 large potatoes, washed, scrubbed clean and boiled (I used a floury potato variety)
2 tbsp oil or ghee (I used both)
1 tsp ajwain (mustard seeds were then on my list of things to buy from the Indian shop)
1 large pinch crushed asafoetida
1 1/2 tbsp coriander seeds, ground
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds, ground
2 tbsp dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi)
1 inch (2 cm) piece ginger, scraped and grated
1/2 cup natural yoghurt (I used soya yoghurt)
1 pinch red chilli powder
1 tsp salt

Method:

• boil and peel the potatoes when still hot. Wash them once quickly in cold water before peeling them
• heat oil+ or ghee in a deep saucepan, add ajwain, it should immediately start spluttering (check if the oil is hot enough by first adding one seed into the oil), add asafoetida, ground fenugreek seeds, ground coriander seeds and grated ginger, stir to still they start smelling good (be quick and careful not to burn them!)
  
• add potatoes and crush them lightly with the wooden spoon or spatula and stir to coat them with the spices
• add the yoghurt and stir further
• add fenugreek, chilli powder, salt and water, and cook on low heat till the potatoes take the flavour of the spices
  
• serve with hot puris and as per choice with sides like achaar and chutneys

This was a lovely combination. The flavour of kasuri methi in the aloo gave it a very good "pepp", as we call it here - "liveliness" is one good translation. It was a good decision and the gentle flavour of methi seeds also added to the flavour. Now, this is something I have learned from my mom, who regularly used ground meethi seeds in daals.
Now, if I have a favorite Indian leafy vegetable then it is Fenugreek, methi as it is called in Hindi. And my liking for it has grown with time as it is imossible to get it here in any form except as Kasuri Methi (a variety of dried Fenugreek). Well, better than nothing. I stuffed myslef with Methi when I went to India this year. But I still crave for the flavour of fresh methi. Next year I plan to try out growing my own methi in my kitchen garden, but then that is another chapter of the book, as these summers are slowly coming to an end and the sun God has been playing games, or should I say peek-a-boo with us this time much too often.

So, I keep a good stock of Kasuri methi in my pantry. Lately I had been seeing the bottle every time I would open the door and realised that I hadn't used it since a while, but it was never the right moment to use it. But, thanks to the Fenugreek herb mania at Redchillies I read about a few days ago, it is on my mind all the time and I am discovering new ways to use dried Fenugreek and the seeds in many dishes, like here too.

So, this is my entry for Redchillies' Herb mania- Fenugreek!

And of course also to Zlamushka's monthly event Tried and Tasted where the blog of the month is none other than Jai and Bee's Jugalbandi.

Sesame Bread rolls

I felt like baking some brötchen after a long time for the weekend breakfast.
The last time they had not turned out so good. I had made them for the first time then,when I had tired a mixture of rye and wheat flours. They were too hard. Don't know what went wrong, but I had experimented with the recipe and made changes. Yes, just can't help it!
This time I tried another recipe which I felt should work better and wanted to be more careful with the changes.


Preparation time: 2 hours
Baking time: 25 minutes
Temp.: 220°C (195 °C Convection)

Ingredients:

300 g whole wheat flour
100 g wheat flour 1050
100 g whole rolled oats
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 packet (1 cube; 42 g) fresh yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/4 - 3/8 l Leukewarm water
35 g sesame seeds, roasted
20-30 g sesame seeds for outer covering on the buns

Method:

• Mix together all the flours, the rolled oats and salt in a bowl.
• Make a weell in the middle and add a little leukewarm water, sugar and crumbled yeat cube into it. Let stay for a 15 mniutes at a warm place (See remark below).
• Roast the sesame seeds and add to the flour in the bowl and knead it to bind the dough and keep aside at a warm place for an hour to rise, untill the volume of dough doubles.
• Knead the dough again, make 12 balls and roll it in a plate of sesame seeds or press them on each ball.
• Place on a baking try lined with baking paper or sprinkled with flour. Let it stay at a warm place for 15 minutes to rise before baking in the oven at 220°C (195° convection) for 25 minutes.
• Serve warm or store in an airtight container after they have cooled down.

And we did enjoy them, although I need to make some changes next time. Like I would let them rise for longer. The combination was good, but I don't know if I shoud take less whole wheat to make it rise more. As from what I know whole wheat makes it more stiff. I wonder how the bakerys make the whole wheat doughs rise, which are not hard at all. I guess, I need to do some web search on that.
Note:
For those living in cold climates, to let the dough rise at a "warm place "I usually switch on the oven at 50 °C, the minimum temperature possible, and switch it off after 10 minutes or so, before I put the dough inside. Cover the dough in the bowl with a kitchen towel.

Added to answer a query:
The wheat flour type numbers: I had been wanting to write something about the different wheat flour types indicated as numbers. Infact, the reason I delayed publishing the post was that I wanted to put this info here first, but then forgot it. The link is here. And that wheat flour type 1050 is not whole wheat but the best flour next to whole wheat and helps make the bread or brötchen (buns) rise better. Usually the whole wheat breads are not made exclusively of whole wheat but contain between 45 to 70% of whole wheat flour and the rest is other flours.
So, wheat flour 1050 represents the ash mass or mineral content of 1050 g in 100 kg burned wheat flour. The ash mass of whole wheat flour is 1600.

Banana sandwitch

In the afternood when my son is hungry, I like to give him half a banana (these South American ones are usually so huge that half is really enough), as it is a fruit, i.e., has vitamins and minerals, is sweet (a very important factor for my son!) and has calories too (important for the mom, as his weight is really on the margin). I may sound like one of those worrying mothers always complaining about how little their child eats, but just can't help it!
So, I find it a good thing for an afternoon snack.
Now that he was getting bored of eating a banana which I had already cut into slices for him. He asked for it himself, but then did not want to eat it once it was on the table. Hhhhhhmmm....
So, I had to think up of something, as always ending up eating away his leftovers is doing me no good (Need I explain?!). And this is how he enjoyed eating it, atleast half of it and then he was not hungry anymore, but that is OK! :
Whole wheat bread with a layer of a haselnut nougat creme (one famous brand is Nutella)
and banans over it.