Minty Taro Kebabs…and a small break

Hi Friends!

Last few days have been busy as we celebrated my son’s 10 birthday and we also had my parents visiting us. Now that my parents are off to London to spend time with their brand new  grandson I got busy to pack for our family vacation. Yes, I will be off from blogging for a while as we spend time in the now lush green mountains of Himalayas, in the extreme North of India, considered the paradise or swarg on earth.. Yes, you guys guessed it right I am going to Kashmir for a week.

I have been trying to finish things in the refrigerator and we had a huge batch of mangoes to finish. Mangoes, we are eating them religiously post lunch and dinner. S, kindly offered to cook complete meals while I completed other chores, so he made dosa for breakfast and  a bengali style cauliflower subzi for lunch. I was left with some paneer and colocasia to finish, with paneer I  made low oil parathas and with Colocasia/Taro I made the Kebabs….

I had never made kebabs with this earlier and it was quite an impromptu plan…but glad I made it because they are extremely delicious and made us feel that we had a royal treat. I also had some mint and cilantro to finish so they also went into the kebabs and gave an amazing flavour. I also used carom seeds which enhanced the flavour of the kebabs further. I would personally recommend that if you are trying these kebabs, do not ignore these seeds.

The kebabs have a nice crunch on the crust and are extremely succulent inside. Taro being sticky one has to be careful while making these as one tends to put more binders to reduce the stickiness but the real art of the making good kebabs is to have less binders, this helps in maintaining the succulence. This is how I have made it…

 

Ingredients (makes about 16)

about 500gms Taro/Colocasia/Arvi

1 tbsp chaat masala

1/2 tsp carom seeds

2-3 bread slices

2-3 tbsp corn starch

7-8 green chilies

5-6 garlic pods

a small piece ginger

4-5 tbsp cilantro

handful of mint

salt to taste

half cup semolina

oil for shallow frying

Method

Boil and peel the taro. Mash it on cooling

Grind together coarsely (I used my hand mixer) cilantro, mint, ginger and garlic.

Add this mix to the mashed taro. Also add the chaat masala, corn starch, carom seeds and mix together.

Feel the texture of the mix, based on that add soaked bread to it. I required about two slices. Remember, we do not have to make the bind too hard, it should be just moldable.

The mix will continue to stay sticky, do not worry, just wet your hands lightly and then use the mix.

Take a small portion with wet hand and flatten it into a small tikki.

Roll it in semolina and then shallow fry on medium flame till golden in colour from either side, remove it on a kitchen towel to remove the excess oil.

Serve it hot with curd based mint dip or tomato sauce. I served with tomato sauce as I was clearing my pantry but this will taste amazing with the mint dip.

See you all in about 8-10 days till then you all enjoy cooking and blogging. I will catch up with your posts once I am back.

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