The Indian Food Court

Vegetable cutlet is one of those favorites. Its a snack not in the sense of filling your stomach as much as just fulfilling anyway – something you eat just because you like it. It can be prepared by combining curries with potato as the base. But better still to prepare it afresh for both taste and aroma. Somewhat time consuming to prepare – but well, here goes the recipe anyway.

What you need to have:

1. French Beans                      a few

2. Carrot                                 one

3. Beetroot                              half

4. Green peas                          1/4 cup

5. Potatoes                              2

(In all 2 cups Vegetables)

Vegetables for veg-cutlet

Ingredients for seasoniong:

1. Onions                                      2

2. Mustard                                    1 teaspoon

3. Cumin seeds                             1/2 teaspoon

4. Chilli powder                            1 teaspoon

5. Turmeric powder                      1/2 teaspoon

6. Garam masala powder             3/4 teaspoon

7. Green chilli                              2-3

8. Ginger                                     1/2″ piece

9. Garlic cloves                            4-5

10. Lemon juice                           1 teaspoon

11. Corriander leaves                   a handful

12. Bread crumbs                         4

13. Maida                                     2 teaspoons

Ingredients for seasoning

What you do with what you have:

1.Wash, peal and grate carrot, Beetroot and keep it seperately.  Grate beans and half of above specified quantity of peas together in the mixer as shown in the image below.

Grated & cooked vegetables

2. Wash, peal potato & cook with the remaining half of peas in the cooker .(it is shown in the image above)

3. Peal and cut onions very fine as shown in the image above and keep it aside.  Cut Green chilli, Ginger, Corriander leaves and also peal garlic cloves and cut it very fine and keep aside.

4. Place a wide thick bottomed bowl on the flame with 5 teaspoons of cooking oil in it.  On heating add mustard seeds.  On sputtering add finely chopped ginger, garlic, cumin seeds, turmeric powder, chilli powder & garam masala powder to it.

5. Add finely chopped onions and required quantity of salt to it . Allow it to fry till it turns transparent on a medium flame.

6. When done add grated mixture of french beans and green peas to it and let it cook for about 5 minutes  in the open pan.

7. Now add grated carrot, beetroot and lastly mix the cooked potato and green peas to it. Powder 2 bread crumbs and mix it to the vegetable mixture.  Also mix finely chopped Corriander leaves. Add a spoon of lemon juice and stir it well.  Allow the mixture to cool.  Make vegetable Patties of required shape as shown in the image below.

Vegetable  mixture patties

8. Prepare a solution with maida and water of a semi liquid like to dip the vegetable patties so that it bounds well to dust it in the bread crub powder later.  Below is the image showing both the the patty dipped in maida solution in the middle & the other four are dusted in the bread crumb powder.

Veg patties dipped & dusted in bread crumbs powder

9. Place a griddle on the flame with 5-6 teaspoons of cooking oil in it.  On heating simmer  the flame and place the dusted patties and cook on medium flame till the bottom turns light brown. Flip and fry the other side by adding cooking oil on the sides of  it. Fry till it turns light brown as shown in the image below.  Enjoy with Tomato sauce & Onion chutney.

Ready to serve Veg cutlet with Onion chutney & Tomato sauce

How long it takes: 90 minutes

Number of servings: 15

What to remember

1. The reason to cook half of the peas only in the cooker is that it enhances the taste of the dish.

2. Some people dip the veg patties in egg instead of the maida solution.

3. Always shallow frying the cutlets is better than deep frying not just from health point of view (deep frying consumes lot more oil) but also can become soggy on cooling.

4. It could be a party dish if the veg mix is prepared in advance and pushed in the refregerator and later on can be either shallow fried or deep fried however convinient.