Mung dal bites – Healthful Indian snacks

I have been sporadic in posting on this blog this past month. That is because I have been planning my sojourn to India, packing and arriving first at New Delhi and then at Chennai. I have many interesting stories to relate, but I first need to get this off my chest: Indian restaurants and eateries have exploded in numbers in both the cities I am visiting. There are all kinds of eating joints: small roadside carts (with dubious hygiene, so please avoid if you visit India), small restaurants (again, eat at your own risk), medium sized ones (a definite yes, you may find a gem), large, opulent, Maharajah style restaurants complete with turbaned waiters running to fulfill your every command, starched lily white tablecloths and napkins, wonderfully cooked meals, fabulous menus….India has become a gourmet delight in all respects.

Leaving aside all those eating places, my vote for the best eating place is at the place I am staying while in Chennai. It is at a home of a friend who has a full-time cook. The cook is a young woman called Ammu, who keeps complete control of the household kitchen. She comes in each morning to whip up delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Ammu’s cooking has the guests and family members charging in unseemly haste to the dining table in eager anticipation of every meal. Every dish that she makes is a gourmet delicacy that leaves one feeling completely content, replete and prosperous.

In the next few posts I plan to post some of her recipes. Here is a recipe from Ammu – a very healthy snack made of ground and roasted Mung beans. This is very easy to make and is absolutely delicious. Try it – it stores well unrefrigerated for over a week and is a great snack for your school going child.

Here is what you need:
3.5 cups green Mung beans with skin (great if you can get Mung flour, otherwise, powder the beans as fine as possible in your blender)
3 tbsp brown rice flour
1.5 cups powdered sugar (white or brown, your preference)
Scant 1 cup Ghee or olive oil
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup raisins
7 cardomoms (remove peel and powder fine)
pinch salt

Here is how you make this:
Heat and pan and dry roast the Mung flour and rice flour for about 4-5 minutes. Remove from pan and cool. Heat the pan again and add 5 tbsp ghee or oil. Fry the cashews golden brown and drain on a kitchen towel. Now add the raisins in the same oil. Fry until golden brown and set aside. Cool the cashews and raisins. Chop the fried cashews into small bite-sized pieces. Cut fried raisins in half.

To the roasted Mung flour, add the powdered sugar, powdered cardomom, salt, fried raisins and cashews. Mix thoroughly.

Heat the rest of the ghee or oil in a pan until slightly warm. Pour in a little at the time in the flour mix. Mix and shape into small balls. Set aside. Add more oil or ghee as needed and make the Mung bites until all the flour is used up.

Makes 50-60 Mung bites. Store in a tightly closed container for upto a week.

Taboo fat

When my sisters and I were children, we used to love fried foods. Those were the days before we knew that fat was bad for us. We never felt guilty eating all those delicious fried stuff that Mom regularly made for us.

My mother just loves to cook and she just loves to fry. Ever since she moved to the US to live with me and my sisters, we keep on bugging her to use less oil and not frying anything. And she has been a real trooper about it. She had adapted wonderfully to our cooking styles of using very little oil, frying foods very rarely and still whipping up the most wonderful dishes.

Every once in a while though, she’ll succumb to her yearning for making fried foods by convincing my sons that since they are young, they need to enjoy fried foods before they grow older and have to watch their diets. So, whenever Mom visits, I’ll buy a 5 gallon jug of Canola oil from Costco. It usually lasts about 6 months and is used only for deep frying. Once Mom leaves to visit one of my sisters, the Canola oil will sit in my larder until I hit one of those days myself, when I want to gorge on fried food.

Yesterday was one of those days. It had snowed heavily the day before and the whole landscape was white. The trees dripped white snow, the lake was covered with snow and everything was sparkling in the bright sunlight. The great outdoors was lit up and dazzling. It was also far below freezing temperatures outside but the house was warm and toasty. Add a furry, lazy feline, begging to be stroked all the time, into the day and it made it just the perfect day for deeply satiating, hot, spicy, easy-to-make bread rolls. My son Karthik enthusiastically seconded the idea and I consoled myself that I was still being good by using whole wheat bread instead of white.

Here’s how I made the bread rolls -
For the filling:
2 medium potatoes (boiled and mashed with some lumps)
1 small onion (finely chopped)
1 green chili (finely chopped)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red chili powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp oil

Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds to the hot oil. When they crackle, add the chopped onions and green chili. Fry for a couple of minutes until the onion is brown. Now add the rest of the ingredients including the mashed potato and stir fry until the potato filling is brown and partly crisp.

For the rolls:
4 slices whole wheat bread (you can also use white, rye, multi grain or any other bread you like)

To make the rolls:

Heat enough oil to deep fry. Take water in a bowl and wet a slice of bread on both sides – just enough to be able to shape it. Be careful not to wet it too much because when you fry wet bread, it will soak up the oil. Now fill the center with potato and shape the roll into an oblong. Here is a picture of how a roll would look before it is fried.

Place in hot oil and fry until the roll is golden brown. Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel.  Each slice makes one roll.

Serve hot with tomato ketchup or any sauce.