Taste & Create: Tandoori Tikkis

For this round of Taste & Create, I was paired up with Bharti of Veggie Foodist. Who would have thought? Me, a baker, paired with a vegetarian?!? Who has, by the way, very few sweet recipes on her blog. Thank you, Bharti, because you just did my hips a favor :) Not only that, there are a good half dozen desi recipes on her site! I've always been interested in trying different foods, but this gave me the perfect excuse. So, after meandering through her site a few times, I finally chose one - tandoori tikkis. It sounded like the sort of dinner that I'd love to throw together, with different flavors and some extra veggies snuck in for good measure. Ya know, it's a lot harder to sneak veggies into baked goods!


I only had a couple substitutions that I needed to make - I couldn't find paneer, and I was told that queso blanco would be an adequate one, so there's substitution number one. The second one was brought about by the fact that I didn't have tandoori masala or chaat masala in my cupboard. So I took a look at the ingredients in those spice mixes and winged it from what I had in my spice collection. Tasty? Yes. Accurate? Probably not. Third substitution was cooking method. Not that I'm too health conscious (take a look at all the baked goods on this site...), but I ran out of oil last night while making pizza. So I ended up broiling the little patties instead. I must admit, frying them in a pan with oil probably amps up the flavor factor here.


The verdict - yum! My entire apartment smells of fun and exotic (to me) spices. It was outside of my comfort zone, it was tasty, and I'm thinking that I can tweak this recipe quite a bit with equally tasty results. Thanks Bharti!

Tandoori Tikkis (from Veggie Foodist)
Ingredients

• 1 cup bulgur (fine cracked wheat as it's called in Indian store, Sindhis call it "bhat") soaked for an hour
• 1/2 cup grated or crumbled paneer
• 1/2 cup grated carrots
• 2 tablespoons minced onion
• 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro (coriander leaves)
• 1/2 lime squeezed
• 2 tablespoons tandoori masala
• 1 teaspoon chaat masala

2-3 tablespoons oil to fry the tikkis

Method
Drain the water from the bulgur and squeeze till all the water is drained. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Keep aside for 1/2 hour to let the bulgur absorb the juices.
Shape in to tikkis.
Heat 1-2 tablespoons oil in a shallow frying pan. Fry on both sides for a nice brown crust. Serve hot with mint yogurt raita and onion soaked in lime juice or vinegar. If you want to make a meal out of it, fill the pita pockets with the tikkis. Add the onions and mint yogurt and dig in.