Leftover Dal Tikki

Happy Vinayaka Chaturthi everyone!  Strangely I have the TV and remote all to myself and I am flitting from one cinema climax to the next and I am loving it. Strangely there are so many good movies on today and not “Singam” or “Singaravelan”. 

Sorry, that was last week when I sat down to write this. I loved “Yaam Irruke Bayame”. It was hilarious. “Endrendrum Punnagai” was good too.

I’ve been sitting on these Leftover Dal Tikkis, an absolutely cracking puff pastry recipe, my first really well decorated red rosette cake and a whole lot of stories but haven’t been able to sit down to it.

I don’t want to open the fridge these days. It is scary. Yesterday’s rice, last week’s lemon rice, alpha, beta 1 and beta 2 versions of the same coriander chutney, assorted slices of cakes, extra frosting, light fresh rasam, concentrated rasam, multiple loaves of bread, huge dabbas of dosai maavu (dosai batter), one hardened chappathi dough ball that’ll make exactly one chappathi..


.. multiple blocks of butter, the half tin of cherries (from the fantastic blackforest cake), multiple bags of lindt chocolates (we hoard lindt chocolates) and Hershey’s kisses stare me in the face (We’re out of eggs though). And I can’t find a place for my little bowl of dal.

I told you about Joint families. We’ll have multiple versions of everything but never enough eggs.

Some repurposing was in order. I wasn’t going to throw out my favourite dal. I re-arranged, switched smaller dabbas for a few bigger dabbas and managed to squeeze the dal into the fridge.

We were going the have leftover dal tikkis the next day (but I made up the recipe as I went along). I first cooked the dal down to a thickish consistency, adding in powdered oats, some fresh green peas and spice powders, drizzling in some oil now and then to help along and reducing it to a dough almost. I then shaped it into tikkis, rolled in bread crumbs and shallow fried in butter and oil.

I didn’t have to find a place for the dal tikkis in the fridge that night. The tikkis were gone. Success!

Next alpha, beta 1 and beta 2 chutnies..

Prep time: 10 mins
Cooking time: 15 mins
Makes: 10-12 tikkis

Ingredients

Any leftover Dal – 1 cup
Green peas – ½ cup
Oats – 4 tbsp powdered
Red chilli powder – ½ tsp
Garam Masala powder – ½ tsp
Salt to taste
Bread crumbs – ½ cup
Butter/Oil  – for shallow frying

Method

1. Empty the cooked and mashed lentils/dal into a pan and cook on low heat till it thickens to a sticky dough/halwa kind of consistency. Add the powdered oats to help the thickening. Throw in the green peas and the spice powders. Taste and adjust seasoning.
2. Keep stirring to avoid the dal sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add a teaspoon or two of oil if it is too sticky. Once the dal reaches the dough consistency, remove from fire. Let cool.
3. When warm enough to handle, pinch lemon sized balls of the dal mixture and flatten to a tikka shape.
4. Heat a tawa or pan and slide in a few chunks of butter or drizzle some oil for shallow frying. Roll tikkis in breadcrumbs and place tikkis on pan. Once the underside is browned, flip over and cook the other side till nice and golden. Shallow fry the rest of the tikkis similarly. Serve hot with ketchup.