Spicy dry baby potatoes (Allo Dum)

Spicy dry baby potatoes (Allo Dum)

All babies of all species look cute including baby potatoes. These are potatoes that farmers take out from the soil before they are fully matured. Apart from their small size, they are different from their bigger and fatter brothers. They are sweeter, have a smoother and softer texture when boiled, they boil more easily and once cooked can be eaten with their skin on. On the flip side, they get spoiled faster. Simply shrivels up and dries and then it is no fun to cook. Potatoes in any form tastes great. This is an easy to make recipe and will delight  everyone at any time of the day. 

Did the above charcoal sketch of the potatoes quickly before setting them for boiling. These potatoes boil real fast, one whistle in the pressure cooker on low flame and they are boiled to perfection.

For a meal for 4

Ingredients

½ Kg potatoes boiled and pealed

1 large onion, 4 pods of garlic, 1 medium size tomato and 1 inch long ginger to be made into paste

1 tea spoon tumeric

Bunch of coriander leaves

½ a lemon juice

2 green chillies chopped coarsely

1 tea spoon cumin seeds

2 table spoon roasted cumin powder

5 table spoon oil

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon of sugar

Method

I had boiled and peeled some baby potatoes last night. So it was simply putting together the ingredients to make this dish which I have named this dish spicy dry baby potatoes. Heat oil in a deep wok and the cumin seeds. Let it be nicely fried and then add in the tomato, ginger, garlic and onion paste and the turmeric powder. Keep stirring till the oil separates from the mixture. Add salt to taste and the sugar. Put in the baby potatoes and stir to coat the potatoes with the sauce mixture. Throw in the green chillies and the coraider leaves. Stir some more and add ½ a lemon juice and roasted cumin powder. The aroma and taste of roasted cumin powder adds extra flavor and taste to the dish. If you are in mood for some spicy snack, try this. Else, it is an excellent side dish to be had with rotis or plain rice and lentils.

Salad with beet root and beans

Yukti is just five, but she is very diligent when it comes to attending my art classes. Honestly, these classes were started with the selfish motive of trying to engage my almost three year old daughter and familiarize her with colors and shapes. In the process, I have now reconnected with the world of painting on a regular basis.

When I told them that I would require some beet root photographs for my post on beet root salad Yukti was the first to volunteer with her super cool beet root pastel. She will be overjoyed when I show her this post and I hope that it will spurt some healthy competition among the kids.

The salad actually is very simple and I intend to make it one day with the kids.

For 4 people

Ingredients:

2 beet root medium sized
About a dozen beans
some peas
200 gms yogurt
salt an chat malasa to taste




Method:

Beat the yougurt and add the salt and chat masala to it. Chop and boil the veggies and mix with the yogurt to have the healthy salad ready. I suggest you prepare it with your kids as they will love the colors.

Bonding over potato fritters

We were neighbours for two years residing on the same floor. When we met on the lift we would smile at each other. The lift doesn’t take too long to reach the ground floor from the third, so we never really went beyond a quick hello. Then one day Neha’s husband gave us sweets. He had just become a proud father of a beautiful baby girl and his happiness showed. How did I not notice that Neha was pregnant? Was I too wrapped up in my own joys of knowing about my pregnancy or was I just conforming to the city attitude-‘its none of my business’. Nonetheless, her daughter and, mine who arrived a year later did what we made no efforts to do- brought us close. Neha and I became friends.

We meet every evening when we taking our daughters outdoors to play. Together we share their daily activities, at times with despair and at others with joy, mostly laughing and celebrating life. And there is no life without food. In due course of time we befriended other neighbours with kids. Together we hosted many kiddie parties and had very good times. This blog post is about our recent pakora party. Pakoras, the Indian version of fritters is an all time most enjoyed snack by all age groups. However, there is something about torrential rains which makes one long for pakoras. Holed up in Neha’s house because of the rains, what better way to engage a bunch of hungry kids than putting plates of hot pakoras in front of them? Needless to say we all had a rocking time.

Ingredients for potato fritters

5 medium size potatoes chopped into thin slices

1 cup gram flour or besan

2 cups water

Red chilli powder ½ tea spoon

Salt to taste

Method

I watched Neha cut the potatoes into thin round slices.  Then she made a thin paste batter by mixing the gram flur with water. She mixed it thoroughly to remove any lumps and added salt to taste and the chilli powder. Next, she added the potato slices to this mixture and mix it well. All this time she had been heating the oil in a deep frying wok. When she felt that the oil was hot enough she dropped in a tiny drop of the batter. The acid test is, if the oil is hot enough then the batter will be cooked immediately and float up. Another tip, use your hand when you are making pakoras. I saw her dunk each of the pieces properly in the batter so that it is nicely coated and then gently release into oil one by one. And woh ho, soon the potato slices turn golden brown. After taking them out, she puts them on paper napkins to absorb the excess oil and barely manages to keep them away from greedy hands. The kids and adults were already reaching out. 

These are some bread slices coated in the same batter and fried the same way

happy faces!!