Monday, February 19, 2007

Tuna-Potato Cutlets with Peanut-ginger sauce



My sister and I have very different food tastes. Shes an only-fish-eating-vegetarian and yours truly will try any animal- be it vegetarian or not ;) at least once. Barring starkly different diet preferences, pleading requests for our favorite school meal (our fifteen minute break around 11am can hardly be considered lunch), tuna-potato cutlets, were competitively fervent. We would eat this for dinner, in-school snack, after-school snack, lunch and then again dinner till all of it was gone! We might have even had them for breakfast, if our mom hadnt made a morning ritual of shoving eggs and corn flakes in HOT milk (YUCKY SHUDDER!) down our throat. There was no way we would trade these decadent pieces of kid heaven for pizza, cookies or ANYTHING, even if they did last till break.
Although, there are a zillion ways to appropriately dress a potato for Jihva, I couldnt think of a better recipe for my very first!

You will need:

For Cutlet:
3 potatoes (boiled/microwaved and peeled)
2 6oz cans solid tuna in water (drained)
1 onion chopped
4 green chillies chopped
2 tsp ginger-garlic paste
1 cup cilantro chopped
2 tsp of cumin seeds (powdered)
2 tsp of corriander seeds (powdered)
2 eggs (well beaten)
2 cups breadcrumbs
3/4 cup + 1 tbsp vegetable oil

For Peanut-ginger sauce:
2 tbsp unsalted, unbleached peanut butter
1/4 cup chopped ginger
3 red chillies
1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt (or to taste)

Method:

Peanut sauce:
Blend all ingredients together till mixture becomes pourable.

Cutlet:
In a medium sauce pan, fry tuna, onions and ginger-garlic paste in 1 tbsp of oil till golden brown. Add cumin and corriander powders. Add potatoes and mash into the tuna. Mix on heat for about 5 minutes. The potato-fish mixture should be of "workable" consistency, ie, you should be able to make homogenous balls that dont crumble. If the mixture seems a crumbly and like it wouldnt hold together, add water till it assumes appropriate consistency. Add cilantro, mix and cool mixture. Once the mixture is cool, make oblong (about 4 cm long and 3 cm wide) balls (cutlet) and press gently to slighly flatten. Dip each cutlet into beaten egg and cover with breadcrumbs. Shallow fry in remaning oil till golden brown. Serve warm with peanut ginger sauce

1 comment:

Vaishali said...

Thank you so much for your entry to Jihva, Veena.
Btw, eggs and cornflakes + milk every day???? My sympathies with you. :-)