“You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em”

Thursday, June 7, 2007

There's somethin' irresistabullish about 'em.
We grin and bear it 'cause the nights are long.
I hope that somethin' better comes along

I love summer! Its perfect weather right now and I am spending as much time on my balcony as possible. Yep you can catch me with a book or laptop and a glass of wine lounging on the papasan. Of course Bhatji is away during the weekdays and I have nothing but time. I am looking forward to the next few weekends….I am going to have lots of people visit me and I can’t wait!
So on to the foodie segment of my blog. This past Sunday when Bhatji was home…it was raining so we decided to eat at home. My mom had bought me some ready made puris from the Indian store and so we decided to enjoy a pani puri evening :o) Pani puris have several fillings depending on the different regions of India. But since we decided last minute we sorta made our own version of Pani puri fillings. I didn’t have to make puris so that was helpful.
Fillings for the Pani puri:
1) mashed potato with salt and pepper
2) a can of garbanzo beans
3) chopped onions (well I like it with onions :o)
4) Pani – jaljeera mixed in water

Ingredients for Tamarind Chutney:
6 tbl spns of Tamarind pulp
3 tbl spns of Jaggery/sugar
½ tsp of Red chilli powder
¼ tsp of Black pepper powder
1 tsp of Roasted cumin powder
1 ½ cups of Warm water
Salt to taste
To make:
Mix the tamarind pulp with the warm water and let it sit for about 10 mins. Add sugar, red chilli powder, black pepper powder, roasted cumin powder, and salt. Cook the tamarind mixture for 5 minutes on medium heat. Cool and serve.

Ingredients for Green chutney:
½ bunch ( 8 to 9 leaves) Mint Leaves
½ bunch of cilantro
4 cups of Cold Water
3 teaspoons Black pepper powder
3 teaspoons Salt
2 teaspoons Cumin powder
1 inch piece of Fresh Ginger
1 ½ tspns of Lemon juice
To make:
Wash the mint and cilantro leaves and grind all of the above ingredients in a blender with the cold water and serve.

Well Bhatji and I gobbled down as many puris as humanly possible. MMMHMM we love chaat and if I had it my way (and chaat was healthy) I would eat pani puris every day. Well since I am able to make the chutneys by myself, I guess we will be eating chaat more often :o) until the next blog, Happy Eating!

PS (The muppets song is dedicated to Bhatji hehe)