Kojagiri Cutlets!

Hi everyone! Hope you enjoyed lots of Halloween candy and baked some sweet treats. I had been looking forward to this Halloween for days - mostly because it was our chance to finally meet the neighbors, which I'm happy we did. The whole parade of kids dressed up as princesses, ninjas, ghosts, transformers and what have you, was quite a lot of fun. Hubs and I put our beach chairs in front of the house and enjoyed giving out candy to happy kids (derived mostly through their gesture since I couldn't really see many of their faces) and talking to parents who worried whether their li'l ones said "thank you"! Our first holiday season in the new neighborhood as begun on a sweet Halloween candy note!



Anyway, to cut to the chase - cutlets! I made these fun snacks three days back for Kojagiri pournima (full moon night). I was hoping to post the recipe right away and get to my 100th post(!). Anyway...The story goes that Goddess Lakshmi roams the earth on this full moon night and asks "Ka: Jagarati" meaning "Who's awake" and  blesses those who observe night vigil with wealth and prosperity. People gather at night and enjoy flavored milk (masala doodh) and poha (flattened rice) after offering it to the beautiful full moon. In honor of this day, I made some tasty cutlets of poha. I remember my mom making these out of left-over Maharashtrian style kande-pohe (seasoned flattened rice). Poha is unusual to use in cutlets, but it works really well. It turns into almost rice-flour essentially, which helps in binding the cutlets and absorbing any flavors you add.  If you are making them out of kande-pohe, you already have the ginger, green chili, onion, cilantro etc. I mimicked the same flavors and made these out of plain poha. A fun snack you could make as starters for all the diwali parties you'll have lined up! These are great after-school snacks for kids as well. Of course, tone down the spiciness for them.

Poha Cutlets

Ingredients:

1 Large potato

1 1/2 Cups washed thick poha 

1/4 Medium onion - finely chopped

A few springs of cilantro - finely chopped

1 Inch ginger

2 Small green chilies

1 Teaspoon cumin-coriander powder

Salt to taste

Rava (semolina) for coating

Oil as needed. 

• Soak thick poha (don't use the thin variety) in some water and drain right away. Let it sit for 15 minutes. 
• Boil the potato until fork tender and peel. 
• Grind gingner, green chilies and cumin-coriander powder together. 
• Mix the soaked poha, potato, onion, cilantro, the space paste you made and salt and bind well until the potato and poha are mashed. Sprinkle some water if the mixture is too dry. 
• Make small flat patties and roll them in rava, pressing lightly. This will create a nice crunchy crust on the cutlets. 
• Heat a pan on medium-high flame and drizzle some oil. Pan fry the cutlets on each side until brown. 

The cutlets taste yummy with ketchup!