Skip to main content

Friday night munchies

By
Whether its a football game or a bollywood masala flick, an essential part of the experience is having the right finger foods to go with it. My idea of relaxing on a friday night is whipping up something other than the traditional  Indian fare & the favorites are usually something Mediterranean or Mexican..
The bad thing about nacho's the difficulty in controlling portions.. the smallest baking tray accomodates 1/2 a huge bag of chip & with the toppings... forget it. When combined with a childhood habit of 'not wasting food' you're pretty much doomed as far as watching your caloric intake for the next week!
 Baking individual portions in muffin pans makes for a visually pleasing hors  d'oeuvres, while retaining all the elements of the incomparable umami.& the interesting part... no deep fried chips!.
For those of you in India where the listed ingredients may not be available in the standard form, I've provided substitutes that do not alter the basic taste & flavors as far as possible.
Ingredients with *: recipes follows.
You need:
 6” Corn tortillas (ready made from your local supermarket)
Oil for brushing
1 can refried beans
1 can black beans drained & rinsed
sour cream or
finely diced lettuce & tomatoes
Salsa*
grated cheddar cheese or a mexican blend if available

Heat oven to 250 F.
Cut slits in the corn tortillas as as you would when making a pinwheel with paper.
Brush lightly with oil & place into the muffin tin cups with the flaps overlapping as in the picture.
Bake in a 250 F oven till crisp. (the rosette shape is a result of the baking) Set aside till you’re ready to make the dish.
Scoop a tsp each of refried beans, and black bean into the centre of the cups. Add jalapenos to taste.
top with grated cheese. bake in a 350 C oven till the cheese is melted & oozy. remove from oven,  top with lettuce tomatoes & sour cream. Serve with a generous bowl of Salsa on the side.

For the Salsa:
1/2 can of crushed tomatoes or 1 cup of fresh peeled chopped tomatoes
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
Salt to taste,
1/4 tsp red chilli powder
2-3 green chillies finely minced
1 cup loosely packed cilantro chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp cumin powdered
Add all the ingredients together  & mix well till  blended. Taste & adjust seasoning as per personal taste.

Refried beans may be substituted suitably by mashing up some prepared Rajma subzi well & heating it to a thickened consistency .
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear feedback from you, your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Popular posts from this blog

Sputtering back....

By
I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been
3 comments
Read more

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

By
 One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things  culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30  minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their
14 comments
Read more

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

By
T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon  (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats,  the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as
6 comments
Read more