Dal-chawal Cutlet

Moms are always in a quest to find out healthy and easy evening snacks for their kids, isn’t it? Neha mostly takes roti and sabzi for lunch, but she hardly gets to eat what she carries, as she says her food is always in great demand. I coax her to take 1 or 2 chapatis extra, but you know how rebellious a teenager can get 🙂 so by the time she reach home at 4 pm, she is quite famished and enjoys something hot and tasty. She doesn’t like to eat cookies much and neither is fond of any store bought junk snacks. So my kitchen is always devoid of such stuffs. So I end up giving her either a

sandwich made with home made bread ofcourse or some rava upma or sheera, noodles (once in a month or so), paniyaram, poha, bread upma (that’s her favourite) or rice on rare occasions especially on Saturday, when hubby is at home and I cook proper lunch. Otherwise most of the days I would have some left over from last night’s dinner or Neha’s lunch dabba.

Today afternoon, as I was scratching my head thinking of what to give her when she comes home and suddenly I remembered that I had some rice and moong dal left after yesterday’s dinner. Being a Friday, my vegetable tray was almost empty and I just had a capsicum, green chilies, few onions, potatoes and a tomato. Luckily I had a few tablespoon of dry bread crumbs and a small piece of WWF bread. I immediately set to work and within 15 minutes, these cutlets were ready with a yummy dip. I chose to grill these in a grill pan rather than deep frying them. She relished it (she likes anything homemade and enjoys it) and I could give a couple of these to hubby too when he came back from work. He muttered something like this not firm like aalu wala cutlet and so on. Then I gave a big talk on how healthy these were and how similar it was to an Italian recipe and blah blah ….. anyways, don’t they look yummy?

Ingredients:

• Cooked rice 1/2 cup
• Cooked dal 1/2 cup
• Salt to taste
• Oil 2 tbsp
• Capsicum 1
• Onion 1
• Green chilies 1-2
• Coriander leaves 2-3 sprigs
• Red chili powder 1/2 tsp
• Garam masala 1/2 tsp
• Grated cheese 2 tbsp
• Fresh bread crumbs 1/2 cup
• Dry bread crumbs 2 tbsp

Method:

• Heat oil in a kadhai and add the finely chopped onion and capsicum.
• Add salt, red chili powder and garam masala.
• Add the cooked rice and dal and mix well.

• Garnish with finely chopped coriander leaves and allow it to cool well.
• Add the grated cheese and the fresh bread crumbs and mix to form a dough. Add more bread crumbs if the mixture looks very watery.

• Keep the mixture in the refrigerator for few minutes.
• Make small lemon sized balls of the mixture and shaped it according to your taste.
• Coat it with dry bread crumbs and refrigerate for a while of you have time.

• Now either deep fry these or shallow fry them in a grill pan till it is golden on both sides.
• Serve it hot with any chutney or dip of your choice.

Notes:

• These are almost similar to Italian arancini where you use Risotto rice along with vegetables of your choice, stuff it with cheese and dip in bread crumbs and deep fry them in hot oil.
• This is a good way to finish off your left over rice and dal. Make sure your dal is not watery and if so, then cook the rice and dal mixture till the water evaporates.
• You can make this using left over khichdi too.
• You can also add finely chopped carrots, beans, boiled corn, boiled peas, finely chopped cauliflower, mushroom or any other vegetables of your choice.
• Instead of mixing the cheese into the dal-rice mixture, you can stuff the cheese and then fry them.
• You can use Italian herbs instead of our desi spices.
• I have made a quick dip with a tablespoon of hung curd, cream and tomato ketchup with a drizzle of Tabasco sauce.