Thousand Island Veggie Hot Dog (Low Calorie)

A lip smacking dish you can serve as a tea-time snacks, as an accompaniment to hot soup, as a starter or as a Sunday brunch.

Beginners can make it without any hassle.

This dish can also be prepared using cheese, to view that, please click here.

Makes: 6 hot dogs

Ingredients :

Cabbage (shredded) - 3 cups
Onions (finely chopped) - 2
Tomato (finely chopped) - 2
Fresh Corriander (finely chopped) - 2 tbsp
Dry Rosemary (crushed) - 1/2 tsp
Dry Parsley - 1/2 tsp
Chili flakes - 1/4 tsp (optional)
Salt - to taste
Thousand Island Dressing - 3 tbsp
Hot Dog Breads - 6
Melted low fat butter - for greasing hot dogs
Tomato Ketcup

Procedure :

1. In a big bowl, mix cabbage, onion, tomato, corriander, rosemary herb, dry parsley, chili flakes, salt and thousand island dressing. Chili flakes is optional because thousand island dressing is already very spicy, so if want to make your salad more spicy, you can add chili flakes, otherwise skip it.
(This salad is complete in itself and can be served as an accompaniment to lunch and dinner.)

Thousand Island salad

2. Using a knife, Cut the hot dog breads horizontally into half (but the two pieces should remain  attached to each other at the back of the hot dog bread) so that you can open it and put the stuffing.

slit the hot dog

3. Apply tomato ketchup on both the inner sides of the slit hot dog breads.

spread pizza topping

4. Divide the prepared salad into six portions and fill each portion into the hot dog breads.

fill the salad into hot dog breads

5. Brush melted low fat butter all over the outer surface of hot dog breads and bake it for 4 minutes at 250 degrees in a preheated oven on a low rack. The bread should turn red and crispy.

6. Garnish the baked hot dogs with tomato ketchup in a zigzag pattern using a squeezy bottle and serve them immedietly.

Lachcha Paratha

Ingredients : Whole wheat flour, Salt and water.

Preapare a regular dough as you would prepare for chapati.

You can also use maida for this recipe. Lachcha Parathas made with maida are much more soft and crisp than whole wheat flour. But whole wheat lachcha parathas are a healthy deal :)

Procedure :

Take the dough slightly bigger than the size of regular chapati.

Using a rolling pin, roll the ball shaped dough into a chapati.

Pour a few drops of refined oil/ghee over it.

Spread it all over.

Fold the chapati like a fan.

From one end start rolling it to make a circle.

Go on...

The final result should be this. Press the ends.

Dust it with flour.

Other side too.

Start rolling it with the rolling pin

Roll it till u make it to the size of chapati.

Now heat a non-stick tawa/griddle, cook it as we cook a regular paratha.

Serve immediately.

Tastes best with pineapple raita + paneer sabji/navratan korma/ methi matar malai and other such party recipes.

Chocolate Ganache/Truffle Cake

My husband loves chococlate, so for the midnight cake on his bday I decided to do the ganache cake to delight him. He was amazed.  He loved it!

To start with, first prepare the sponge in a heart shape microwave safe dish and set it aside to cool down on a wire rack.

For the recipe of the cake/sponge please click here.

Slice the cake horizontally into 3 layers.

Then I prepared my Ganache using : 1 tetra pack (200 ml) Amul low fat cream, 400 gm cooking chocolate.

Seperate the watery liquid from the cream and use only the thick cream. Cut the cooking chocolate slab into small chunks, put them in the cream and microwave it on 80% power till chocolate melts and yields a smooth shiny paste. This is ganache!

Now pour some soaking syrup on the bottom layer of the sponge and spread one-fourth of the ganache, then carefully place the middle layer, pour some soaking syrup and apply the ganache and then the top layer, pour the soaking syrup and apply ganache on the top and all the sides of the cake.

 Garnish the cake with grated chocolate and sprinklers. 

Tadaa... 

Tip : Microwave the cake wedge just before serving for 10 seconds, enhances the taste and texture many folds.

                         

Palak Pyaz Bhajia / Spinach Onion Fritters

Makes : 30 fritters
Preparation Time : 15 min
Cooking Time : 20 min

Ingredients :

Spinach (roughly chopped) - 4 cups
Onion (thinly sliced) - 1.25 cups
Salt - 3/4 tsp
Chat Masala - 1 tsp
Corriander powder (dhania powder) - 1.5 tsp
Carom Seeds (Ajwain) - 1/2 tsp
Chilli Powder - 1/4 tsp or 1 green chilli finely chopped
Gram Flour (Besan) - 3/4 cup

Procedure :

1. Wash spinach, onion and put in a colander/sieve to drain excess water.
2. Put them in a flat dish and mix all the remaining ingredients. No need to add any water if you wash the veggies just before adding the seasoning and besan, if you have washed it beforehand, then you may need to add 1-2 tsp of water, but make sure the mixture is wet, lumpy and thick. It should not be runny at all. It will look like this :

3. Divide the mixture into 30 equal portions and roll each portion into a round ball.
4. In a flat bottom kadai/wok, heat oil and deep fry these balls on medium flame, till they turn golden brown from all the sides. The deep-frying procedure should take a little longer then deep frying potato cutlets, otherwise you will find them uncooked from inside, so make sure the oil is medium hot and NOT very hot.

5. Palak kanda bhajji is ready to serve. Serve immediately with tomato ketchup or any chutney of your choice :)

Best Accompaniment : Hot Masala Tea

Tip :  You can add 1 tsp anardana (dry pomegranate seeds) in step 2 to enhance the flavour and taste.