OVEN E NARKOL KISHMISH DIYE PAURUTI ALOOR SNACKER

Today is "BhaiPhota". Among us, on this day, we pray for our brother's health, peace, prosperity and long life. Be it a younger brother or the elder, it is the sister's pleasure to wish him or them with all her / their heart and buy some gifts for them. A plateful of sweets is a must in offer, besides meat & fish curries, luchi, polao. Its been ten long years, I have not given "phota" to my brother except in 2016, when they visited us on Kali Pujo & Bhai Phota.  It is an auspicious dot of a mixture of  red & white sandalwood, yogurt, eye kohl, ghee, rice grain to be put on the brother's forehead. I remember, how I used to prepare fresh kohl applying ghee / clarified butter on bel pata / wood apple leaves, held it on top of a burning diya / earthen lamp, the ghee would burn to get kohl.

My brother is not fond of sweets; I will not share a non-vegetarian recipe today. What to share then? I must share something that my entire family would love to have. For us, if it is not meat & fish; a SNACK works too good. An evening with TEA / COFFEE & VEGETARIAN OR NON-VEGETARIAN SNACKS works wonder. Such an evening always holds special in my life. I can prepare innumerable number of APPETISERS; each day one variety throughout my life and have them; I am not allowed to. But at least once a week FRIES & FRITTERS happen in our home. The son immensely loves TELEBHAJA, so does his mother; the father loves but keeps his health above his love for fried stuffs. Cristine says, "ma'am, so hot" but enjoys having. The fact my son is a single child does not mean  he will not be taken into the account in the family occasion; so here is a VEGETARIAN, HEALTHY, SNACK with POTATO, BREAD, RAISIN, COCONUT FLAKES, GREEN PEA, SWEET CORN, GREEN CHILLI, SPICES; just perfect for all my readers to have and treat their guests with. To avoid too much use of oil, I cooked it in MICROWAVE OVEN using only two tablespoon of oil. I named it OVEN E NARKOL KISHMISH DIYE PAURUTI ALOOR SNACKER.

It felt very satisfied doing it because it was done yesterday evening all by myself. It was a Sunday & Cristine's off day. We were watching "The Secret of the Saqqara Tomb" in Netflix, all of a sudden it felt I do not want curries, roti or rice for dinner. This idea popped up and by the time the high priest Wahtye's skull was in the hands of the rheumatologist, I was done with the prep work of the snackers to be made. It took an hour to do the preparation, then they slept in the refrigerator for over two hours. Thereafter, cooking them in the microwave, in grill mode was no big job! Then, one more movie Spartacus was going on but I did not watch it minutely, understood the reason for the downfall of the Roman Empire but. Besides the entertainment, this STARTER, OVEN E NARKOL KISHMISH DIYE PAURUTI ALOOR SNACKER caught our fancy. I also cooked some store bought chicken karage to go alongside. 

Except the hot salsa sauce, the rest of the sauces are me made; did you check my recipe of AAM SHORSHE KANCHALANKAR CHUTNEY, a no cook sauce made of mango, green chilli, black mustard? By the way, get this BREAD & POTATO snack RECIPE enlisted in your to do MENU list.

INGREDIENTS :

BREAD : 6-8 SLICE [I USED WHOLEMEAL]

POTATO : 3 MEDIUM SIZED

SWEET CORN KERNEL : 1 TBSP

GREEN PEA : 2 TBSP

RAISIN : 11/2 TSP

COCONUT FLAKE : 11/2 TBSP

CHOPPED GREEN CHILLI : 2 TSP

RED CHILLI POWDER : 1TSP

CUMIN POWDER : 1 TSP

CORIANDER POWDER : 1 TSP

DRY MANGO POWDER : 1 TSP

TURMERIC POWDER : 1/2 TSP

SUGAR : 2 TSP [BENGALIS WILL NEED THIS]

CHILLI TOMATO SAUCE : 2 TBSP [THIS MOISTENS THE MIXTURE]

OIL : 2 TBSP

PROCEDURE :

I had ground the bread slices with my hand, fingers to be precise. This will take 6-7 minutes.

I had washed and pricked the potatoes with a fork, took them on a plate and microwaved at high for 5 minutes.

Once cool, I had peeled their skin.

I had soaked the green peas, sweet corn kernels, raisins for 10-15 minutes.

I had added all the above to the torn bread, mashed the boiled potato, added the coconut flakes to it. I had folded in well all of them roughly.

Then, I had added the oil, chopped green chillies, chilli-tomato sauces, salt & turmeric.

I had mashed the entire thing well and tasted a bit. My Bengali tongue wanted some sugar to be added and I did, mixed well. We eat brown sugar these days.

I had torn smaller portions from the mixture and smoothen in between palms to form coin likes.

I refrigerated them for over two hours. Can you see the plateful sitting on the watermelon?

I had greased an oven proof plate with few drops of oil and placed the snackers on it. Mine is a convection mode microwave; I had placed the wired high stool inside it and on top the plate.

I had cooked them in grill mode for 10-12 minutes.

I took the plate out, turned them over.

I had again put them back on the wired high stool, cooked in grill mode for 4-5 minutes. They should be done.

We must serve and have the OVEN E NARKOL KISHMISH DIYE PAURUTI ALOOR SNACKER hot with different kind of chutneys, achar, sauces.