Ingredients:
Dried Green Peas – 1/2 cup (soak in water overnight)
Cooking Oil – 1 tablespoon + deep frying
Green Chillis – 4
Onion – 1 large
Ginger, minced – 1 teaspoon
Capsicum, chopped – 1/2 cup
Spinach, washed and chopped – 8 cups
Mint Leaves, washed and chopped – 1/2 cup
Coriander Leaves, washed and chopped – 1/2 cup
Spice Powder – 2 teaspoons
Salt to taste
Boiled Potato – 2 medium sized
Bread Crumbs – 1/4 cup + 1/2 cup for dusting
Split Cashew Nuts – 30
Chaat Masala – 2 tablespoons
For Green Chutney: (or use this recipe if you do not have cream cheese/sour cream)
Fresh Mint Leaves, chopped – 1 cup
Coriander Leaves, chopped – 1 cup
Green Chillis – 2
Cream Cheese – 1/4 cup
Sour Cream – 2 tablespoons
Salt to taste
Lemon Juice – 2 teaspoons
Method:
Preparing Green Chutney:
- Blend chopped mint leaves, coriander leaves and green chilli along with salt into smooth paste. Do not add water.
- Add cream cheese and sour cream. Blend to combine well.
- Transfer into a serving bowl, add lemon juice, mix well.
- Refrigerate covered, until kebabs are ready.
Preparing Kababs:
- Pressure cook green peas.
- Shred green chillis.
- Chop onion.
- Peel and finely mash the potato.
- Cook chopped spinach with little water for 3-4 minutes. Strain out the water and keep the cooked leaves aside.
- Heat one tablespoon oil in a pan.
- Add shredded green chillis and minced ginger. Saute for a minute.
- Add chopped onion and saute until it turns translucent in color.
- Now add chopped capsicum and saute for 2-3 minutes.
- Add chopped mint leaves, coriander leaves, cooked spinach and cooked green peas. Do not add any water.
- Add spice powder and salt. the water content dries up completely from the greens. Make sure there is no trace of water at the bottom of the pan. This is very important as any water content left over will make the mixture very sticky.
- Turn off the heat, allow the greens to cool down completely.
- Blend the greens into a coarse paste. Do not add water.
- Transfer the blended mixture into a mixing bowl.
- Add mashed potato and 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs. Mix until well combined. Check the salt, add a little if required and mix well. The mixture look like that of a dough and you should be able to make one large smooth lump.
- Make small balls of this mixture, flatten each ball by pressing gently between your palms to form a thick disc.
- Place a split cashew nut in the centre of each disc.
- Deep fry the discs in oil. This gives uniform roasting on all sides. You could shallow fry instead or grill on charcoal for its best.
- Place the deep fried kababs on a tissue paper.
- Sprinkle little chaat masala on each kabab as soon as you remove them from oil.
- Serve hot with green chutney.
Note:
- You can shallow fry the kababs instead of deep frying.
- The best way to cook is to grill the kababs, preferably on charcoal.
- Since I deep fried, the outer color turns brown and little crunchy.
- Deep frying leaves a scum like layer of burnt breadcrumbs at the bottom of the pan which dissipates when kababs are immersed in oil. I filtered the oil a couple of times to avoid them sticking to the kababs.