Cashew-Pistachio Coated Sweet Potato-Paneer Sandwiches

Ahhhh! I know the name is a mouthful!! sorry about that :(
This recipe came about by sheer chance - We've made a habit now of having steamed sweet potato dinners - they are the best kind of carbs to eat and are touted to be the healthiest veggie. We LOVE it, luckily and I have been trying to get my little one to like it too - but she is too smart for just steamed, so my sweet hubby, who I have mentioned on several occasions is a fabulous cook too. He decided to cut the sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch rounds and roast them with the smallest amount of olive oil - He added a dash of curry powder and some salt and it tasted outtsight - I had made some paneer for her and after she'd eaten most of it, she said enough - I popped the sweet potato and the paneer in my mouth - Oh boy was the combo deadly! I decided I had to make that for the rest of us - and that's exactly what I did - In my zeal, I made more than I should've - so the next day, I improvised some more - added some spinach, lima beans all leftovers from the previous day- added a dash of sambar powder and that made for another excellent self-contained meal - I will blog it next - So please try it and let me know how you like this combo -

Prep time 30 making time 30
This includes steaming the sweet potatoes and coating them in the cashew pistachio,masala.

4-6 steamed sweet potatoes
a fistful of cashews and pistachios
2tbsp curry ma powder
salt and pepper
3 roasted red chilies

Preparation
Grind all these into a coarse-fine powder
Cut the sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch circles
Put them in the powder mic and press and roll the sides and flip over and press down again to fully coat them
In a shallow pan, spray some olive oil spray and roast until both sides are a happy golden crisp - Some of mine got a bit darker, but they were remarkably tasty even so.
In the same pan, roast the paneer - you have cut these into 1/2 inch cubes as well - once they are a nice brown, remove from pan - I added some salt and curry powder -

Serve hot.

Event Announcement

My blog is guest-hosting hosting Mharo Rajasthan's blog event - Veggie/Fruit a Month and the star veggie on my blog is the much touted (by me thanks to Dr Oz) and supposedly one of the healthiest vegetable - The Sweet Potato - or La Patate Douce or Chakravelli Kazhangu, Camote etc - If you have not cooked with this wonder veggie hitherto, please, this is your chance to give them a shot - here are some of my sweet potato recipes - Thank you Priya for giving me this wonderful opportunity to showcase my most favorite veggie :)

There are few rules of this event:

·              The chosen veggie or fruit has to be the STAR of the recipe.

·              It can be cooked in any way or can be in its raw form in the recipe. 

·              It can be any course of the meal (appetizer/main course/side dish/dessert/beverage or breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack).

·              Recipe has to be strict vegetarian (eggs are allowed). This is simply to re-enforce the fact that we can eat veggies without any meat and also for all our vegetarian friends, who do not eat meat.

·              You HAVE to make new recipes and old archived posts are not allowed. This is just so that we try and make new fresh recipes :)

·              Please send in your entries before end of March 31, 2012.

·              Link your post to the original event post along with the event announcement for that month.

·              You can choose any kind of fruit/veggie that is featured. Feel free to mention the variety if you know.

·              Always try to buy and use locally grown veggie and fruits :)
Please use linky below to enter your recipes

Please feel free to send any suggestions or feedback on the event or if you have any questions regarding any of the rules.


******REMINDER*******


Ongoing event "Cooking for Kids", A brain child of Kalyani -Sizzling Tastebuds - The ingredient - Sprouts- I have cooked 3 recipes I cannot wait to share! 
Do send your entries to both events


Look forward to your entries - send them along starting now ...:)

Avial

This is a traditional South Indian delicacy, largely influenced by Kerala cuisine, but well entrenched in Tamil Nadu as well - A festive dish Avial is made with slight differences from region to region, but for this blog hop, I got the perfect blog for the dish - Kaveri's Palakkad Chamayal - This is my post for Blog Hop Wednesday, a wonderful event started by Radhika of Tickling Palates

I have my own recipe for this as well, but I wanted to try out her method while incorporating some of my fav ingredients as well- For those who don't know Kaveri (unlikely) she has an amazing collection of authentic Kerala and Palakkad recipes which really appeal to me esp since coconut is a staple and I love using it in my preparations - Here is Kaveri's recipe

I am late posting this, but it is still wednesday :)
Serves - 6-8 people -1or 2 cups each
Ingredients:

Vegetables -  (some of the veggies she used are not available here)
1/2 - 1 cup each of snake gourd, carrots, chow chow (chayote Squash) yellow bottle gourds,
1 quart plain low fat yogurt
1-2 cups of thick buttermilk (depending on how much gravy you'd like - I am not a thick avial person so I use buttermilk to thin it down)
4-5 green chilies
1/2 cup grated coconut
1/4 tsp Turmeric
1 tsp Cumin
1/4 cup crushed cilantro
1tbsp coconut oil

Before adding yogurt

After adding yogurt

Preparation
Steam or pressure cook the veggies with a 1 cup of water and the turmeric
Wet grind the coconut, green chilies,  cumin and cilantro
Pour ground paste into a saucepan and allow it to cook for few minutes - it will thicken
Now add the cooked veggies and the salt and let the mix come to boil
Switch stove off
In a separate bowl, lightly whip the yogurt and the buttermilk and keep
When the veggies in the sauce pan cool down, add the yogurt mix and bring both gravies and yogurt nicely together.
Add 1 tbsp coconut oil at the very end before serving.

Tadka or temper with curry leaves

Serve at room temp with dal rice and ghee with appalam on the side :)
NOTE: Avial almost always tastes even better the next day, so be sure to have some leftovers:)