Aloo Tikki: Potato Cutlets

Aloo Tikki is a North Indian street food, prepared with mashed potatoes, some herbs and spices. It is a very popular snack found in Chaat stalls. It is usually served with tamarind sauce and coriander-mint sauce and also at times relished, topped with chick peas, yoghurt, onion, green chilly sauce, tamarind sauce, coriander-mint sauce and sev to make a complete Chaat.

Spicy Beetroot Cutlet

Who has been to the Indian Coffee House and not fallen in love with with their spicy, crunchy beetroot cutets. It is the only place I've been to that serves beetroot in almost all their vegetarian dishes and their beetroot cutlets are my favourite.

Egg Cutlet/ Spicy Egg Fritter

There are some recipes that you go back to again and again, simply because it is very simple. Some of these recipes come handy, when you have some unexpected visitors home for lunch or dinner, and you want to come up with a good spread on the table.

Vegetable Cutlet (Kerala Bakery-Style)

This is how I ended up preparing Kerala bakery-style vegetable cutlets at home.

We, my friends and I, threw a baby shower for two of our 'latest' mums-to-be two weeks back and decided on a potluck. I chose to make vegetable cutlet for entree` and roughly estimated that 5 cups of mixed vegetables and 1 1/2 cup of mashed potato should make me at least 25 vegetable cutlets. But it was only when I made the cutlet mix that I realised my estimates on mashed potato had gone terribly wrong and I didn't have any extra potatoes in the pantry. Battling with going ahead of making cutlets with the mixture I had at hand against running to the supermarket for potatoes and being late for the party, the vegetable cutlets that is so common in bakeries in Kerala came to my mind. Well, why not use their most important ingredient?...... Bread Crumbs...... It may not be perfect but that was the best choice I had.

Meat Cutlet

Celebrations in a Christian household in Kerala is never complete without the humble looking brown meat cutlets. Marriages, engagements, christenings, birthdays or even a gathering with friends - the meal always begins by nibbling on meat cutlets served either with Challas or tomato ketchup.

Origins for meat cutlets can be traced back to meat croquettes of the Western world. Westerners who came to Kerala for trade spread Christianity and also shared some of their recipes to the region. And our ancestors, from Kerala, added some spices found here, to add an "oomph" to these crumbed fried bites. (This story can be disputed by the fact that our cutlets also have a close resemblance to the Arabic Kibbeh. But I am not here to confirm history and so for the time-being let's just move on). Though there are several seafood and vegetarian varieties of cutlets prepared now, meat cutlets still remain the favourite among Kerala Christians.