Vegetable Shikampuri Kebabs

Few days ago, Aparna had shared in her Instagram feed a picture of few of her cookbooks. She had mentioned that Sheetal bhatt at Route to roots blog had initiated the idea of a virtual food enthusiasts group to cook dishes from our respective collection of cookbooks and share the pictures/ recipes where desired. 

Most of us like to buy cookbooks, but hardly use them regularly. We might cook a few recipes every once in a while and then slowly put the book away and let it gather dust. 

This virtual group will now bring those out and cook dishes twice a month, based on given themes. we would share the picture of the dish in our Instagram feeds with a hash tag 'thecookbookcollective'. We may share them across other social network media also. We might share some of those recipes in our blog also.
The theme for the first dish was 'Regional'. I chose to make Shikampuri Kebabs that are famous in Hyderabad Mughal cuisine. These are rich and delicious with a filling of tender meat or equivalent vegetarian mix. The name literally means 'filled in the middle' as in 'tummy full'.
During one of my stay at The Gateway Hotel, Bengaluru, I found the book titled 'Vegetarian Fare at the Taj' that has so many vegetarian dishes that are cooked in the kitchens of the Taj group hotels across India. The management were generous to let me have that book. 

I had this recipe from that book; this was shared by the executive chef of Taj Krishna, Hyderabad.

The same book has another recipe from the Taj  Falaknuma Palace, Hyderabad that replaces potatoes with Elephant Yam and lentils.
I gave this recipe to my daughter as she had mostly all the ingredients with her. She decided to add lot of young beetroots and made a very pleasantly pink kebabs. 

 

I am giving approximate measures for the outer cover vegetables. I used potatoes, beans and carrots. Because ultimately all vegetables are going to get mashed, you can add any more different vegetables that will not taste off.

I used two large potatoes, boiled until soft and grated. The yield of potatoes was 2 loosely packed cups.

 

Vegetable Shikampuri Kebabs 

 

Ingredients: 

Makes 8 kebabs

For the outer cover:

2 cups boiled and grated potatoes

1 cup boiled carrots (cut in very tiny bits and heaped cupful of raw carrots)

1 cup boiled beans (same as carrots)

Just about enough bread crumbs to bind the vegetables in a dough like texture.

1&1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 blade of mace

3 green cardamoms

2 teaspoons caraway seeds/ ajwain

1 tablespoon chopped mint leaves

1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves

Salt to taste

Oil for shallow frying/ deep frying. (The book has a deep fried version, I used the airfryer by basting a little ghee all around each kebab before placing in the fryer.) (My daughter shallow fried the kebabs and said they tasted good)

 

For the filling

1/3 cup khoya (I boiled 500 millilitres of milk down to get this quantity)

1/2 cup crumbled paneer

1 &1/2 teaspoon oil

1 medium red onion sliced very finely

1 green chilli finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder

1 teaspoon chopped mint leaves

1 teaspoon chopped coriander leaves

A pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon sugar

Method:

 

Prepare the filling:

Heat oil in a pan.

Add the onions and green chillis. Saute until the onions are transparent.

Add the paneer and khoys and cook until they are soft and pink.

Add salt, sugar and white pepper powder. Toss to mix and turn the heat off.

Drop the chopped fresh leaves and mix.

Allow to cool and divide in 8 small portions rolled in balls.

If the quantity of the filling might feel more for 8 kebabs. You may store them and use in other dishes.

Prepare the vegetable kebabs:

Crush the mace, cardamom and caraway seeds to a fine powder. This is a very aromatic spice powder mix

Mash the carrots and beans ( other boiled vegetables if you are using ) to a pulp with only few bits left to show.

Add the grated potatoes, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, salt and prepared spice powder of cardamom, mace and caraway seeds.

Knead them together to a dough like mass. Add the bread crumbs and knead to a smooth dough. 

Take a small portion and roll and pat to a disc to test if the dough is not cracking. Add little more bread crumbs if needed.

Divide into 8 portions, roll them in smooth balls.

Use little oil or ghee to grease your palms and pat one dough ball in a discs, place one portion of filling, gather the ends and cover the filling with the vegetable dough.

Flatten it slightly to a round disc, like kebabs of uniform thickness of about 1 cm.

 

Repeat with the rest of vegetable dough and filling.

Heat oil in a pan and when hot place the kebabs as many will hold in the pan, not too close to each other.

Cook the kebabs well until crisp and golden all over. Remove from the pan. Transfer to a serving dish.

Repeat with all the kebabs.
While the book has a directions to deep fry the kebabs, I chose to do them in my airfryer and my daughter opted to shallow fry in a pan. Both turned out excellent. So how you want to have them cooked has these options.

 

For my airfryer version, I used a few drops of ghee over each kebab brushing it all over. I cooked them for 10 minutes at 180 degrees C and for a further 2 minutes after flipping them over.

Serve them hot with salad and green chutney or tomato sauce.
If you are planning to do them in more numbers, you may make ahead the kebabs, refrigerate them and fry them at your convenience. My daughter had made the quantity for 8 kebabs, but used only four on the first try. She refrigerated the uncooked kebabs and used them the next day.

A Learning Curve

One night as I was about to retire to bed, my daughter called and wanted to discuss a bread recipe that we had baked together and was blogged about. While suggesting to her to halve the recipe and talking about it, we both opened the blog on our respective machines and laughed out so loud looking at the picture of the bread - some odd angles, no “set up” so to speak and one loaf where the crust had torn off a bit. The recipe was from a well received blogger, so I am sure the bread must have turned out well and I confidently wrote a blog. Ah, if only the picture did justice!

 

For the next twenty minutes, we kept opening a few of my earlier posts and were commenting on the photographs and content. By God, what ever was I thinking! When I was aware that some people out there were taking great pictures even with their mobile devices, I had a good camera and just did not know how to handle it? I have been shooting in auto mode and still poorly focused photographs, over correction with picasa are all so evident. 

My daughter once set me benchmarks saying that she will accept and credit me if ever I show the quality as few other bloggers. She has not given her verdict yet and it is over three years. That is indication enough where I stand.

I had, without qualms, attached badly focused photos like this one.

Some wrong angles thinking it looked cool. In this picture all you see is a chunky slice of potato and not the bread. How would anyone make out if the bread had turned out soft as I had claimed?

The food is your hero in the picture, but there was nothing but the dish in many.

  In some pictures, the food looks like a small prop, and the furniture and the windows more important?

Speaking of props... oh dear, they were simply arranged to cover the frame. I did not realise that they were so distracting. 
Too much food in one frame, and a crammed post at that. Whoever would patiently read so many recipes?

I also realise, things do improve with patience and practice. If my picture is not to my satisfaction I thrash them, the recipe does not make its appearance until it has a picture worthy to share. I take help from those numerous photographs that appear on Pintest, Flickr and such sites. They help me look at my dish with someone else's perspective. I mentally tally my idea with what I see in those and then work. Attending the food photography workshop that Aparna conducted was a good idea. I see areas I need to improve. Last year's Indian Food Bloggers Meet in August had two sessions on photography. They taught me how to compose, what to focus, what to mute and more.

Looking back at these old pictures, my learning curve is quite evident to us. I still need improving and lack perfection, yet I keep clicking, discarding or sharing. Now, I am more aware of the quality of my photos, keeping a keener eye on tasteful framing, composition, light etc.

It takes just a little learning to get to near good pictures if not truly amazing. I learn a little bit every day with each blog post I read, and each set of photographs I look at. Looking back at old work was eye opening, to say the least and provided a good laugh for the day!

This is not a recipe post, but I needed to ramble off a bit and have a hearty laugh along with you.