Food talk
 Go for bacchu burger

Pushpesh Pant brings us a refreshingly different and an easy-to-prepare finger food

THE inspiration for this one comes from Chile. Last year, at a business breakfast in Santiago at the Catholic University, we, the members of an Indian academic delegation, were served dainty sandwiches fashioned with mini-bread rolls encasing morsels of mouthwatering tidbits — salmon, salami, blue cheese and more. Ever since we have been restless to try our hand at it. Why not use mini pav to make desi club sandwiches? Or bread rolls to fashion baby burgers?

Cocktail kebabs, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, deter us with their trans-fat content and we couldn’t bear to experiment with these fillings. Recently we found ourselves with ‘leftovers’ that couldn’t yield a dish on their own — a couple of large button mushrooms, 50-odd grams of masala paneer and a solitary baby corn. We were about to yell at the cook then suddenly checked ourselves.

Hadn’t he reminded us of the spiraling prices even in the age of negative inflation? The poor man had our best interests at heart and had started economising with all ingredients. We spotted some mini-bread rolls and indulged in our fancy.

The results were very encouraging to say the least and we strongly recommend bacchu burgers to our dear readers. Quick to fix, these are refreshingly different finger foods, which are equally attractive for the young and the old. A far more healthy option than pre-cooked and reheated kebab or chips with dips, salted biscuits masquerading as canap and such like culinary clich`E9s. The beauty is that the filing or topping can be improvised at will. Our only suggestion is that avoid the ketchup if you can and stay with homemade chutney to moisten the base.

Bacchu  Burgers

Ingredients

Mini bread rolls (soft) 10-12

Paneer 50 gm

Baby corn one

Button mushrooms (large sized) 2-3

Small tomato one

Shahi zeera ¼ tsp

A large pinch of mixed dried herbs

Green chilli (optional) one

Kasundi or home-ground hari chutney 1 tsp

Butter/oil 1tsp

Salt to taste

Method
Slice the top off the rolls to obtain two halves. Wash well or wipe clean tomato and mushrooms. Dice the paneer, tomato and mushrooms. Slice the baby corn into small discs. Heat butter/oil in a non-stick frying pan and put in the cumin seeds. As soon as these begin to crackle, put in the mushrooms, tomato and paneer. Sprinkle salt and stir-fry on high heat for a minute then reduce to medium flame add the baby corn and continue cooking (covered) for two minutes. Uncover, sprinkle dried mixed herbs stir well. Remove from flame. Line the base-bottom half of the roll with kasundi or chutney and place a small portion of topping on it. Garnish with green chilli, if using.





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