Mangalore Buns - Step by Step

Mangalore buns is one of my favorite snack or breakfast dish. It is a specialty of the Mangalore region in Karnataka. I usually make it on weekends and we have it for brunch. This dish is quite heavy and filling. Whenever I see over ripe bananas in the house I usually make these buns. My mom serves this with chutney pitti. It is a great snack to take on travels and hikes. Recently, I visited one of our relatives and came to know that they serve it with a special potato bhaji. I made buns with potato bhaji when some of our friends visited us for dinner and this dish was a great hit. Here is the recipe to make buns.

Ingredients
2 medium sized over ripe bananas
2 1/2 cups maida
6 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup yogurt or home made curd
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder--see differences here. )
1/8 teaspoon salt
milk for kneading
oil for deep frying

Method
Blend the over ripe bananas. Add yogurt, salt, sugar and baking powder to the banana paste. Mix 2 cups of flour, and add milk ( if needed )to make the dough. The dough should not be like chapatti or roti dough. It will be a little sticky.
Cover the dough with oil on top to prevent it from drying . Cover it with a cloth keep it in a warm place overnight or for around 8-10 hours. In winters, I heat the oven to 100 degrees and turn the heat off once it is heated. Then I leave the dough overnight in the oven. You can leave the dough outside in the summers. The dough should rise to almost double its previous quantity.
Cover your fingers with flour and pick out small balls of the dough. The balls should be the size of a small lemon.

Press the balls of dough well in the flour and stretch them to make small puris.

Fry these puris in hot oil till they are golden brown. Put them on a kitchen paper to drain the oil.

Mangalore buns are ready to eat. Serve them hot with potato bhaji.


Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Serves: makes around 30 buns

Vegetable Cutlets

Vegetable cutlets are my favorite weekend evening snack. My mother would make this very often when we were in Bhopal. We would come back home from swimming and have cutlets with bread and tomato ketchup.
I remember having vegetable cutlets at Suvidha Restaurant at CST Mumbai in the early 90's. They were the best I ever had in my life. Here is the recipe for vegetable cutlets.

Ingredients
3 potatoes
1/2 cup boiled spinach
1/2 cup peas
1/4 cup beetroot
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
salt for taste
1 teaspoon red chili powder or as per taste
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
3 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup semolina
2 bread slices(The side slices work great!)
3 tablespoon chopped cilantro or coriander
oil for deep frying

Method
Boil the potato, beetroot and peas till tender. Just soak the bread slices for a second and squeeze all the water. Mash all the vegetables and bread slices well. Add all the powders, lemon juice and salt as per taste. Make small balls from the dough and flatten each ball to make a cutlet. Deep fry in hot oil till golden brown on both sides. Serve hot with tomato ketchup or coriander/cilantro chutney.

Preparation time: 45 minutes
Serves: 3-4