After a long blogging break, you need to polish up your typing skills and cannot write in long posts. So here with less talk and more pictures. This post is a simple story about what you can do to potatoes. You boil them, peel their skin, mash them up.Don’t stop there – spice them up, roll them over spiky breadcrumbs, drop them into hot oil and finally, serve them on a spinach sauce. That’s about the time you feel happy about my absence from the blogging scenario, rt ;-)?

Anyway, torturing potatoes wasn’t my idea. I was just following what Mrs. Vasantha Moorthy’s asked me to do in her Vegetarian Menu book. The book, which I successfully stole, erm..borrowed from my sister-in-law, is quite useful when you need to put together a meal and you are out of ideas. Some combinations from that book are regular repeats for me, like coconut rice and ginger pachadi.

For the past some months, the camera hasn’t been that friendly with me. None of my half hearted attempts at clicking pictures was giving good results.So it definitely was a pleasant feeling when the potato balls came out looking cute on the camera, despite all that I did to them.

Small steps first, when you are walking after a long time :-).

Enjoy the recipe as it goes to the Cooking from Cookbook Challenge. Please check out this page for more details about the event. 

Saute one big onion, 2-3 pods garlic, 1″ ginger piece and 2 green chillies in 1 teaspoon of oil. Once the onions are cooked, add two cups of spinach and salt as needed. Cook for a couple of minutes and let it cool. Once its cool, make a puree and bring it to boil adding some water if its too thick. Thats the gravy.

Pressure cook 5 medium potatoes. Peel and mash them well. Finely chop one big onion and 2-3 green chillies.

Add one tablespoon of kasoori methi (or chopped coriander leaves), minced onion-chilli combination and 1/2 cup shredded(or 2-3 torn slices)cheese to the mashed potatoes and mix it in.

Make lemon sized balls out of  the potato mix. I got around 22. Whisk 1/4 cup all purpose flour with some water (about 1/2 cup) to make a not-so-runny batter. Dip the potato balls in this batter and roll them over breadcrumbs. Deep fry in a kadai or appakuzhi.

To serve, add some spinach gravy to a plate or bowl. Top with the fried potato balls. Sprinkle some cheese or dot with fresh cream, if desired. Serve with chapati or basmati rice.

The recipe goes to the second week of CCChallenge. Please check out this page for more details about the event.