Hara Kebab (Green Kebab)

My honest confession, when you start a food blog, there is no looking back. You just carry on cooking & cooking & cooking. The pressure is so much to cook good, versatile & different food every time. Especially when guests come home & if they are aware of your food blog, then you need to match or rather excel their expectations. My best friend came home this weekend & we had a great time together gossiping, shopping & of course eating glorious food. She is a hard core vegetarian, hence my cooking skills were put to test as I said before. So I ended up making delicious Hara Kebab for her.

Kebab is often the grilled or roasted skewered meat which we all talk about. So I thought, why not make it vegetarian & give my friend a surprise. "yeah, Baby...eat those Kebabs right now"...Don't worry...Its vegetarian! ;) Also I came across a "spinach event" which is going on in one of the blogger's space, so I thought, why not make my first official entry to this online cooking competition as well with this recipe. Hence, the Hara Kebab, a combination of spinach & paneer blended together to give an unusual green colour & a great appetizer for those hard core vegetarians out there.

Ingredients:

• 800 gm spinach/palak
• 400 gm paneer/indian cottage cheese
• 1" stick cinnamon
• 4-5 cardamom pods
• 4 cloves
• 1 inch ginger
• 10-15 cashewnuts (finally chopped)
• 3 tsp garam masala
• 1/4 cup gram flour/besan/chick-pea flour
• 10 green chillies (finely chopped)
• 2 tsp mace/javitri powder
• 4 tsp coriander leaves (finely chopped)
• oil for deep frying
• salt to taste

Method:

1. Boil water in a sauce pan & put in the spinach & let it cook for exactly 2-3 minutes. Drain the water & blend the spinach into a smooth paste. Keep aside.
2. Blend the cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves & ginger to a fine powder. Keep aside.
3. In a small frying pan, just dry roast the gram flour for 1-2 minutes.
4. Take a big bowl & mix all the above ingredients (excluding the oil, which is for deep frying) including the spinach paste, roasted gram flour & the dry spice powder in it.
5. Shape the mixture into a thick finger size length kebab. (should look like a sausage). If you are not able to make that shape, you can make a 2 inch flat round patties out of the mixture.
6. Heat oil in a Kadai & deep fry the palak-paneer kebab/patties to a nice golden green.
7. Serve hot as an appetizer with a nice Mint Relish. (To see the recipe of the Mint Relish, please click on to the sauces/chutneys category of this blog.

Sending this recipe to yummyfood-khushi@blogspot.com for the event "What's on your Kebab Platter?"

Sending this recipe to http://rasoithekitchen.blogspot.com/2011/04/announcement-guest-hosting-veggiefruit.html for the spinach event started by mharorajasthanrecipes.blogspot.com

Sending this recipe to http://akilaskitchen.blogspot.com/2011/04/dish-name-starts-with-h.html for the "Dish name starts with H".