Solace from Croquettes…

Humans are currently witnessing history in the making. Before this no one amongst us has witnessed a pandemic, only read or heard about one. This is a very stressful time for all of us. All of us are trying to find some solace in any way possible.

Solace

Food has always been a source of solace for me. Be it making or eating! The only thing that can get a bit unpalatable is the cleaning up after and the other menial works. Now I am lucky in that aspect that my hubby darling is the sweetest thing and pitches in very spontaneously.
In the past month we have spent all our time at home. Also outside food is a strict no no. So all meals are ending with round table discussions regarding what we are going to have for our next meal!

Tea Time

Since I was young the evening tea time has a special place in my heart. This is because that was the time when after the whole days respective school/college/ office all of us would sit together and enjoy our cuppa with some snacks. Most of the times in those days the snacks was usually muri(puffed rice) with different combination of fried snacks like chanachur, jhuri bhaja together with chopped onions, green chilli and topped with raw mustard oil!

Now also we often have this snacks. But for the longest time in the past month I could not get my hands on muri! So we had to come up with different snacking ideas other than the mundane marie biscuit. Also since its difficult to get access to variety of food products these days I am not throwing anything away. Believe me not anything! That includes vegetable peels , which is a story I will tell later!

The loaf story

So every time I got my hands on a loaf of bread I am constantly thinking what can I do with the stale pieces! Usually the hard end pieces of my bread loaves get left crying in my fridge as no one will touch them even by mistake. So in these times of sustainable living I left constantly worrying how I can use them up!! One day its a caramel bread pudding, the other day its this croquette recipe. I still have around 3 pieces of stale bread left which I have to ingeniously use in some dish very soon

Now after some searching I came across a recipe on a wonderful site, archanaskitchen.com. I modified the recipe a bit since I avoid deep frying or using too much oil in my recipes. So for that my trusted air fryer came to the rescue! So as little as 2tbsp oil/ ghee resulted in wonderfully crispy and yummy cottage cheese croquettes.

Ingredients

Cottage Cheese/Paneer 1cup grated
Potato 2 boiled
Stale Bread 2 pieces soaked in milk
Raisin soaked handful
Peanuts roasted (optional)
Chopped coriander ( as per taste)
Salt, sugar, kashmiri red chilli powder, cumin powder ( as per taste, I used around 1 1/ 2 tsp of each of the spices)
Bread Crumbs
Ghee/ Melted Butter 2tbsp

Method

1. Start by soaking the bread ends/ slices in milk for 5 minutes or till soft.
2. Mash the bread, the boiled potatoes and the cottage cheese together.
3. Mix in all the ingredients except the bread crumbs and ghee.
4. Make an uniform dough and shape into your desired form.
5. I chose to make flattened diamond shaped croquettes so that they will cook easily. Also the shape resembled our beloved fish fry which hubby dear sweetly pointed out 😉.
6. Pre- Heat the airfryer at 200°C for 4 minutes.
7. In the meanwhile coat the croquettes with the bread crumbs and brush some ghee/ butter on both sides.
8. Reduce the temperature of the airfryer to 180°C and fry the croquettes for 3 minutes on each side . Then increase the temperature to 200 and fry for 4 minutes more.
9. When they are done the croquettes will be a beautiful golden brown in colour. So you can adjust your timing accordingly.
10. If you dont have an airfryer you can shallow fry the croquettes but obviously you will be needing a bit more ghee then.
11. So piping hot and crispy solace giving Cottage Cheese croquettes are ready to be served with some tomato ketchup and yummy evening tea .