Battle of the Bloggers - Za'atar and Sesame Zucchini Bites with a Sesame Lemon Dipping Sauce

Here we are posting another zucchini recipe this week, acting as though we have a garden and an abundance of zucchini that we are desperately trying to use up.  This is not the case.  No such garden exists.  Between all the bugs, dirt, allergies, and bugs, I can safely say that gardening is not my thing. 

My reason for posting zucchini again - these thick slices of zucchini are coated and baked in a mixture of panko, za’atar, and sesame seeds, and served with a lemon-sesame dipping sauce - comes from a very non-altruistic place.  

I have such a huge favor to ask of you.  If you like this recipe, I would love for you to to vote for it!

Smart Balance is running a Battle of the Bloggers competition.  The blogger whose recipe receives the most votes at the end of the contest will win a yearlong contract with Smart Balance to develop recipes!  

To vote for the entry (it's super quick):
 •  CLICK HERE to head to the Battle of the Bloggers Facebook app!  Then vote!

You will even have a chance to win prizes, including Calphalon products and a year's supply of Smart Balance products!  The contest runs now through August 11th.  

Ingredients
For the bites:
2 medium zucchini, cut into slices (about 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch thick)
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups panko
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon za'atar
2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds
ground sumac, for sprinkling
paprika, for sprinkling
Smart Balance Cooking Spray

For the dip:
1/4 cup Smart Balance Omega Plus Mayonnaise
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon tahini
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon honey
pinch ground sumac
1/2 teaspoon za'atar
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds, plus more for serving

Instructions
To make the zucchini bites:
Heat oven to 400.  Place buttermilk in a shallow bowl.  Mix together panko, salt, pepper, za'atar, and sesame seeds.  Place in a second shallow bowl.  Dip each zucchini slice first in buttermilk and then in the panko mixture.  Repeat for each slice.  Place on lined baking sheet.  Sprinkle each bite with just a pinch of sumac and paprika.  Spray the zucchini bites with cooking spray.  Bake for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

To make the dipping sauce:
Stir all ingredients together.  Adjust salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle sesame seeds on top before serving. 

Tags:Battle,Bloggers,Sesame,Zucchini,Bites,Lemon,Dipping,Sauce

Homemade Bagels with Jalapeno Cream Cheese spread

This is another one in the line of my attempts to recreate at home a commonly available preparation that I thought for the longest time nearly impossible or at least too difficult to create at home. The humble bagel definitely proved to me it sure is a little tricky and requires attention to detail to get the best result. I speak from experience. The first time I tried it, it got too chewy and tough. After much I though I figured out where I was going wrong. To get the right taste and texture, you have to be very mindful of how long you boil the dough, the right pinch of baking soda and finally baking it just right. Once you get it how you want it, and not to mention with the easy-to-put-together but outta this world jalapeno spread, a fresh out of the oven hot bagel with a spicy spread will be close to if not the best kind of bread you ever had.

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Mirchi Ka Salan/Green Chillies in Spicy Tangy Sesame Peanut Sauce

 
es you read it right. A curry of green chillies! If you take my word for it, this curry is utterly lip-smacking and delicious besides of course being... yes... hot! Mirchi, in hindi, means chillies/peppers and salan is hyderabadi lingo for a creamy curry or sauce. This curry is not just something I made up on a day I was overzealous. It in-fact is a very popular curry from the hyderbadi cuisine. So much so that this curry was popular as a favorite of the royalty of the yesteryears.
Hyderabadi cuisine, the cuisine from a region in the south-eastern part of India is highly inspired by the Mughlai cuisine. The word "Nawabi" is as synonymous with the Hyderabadi cuisine as "Shahi" is with Lucknowi. Hyderabadi recipes are famous for their rich taste and unique use of ingredients, roasted spices and aromatic flavors. This  dish has all these components and more... chillies simmered in roasted peanuts, sesame, coconut sauce with lots of indigenous spices cooked to perfection give this curry its unique spicy, sweet and tangy taste. It is very easy to put together and has a very rich creamy taste that will compel you to make it over and over again.It is nutty with peanuts, has a distinct taste of sesame seeds and the  bite and heat from the chillies... ahh.

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Gud aur til ka Paratha / Jaggery and sesame stuffed flatbread

My mom is a queen of innovation. Especially when it comes to innovation with leftovers. She would come up with cool ideas to convert things that everyone deemed throwaway into dishes that would fly like hot cakes.

In India it is tradition to take some sweets if you are visiting a near and dear. My mom being quite the entertainer, we used to have a rather busy guest 'traffic'. Now not everyone has a big heart to take the best quality stuff so quite often we would wind up with sweets that no one wanted to eat. This one time mom came up with the idea of mixing it all up, boiled it in some milk to make a thick filling and made stuffed parathas out of it. Papa and my brother ate them up in seconds.

This dish is another such example of my mother's innovativeness. After the festival of Sankranti, we would usually have lots of left over 'tilkut' (a sweet candy made of sesame and sugar). She used a similar technique on the tilkut to convert it into absolutely fabulous sweet stuffed bread. I wanted to give this a shot but unfortunately I couldn't find any tilkut here. I had some sesame seeds handy and some jaggery so I used them together to create the tilkut effect. Hubby loved it :)  So here's another one inspired from and for my dear mom.

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Coconut rice

If you saw my Yogurt Vadai post from a couple of weeks ago, you will know about the my cool new possession, my new cookbook 'Dakshin'. From the different recipes that I had bookmarked and in keeping with my promise, here's another one of my favorite ones from the book.
I'd heard about this rice a lot. At first it didn't seem like a big deal, after all it was rice mixed with shredded coconut. However, I wanted to make it the authentic way so I followed the recipe and let me tell you, when done right, it is far more than just coconut mixed with rice. Also, it is a perfect way to use the leftover rice with a very quick yet elegant makeover.

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Thai sticky rice with mango

e ate sticky rice  with Thai curries all the time at our local Thai restaurants . Never really gave it much thought. After all it was just rice, just a little more sticky then usual, right?

Wrong. One day when watching Top Chef on Bravo I saw one of the contestants actually being sent home for not getting this rice right, I remember the dish was Thai sticky rice with mangoes. I wondered 'how can you mess up rice even if you are a basic cook, let alone a chef'. That's when it got my curiosity. When I started looking at how to make it that is when I realized it is not as easy as I thought. I looked around a bit more and ever since have thought of giving it a shot. The desire came back when I saw the Sticky rice with Mango post on Priya's site. The dish looked perfect the way she had made it and having a good detailed explanation definitely helped make it appear do-able. Here's my attempt to recreate the dish as described by Priya. The rice package I bought however required a sticky rice steamer to make it. Since I did not have it, I just used my regular rice cooker with its steamer attachment. Have included the details below.

Thanks darling, we relished it, it tasted awesome.. and  I can now proudly add sticky rice to my resume :)

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Vegetarian Sushi

I had always heard a lot about Sushi. I had the impression that Sushi had raw fish (which by the way as far as I have seen is true for the most part) so never even thought of ever eating it. This one time, soon after we got married and I came to the US, hubby and I went to a wedding ceremony of one of his colleagues. Sadly they did not have much food. Only some light snacks and drinks. So after the ceremony on our way back we decided to get lunch. He said he knew a Thai-Japanese place that was pretty good. At the restaurant we saw they had vegetarian sushi on the menu. I got all excited about it and we ordered it. When it arrived, it looked really pretty. Got me even more excited to try it out. Hated it. I almost spit it out in my napkin. I kid you not. To my surprise thought, hubby seemed to like it. Well anyway that was end of Sushi for me for a very long time. Recently we went to another Thai restaurant where I got brave (you guys probably noticed by now I do get brave occasionally) and tried it again. This time I liked it a little better and figured may be if I made it using my own components, it would work for me. So went out and got all the ingredients with my choice of veggies and tried it at home. It was not the easiest thing I had done but following closely a few online videos and the package instructions of the sushi rice, it worked. To give credit where its due, let me tell you for the life of me, I could not roll and cut the sushi. So hubby was tasked to do it :) and he was a Man about it, no pun intended. Look at the pictures can't you tell :D

For a little general knowledge, if you are not aware of what Sushi is, here's a little excerpt from Wikipedia.
Sushi s a Japanese dish consisting of cooked vinegary rice which is commonly topped with other ingredients, such as fish or other seafood or put into rolls. There are different kinds as nigirzushi, sasimi, inarizushi etc. Sushi that is served rolled inside or around dried and pressed sheets of seaweed or nori is makizushi. Sushi is made with white, short-grained, Japanese rice mixed with a dressing made of vinegar and salt. The black seaweed wrappers are called nori. Nori is a type of algae, traditionally cultivated in the harbors of Japan.
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Hyderabadi Bhaghare Baingan / Eggplant in sesame peanut sauce

Hyderabadi cuisine refers to the cuisine from a region in the south-eastern part of India. It  is highly inspired by the Mughlai cuisine.The word "Nawabi" is as synonymous with the Hyderabadi cuisine as "Shahi" is with Lucknowi. Hyderabadi recipes are famous for their rich taste and unique use of ingredients, roasted spices and aromatic flavors. This eggplant dish has all these components and more... baby eggplants simmered in roasted peanuts, sesame, coconut sauce with lots of indigenous spices cooked to perfection. It is utterly lip-smacking... even if you are a eggplant hater you can't ignore this one. It is very easy to prepare and has a very rich creamy taste which will compel you to make it again and again :) or if you have an eggplantoholic hubby as mine..  he will compel you to make it again and always. Also you can bribe him with this to get him to take you shopping for the whole day or spa or just whatever. I have used it for this trick a few times lol.. shhhh....:D

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Whole Wheat Stuffed Buns

ince the past few days I was craving those spicy veg stuffed buns which we used to always eat from our local fav bakeries back home. These are basically soft buns stuffed with a spicy veg filling. Also the fact that Mr. Yeast  and I are now on good terms... in fact we are now friends :) gave me some added courage to try it for myself. Let me tell you, if you are yeast skeptic as I was before, once you start getting comfortable with yeast you will want to use in everything... they are addictive. After making the pav buns a few weeks ago I thought to give this a try and boy I was glad I did as these turned out fantabulous... and so perfect we loved it. They were tasty to the last bite and very very addictive.  Smelled heavenly while baking and were gone in no time once they came out of the oven. A super hit!!!! The best part my hubby said these are the best buns he has ever eaten and they tasted better than the store bought ones ;D

I tried  to make them little healthier by using whole wheat  flour... so that I can continuously convince myself while gobbling them up that these are healthy and so ok to eat and not feel guilty afterwards... he he which I did!!

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Khara biscuit

If you have read some of my previous posts you will know that I don't have a sweet tooth (yes yes, except chocolate) so I don't particularly like regular cookies either. I just make 'em for my little princess. So for those times on a lazy afternoon when I feel like munching on a quick snack, I like to have some salty or savory stuff at hand. The typical salty snacks they sell in stores are usually fried so I figured I make some baked ones of my own. Here's a recipe for khara biscuits that I bake often so I can have them handy for when those hunger pangs strike. Considered yourself warned that they are addictive :)

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