Special occasion meal 💝

My love for cooking and presenting variety of dishes has always made me plan special occasion meals at home. I will plan a few dishes and keep couple of them really simple and cook a couple of them from scratch. This helps with a big spread but not hours of sweating in the kitchen. Some amount of prep work and pre-cooking over a few days also helps. 

For this Valentine’s day – our dinner menu was – 

• Yin and Yang rice – Forbidden wild rice displayed with white basmati rice
• Egg burji – Eggs scrambled in an Indian spicy sauce
• Hara Bara kabab – Broccoli and cauliflower rice baked into kababs
• Skewered vegetables – zucchini, squash, mushrooms and peppers char-grilled

☝️I cooked both the types of rice a few days ahead and stored in the refrigerator. On the day of event, warm them separately and arrange the 2 rices into a Yin and Yang shape, I did not use any mold, just did it with hand.

✌️Cut the zucchini, squash, mushrooms and peppers (green and red) into big chunks and marinate them with oil, salt and spicy curry powder. After couple of hours, drain out the water that has oozed out. Skewer the vegetables taking are to mix and match the colors. Bake at 450 degrees until a good charr is achieved on the edges.

🤟Start making the Egg burji. Saute onions, garlic, ginger, green chillies and tomato and scramble the eggs in this spicy sauce until eggs are completely cooked. Season well with salt as you scramble the eggs.  

👌 Mix broccoli rice, cauliflower rice, almond flour, chickpea flour and seasoning – make into kabab balls and put to bake in the oven. Detailed recipe follows 

👍 Set the dinner table – this is done by the rest of the brood usually here 🙂

👏 Celebrate with beverage of choice 😉 

Hara-bara kababs recipe

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Ingredients for kababs –

• Broccoli rice – 2 cups 
• Cauliflower rice – 2 cups 
• Almond flour – 1 cup 
• Chickpea flour – 1 cup 
• Chopped jalapeños – 2 tbsps
• Chopped cilantro – 2 tbsps 
• Salt 

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Procedure –

1. First cook the broccoli rice and cauliflower rice in the microwave, my package said 3 minutes 
2. Cool a bit and squeeze out all the water, it must be practically dry
3. Add the flours, jalapeño, cilantro and salt and mix very well
4. Using your hand make kabab balls or elongated oval shapes 
5. Arrange them on a parchment lined cookie sheet
6. Bake at 400 degrees hot oven for 20 minutes on one side
7. Carefully flip them one by one and bake again for another 10 minutes until crisp
8. Broil for a few minutes for extra crunch
9. Kababs are ready !