The Punjabi Masala Burger on Sunday Evening

This evening, after a nice long walk in the morning followed by an icecream at the Memorial Union and a movie in the afternoon at home, I was wondering what to do. I searched for any events in Madison on Sunday evening at google but in vain. I had just finished the extraordinary genius and captavating book 'Digital Fortress' by Dan Brown in the morning. After the past 5 days which were extremely interesting because of the book I was feeling bored and dull. So thought of cooking something I hadnt cooked before, that was the only thing that came to mind I hadnt tried for the past few weeks :). Seeing the few ingredients I had in my kitchen i thought of making a Masala Burger. It turned out fine for the first attempt and there is plenty of scope for improvement for the second one. So here is the recipe incase any enthusiast wants to try. I call it a Punjabi burger because it was cooked by a Punjabi chef ( thats me :) ). Here it goes:

Ingredients:
2 Potatoes
Coriander/Cilantro leaves
1 Onion
1 Tomato
Cucumber
Curd
Oil
Bread crumbs/ Rusk powder
Kishmish, cashews
Lemon
Spices- ( Salt, red chillie powder, garam masala, jeera powder, turmeric powder)
Tamarind (optional)
green peas
Buns

Procedure:
First Boil the potatoes either by wrapping them in plastic and using a microwave or in a pressure cooker using water. Next mash the potatoes as much as you can and add the bread crumbs or rusk powder ( as fine as possible), cashew, kishmish, coriander leaves,salt, chillie powder, garam masala, green peas and jeera powder to the mashed potatoes. Now mix this mixture properly. Taste and see if the spice level is good enough. It should be a little more than what you like as after being sandwitched in the bun the spice level of the tikki in between will be pacified. Once this mixture is ready, heat some oil in a pan for frying the tikkis. Grease your hands with oil and make round balls from the mashed potatoes and make the balls flat in the shape of the tikki (they should be as flat as possible for better frying). Fry them 2 or 3 at a time depending on the size of your pan. Once the surface on bottom is brown enough tilt the tikki upside down and fry the other side. In the mean time tikkis are frying you need to prepare the mixture for garnishing. Cut the tomatoes and oninons in medium sized slices and mix them together. Now add some curd to this to form a paste like mix and add coriander leaves , turmeric powder and some red chillie powder to this mix. Slice your lemon ad squeeze it generously in this paste and mix again. When you leave this paste aside for some time and then you smell it it will be a very delicious and nice smell because of the coriander and curd mixed together. Also slice cucumber in round slices. Once the tikkis are ready you could grease the inside of buns with butter if you dont mind some extra calories. Next place the tikki inside it and a slice of round cucumber. Now add the onion tomato paste generously on the top of the tikki and stuff the burger with the paste and then close the hamburger. Serve with tomato ketchup.

Optional: If you are a tamarind lover, you could prepare a tamarind mix by mixing tamarind in water and brown sugar and then heating for a while. This tamarind paste can be added to the onion tomato paste. ( I did not try this since I didnt have tamarind at home).

So that was the recipe I tried this evening and it took about an hour to make some delicious masala burgers.