Rainy evening and a whole bunch of ‘shammis’

Both my husband and I have a fascination for rain. Where I stay, in Bangalore (India), summer brings in cool breezes and bursts of rain every single day. If you ignore the terrible traffic jams that come with it, sitting in the veranda, watching the whole world soak in the freshness as raindrops go pitter patter all around you, brings in a great calm. And with “calm” comes thoughts of hot steaming morsels of food and liquid warming your heart and innards too.

The other day, we both got home early from office at the first sight of gray skies. Which was a smart thing to do, considering people got stuck everywhere for hours on the streets what with the heavy downpour. Anyway, M and I watched the rain for a full 10 minutes (wow! a new record!) before we got hungry. And I was not ready to settle for frozen chicken nuggets this time. No siree! I wanted the real deal.

And that why I made a dozen or more of chicken patties spiced up with Indian spices. The whole batch was ready in a jiffy, and tasted just simply YUM. I call them Tandoori Shammi: tandoori for the bucketful of tandoori masala I used in them, and shammi because, well, shammi kebabs are my favorite and I tried to shape these patties up to look more like shammis than burger patties.

K’s Tandoori Shammi Patties:

Ingredients:

• 500 grams minced chicken
• 250 grams of boiled and mashed potato or equal amount of re-hydrated dehydrated potato
• Half a cup of chopped cilantro/coriander
• 2 Tbsp ginger-garlic paste
• 2 Tbsp cumin powder
• 2 Tbsp coriander powder
• 3 Tbsp tandoori masala – I like it a lot, so used about 5 Tbsps of it. It made the mixture ‘hot!!’ [For those of you who donot have access to this masala, just use ground 5-spice mixture that you can get from any neighborhood asian grocery store]
• Half a cup chopped onions
• 1 Tbsp red chilli powder or paprika, whichever suits you!
• Salt to taste!

Procedure:

Very simple process… Mix everything together! With your hands, preferably, to get all the spices and meat and potato together. Then shape them into round palm sized patties as shown below:

If you are the patient type, let it sit in the refrigerator for about an hour or so so that it sets.

Or, if you are like me, just start frying them. I shallow fried them as shown below:

You can bake ‘em too!

Now all thats left is to eat them up. I served them with sweet-sour thai sauce that I got from the store. Or you can eat them with burger buns, breads – anything! They simple taste awesome.