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Turkey Pepperoni Garlic Bread Toast

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Time-saving cute mini turkey pepperoni pizzas that are packed full of flavour.

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Not sure if I should call this pizza or toast.  The reason being is you can have this for breakfast, dinner or evening snacks.  Top with your favourite pizza ingredients and you’ll have your favourite kind of pizza style toast in no time. The pizza sauce can be store bought or homemade. I would suggest you use the Texas style garlic bread for this recipe to get to the best taste. The cute turkey pepperonis add the best flavour to the bread. Who can go wrong with turkey pepperoni, garlic bread, tomatoes and cheese?

You can do this recipe in Airfryer as well.  The same 375F for 6 minutes will do the job perfectly.

I have collaborated with Canadian turkey farmers and created this recipe.  When you think turkey you are supporting local farmers. Turkey is a great lean option to add to meals when you start doing meal prep. We can add turkey to different go-to recipes like burgers, meatballs and hotdogs.

Other favourite turkey recipes: Peanut butter turkey, Turkey Gumbo, Turkey naan pizza


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Turkey Pepperoni Garlic Bread Toast
Author: 
Recipe type: Main
Cuisine: Fusion
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4
 
Ingredients
  • • 1 oz of turkey pepperoni (chopped into thin circles)
  • • 4 slices of frozen garlic bread (I used Texas toast style)
  • • 4 Tbsp pizza sauce (storebought or homemade)
  • • 1 Cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • • 2 Tbsp chopped basil.
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
  2. Wrap aluminum foil on a baking pan and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Place the garlic bread on the sheet.
  3. Now apply a little bit of pizza sauce to each slice of bread to cover the one side of the bread.
  4. Then top it with turkey pepperoni.
  5. Lastly, cover with cheese and chopped basil. Do this for every bread slice.
  6. Bake in the oven for 6-7 minutes or until cheese is melted.
  7. Serve it hot.
Notes
Add some red chilli flakes for extra spiciness.
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Chicken 65 – Restaurant Style

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The famous deep-fried, south Indian appetizer 🙂 crispy outside and juicy inside!

Small pieces of chicken are marinated and then deep-fried till crisp.  This is one of the best things that you can do with chicken   I am sure there will be no one saying a no to this chicken recipe. This taste exactly like a restaurant one, I am sure you would love this recipe.

This is a recipe that I am updating the picture 🙂 from August 13, 2014! Omg! Time flies :D. It’s an old classic recipe I always use. I made this a week back with pepper chicken and biryani for my sweets. I bought a chicken breast used half for pepper chicken and used other half for chicken 65. Perfect for a single person J happy meal. I did not like my old picture 😉 much. Just trying to improve :). I had another recipe scheduled for this week 🙂 just inserted this into the schedule ;). I was so eager to post this.

Chicken 65 – I used to wonder where did this name come from and read some stories about this. There are many different stories for how the name came about but the most acceptable/logical theory seems to me is that it was introduced in 1965 by the famous Buhari hotel restaurant in Chennai. Many sources claim that “this dish originated in a military canteen in Chennai and as most of the soldiers, officers were from various parts of the country, to avoid language problems, they actually used a unique numbering system in the menu card/board and this particular dish was the 65th item on that menu. So it became chicken 65. But I used to wonder what happened to Dosa 16, lamb 36, omlette 01, why dint this dish survive. And I read one hilarious one, the chicken was cut on the 65th day! Hehe! Funny!

My other chicken favourite recipes:  Spicy chicken roast, pepper chicken curry, sweet and spicy garlic chicken drumsticks, spicy chicken egg fry noodles

This taste great as an appetizer. Also taste great with lamb biryani, shrimp biryani, chicken biryani.

 

5.0 from 2 reviews
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Chicken 65
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
 
Ingredients

  • For the Marinade:
  • Chicken – (try to use thigh meat) but I used two chicken breast.
  • Chillis – slit into slices
  • Turmeric powder – Just a pinch
  • Cumin powder – 1 tbsp
  • Chilli powder – 1 1⁄2 tbsp
  • Coriander powder – 1 tbs
  • Red colour – just a pinch
  • Ginger garlic paste – 1 tsp (I always blend fresh garlic and ginger)
  • Chilli garlic paste – 1 tbsp
  • Salt – 2 tblsp
  • Ajinomoto – 1 Tsp
  • Pepper powder – 1 Tsp
  • Corn flour – 3 tbsp
  • Egg – 1

  • Other ingredients:
  • Oil - for deep frying
  • Curry Leaves - few
  • Green Chilies - 2 halved
  • Lemon - ½ wedge just to season
Instructions
  1. Take a mixing bowl and mix all the ingredients under the “marinade” section. I usually rest it overnight. Allow it to rest at least for two-three hours.
  2. Heat the oil to deep fry the chicken in medium flame. When oil becomes hot, add the chicken in batches and deep fry them till it becomes crispy and turns brown. Remove extra oil using by placing them on a kitchen tissue.
  3. In the same oil, just fry the slit green chillies and curry leaves. Place it on the top of the chicken, squeeze lemon to garnish.
Notes
1.When frying chicken,Egg makes a nice coating and seals the edges. Juices won't escape making the chicken tender.

2.The more resting time the softer the chicken 65 will be.

3.You can also temper with cumin seeds, chopped garlic,. Fry for 30 sec.

4.I used chicken breast because I did not get chicken thigh that day, try to use chicken thigh. It's juicier.

5.If you want to avoid red colour, you can use Kashmiri chilli paste and do with no colour. It tastes the same with no difference.

6.You can also onion to garnish.
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Medhu Vadai/Uludhu vadai/ Lentil Onion Fritters

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mexdhuvada-4Ulundu vadai  or medhu vadai are deep fried fritters and a popular snack in south India.

They give great results when you soak them overnight. This is my favorite but I have a problem with shapes of the vadai. It was not the perfect ones like hotel. But last time i made it perfectly but did not take the final pics 🙂 . But my Mom made it for me this time 🙂 and I clicked these final pictures. She just made them so quickly!!!! She made the whole meal for lunch when I took  a quick nap in the couch.

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It is one of the easiest snack to make. If you have some left over sambhar, you can make the medhu vadas and do the sambhar vadai like I made :)! It is one of the famous appetizers in India.

Some places in hotels, the oil content is really high. So, I always prefer to make this at home and do it :)!

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MEDHU VADAI/ULUNDHU VADAI
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 12 vadai
 
Ingredients
  • Urad dal/SPlit Black Gram – 1 cup
  • Small onion – 10 finely chopped
  • Curry leaves - 6
  • Green chillies – 2 nos
  • Ginger – 1 inch
  • Coriander leaves – 2tbsp,chopped
  • Asafetida – 3-4pinches
  • Salt – as needed
  • Jeera - 2 tsp
Instructions
  1. Soak the urad dal overnight atleast for 4- 5 hours. Drain the water completely and grind the mixture. Do not add any water. Drain them totally. Just sprinkle water. This whole process takes 10-15 minutes, you will get a fluffy white batter.
  2. Add the black pepper powder, rice flour, salt,cumin, asafetida, small onions,ginger and green chillies to the batter and mix well. If you want to add ginger and green chillies , add them in the batter before you grind, so you grind everything together.
  3. Wet your palms with water and take some batter in your right palm. Use the thumb and put a hole in the center and gently slid the round shape vadai into medium hot oil.
  4. Make the other vadais same way. Drop them in the oil. Fry the vadais till they are golden brown.
  5. Drain the medu vadais in the tisuue to remove excess oil.

    For sambhar vada:
  6. Take a bowl, keep the vada and top it with sambhar and add a tsp of ghee (optional) and sprinkle some chopped red onions and coriander!
Notes
1. Use good ural dal. It matters a lot.
2. Even if you don’t add rice flour, it will be good. But that rice flour gives extra crispy texture.
3. If the vadais are oily, then it means you have added more water, you can reduce next time.
4. Keep the batter in refregeritor for an hour and then make vadais and drop in oil, it will give good shape.
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Serve vadais with chutneys or sambhar. You can serve them plain as a snack.

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Cauliflower Malligae/ Cauliflower Fry

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CauliflowermalligaeCauliflower malligae is a dish famous in Mangalore. The cauliflower is marinated in garlic mint coriander paste and deep-fried. It is a perfect appetizer. The renowned dish in India using cauliflower is gobi 65. It is a fried cauliflower dish where the cauliflower/gobi marinated in chilli powder and deep fried.I will post the recipe of that soon.  So, this cauliflower malligae recipe is something distinct and tasty.

I heard about this recipe on a cookery show, so just tweaked it here and there. It is a very quick, easy recipe. It’s too hard to resist without having them when frying. that’s the biggest problem 😉 when I drop the next set in oil, I keep munching the fried ones 🙂 . You will understand when you fry them. And you can have them as snack or for jeera rice.

The paste that we use here is fresh grinded paste. You can store it for 4-5 days. It can be served as chutneys for dosa,paniyaram. Can even be used to prepare biryani. Can be used for variety rice by just sautéing them and adding it to rice, it taste great.

You can replace this cauliflower with any vegetable for this paste. Try aloo( potato), broccoli, mushroom, babycorn. Everything will be extraordinary. Even simple onion would be great when marinated in this paste and fried.

It is kid friendly as its not spicy. You can spice up the recipe more/less by adding/reducing green chillies.

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CAULIFLOWER MALLIGAE / CAULIFLOWER
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4
 
Ingredients
  • Cauliflower - 1 medium
  • Rice flour – ½ cup
  • Corn flour – 1 tbsp
  • Salt – as needed[b]To grind:Mint – ½ cup
  • Coriander – ½ cup
  • Green chillies - 6
  • Garlic – 5
  • Ginger – ½ inch
  • Cumin -1/2 tbsp
  • Curry leaves – 5-6
  • Garnish: curry leaves/ onion/ lemon
Instructions
  1. Wash and separate the cauliflower florets from cauliflower. Cut them bite size pieces. You don’t want it to be big chunks, as it’s hard to boil as we are just frying in oil and not boiling. Soak the cauliflower in hot water for 3 minutes to remove any insects.
  2. Grind all the ingredients under “to grind” in a blender to a smooth paste. Add 1 tbsp of water when blending. Don’t add more.
  3. Take a broad vessel; add the cauliflower, rice flour, corn flour, salt and the blended paste. Mix them well. Add water if needed. Set aside for 15 minutes.
  4. Heat oil in a pan, add the cauliflower batch by batch and fry them in a medium flame. You can fry them till they look crispy outside.
  5. Finally add the curry leaves in the oil and fry them.
  6. Garnish with curry leaves,onion and lemon.
Notes
1. You can increase/ decrease green chillies according to your spice level.
2. If you want it crispier, add more rice flour.
3. If you have grounded the paste watery, add more corn flour.
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Serve hot as a snack or as a side for jeera/ghee rice.

Green Peas Sundal/Pachai Pattani Sundal

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Green_Peas_Sundal_Relishthebite_name1
I wanted to make some Sundal recipe for Ganesh Chaturthi special. I have already made a sweet, coconut ladoo and posted it. I have explained about ganesh chaturthi on that :)If someone wants to read,:) you can ;). The most common sundal recipes for festival are chenna sundal. But they do this also for festivals. 🙂 This is a basic sundal version that we make for navarathri. Navrathri is near by too.

If you are using fresh gresh peas, soak them overnight. You can use it next day. I used the frozen peas 😉 so it was even easier. You can use this recipe to make any variety of sundal recipes. Just replace with those lentils/beans.

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GREEN PEAS SUNDAL/ PACHAI PATTANI SUNDAL
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 1
 
Ingredients
  • Fresh Frozen peas - ½ cup
  • Salt - To taste
    To blend to a coarse paste:
  • Grated coconut - 2tbsp
  • Green chillies -2 small
  • Coriander - 1 tbsp
  • Ginger- small piece. Very small.
  • Jeera - ½ tsp
    Temper:
  • Oil - 2tsp
  • Mustard seeds - 2tsp
  • Curry leaves - 6
  • Red chilli - 1
  • Hing - a pinch
Instructions
  1. If you are using fresh dried variety of peas, then soak them overnight or atleast for 4 hrs. Pour enough water,salt and pressure cook for 3 whistles.The skin might come out, just discard them.
  2. I am using frozen green peas, so i just wash them. Set aside.
  3. Transfer the ingredients listed under "to blend to a coarse paste" into a blender and blend them to a coarse paste. set aside.
  4. Heat a pan with the oil, add the list under "temper" in that pan.
  5. Add the green peas and salt, toss them for two minutes. Add the blended mixture on top of it. Saute them for two - three minutes until the raw smell of green chillies leaves. Switch off.
Notes
1. Adjust green chillies according to your spice level.
2. You can use this recipe to make any variety of sundal recipe. Just replace with that lentils/beans.
3. If you are using fresh dried variety of peas, then soak them overnight or at least for 4 hrs. Pour enough water and pressure cook for 3 whistles.The skin might come out, just discard them.
4. If you are soaking peas overnight then 2 whistles is enough. If you are soaking just for three hours, then 3-4 whistles.
5. use salt according to taste. Put them when you are boiling.
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Serve hot/warm as a snack Goes well with any rasam.

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Uppu Seedai/ Crunchy Lentil Nuggets

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UppuSeedai_relishthebiteHello all hi, It’s Janmashtami/ Krishna Jayanthi today. It’s the birthday of the Lord Krishna. I posted a recipe for “pepper vadai/ milagu vadai” yesterday for this occasion. But the main savory we do for this festival is the “Uppu seedai/sweet seedai”. I am going to uncover the “uppu seedai” recipe today here. I like savory more than sweet after coming to Canada. Wherever I go here, I see ample of sweet based dishes and get very few savory ones. So my choice was this and I did aval payasam as a sweet which was very easy to make. It took me very few minutes. Will post it sometime soon.

I was wondering why this recipe is being the main savory for this god. There should be a reason. Let me know if somebody gets to know it.notsure

Uppuseedai_Relishthebite

I always wanted to make seedai, but my mom used to warn me that it would burst easily. So I was staying away from it always. This time, may be I thought I was old enough to try it. When I told my mom today about making this recipe, my mom was watching me in facetime when I was doing it, and she was waiting for me till i shout “success!” after taking the first batch from the stove. She is so protective whatever age I am in. “MOM’s” are always the best. heartI have seen my dad and close one’s throw this “Seedai” on the air and catch them with their mouth to make it more interesting. When I put the first batch in the oil, I stayed away from the kitchen just to make sure that it does not burst and was peeping into the kitchen peek. But it came out so good :). I was so happy! I am not trying to scare you by saying all this, but be careful when you do this. May be in older days they used to have lot of stones in the rice which made it burst. These days its loads better and also if you sieve it well, it should be very fine 🙂

The correct way to do this recipe is to soak one cup of raw rice in water for two hours, dry them completely by placing on a cloth/paper and grind them. I used the ready-made rice flour instead. It was equally good. I have no complaints. 🙂 Let me know someone if you get to know the reason why we need to do the former method.

5.0 from 1 reviews
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UPPU SEEDAI / CRUNCHY LENTIL NUGGETS
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 2 cups seedai
 
Ingredients
  • Rice flour – 1 cup
  • Urad dal – ¼ cup
  • Sesame seeds – 1tbsp
  • Ajwain – 1 tsp
  • Coconut Grated - 2 tbsp
  • Jeera/Cumin – 1tsp
  • Salt – as needed.( I used 1 tbsp)
  • Ghee – 1 tbsp
  • Oil – to fry.
Instructions
  1. Fry the urad dal for 2 – 3 mins.Grind the urad dal very finely. Mix rice flour and urad dal powder together, Seive them twice.
  2. Mix the ajwain, coconut,jeera,ghee and salt to the mixture.
  3. Add water little by little to form a soft dough but do not make it watery/sticky.
  4. Now comes the major step, hold a little dough part on your left hand on the fingers side like shown below. Take a tiny dough part, press them and release them by making anticlockwise directions on the right hand. And the first seedai dough is ready. It should not be hard or very soft. It should be in perfect texture.
  5. Make them all like the above step.
  6. Fry them in hot oil and take them out when its in golden color.
Notes
1. Be careful when you put them in oil, it might easily burst. So, sieve it properly to avoid stones.
2. When you make the balls, make sure its not very hard or very soft. It will either break or it will be too hard.
3. Use unsalted butter instead of ghee. Or if you using ghee adjust your salt accordingly as ghee would have salt.
4. If you think the dough is too hard, add little ghee and water. Very little.
5. Oil should be very hot, or else it will break.
6. Roast the urad dal just for few minutes, which should do the job.
7. Try to use whole urad dal for this recipe. I used the broken one’s, as I did not have the whole urad dal handy.
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Uppuseedai_Relishthebite

Milagu Vadai/ Pepper fritters

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Crispy  and spicy crackers made with peppercorns and urad dal.

I made this again this week 🙂 the very first version I made before two years 😀 I totally had this guilt that it was not perfect so tried again and it came out crispy perfect. I found the reason for it, I soaked for an hour which did not make it crispy I believe and this time I soaked for just 15 minutes.

Today is Krishna Jayanthi 🙂 Happy Birthday, Lord Krishna. For people who do not know what is Krishna Jayanthi, it’s an annual celebration of the birth of the Hindu deity Krishna. Images of Krishna’s infancy are placed in swings and cradles in temples and homes. His devotees celebrate his birthday by today sweets and savory by his name. This pepper vadai/ milagu vadai is usually done for another god “Hanuman”. But it’s a good savory to do for all gods. These vadai’s are usually connected through a thread and garlanded to the Lord. The below picture was my older version. I totally felt it was not that crispy so made it again 🙂 This time it was crispy crispy perfect!

Milagu_vadai_Relishthebite

This is the first time for me to make these. And I guess it turned out good. They used to give this in temple. And I always loved them. But never felt like trying them at home. But today is the day for me to try this. Soak the urad dal only for one hour. It will not have that texture otherwise. I soaked more than that this time 😉 so make sure.

Milaguvadai-4

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Milagu Vadai/ Pepper Vadai
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 6
 
Ingredients
  • Urad dal - 1 cup
  • Rice flour – 1 tbsp
  • Pepper corns – 2 tsp (grounded)
  • Ajwain - ½ tsp
  • salt – ½ tbsp
  • Oil – To fry
Instructions
  1. Wash and soak the urad dal for 15 minutes and not more than that.Drain it nicely. If there is water, it can spoil the whole procedure. Grind it in the blender without adding water. The mixture should be little coarse not a paste.
  2. Ground the pepper again roughly. Just a single pulse would do.
  3. Take a bowl, mix the ground urad dal, hing, rice flour,ajwain and broken pepper.
  4. Heat oil in a kadai/pan, add one tbsp of oil to the vadai mixture.
  5. Take a banana leaf/Ziploc cover grease with oil. Grease your hands with oil to tap them thinly using hand or flat shaped cup. Take small lemon sized balls and pat it to make it a circle and thin vadai. Flatten it as thin as you can.Mark a hole in the center.




  7. Remove the vadai from the banana leaf and put them in the hot oil.
  8. Cook the vadai on both sides and till its crispier brown color on both sides.
Notes
1. Try to use whole urad dal. As it gives a nice texture. If not, use the broken ones.
2. When you drain the mixture, drain them completely. If there is water, the vadai’s wont be formed perfectly.
3. If the vadai batter is sticky and with more water, add more rice flour. Continue doing still it is in the perfect consistency.
4. Adding 1 tbsp hot oil to the batter will make the vadai crispier.
5. If you want crispier vadai, after frying them, try to refry them again. It will give nice colour and more crispiness. But mine was fine with the first time.
6. If you don’t have banana leaf, use Ziploc or polythene cover.
7. Marking a hole in the center will cook the vadai faster.
8. Ensure that vadais are patted thin, or else it’s going to be hard.
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