Zucchini Thayir Pachadi

1 Wash the zucchini and grate it with the skin and place it in a bowl. Add the required amount of salt.

2 In a small frying pan heat the oil, add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters add the sliced green chillies, hing and fry it.

3 Add this to the zucchini and mix it well.

4 Mix the yogurt to the zucchini when ready to serve.

My Notes 1 If you don’t have the time to prepare the bisi bele bath masala powder you can buy it. I’ve tried MTR brand and it’s good too.

2 You could also buy the frozen Avial vegetables available in Indian grocery stores and save time chopping vegetables.

3 I have pressure cookers in all size so I used one for cooking the vegetables and one for cooking rice/daal. You can also cook both in any vessel on stove top, but as far as I’ve read brown rice takes more time to cook like that.

4 We don’t eat spicy food, so I used only 2 red chillies for the masala powder. The heat was very mild. If you prefer it more spicy use about 4-5 chillies.

Step-By-Step Procedure(Click on the thumbnails for a bigger view)
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Combine first four ingredients in a saucepan.

3. Heat slowly, stirring till the mixture resembles a syrup. Let cool to room temperature.
4. Combine flour with baking powder and spices (if using).
5. Pour in chocolate syrup and work into a stiff batter. (See My Notes)

6. Add almonds and raisins. Raisins generally stick together, so take little flour and mix it with the raisins and separate them with your fingers, so the raisins will be spread uniformly throughout the batter.

7. I scooped out the dough using half tablespoon (see My Notes) and dropped it on the cookie sheet. The cookie does not spread, so leaving 1/2 inch space in between is sufficient. I was able to arrange 24 cookies in a large baking sheet.

The cookies tasted more like chewy brownies with the perfect amount of sweetness from the combination of brown sugar and raisins.

My Notes1. Smart Balance 50/50 Unsalted Butter Blend is a blend of real butter and Smart Balance Spread. It is in a convenient stick form, which is ideal for measuring and baking . The calories measure up to be the same of regular butter (100gm per tablespoon), but this one has 28% less saturated fat than butter and 50% less cholesterol than butter. It’s also an excellent source of Omega 3 and Vitamin E. It’s non-hydrogenated and does not have Trans Fats.

2. At first I doubted the measurements, because I felt that adding the entire syrup would make the batter very watery. So I reserved 1/4th of the syrup and added the almonds and raisins. But once they were added the dough became very stiff, so I added the reserved syrup also which gave the right consistency to the dough. It was neither very stiff nor watery.

3. Spray the tablespoon with some non stick spray, so the dough will fall off the spoon easily. If you want perfect shaped cookies you can shape the dough into balls and arrange it on a cookie sheet or else you can simply drop it to get a nice rustic look.

4. The flavor of cocoa was dominant than the sweetness. I liked it very much. But if you have a very sweet tooth, you may want to increase the quantity of sugar.

5. I would also suggest toasting the almonds before adding it to the batter to give a nice crunch to the cookies.