Soy pancakes?!! Not kidding! :)

After the marathon cooking sessions over the last few days for the mega party last night, tonight called for a simple, light dinner. Hmm ... after poking around a bit, I stumbled upon this crazy soy pancakes recipe from a collection of ultra healthy recipes from the Pro Club! I was always skeptical about trying any of these 20/20 lifestyle recipe handouts available there, but after I spent some time reading them earlier tonight, I must say that I've revised my opinion. Some of these actually look pretty good!

So, soy flour rocks! It makes for a really light batter - quite perfect for pancakes, actually. And it is the perfect texture to serve as a thickening agent - an attractive alternative to corn starch. And apparently, since it can add moisture to baking products, apparently it is also a perfect alternative to eggs in most recipes! That is really good to know, I can't wait to try some breads and cakes with soy flour! Weeeeeee! *exciting*!

The recipe that caught my eye tonight was one for savoury pancakes with a cilantro chutney. Hmm ... adais and oothappams are probably closest to what I could consider savoury pancakes, so this looked really intriguing. The original recipe called for cauliflower, but I decided to go with a base of onions and red peppers instead - turned out to be a great idea. And the cilantro topping was perfect!

Savoury Soy Pancakes
They'll melt in your mouth!!!

Servings: 4 pancakes

1/2 cup soy flour (defatted variety)
1/3 onion
1/2 red bell pepper
1 thai green chilli
1/2 t salt
Oil or oil spray

Grind the onion, bell pepper and green chilli into a puree.
Pour this puree into a mixing bowl and add the soy flour, stirring constantly.
Add 2-3 T of water to form a really thick batter.
Season with the salt.
Heat a griddle and pour out dollops of the batter onto it.
Flatten the batter to form small pancakes and lightly douse with oil spray.
Let each side brown, before flipping or removing the pancakes.

NOTE: The batter needs to be really thick, not runny - soy flour does not really make for thin crepes of sorts and can totally disintegrate if the batter is too thin.

***

Cilantro chutney
Go green!

Servings: 1 cup

1 cup cleaned and trimmed cilantro leaves
1" ginger
2 cloves garlic
2 T lemon juice
1 green chilli

Grind all the ingredients in a blender, adding a little water if needed.
Season with salt if needed.




Good? Better?
*drool*! These were awesome! Seriously! Can't wait to eat them again! And the whole process took about 1/2 hour.

Seriously, soy flour rocks! And another WHB entry (Kalyn's brainchild) - this goes to Rinku from Cooking in Westchester.

Yay! Dosas!

Dosas always make me happy. Very happy! And this time, they made Stephanie & Shawn super happy too! They were long overdue for a south indian food tasting, so the makings were pretty traditional. Figured I'd go with a chutney, sambar and some veggies.

The chutney was super simple, and turned out awesome! I just blended a bunch of cilantro, bengal gram, couple of green chillies and seasoned it with lemon-ginger juice and salt. Yummy!

The sambar was a little different - no coconut this time since Stephanie is not a fan of it. No onions either. So, it was a simple broccoli sambar. I love the earthy texture and flavor that coconut lends to the sambar spices, so I figured I needed some other flavor to compensate for it - I went with some pureed tomatoes instead. It turned out pretty good!

The highlight though was the grilled sunburst squash. I just chopped up the squash and marinated it for about 15 minutes in a lemon-ginger-garlic-olive oil marinade before grilling the bits. The flavors were fabulous! The Ballard and Redmond farmers markets have been carrying some awesome squashes this summer - am truly going to miss the sunbursts (along with the sunshine!) when summer is gone :(