Tuesday 3 November 2009

Recipe for Bread Upma

Wondering what to do about that slightly older loaf of bread once you've bought a fresh one? Too much of a waste to throw away, yet a bit dodgy to consume...

Try a bread upma snack. This is another of those offbeat, male-only recipes handed down from father to son :-).

Ingredients:
8 slices of bread (you do use multigrain, don't you? That's the best from both a health and flavour perspective)
4 medium sized red (Spanish) onions
1 red hot chilli pepper (preferably Jalapeno, my favourite - slurp!)
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
Any cholesterol-absorbing butter alternative
Cooking oil (grapeseed oil handles heat much better than olive oil, I'm told)
Chopped coriander

Process (two parallel processes, in fact):

Process 1:
Chop the chilli and onions. The chilli pieces should be really fine. We want a pervasive spicy taste, not islands of dynamite.
Heat a couple of tablespoonfuls of cooking oil, pop the mustard seeds into it and wait till they start to crackle. Add the chopped chilli and saute for a while, then add the chopped onions and stir until well-fried.
Add one or two teaspoons of salt depending on preference.

Process 2:
Toast the slices of bread in a regular toaster until nice and brown (that's to ensure that any nasty effects of the mild staleness are burned away).
Apply small amounts of the butter substitute to soften each slice, then cut the slice into 16 square pieces (3 cuts in each direction).

Merge process:
Add the toasted, "buttered" bread pieces to the fried onion/chilli combine and stir well for a few minutes.
Add chopped coriander, turn off heat and continue to stir for a couple of minutes.
Serve hot.

Serves 2-4, depending on appetite :-).

I would have included a photograph because it looks really yummy, but then it was all gone before I could get my camera!

1 comment:

Ram Veeraraghavan said...

Ganeshji,

I thought multigrain bread itself is brown ... and how you can ensure the the toast is nice and brown.. next time... get the camera.. put it in video mode... may be it will help people like us... ha ha...

I thought to add an optional process (3)... incase if you have yesterday's boiled rice.. then you could fry that and continue the merge process along with 2 cloves / cardamom... to get a biriyani out of it !!!!

Good one...