Quick and Easy Bread Snacks
Sundays afternoon siestas are so divine. A happy tummy, the nip
in the weather and an obliging baby who sleeps without throwing any tantrum is
my idea of a perfect prologue to a siesta these days. Our household stirs out
of this solemn ritual at around 5 pm. I always wake up with the feeling of
wanting to snack on something. Well, gone are the days when I used to lazily
loll out of the bed and ask mom what she was making for tea. But I am not
complaining, I love experimenting in my kitchen and I love the fact that
whatever I make shall be accepted, no matter how inedible that is!
So today was one of those Sundays when my mind was debating on
whether to go for sweet or savoury for tea. I opened the fridge and caught
myself staring at the packet of brown bread that the husband had bought for our
birding trip. Again I was assailed by the thought of ways to cook with bread. A
number of recipes came to my mind. But I was still in that just-out-of-sleep mode
and did not want to make anything elaborate or which involved much activity.
But the question of sweet or savoury still remained to be
settled. Now, my mother-in-law has a massive sweet tooth, my husband has a ‘medium’
size sweet tooth, mine is a size small and my father-in-law has zero tolerance
for sweets! I counted the number of bread slices and came up with a great idea
to kill both birds with one stone. How about making 3/4th of the
bread for something sweet and 1/4th for savoury? Brilliant, isn’t
it?
I will go on a tangent here, but I love to watch cookery
shows (is that a surprise?). Earlier I used to watch the program Top Chef and
nowadays I am into Masterchef Australia. I like it when they are given only a
few minutes to come up with their dishes. Sometimes I put myself into their
shoes and think what I would have cooked if I was given 10 or 15 minutes. I
tried that concept today. I pretended that I have been given 10 minutes and I have
to produce two dishes, one sweet and the other savoury, with bread being the
prime ingredient. Here is what I came up with – Bread Halwa (or maybe pudding?)
and Bread Upma. Both these dishes took just 10 minutes, not more, and I was
happy with the outcome. You can, of course, make them more exciting with a lot
more ingredients. The quantity I have mentioned in my ingredients list is good
enough for 1 or 2 persons. You can increase the number of bread slices as per
your requirement. Also, I removed the edges of the bread slices to get a more
even consistency. So, here goes my basic recipe for both these dishes.
Bread Halwa
Ingredients:
5-6 bread slices, soaked in water and the excess water
squeezed off
½ cup condensed milk (you can also use milk and sugar) or as
per your sweetness quotient
2 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter)
7-8 raisins
Method:
Mash the water-soaked bread. Now, heat up 1 tablespoon of
ghee in a kadai and add the mashed bread to it. Stir well till some of the water
in the bread evaporates. Do not let the bread stick to the bottom of kadai. Next,
pour in the condensed milk and stir. Add the raisins and take the halwa off the
gas. Drizzle another tablespoon of ghee over the halwa and serve hot.
Bread Upma
Ingredients:
5-6 bread slices, soaked in water and the excess water
squeezed off
1 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
1 green chilli, chopped
1 tablespoon refined oil
1 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter)
Salt to taste
Method:
As in the halwa, mash the water-soaked bread. Splutter the
mustard seeds in the refined oil in a heated kadai and add the chopped onions
and green chilli. Fry till the onions turn brown. Then add the turmeric powder
and stir. Now, tip in the mashed bread, add salt and stir some more. If the
bread mixture is too watery, let some of the water evaporate. Pour 1 tablespoon
of ghee before taking the upma off the gas. Serve hot.
Now, wasn’t that easy enough to be cooked in 10 minutes? You
can add dry fruits to the halwa and different vegetables to the upma to make them
more interesting.
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