Every year V settles down to watch Super Bowl, with me at his side cheering on enthusiastically….. for the ads and the half-time show! It bothered V to no end that I did not follow the game itself. This year though, I was prepared! I knew the rules of the game, I knew the teams playing, I was even rooting for one of them (the one that won of course)! V, I think, was suitably impressed.
On the food front, there is an interesting tradition we follow every year on Super Bowl day. We always cook a vegetable rice dish (which could be Thai fried rice or Chinese fried rice or Indian biryani or pulao) and eat it with kettle-fried potato chips with salt & pepper, and buttermilk. I am not sure how this tradition came about but we follow it quite religiously. This year, as Amma is visiting us, we made biryani rice with green beans, carrots, red and green bell pepper and peas, seasoned with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Yummy as always, when watching Super Bowl!
For a healthy snack before the meal, I decided to make a egg-free version of the Spinach & Kale Bites from Trader Joes as amma does not eat eggs. I was surprised how easy it is to make this yummy finger food.
Inspired by the Trader Joes frozen snack
[Printable Recipe]Ingredients:
- 1 bunch curly kale, stemmed and chopped (came to around 10 oz chopped)
- 10 oz fresh spinach
- 2 medium potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed up
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese or Gruyere cheese
- 1 1/2 cups Panko bread crumbs
- 3 Tbsp powdered flax seed
- Salt & pepper to taste
Method:
- Preheat oven to 375C
- Process the chopped kale in a food processor and add to a large bowl
- Steam the spinach for 5 mins with about a tablespoon of water until wilted. Cool. Then process in a food processor and add to the bowl with the kale
- Mix in the mashed potato, grated cheese and 1 cup of bread crumbs. (Save the remaining bread crumbs to coat)
- Mix the powdered flax seed with about 8 Tbsp of water. Set aside for 10 mins to thicken. Then add to the bowl.
- Add salt and pepper to taste and mix all the ingredients in the bowl well.
- Line 2 cookie sheets with foil or wax paper
- Form small ping pong ball-sized balls with the mixture and roll well in the remaining panko bread crumbs to coat. Flatten in to hockey puck shapes and place on the cookie sheet
- Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on both sides turning them over once in the middle
The experiment to make an egg-free version of this super-nutritious snack for super bowl was quite successful. Again, V, I think, was suitably impressed!Update: I made this recipe again the following weekend to take with us for a potluck. I made some variations such as adding potatoes and omitting the onions. I also flattened the balls out in to hockey pucks and turned them over once in the middle of baking. It tasted much better than the first time! So I have updated the recipe accordingly and included one picture I shot indoors in the dark.