Kid-Friendly Potato Peas and Cheese Surprise!

Okay the name is a little dramatic, I admit. For a lack of any good cutlet recipes, or should I say, different cutlet recipes, I came up with my own. It isn't fancy, neither does it take too much time. Just the idea that when you bite into the cutlet, through the soft potatoes and peas shell... Surprise! Say cheese?

The cutlet is children-friendly, though you can notch up the spiciness quotient to make it an ideal snack for a small tea-party too. Though you may better watch it. Since it is a kid-friendly cutlet, I have incorporated chunks of cheese. Cheese, as we all know isn't adults-friendly, especially women and it tends to, shall we say 'show' in all the wrong places! Damn. Why are all good things in life so sinful.

Anyway, read up. Make it, and let me know how it turned out.

Ingredients

• 2 medium sized potatoes, boiled
• 1/2 cup peas, boiled
• 10 rectangular chunks of processed cheese (big sized  for kids, microscopic for us!)
• 2 tbsp cornflour + 2 tbsp for coating
• 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/2 tsp red chilli powder (more if grown-ups are going to eat it)
• 2 tsp roasted sesame seeds
• 1/2 tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp dry mango powder (amchur)
• salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp sugar (trust me!)
• 1/2 cup semolina for coating
• oil for shallow frying

1. Mash the boiled potatoes well. This is first and foremost a necessity if you want to make good tikkis. The potatoes must be mashed till atleast most of of the large chunks are gone. 
2. Add the peas, cornflour, dry spices, sesame seeds, salt and sugar.  Mix it well. (although bread slices are preferred, I didn't have any, so I used cornstarch. Works just as well.)
3. Divide the above mixture into ten equal portions. 
4. Grease your hands with a little oil. Roll the potato and peas mixture into a ball. Make a deep long indentation in the center using your index finger. 
5. Place a cheese stick in this indentation.
6. Roll the edges of the potato mixture over the cheese and shape into a rectangular block. (this makes it easy to fry.)
7. Prepare all the ten cutlets in this manner and set them aside.
8. Heat a skillet and pour just enough oil to shallow fry.
9. Make a thin paste of cornflour in water.
10. Roll each cutlet in the cornflour paste, then into the semolina and place in the skillet to shallow fry.
11. These are delicate things, so do NOT attempt to pick them up and roll them over. They are rectangular remember? So just nudge them on to their adjacent side once the base has cooked to a crisp and brown purrrfection!
12. Fry on all sides.
13. Dip them in ketchup, and pop them in your mouth and feel ecstasy as the cheese melts like so much yummy molten lava!

I admit that the pic is not very good. But I made these in the evening and the light these days is really fickle. (Plus I need to get my eyes checked, but I am not going to say that, am I?)

 Happy Cooking!