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"Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one ha penny, two ha penny, hot cross buns....." goes the popular nursery rhyme.I love listening to nursery rhymes and grew up listening to them sung by Preeti Sagar.I have lost that cassette, but the song still rings in my ears. Maybe this is the reason why I love to eat bread.Bread toasted with ghee on both sides, sometimes sprinkled with chutney-pudi(chutney powder), or plain bread-butter-jam or a veggie sandwich, or bread uppit or just hot masala tea and bread :) ..... I can have bread in any form.
If you have an old bread which is turning hard, making uppit out of it is a simple way not to waste it.....preparation does not take more than 10 min.I make a fresh bread uppit and then keep it in oven for 5 min so that it is crispier and does not stick to your teeth while eating (this one is my hubby's idea :-). Also dear hubby noticed that if you cut the bread into small pieces with a knife, instead of breaking them into small pieces with hand, they get crispier faster in oven. As the popular saying goes, old habits die hard, and I usually end up using my hands :-D.
Ingrediants :
- 7-8 slices of bread
- Half finelly chopped onion
- 5-6 finely cut green chilles (adjust the number of chillies to your taste)
- 3 finely cut curry leaves
- finely chopped cilantro (to your taste)
- pinch of sugar
- lemon juice to taste
For Tempering :
- 5-6 tsp oil or eyeball it
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp jeera
- a pinch of hing and turmeric(haldi)
Method :
- Heat the pan, pour oil.More the oil, the better, as uppit does not get too dry.Do not use water to soften the uppit.I use olive oil for cooking as it is supposed to be healthier than regular vegetable oil....hence I make generous use of oil here, but I make sure uppit is not oily.
- Add mustard seeds, jeera, curry leaves, green chilles,hing and haldi. Once they start spluttering, add finely chopped onions and sprinkle little salt over it. Salt cooks onion faster.
- After few min, maybe after 5 min(onion need not be wholly cooked...it is nice if you get a crisp chuck of onion in your bite....it tastes good to me), add bread pieces and mix it well.Lower the flame to very low at the time of adding bread pieces.
- Sprinkle little sugar, add salt and lemon juice to taste.Garnish with finely chopped cilantro. Keep it in pre-heated (350) oven for 5 min and serve.
I remember reading some funny things about bread which surprised me .....that offering bread and salt to a guest is a sign of Russian welcome....that some Europeans believe that if a boy and a girl eat from the same loaf, they fall in love.....that whoever eats last piece of bread has to kiss the cook :D :D.....so next time you eat bread, remember you are eating a very romantic snack !!! Bon Appetite.
