Sour Cream Sandwiches

I am back ! I know that it seems like a deja vu, but hopefully this time I will not disappear like I did last time. Its amazing how my life changed in a year! Last April , I stumbled upon this beautiful world of food bloggers, and I knew instantly, that this was something i would love to be a part of. With little kitchen experience and a lot of encouragement from all of you, I have managed to complete a year of blogging on 5th April and 50 posts (although, i wasn't really active for the last 4 months...but who is counting right ? ;))! This April, I was buried deep in work with the last few days of tax season, and even managing to cook something at home was a major achievement. So I literally went from a lot of cooking to no cooking in a year. :)

I want to thank all of you for enquiring about my whereabouts and motivating me to come back with all of your wonderful recipes and stories. I would also like to thank my hubby, for his immense patience and tolerance level (as the guinea pig for my experiments), my sister who is always providing me with quick fix recipes and ideas, my mom-in-law for sharing her treasure of recipes with me, and last but not the least....my Mom. If it had not been for her, I would never have developed this skill and Bhaatukli would never have come into existence.

Now, lets talk about today's recipe. Last week, as I was blog hopping to update my blog for the different events going on, I came across this event - The Sandwich Festival, hosted by Anupama of Food-n-More. What a fun event, I thought. Every week, there is at least one day when my lunch box has a sandwich, and there are countless evenings, when I am tired to make anything else, but the humble bread has always provided me with a quick and delicious meal. The sandwich recipe I am sharing with you today, was my discovery in the early days of my marriage (makes me feel really old), when I was trying out different stuff from the American grocery stores and did not have a clue about food blogs. At that time my main resource for new and different recipes was Bawarchi, and I always found very good recipes contributed by readers like us. One day, I went to the grocery store and bought sour cream. I was very excited at the prospect of making something out of this world with this. As I came back home and put the jar of sour cream in the refrigerator, I realized that I the only thing I could think of was sandwiches. But how ? I quickly went to my favorite website for ideas, half expecting to be disappointed. Who would think of making Sour Cream Sandwiches. But to my great surprise and delight, there was someone who thought like me. Yay! I decided to give this recipe a try, and ever since, Sour Cream Sandwich by Saroj Kering, has been a family favorite. The great part about this recipe is that, you can experiment with it and change to your liking. This sandwich is my entry to the Sandwich Festival. I follow the recipe exactly, with a few teeny tiny changes.

Ingredients: (makes 4 Sandwiches)

8 slices of bread (your choice of white, wheat or any other)

2 potatoes

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1/4 tsp garam masala (I generally skip this)

1/2 tsp Jeera powder (Cumin powder)

2-3 green chillies chopped finely (adjust as per your liking)

Lemon juice ( about half a lemon)

Few leaves of cilantro chopped finely

Sour Cream

Grated Cheese ( I use the readymade grated cheese packets -Italian blend/ Mozarella/or whichever I find interesting)

Green Chutney ( recipe to follow)

Sandwich Maker

Method : Green Chutney

To make this chutney, you will need :

A small bunch of cilantro leaves

2 Green chillies

2 tbsp Peanuts (roasted/unroasted but definitely without the skin)

1 tsp Jeera (Cumin seeds)

1/2 tsp Sugar

1/2 tsp lemon juice

Salt to taste.

Add all the ingredients except sugar, and lemon juice in a mixer/blender and grind together with little bit of water. The consistency should be a little thick, like a paste. Once done, add the sugar and lemon juice and voila, the chutney is ready! You can also add mint leaves if you like.

Method : Sour cream sandwich

Boil the potatoes in the microwave or a pressure cooker. Then mash them and to this, add the turmeric powder, chopped green chillies, cilantro, lemon juice, garam masala (if using), jeera powder and salt. Mix well and keep aside.

Now take a slice of bread, apply the green chutney to it. On another slice, spread a little bit of the potato mixture. Take a dollop of sour cream and apply over the potato mixture. Finally, sprinkle some grated cheese over it and then place the slice of bread with the chutney on top of it to make a sandwich. Place the sandwich in the sandwich maker and cook as per instructions. Repeat process for all the slices of bread. Enjoy hot with some ketchup!

Variation :

Instead of adding green chillies to the potato mixture, I sometimes add laal mirchicha thecha (a type of chutney made with fresh red chillies) to it. This lends a great flavor to the mixture. I will share the recipe for this thecha in my next post.