The Adventures of Tintin

I had read The Adventures of Tintin comic book long time ago, when I was in college, from a friend who had one of many stories of Tintin.  I really enjoyed reading it and not all comic books are fun and engaging but this one was!  After so many years, me and my friend got in a conversation which led to the discussion of how we both liked The adventures of tintin comic books.  My friend had read all of its books but I had just read maybe one or two stories.  So without further delay, I went to the library and got Volume 2 & 3 of The Adventures of Tintin comic books where each book contained 3 stories.  Volume 2 has The broken ear, The black island, and King Ottokar's sceptre stories whereas Volume 3 has The crab with the golden claws, The shooting star, and The secret of the Unicorn.  I also found out that there is a cartoon series of his books which is also fun to watch and might be quick to finish up instead of book :P..hehe.  However, beware that the cartoon stories are slightly different from the book series.  In fact, one of the book series that I watched online "The shooting star" is compressed in small version of cartoon series with only 20 minutes whereas the book story covers a lot.  Also, I found out that there is Tintin's movie coming out this December (The secret of the Unicorn), and after watching the cartoon series of the story, I definitely want to go see the movie.

Let me tell you little bit about Tintin and why I enjoyed reading the book so much.  First of all, Tintin is a mystery solver, smart, and intelligent, but also someone who invites trouble to himself.  He has a loyal and equally intelligent dog, snowy, who saves him when he has put himself in worse situations!!  In fact, snowy has better sense of humor than Tintin :).  I don't know how this guy manages to land himself in the unexpected places and situations and also get out of it without a hiccup (well there are definitely hiccups, but it's funny how he manages it).  Also I like how the location of each of his stories is in different parts of the world and even places where ghosts will be scared to go :P, but he stays brave, strong, and goes to any limit to reach to the evidence with snowy, following his master, even though he doesn't agree with Tintin all the time, but that poor dog has no choice!!

Well that's just my 2 cents of reading Tintin's comic books.  I will probably get some more volumes of the book to read so I can finish the complete set of The Adventures of Tintin :).

Bread & Green Chilies Pakoras

Bread pakoras, by far, have been the easiest recipe I have tried which has turned out to be really tasty and yummy snack!!  I have taken down the recipe from http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2007/10/20/bread-pakora/ but made a minor addition.  Even though the recipe is on the site with video, I still want to give you guys my side of the recipe with an excellent alternate to bread pakoras which my mom suggested.

Ingredients:
- White bread (I used wheat bread since that's the one we use)
- 1 cup gram flour (besan - 1 cup is enough for only about 4 to 5 bread slices)
- 1 spoon rice flour (to add crisp to the pakoras.  If you don't have rice flour, meda works as a substitute.)
- 2 green chilies finely chopped (I used jalapeneo peppers)
- Cilantro finely chopped

Spices:
- salt
- pinch of asafetida (hing)
- 1 spoon cumin seeds (jeera)
- red chili powder

Other:
- Oil to fry the pakoras
- Water to mix in the batter

Process:
- I used 5 slices of bread
- Cut the crust from all sides of the slice
- Cut the bread in 2 equal pieces
- Mix all of the following: Gram flour (besan), rice flour, asafetida, cumin seeds, salt, and red chili powder.
- Add water to this mix to make it smoother.  Make sure you don't make it too liquidish but just enough to dip the bread slices in.
- In this mix, add green chilies, and cilantro and mix everything well.

Frying Process:
- In a frying pan heat the oil on medium heat.
- Once the oil is ready, dip the bread slices in the batter you just made one at a time and drop it into pan (slowly, so that you don't splash the hot oil).
- Put only 2 to 3 pakoras at a time in the pan (depending on the size of your pan).
- Turn them occationally and let them cook until they are brownish in color.
- Repeat this process until you have cooked all your pakoras.
- Your crispy, tasty, delicious pakoras are ready to eat.

Now about the excellent suggestion my mom made during the process of this pakoras.  Make the batter as described above but instead of bread, you can make pakoras out of green chilies (jalapeneo peppers).  Follow the process described below and you will have some mouth watering, spicy, and extremely delicious green chilies pakoras.

Green Chilies Pakoras Process:
Ingredients:
- 3 green chilies (jalapeneo peppers)
- coriander powder
- salt
- sugar

Process:
- Cut each jalapeneos in half from the center top and cut 2 to 3 big pieces (removing the middle white stuff and seeds)
- fill the pieces with coriander powder, little bit salt, and little bit sugar.
- Keeping it together, dip this mixture into the batter and fry it.
- Remove from the pan when they are cooked brownish.

Trust me....you will love these pakoras!!
Enjoy :)