Thrilled that I'd actually got down to blogging, I came up with another attempt today. I’ve had this big jar of quick-rolled oats for a while. I was supposed to have a virtuous upma of them for breakfast once in a while, but it stood crowded and forgotten among many others in my pantry. But – I definitely remembered buying it in the recent past (four months ago) and though squinting at the ‘BB’ date gave me the sinking suspicion that it said ‘one month’ I bravely forged ahead and set about using it up.
What I did was try and replicate a crunchy coating of oats on fried nuggets I’d had at a restaurant once. I looked for some recipes on the Net till I found a few for fish and chicken rolled in oats and baked but since I didn’t have either handy, I decided to use a couple of mammoth potatoes that were just threatening to turn green.
I hadn’t really bothered to keep an eye on the quantities specified, so I threw together some random amounts for the first spud - they nearly didn’t suffice. Then I put together another batch for the second.
I dipped the slightly-boiled slices in the beaten-to-foam white of an egg, rolled it in the oats-sesame-cracked pepper-ajwain (oregano)-salt mix and baked them on a greased plate in the oven. Not a big success, they didn’t soften, and the coating tasted so-so.
However, I shallow-fried the second batch with a little olive oil in a non-stick pan, and that’s what I’ll do till I find out what went wrong with the oven batch. Better still, I’ll figure out a way to get just the coating (scrumptious!) to hold itself together and not get some humongous tuber into the act!
