PFB Round #3 Luxury Dinner Recipe, Stuffed Poppadoms! Easy Elegance. Also, Last Day To Vote!

Channeling The Inner Burra Memsahib

   Voting ends on Thursday Oct. 7th at 6:00 PM for Project Food Blog Round #3, The Luxury Dinner. I've been well and truly impressed by all the elegance out there. Who knew that we Kitchen Gophers can be so classy when duty calls!
  I've seen everything from the good wedding china to casual crockery, fancy crystal to simple stemware, sterling silver to ivory chopsticks. And the dinners have taken me on a round-the-world journey. It's been fun seeing what everyone has been up to. Believe me, the competition is stiff I tell you, stiff!
    My Goan dinner, while not exactly this...

  ..still took work and was fun to prepare.

   
   I hope that my entry has been worthy of your vote. If it has, please give me a boost up the challenge ladder Here. Thanks in advance.
  One of the things that I'm not much used to doing was something that I felt I really, really needed to do for this challenge, and that is prepare an appetizer.
   Most of the time when I prepare an Indian feast, I serve on a Thali where all the dishes are presented at the same time. But I thought since I was channeling my inner Burra Memsahib, an appetizer would be in order. There had been a recipe in Atul Kochhars Cookbook Indian Essence, that I'd always wanted to do, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. 

Stuffed Poppadoms.
 The thing I absolutely love, love, love about this recipe is the stuffing. Actually that's the main part of the recipe, the only thing you actually have to make. The pappads are store-bought and used as the wrapping. So what's in this amazing stuffing? All the good stuff. First, boil and chop 2/3 cup of potatoes.                                                        
 Set them aside.
In a deep skillet or kadhai heat :
 1 Tbs of vegetable oil
When it's hot toss in :
 1 large onion
 1 tsp of shallot
 1 tsp of ginger
 all finely chopped.
 Add in 1 tsp of ground black pepper.
 Stir fry it up until the onions and the shallot and ginger are nice and soft.

 Then add in :
 1/4 tsp ground coriander
 1/2 tsp of turmeric

7 oz of chopped raw shrimp either fresh or frozen.
 Saute it for about 3 or 4 minutes.

  Now add in the potatoes you boiled and chopped earlier along with:

 1 Tbs of lemon juice
 1/2 tsp of salt
 Sprinkle everything with:
 2 Tbs of chopped cilantro

ground cinnamon to taste.
 That's it. Fabulous, luxurious stuffing.

   Putting it Together

   Soak the store bought pappads in warm water for 5 or 10 minutes to soften them. Then drain them.
 In a small bowl mix a bit of flour and water to form a paste.
 Flatten the pappads.
 Put some of the shrimp mixture into one side of the pappad and then roll them up. Seal them closed with the flour and water paste.
  Cooking
    In a deep skillet or kadhai heat oil for deep frying. When the oil is about 320 degrees, deep-fry the pappads for about 2 to 3 minutes until they're crisp. 
Take them out, drain them on paper towels and serve them hot with a bit of chutney.
   I mixed a light salad of watercress and baby arugula with a bit of chopped shallot, then dressed it in lime juice and salt.
   You can see the finished product on the little plate next to the Thali.
   Now about that stuffing. I love it. I cannot tell you what happened to the extra that didn't fit into the pappads because it isn't a pretty story and involves something one never saw Julia Child or any Burra Memsahib worth her salt doing, and that is eating directly out of the bowl with a wooden spoon while standing over the sink. Okay, there I said it. I'm not ashamed I eat over the sink sometimes like a furtive raccoon. Of course I'm not as bad as some people.

A final word about Project Food Blog
I made it to Round 3 in the Project Foodbuzz Foodblogger of The Year Competition. 
     So for anyone who hasn't heard about this before, what exactly is this Project Foodblog Contest and why do I want it so badly???
     Project Food Blog is the first-ever interactive competition where thousands of Foodbuzz Featured    Publishers are competing in a series of culinary blogging challenges for the chance to advance and a  shot at the ultimate prize: $10,000 and a special feature on Foodbuzz.com for one year
     Voting is now open  until the 7th and I'm trying to make the cut to the next round. Please register to vote on Foodbuzz.com (it's free!) or if you're already a member, do me a solid,  Click  Here and give me a vote and help me make it to the next round.