পাতলা চিতই পিঠা -- A Porous Rice Flour Pancake

 This is a traditional age-old recipe from the former East Bengal ( পূর্ববঙ্গ) that turned into East Pakistan overnight with India's independence, which became Bangladesh later in 1971. So, East Bengal doesn't exist any longer but East Bengal food culture is alive in India with the  Hindu Bengali community who fled to this side of the border after partition and gradually established themselves in India. And of course it is very much alive in today's Bangladesh. In fact, Bangladesh's hospitality and food is extraordinary. 

This pancake was a snack my Grandmother often prepared for my mother and her siblings to eat after they returned from school.

I have never been to Bangladesh, my ancestors' motherland, where they were the children of the soil since time immemorial. But I want to and I can keep the food culture alive.

I made this yesterday morning with the leftover soaked Gobindobhog rice and mug lentil for the day before. I manually made the paste on the traditional shil-norha, শিলনোড়া ( see the photo below). 

Shil -- the flat stone, Norha -- the small, cylindrical one

The Paste

I added salt, baking powder, shredded green chillies and onion, and more water into it and mixed very well. Beating the batter well is essential, too. The consistency needs to be watery. There can't be any lump left. 

The Batter is Ready

We need really very little oil to make this pancake. Just baste the pan with the oil of your choice. I used rice-bran oil. Pour some batter on the hot pan bearing in mind that the pancake will be very thin. The flame should be medium. Flip and cook both sides. It took about a minute only to cook one side. You will see and understand how long (or how quick) it will take as you do it. 

Note: 1) Traditionally only rice flour is used but I wanted to use up the soaked mug from the previous day. 

2) We serve it with some kind of curry/ meat dish but I was to have only the pancake; therefore I added green chillies and onion. 

Making Overripe Banana Palatable

 Nobody likes overripe banana, right? 

 I had only one small banana left. Its skin started turning black.  Nobody  can guess from the photo but inside it just started to become very soft. Usually I throw it if the skin is totally black but during this difficult time of pandemic getting fresh fruits and vegetables are not easy; I can't simply go out and get fresh and new things. So, we are not throwing out anything. Pandemic has changed our lifestyle.

Early this morning I manually made a paste of yesterday's leftover soaked Gobindobhog rice and golden mug Dal for preparing a special traditional East Bengal pancake. I used some of this paste to make my overripe banana palatable. 

Banana Coins Coated in Rice Paste and Semolina

I cut the banana into small round coins and dipped them in the thick rice and mug paste and coated them with semolina. Then I sautéed them in very little oil. I removed them from the frying pan as they started being golden brown on both sides. They were super crispy outside and very soft inside.

I didn't add sugar to the rice paste batter but you can if you want it sweet. I don't have a sweet tooth. So, for me the banana itself was sweet enough.

ঝাল সুজি -- Savory Semolina

 I often make a savory porridge of semolina for breakfast. Depending on the availability and the season, the vegetables change. Today I added peanuts, too. 

Savory Semolina

Now, below are the photos showing the different stages. Since I have posted the recipe earlier -- the link is at the end of this post -- I am just posting the photos today:

Ready

Mixing all ingredients before adding water

Adding semolina

The vegetables

Usually I add more vegetables. But today, along, with carrot, I added an unusual ingredient: cucumber. This pandemic and quarantine life is making me really adventurous with food! 

The recipe is here:

http://kayhavingfeasts.blogspot.com/2018/07/jhaal-suji-spicy-semolina.html?m=1

Vegan Omlette with Sattu Filling

 

I often prepare myself a pancake early in the morning and semolina is my regular ingredient . I make a light batter of semolina adding salt, shredded green chillies, shredded onion, and sometimes a pinch of cumin powder. To make the vegan Omlette above I added cumin seeds and green chillies and a little flour to the semolina, and of course, salt. 

To  make the filling I made a paste of sattu adding salt, freshly shredded onion to it. I don't like hot and spicy but you can add chillies, too, and a little lemon juice, if you want. Also, it tastes good when we add a little shredded coriander leaves, tomato and bell peppers but we don't have our usual supply of vegetables during this quarantine. 

First, I make the pancake cooking it by both sides. I put the filling like in the photo below, roll it and cook it just one or two minutes changing the sides. Et voila! My breakfast is ready. 

Note: sattu is roasted split Bengal gram flour.

মুসুর ডালের বড়া -- Red Lentil Fritters

 During this pandemic our consumption of rice and lentils has increased and that of fresh vegetables has decreased only to ensure maximum physical distancing and isolation. Therefore, we are having red lentil fritters more often than usual.

We had red lentil fritters tonight also. Two days ago I soaked some lentil and made fritters with some of it. The rest was in the fridge. We had to use it up, too. 

This fritter is super easy to make: soak >make the paste> add salt, a little shredded onion and green chillies, a little turmeric powder > stir, stir, stir to mix well > fry. And Voila! No need to deep fry! The only difficult task is to make the paste if you do it manually using the traditional শিল-নোড়া, the two pieces of stones with which Bengali women have been making pastes of almost everything under the sun since time immemorial!! 😅 But I suggest you use a mixer-grinder. Our mixer is kaputt and cannot take it to the shop for fixing unless the infection rate starts reducing. Almost every day we are at the top of the list in daily infections and death. For the same reason I can't get my spectacles replaced; so, Mom did the frying. Two days ago I did it without my glasses but we shouldn't take such a risk since the entire medical service is under tremendous pressure and treatments to other medical conditions are not happening regularly and so, this is not the most convenient time to have an accident in the kitchen. 

The Paste

Soaked Dal on the Flat Stone(শিল)

Instead of onion I prefer adding nigella seeds. I also don't add turmeric powder. 

Make the shapes flat; then the lentil will cook thoroughly though you don't deep fry. We never deep fry lentil fritters. 

It's heavy and oily. I wouldn't give it to very small children. But it tastes simply out of this world and a very common side dish with জল-ভাত /jawl bhaat/ in summer and a popular traditional part of the Iftaar menu as our poet শামসুর রহমান(Shamshur Rahman) reminds us in his poem 'বাংলাভাষা উচ্চারিত হলে': "নানী বিষাদসিন্ধুর স্পন্দে দুলে / দুলে রমজানী সাঁঝে ভাজেন ডালের বড়া"

Red Lentil Soup + Red Lentil Fritters with Rice

Taler bora: Sweet Fritter from Ripe Sugar Palm Fruit

Taler Bora -- Sweet Fritter from Ripe Sugar Palm Fruit

Palmyra palm or sugar palm (Borassus flabellifer), is very common in our region and we make a delicious fragrant sweet dish from the ripened sugar palm fruit. We can call it sugar palm sweet fritter. My mother makes it every season and we help her.

We remove the outer black husk and get this. These are the fibrous kernels of the ripe fruit.

We rub this on a grater and this fragrant yellowish pulpy substance comes out. 

We add sugar or jaggery (non-centrifugal cane sugar from sugar cane or palm sap) and ripe and soft banana into it. Adding banana is optional and it has to be much less in quantity compared to “tal”. (You can also add grated coconut.) Then everything is mixed very well. Now this mixture is too soft to give it a shape. So, rice powder is slowly added and mixed until we get the required thickness. It is also quite common to add refined wheat flour (Maida) but my mother and grand-mother prefer rice powder to it.

Then we make flat and round shapes by hand and deep fry. You can also shape it like round balls. To fry, we usually use sun flower oil. 

Traditionally, Atap rice used to be soaked and then ground using “shil-norha” at home. "Shil - norha" are basically a set of grinding stones very similar to mortar and pestle. "Shil" is bigger, flat and not moved. The spices, or rice in this case, are placed on it and ground moving the "norha" on it, sprinkling water every now and then. The result is a thick paste. “Atap” is a Sanskrit word that means “sun (sunrays/sunlight)” or “heat”. We get “atap” rice by husking sun-dried paddy.  Nowadays we buy ready made rice powder from local shops. We eat less rice/ rice items nowadays and we no longer stock Atap rice at home. We still have shil-norha but it is rarely used. Mixer-grinder is the more efficient replacement for our generation. 

Taler bora is a must-have for the Hindu religious festival of “Janmashtami”, the birthday of God Krishna, celebrated in the month of Bhadra ( pronounced “bhaadro) of Bengali calendar.

Alu Tikia

Potato again! "Alu" means potato.
According to Oxford dictionarym tikia is "An Indian fried cake of spiced meat or mashed potato:an alu tikia"  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tikia
Meat is out of the question since I have become a vegan. We had Alu (potato)-tikia  this evening! I was watching the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and felt shocked and sad, and my mother made these alu tikias for me. You are pampered like this when you come home after many years!
 Sorry, the photo doesn't do justice to the delicious dish!

 To make alu tikia, my mom used boiled chick peas and potato mashed together with shredded coriander leaves, onion, a little carrot and green chillis, cumin powder and salt added to it. She mixed everything well.

The Mixture

She mixed everything well, formed balls of this mixture and rolled it on all purpose flour. But she advised me to use corn flour which she didn't have at the moment: we rarely use it.

I am addicted to fritters and my mom is not at all happy about it. So, she wanted to show me how to make a tasty snack with very little oil. She actually made it with almost no oil. She just brushed the pan with a little oil, placed the potato balls on it and turned the sides. She cooked them on low flame till both the sides of the balls turned brown. We had them with tangy tamarind chutney!

Tikias Getting Cooked on an Almost Dry, Oil-less Pan

It was delicious but I will add a little more oil when I make them, Mother! Hahahah!

Bratkartoffeln, I miss you!

Potato! Who doesn’t love this adorable starchy darling? Potato is easy and quick to cook, filling and super satisfying to eat!

I have heard that potato is an immigrant in Indian sub-continent. The British brought it in this land and now India is one of the top potato producers in the world. Potato is one of the most popular vegetables in India especially in the northern part. Though in South India also, potato constitutes the main ingredient in many popular dishes like masala dhosa, I feel that it is consumed more in North India. For example, we add a little potato in most of our dishes though we do have some recipes without potato: we add whole round potatoes, if relatively small, or big potatoes halved almost always in our regular meat dishes, we fry potato in different shapes and sizes, we add potato cubes almost in all vegetable curries in our daily meal, alur dom/dom alu – slow cooked hot and spicy potato curry – is almost invariably on the menu in any festive occasion!

When we were small, finely mashed potato was our baby food. I still love it with a few drops of virgin mustard oil and shredded onion.

That evening I was home alone! I was enjoying my own company and watching a movie and suddenly craved for a comfort much to complete the pleasure!

So, I washed and peeled two large potatoes, and cut them into pieces that you can see in the picture here.  I soaked them in cold water for a few minutes, drained all the water carefully. Then I added salt and a little turmeric and a little sugar to the potatoes and mixed everything very well. I left this stand for about 15 minutes. Then I drained the water that came out of the potatoes. I heated mustard oil in a korai (traditional cast iron cooking pot, circular, deep and thick) till the smoking point to get rid of the typical strong smell of it, added the potatoes into the oil, reduced the flame and fried them. After that I sprinkled a little black pepper powder on them and served to myself!

It was total foodgasm for my taste buds!

Malabar Spinach Fritter

Malabar Spinach Fritter

My friend aptly commented, “I wish I had a snack-gifting aunt!” Oh, it is really bless to have an aunt who is an amazing cook and loves to cook for you!

My aunt sent me some Malabar spinach fritters and it made my evening! She made it herself from scratch, with loads of love and the leaves were freshly collected from her own garden. What could be a better gift for a happy fat vegan?!

Here is how we make it.

We clean the leaves thoroughly and then shred them.

We add salt, a little turmeric powder, a little poppy seeds and shredded onion and green chilli to chickpea flour ("besan" we call it) and mix everything very well.

Now we add water little by little and make a thick paste. We now add the leaves to this paste and mix very well. Thickness of this mixture would be so, that it is possible to make small, flat and round shapes out of it which we deep fry.

We traditionally use mustard oil but you can use sunflower oil, too.

Curry-flavoured Hummus

Curry-flavoured Hummus

Samosa (Singara in Bengali)

Samosa (or "shingara" in Bengali) is a the very popular traditional Indian snack. Samosa is vegan traditionally since the filling is mainly potato or in winter, cauliflower.One can actually use anything they like for the filling but traditionally potato it is something plant based!I used mashed potato and soybeans for the filling. I cooked everything adding a little cumin powder, shredded onion, chopped green chillies, turmeric powder and salt. You may skip turmeric powder if you are not used to the taste of it.

The Filling: blended ingredients curried and made into a fine spicy puree

I made the dough with maida (bleached and refined flour, very common here and typically used for making these). I added some oil, a little salt, a pinch of red chilli powder (optional) to the dough.
Then I made the cones from the dough, filled with the filling, sealed it and deep fried. 

It was late evening and it was pouring outside every now and then. Our tiny sleepy town looked even more sleepy. It was a perfect weather for enjoying samosa with Darjeeling tea.

Papri Chat

In Kolkata food is everywhere! Bengalis are really foody! They love eating out. An evening for shopping is incomplete without some snacking.

This was our snack bar this time, in front of the South City Mall. We went for Papri Chaat, a fast food from northern India. It is vegetarian.
The main ingredient of papri chat is papri, a crispy wafer from white flour and oil.

Our chaat seller starts with sprinkling tomato ketchup on some papris. Then he adds boiled potato and boiled chick peas to it. WE asked him not to add yoghurt, which is another important ingredient.

He also added some chanachur and some roasted pea nuts.Then he garnishes it with thinly sliced coconut and sev and served it to us.

Note: sev is a very thin noodle made of chick pea flour, broken into very tiny pieces. Sev is salty and very crispy.

Papri chat was very spicy for me and probably that is why my stomach did not find it very friendly.

Alu Bhaja ar koraishunti diye Muri Makha

Puffed Rice with Fried Potato and Green Peas

       "Muri" is a very popular snack in Bengal.
Muri makha, i.e. puffed rice with different ingredients added to it accompanied by a cup of tea is one of our most favourite evening snacks. It can also be called moshla muri (= puffed rice with spices) or jhal muri (jhal = hot [and spicy]).
        I love chanachur diye muri makha/ muri-chanachur : puffed rice with chanachur, a very spicy mixture of fried lentils, pea nuts, gram flour noodles, flaked rice, which my mom considers not very healthy since it is not homemade and since it is very hot and spicy. So, as an alternative she usually offers puffed rice with fried potato and other ingredients like green peas, shredded onion or roasted pea nuts etc.

       This time we had it with potato and green peas and, sadly for my mom, without tea, since tea is now forbidden for her.

           Puffed Rice with Fried Potato and Green Peas

Ingredients:

Puffed rice -- bought ready made
The mix:  potato cut in small cubes
               green peas
               green chili -- shredded if you want it really hot; otherwise, sliced
               black caraway seeds (nigella sativa)
               mustard oil
               salt

How to prepare the mix:

Heat mustard oil till its typical smell vanishes and the colour changes.
The potato needs to be shallow-fried. So, we do not need a lot of oil.

Add the nigella and chili to it.
Add the potato. After it starts turning a little golden, add salt and stir to mix well. Cover the frying pan and let it cook. When the potato is softened, add the peas and cover again. Let it cook for about 2 minutes.

Now mix all these with the muri and enjoy snacking.

Puffed rice is usually a little salty. So, we did not sprinkle salt to the the whole mixture in the end.
Traditionally, a little raw mustard oil is mixed with the puffed rice for all muri makha / jhal muri. You can also do the same if you have developed a taste for its typical strong flavour.

Phuchka

Today we had phuchka for evening snacks.

Phuchka balls with Tamarind-Water and Mashed Potato

To experience the phuchka bliss, you have to do as follows:
1) Take one phuchka ball. with your finger prick the phuchka in the middle. It makes the sound "phuch"! Hahaha! And the phuchka now looks like this:

2) Place some mashed potato into the hollow womb of the phuchka so that there is some space left inside the phuchka.

3) Traditionally, you should pick the above with your fingers (the thumb, index finger and the middle one) and dip it, along with your fingers into the tamarind-water so that the blank space still left after placing the potato inside the phuchka is now filled with that water. We took the tamarind water with a spoon and poured on the popato.

Phuchka filled in with Mashed Potato and Tamarind Water

4) Now put the whole thing into your mouth; do not try to eat it bit by bit with tiny bites, it will not work.
5) Sip from the bowl the left over tamarind water oozed out from the phuchka.
 If you have it from some phuckawala (a traditional phuchka seller), at this point,
5a) ask for one without water and with only the filling, saying "aekta shukno, dada!"
5b) and now ask for some tamarind water without phuchka: "ektu jol, dada!"

5a) and 5b) are interchangeable!

Drinks and Some Tiny Bites on Saturday!

My friends decided to have a party on last Saturday! Everyone was supposed to bring drinks. But I do not have a taste for drinks, since I am very loyal to pure German Leitungswasser (tap water), other than which I very rarely drink milk or black tea, or sweet wine and nothing else. So, I cannot pick up drinks ruling out the possibility of a disastrous choice. I decided to make something that could accompany the drinks.
I made two types of pakoras: 1) Crispy with rice powder, and 2) soft and delicate with potato, carrot and green peas (which could be called vegetable-chop in my hometown.)

For a change, I cooked something completely vegetarian for a party!!!
And I have never seen a better utilisation of a bath-tub before. (LoL!)

Looks like Schaschlik! :)

It was my pleasure that this was recieved well.
I made this for our barbecue evening!