Onion Fritter

I crave for fried food. I think I am addicted to fritters. Or, may be, it is my Bengali gene that is responsible for this addiction. Lame excuse? Trying to evade the responsibility for my own deed/folly? Well, visit Kolkata, or any place in West Bengal for that matter! On every street, lane and by-lane you will find since early evening seven days a week one or more, more likely, busy shops selling various types of fritters: onion-, potato-, eggplant- , pumpkin-, coriander leaves- (and other leaves) fritters, and samosa, and vegetable chop (cutlet), even banana flower fritters, and the non-veg ones like fish-, chicken-, mutton-, shrimp cutlets, what not. You have to make your way shoving through a small crowd to reach the shopkeeper to communicate your desire or choices since we don’t have the habit of forming a queue; if we had there would have been a long queue in front of every shop.

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.