Pyanj Posto

This is for Bengalis all over the world who love their posto and siesta. In that same order. During my life in Delhi, I’d be surprised how the entire stretch of CR Park would look deserted in the PM hours of 1-4. All the Bengalis would shutter down their shops and stores and do a tene ghoom, Bengali for undisturbed, worry-less sleep. Very disturbing for the economy of the small migrant Bengali business community in Delhi. But who cares! Bengalis are not a business community anyway.

When we were kids, there was a convenience store or Dadu’r dokaan in the neighbourhood in Patna. I don’t even know why we called a 50-year-old man a Dadu! “Uncle” or Kaku sounds more respectable for a man that age. What made it worse was even our parents called him Dadu.

Now Dadu would shut shop during lunch and until dusk set in and go into temporary hibernation everyday. The grapevine had it that Didima would wake him up around five with a steaming cup of chaa and ready him with her kucho nimki, muri and tele bhaja, or some days a gorom shingara. These would propel Dadu back to work, before he shut shop again by eight. So we had a small window from 10 AM to 12 noon and again from 5:30 to eight in the evening to get our refill of lemonchus, chanachur, toffee, chire bhaja, pachok, dim, pauruti, makhon, jam, jelly, etc.

And Dadu would do it everyday for years. That’s how loyal he was. About getting his Zzzzs. Maybe he also had Pyanj Posto for lunch in lavish quantities along with his gobindobhog rice. But that we will never find out.

Ingredients for Pyanj Posto are:

1 large red onion, thinly slivered
4-5 tablespoons of white poppy seeds/posto + a little more to sprinkle
3-4 green chillies, slit
Half teaspoon turmeric powder
3-4 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Start by grinding the posto. Many people ask me how to do it in a grinder. Here is an easy way. Start by dry grinding first and then add water, little by little. To get the right consistency for the dish you are making. For Pyanj Posto, we will need a not-so-smooth posto bata/wet ground poppy seeds. You could throw in a couple of green chillies too when you are grinding the posto for extra heat.

With the posto done, start by heating a thick pan. Then add the mustard oil.

Throw in the slit green chillies when the oil is very hot. Then add the onions. Sauté the onions in low-medium heat till they are pink in color.

Then add the posto paste. Move everything around to coat the onions with the posto.

The Pyanj Posto should be cooked well till you see a thin line of oil at the sides of the pan.

At this stage, you can add a little sprinkle of whole posto seeds. You don’t have to, if you don't want to. Add the turmeric too. Season with salt. Let everything mix well for the last time.

Turn the heat off when the Pyanj Posto is bhaja-bhaja. Take the pan to the dining table to serve the Pyanj Posto with plain white rice. You may experience bouts of bliss eating the Pyanj Posto with bhaat.

Other posto recipes from me are here.

Made in Shantiniketan, Bidisha Didi’r Chhana-Posto Bhaate

“Chhana chai, didi? Chhana chai? Ek dom tatka.” The chhana wala would call out every morning. And Didi would invariably oblige. Chhana was her weakness, and so was helping all those street vendors who came hollering every morning. They knew Didi would always buy.

When Didi was done making Chhanar Dalna, some chhana would still remain. And with all that extra chhana, she’d make this bhaate. A steamed goody made by mixing equal quantities of poppy seed paste, fresh chhana, chopped red onions, chopped green chillies, and a generous dash of mustard oil. And if little sister Bipasha was visiting her in her Shantiniketan home, Didi would make sure she made a tiffin-boxful just for her!

Didi would serve her specially made Chhana-Posto Bhaate to little sister with plain white rice. She loved watching Bipasha mix little dollops of the bhaate into the shaada bhaat, deftly using her fingers to mix everything and eat with satisfaction writ large on her face. There were times little sister would give big sister’s maachher jhol a miss and finish all her rice with the delicate-tasting bhaate. That’s how much she liked it. And why not!

Ingredients for Bidisha Didi’r Chhana-Posto Bhaate are:

4-5 tablespoons poppy seeds/posto, made into a coarse paste
Equal quantity of fresh, homemade paneer/chhana, crumbled lightly
1-2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
5-6 green chillies, finely chopped
Generous dash of mustard oil + extra while serving
Salt

In a steel tiffin box, mix everything together – the posto, chhana, onions, green chillies, salt and drizzle the mustard oil. Close the lid of the box and keep in a pressure cooker. Fill the pressure cooker with a cup or two of water. Make sure you don’t cover the tiffin box with water.

Close the pressure cooker and cook the chhana-posto mixture till two whistles go off.

Remove the box as soon as you are able to open the pressure cooker.

Mix the bhaate, add an extra squirt of mustard oil if you want to and serve hot with plain white rice. The addition of the chhana to the posto adds a lot of creaminess to this bhaate. Its a great recipe for vegetarians who’d get protein from the paneer. We loved this new bhaate for its unique and simple flavours.

(Bipasha and big sister Bidisha both live in the US. Little sister often visits Didi in Princeton, New Jersey just to eat her Chhana-Posto Bhaate. Thanks to the two sisters for sharing this recipe. Its for keeps.)

Ilish Maacher Paturi Photoshoot and Some Learnings

So I took this Bobby Flay-like challenge upon me to make Ilish Maacher Paturi the way it should be, wrapped in banana leaves! No steel tiffin box or microwaveable bowl came in my way this time. I had suffered enough scorn from Bengali food-e-ratis for long. It was now time for redemption.

I used one heaped tablespoon of yellow mustard seeds, one teaspoon of black mustard seeds and one teaspoon of poppy seeds along with few green chillies, and a teaspoon of turmeric to make the marinade for the paturi. Once all the ingredients were wet ground to a smooth paste, I slathered it over the fish steaks. The Ilish we get here is from a Bangladeshi store, they have the best Padma river Ilish, known for its distinct taste and buttery texture.

The thing about Ilish is that you don’t need to wash it thoroughly. Too much washing will drain the taste out of this king of fish! Ideally, a whole fish should be un-scaled, washed and then sliced.

To the mustard marinated fish I threw in few more slit green chillies and some salt and drizzled mustard oil. Mustard oil is one of the most essential ingredients in an Ilish Maacher Paturi, please do not substitute it with any other oil. It will be Ilish Paturi blasphemy.

I kept the marinated fish covered for about 15-20 minutes, before I transferred each individual Ilish piece (with its marinade and the mustard oil; drizzle some more if you want to) on a rectangular piece of banana leaf.

I found the banana leaves in the frozen section of a Chinese grocery store. Make sure you wash the frozen leaves with warm water before you wrap them around the fish. This way they will soften a bit and will not tear.

I used kitchen twine to make banana leaf packets for my fish. You can use bamboo cocktail picks to keep the ends of the leaves together.

Each packet was then kept in a large baking dish and microwaved for 10 minutes. I did think of my traditional bamboo steamer for cooking the fish, but then got lazy and settled to microwave. I don’t think the end result suffered because of that.

Time the cooking process of the paturi well, so that you can serve the dish just before you are sitting down to eat your lunch or dinner.

Snip off the twines and unwrap each leaf to keep on the plate in which your guest/you will eat.

Ilish Maacher Paturi needs nothing else but pearly white plain rice to eat with and your deft fingers to artfully make morsels of the fish and rice and its zingy mustard sauce to transfer you into Ilish heaven. Return from there would be very difficult, because everything then will look so ordinary.

The Good, the Bad and the Bengali English; Now Translate Potol

A couple of days ago, when we were singing paeans about Tagore, updating our status messages on Facebook about the literary achievements of the genius called Rabindranath, somewhere in a dark corner of another world, some Bengali was heard saying (to his host) - the phood was yammy! (Literally translated as – I do not know the difference between the sounds “u:” and “ɑ:”. Why? Because my mammy did not make me laarrn.)

There is something endearing about us Bongs and our pronunciation of English words. I admit, we are no Jhumpa Lahiris out there to impress the English-speaking world, hence we have all the right to roll our eyes and say - Bhee the peepull, with as much pride as our Big Sista in Calcutta does.

It does not take long for a non-Bengali to discover that we Bongs mix up our “w” and “v”. In vain is most certainly In wain, and a woman is always a voman. Try saying that ALOUD. But to do that, you will need the soul and the soft, mellifluous voice of a Bengali. That would mean you will have to take a huge riks (read risk; pronounce riks!). While we are on the topic of enunciation, its not entirely unusual for the phish-eating Bengali to mix the “f” and “ph” sounds. The accent gets thicker when he is drinking.

I have never known a Bengali who writes grammatically incorrect English. In my circle of Grammar Nazi friends, we poke fun at each other for our community’s inability to pronounce certain words. That’s how perfect we are. At least in our heads. And I am not even venturing on to talking about the bushy-faced Bengali still hanging on to his embroidered jean pant and bush shaart.

Perhaps another day.

But my favourite mention will be from the recent movie Bhooter Bhobishyot, where the front desk lady at the real estate developer’s office is heard saying (to someone) on the phone, Hard diks crash hoye gæche. Kichchu shave hochche na.

I squealed with glee. Little things make me happy.

That is exactly the reason I turned these mundane-looking potols into a dish fit for royalty. The Shorshe-Narkel-Potol. That’s Parwal in Mustard and Coconut for you.

 

Ingredients for Shorshe-Narkel-Potol are:

10-12 potol/parwal washed
1 heaped tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon poppy seeds/khus-khus/posto
Half cup grated coconut (I use the freshly frozen kind)
5-6 green chillies
2-3 bay leaves
4-5 tablespoons mustard oil
Sugar
Salt

Begin by randomly (but gently) running a blunt knife on the potol. Just to scrape off lengthwise bit off the skin from places. DO NOT peel the skin off. Cut both sides of the ends. You can keep the potol whole for the recipe or cut them in halves if they are larger.

Grind together the mustard seeds, poppy and green chillies. Start by dry grinding the seeds first, once a coarse powder, add the green chillies and a little water to do a coarse wet paste.

For the coconut, do a coarse wet grind and keep.

Heat mustard oil in a thick pan and add the bay and potols. Sauté on high for 4-5 minutes. You can cover and cook till the potols get lightly coloured at the edges.

Add the mustard-poppy-green chilli paste to the potol and mix well till the vegetables get coated with the paste. Reduce the heat and cover again.

After about 4-5 minutes, add the coconut paste. Give it a good mix, cover and cook for about five more minutes.

The moisture from the wet ground ingredients will help soften the potols. Make sure you keep scraping the spices from the bottom of the pan, else they may burn.

Once the potol has cooked, add the sugar and salt. Cook uncovered till the extra moisture evaporates and the spices and the coconut cling on to the potol.

Do one last taste test and season with more salt and sugar if necessary. You can throw in a couple of broken green chillies to add some more heat or leave the dish as it is. I did not add any turmeric to my dish. Just because I wanted the natural colors of all the ingredients to show. You can, if you want to.

An accent-deaf Bengali would eat this Shorshe-Narkel-Potol with mushurir dal and rice. And maybe a rui maach bhaja on the side.

Nameless Kaju Posto Chicken

Forget the Kitchen Stadium, for many home cooks it becomes an everyday challenge to rack her brains over dinner ideas. I usually struggle and remain pretty undecided till the time I actually start cooking. Sometimes things fall in place and impressively so. Sometimes I flip through cookbooks, and close them with equal enthusiasm for their list of elaborate ingredients. The rest of the times I look for inspirations in my own cooking.

Last evening I made this Chicken Curry where the base was made with a paste of poppy seeds (posto) and cashews (kaju).

I don’t have a name for this dish, so maybe you can help. For now, lets call it Kaju Posto Chicken. Under no temptation will you suggest I call it Pree’s Chicken.

Another thing I’d like clarify here (before PETA comes knocking on my door) is that I am not trying to cannibalize the hen you see in the picture. Its just a porcelain planter I picked from a downtown store yesterday and thought it makes for a good prop for my nameless chicken dish.

(Though just between you and me, when I was little we had a parrot called Mithu; he loved Chicken Maggi Noodles and wouldn’t eat chana sprouts or chilies as good green parrots ought to. So we were forced to give him Maggi Noodles with real chicken pieces, he wouldn’t have it any other way!)

Ingredients for Kaju Posto Chicken are:

750 grams chicken (I used skinless, bone-in breast portions)
1 red onion, roughly chopped
150 ml ready to use tomato paste (if you don’t have this, purée two ripe tomatoes at home and use)
7-8 green chilies, slit lengthwise
2 tablespoons ginger-garlic paste
Handful of cashews and 2 tablespoons poppy seeds made into a thick, smooth paste
1 teaspoon red chili powder
10 raisins
4 tablespoons canola oil
Sugar
Salt

Heat canola oil in a pan and sear the whole chicken breasts till they get a nice brown color on both sides. Remove with a slotted spoon and when the chicken is cool enough for you to handle, cut them into bite-size pieces. If you are using chicken which is already cut, skip this step.

In the same pan, sauté the chopped onions, with 3-4 slit green chilies, and the raisins.

Once the onions have turned light brown, toss the chicken pieces in and sauté them further; tops five more minutes. Add the kaju-posto paste and the remaining green chilies and give it a good mix. Then add the ginger-garlic paste, tomato paste, red chili powder, sugar and salt.

Cook this on low-medium heat, covered all the time for five more minutes. Add one cup water when the raw spices get cooked. Cover and cook till the chicken gets tender and the extra liquid dries up. The sauce should be clinging to the chicken pieces. Do not pressure cook, please.

So did you think of a name?