Swatantrata Samosa

Mattar Paneer Samosa

In the days before TV, the only time we saw the official Indian flag hoisting ceremony at the Red Fort was in the Newsreel that was shown in the movies. But we never missed these grandiose events, for we had celebrations in every nook and corner of the community around us.

Every galli, nukkad, naka, chawl, colony, roundabout and chowrasta had enthusiastic patriots – some of them mere “chanda” gathering charlatans- organising flag hoisting ceremonies for denizens who gathered in the early hours of the 15^th of August by the dozens.

 

Buntings would be strung along electricity lines.  A temporary dais would be erected for parochial politicians or corrupt corporators to make patriotic speeches, not always insincere, and unfurl the tricolor on makeshift flagpoles.

All the while, loud speakers with large horns would blare Aao Bachcho Tumhein Dikhayen and De Dee Hame Azaadi Bina Khadag Bina Dhaal by the Kavi Pradeep or Lata Mangeshkar soulfully singing his Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon…and who could forget Iqbal’s Sarey Jahan Sey Accha Hindustan Hamara…

What I also remember, and not merely because I am very hungry at the time of posting this, is the little oil stained paper packets of samosas and laddus that were distributed to all.

The laddus were not a novelty, but the samosas were certainly a treat.  

Our strict home-rules about establishing the origins of a samosa (and yes, a cutlet too) before pronouncing it fit for consumption were thrown to the wind. “Don’t tell me if your tummies go bad!” was a caution we collared, even at the risk of the insufferable but inexorable “I told you so!”

Hot, freshly fried samosas were ok we were told– but you could never be sure as to how long the filling had been exposed to the elements. There were far too many examples of how eating samosas on display, in storage or in transit at under the requisite 60 C or above the 5 C (BTW - the temp range is recent gyan) had ruined many a fun outing.

As my interest in cooking developed, I realised all this could be avoided if we made samosas at home.

The writing on the wall was always clear.

When I finally got down to making samosas at home, it was actually so liberating not be at the mercy of suspect stuffing of unknown origin and antiquity… So emancipating not to be ambushed at first bite by a filling at pungency levels that would scorch any Scoville scales…  So releasing not to fear rancid re-used oil…

   

Matar Paneer Samosa

For the pastry

250 gm plain flour

2-3 tbsp ghee

Salt to taste

¼ teaspoon ajwain

Water to knead the dough

Oil for frying

Method

In a bowl, sift the flour and salt. Then add the ghee and rub it into the flour with your hands until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the ajwain and gradually add the water to make a smooth, firm but pliable dough.  Cover with cling film and set aside for an hour.

For the stuffing

2 tbsp oil

½ tsp cumin seeds

1 small onion, chopped

½ tsp garlic

½ tsp ginger

1-2 green chillies, chopped fine

1 cup grated paneer

1 cup frozen baby peas

1 medium potato, boiled, peeled and mashed

1 tbsp chopped cashew nuts

½  tsp amchur powder or lemon juice

½ teaspoon coriander powder

1 tsp garam masala powder

Salt to taste

1 tbsp chopped coriander leaves

Method

Heat oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds followed by the onions, garlic, ginger, green chillies and cashew nuts and sauté well. 

Add the paneer, peas, and sauté further. Then add the coriander powder, amchur powder, chopped coriander leaves and garam masala. Add the mashed potato for binding and mix well. Cover and cook on a low heat for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Divide dough into equal parts. Make a ball out of each part and roll it into discs like a poori. Cut each disc in half. Fold each semi-circle in a triangle and prop it open like a cone and fill it with a spoonful of the matar-paneer mixture.  Fold the edges over run a finger dipped in water along the edges to seal them.   Prop the prepared samosas in a row.

Heat oil in a kadai or pan and fry the samosas on medium heat till golden and crisp.  Drain them onto kitchen paper to absorb excess oil. Serve hot with chutneys like mint and tamarind-date.  

Cheesy Choices

Cheese Mysore Bonda

 

Some of you may share my disdain for things like cheese dosa, paneer dosa, baby corn dosa, cheese Mysore masala dosa, cheese pav bhaji, cheese dabheli – such fusion in foods sounds a tad cheesy and almost wannbe…

Why is there a need to add cheese, baby corn and paneer to regional dishes that don’t really need this added embellishment?

Do the restaurants really adjust ingredients to justify the claims – or just chuck in a handful of Amul cheese and wilting ageing baby corn – to make it “special”?

Does this far-fetched addition of foreign stuff warrant the substantial difference in the price?

Is this a stratagem to make these traditional dishes more attractive to younger people?

Does this attempt at modernisation delude diners into thinking they are patronising a  “progressive and trendy” eatery?

Okay… granted, I am a little crabby that a most fantastic long weekend has come to an end… reckon I am restive tonight – it’s past midnight; accept I will be busy meeting a mid-week work deadline… and won’t be able to indulge in writing or cooking…

Hmmm, so cheese, paneer and baby corn in these dishes may have some merit. If nothing, only to mitigate the inordinate levels of heat introduced in restaurant foods these days…

Thinking about the dish I am describing - remembering how the flour and cheese were a perfect match - my grudging grumpiness is melting, just like the cheese in the bondas  – and diminishing just like the spongy bondas disappeared in no time…

Cheese Mysore Bonda

This is a perfect snack attack dish - a tad oily, so reserve it for a real special day when you come home hungry on a rainy Friday, after driving for an hour through treacle traffic ... like I did the other day!

Ingredients

1½ cups self-raising flour

½ cup rice flour

¾ cup sour yoghurt

1 onion, chopped

1 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped fine

2-3 green chillies, finely chopped

1 tbsp coriander leaves finely chopped

A few curry leaves, chopped fine

1 tsp cumin seeds

4-5 tbsp grated mozzarella cheese

Salt to taste

Oil to deep fry

Method

Make a thick batter of the flours, chopped onions, chopped green chillies, chopped curry leaves, chopped ginger, cumin seeds, coriander leaves and the yoghurt. Add some water to adjust the consistency to resemble that of a thick pakora batter. Make sure there are no lumps. Add the grated mozzarella cheese and then the salt accordingly. 

Heat oil in a wok and drop spoonfuls into hot oil. Fry the bondas till they are golden brown and remove them on a kitchen paper to drain excess oil.

When you fry in a large quantity of oil, the bondas come out round – but I usually use small amounts of oil, hence the flatter shape.

Serve hot with tomato sauce and mustard sauce.

Creative Comeuppance

Vaangi Pohe (Beaten Rice with Eggplant)

You may have gathered from my last few posts that we are under a baingan invasion, almost in a Hitchcockian fashion. 

That brings to mind the phobia of a cousin, a brave sailor in the naval services, for what I thought was the most innocuous of all enemies - eggplants.

Now, that’s nothing out of the ordinary, a lot of people are mortally scared of the aubergines monsters. But the impetus of this cousin’s trepidation was quite unusual.

On board a vessel on a secret strategic mission, they had for some inexplicable reason loaded tonnes of vankayas in Vishakhapatnam in preparation for a sailing around the cape without really stopping at any ports till their operation was completed. Even refueling was done at sea to maintain secrecy.

(Vankayas BTW are eggplant in Telugu- I didn’t want to obliterate my alliteration!)

So it was a baingan bonanza aboard - starting with eggplant sambar, pickle and chutney with idli for breakfast, more eggplant for lunch and some more eggplant for dinner.


And apparently they were the worst type of eggplants – green, thick skinned, seedy, itchy/scratchy, bitter, with plenty of holes bored by frooti-cooties… 

The sailors were green around their gills with eggplant and thanking their stars they weren’t served eggplant halwa for dessert.

Desperate for home food on a day’s shore leave, the lad flew down to Hyderabad, but was in for - eggplant ahoy!

Mr. Sea Legs couldn’t stop quaking in his shoes when served bharli vangi (spicy stuffed eggplant).

Hey, how was I to know! I thought he would enjoy some home cooked Marathi food…

I have narrated this story to the husband several times over the three decades, especially during this latest eggplant episode. He’s still counting…

And so am I – counting - the number of eggplant dishes I have had to creatively come up with to dispose of them.

And what a tasty comeuppance it was!

Vaangi Pohe (Beaten rice with eggplant)

The vaangi pohe is a typically Marathi dish – the eggplant lends a very silky interlude and a lovely dark purple contrast to the grainy, savoury yellow pohe. It also helps keep the pohe moist without having to add too much oil- there is nothing like the Heimlich maneuver to ruin a leisurely Sunday breakfast…

Ingredients

2 cups medium thick pohe (Beaten Rice)

1 large onion, chopped

1 medium potato, boiled and cubed

1 ½ cup cubed eggplant (stored in salted water after cutting)

4 tablespoons green peas

2 finely chopped green chillies (or more)

5-6 curry leaves

1 tablespoon lemon juice (or to taste)

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

A pinch of hing

4-5 tbsps oil (I try to use as little as possible)

Salt to taste

2 tablespoons grated coconut (optional)

2 tablespoons chopped coriander

Method

Sieve the pohe in a colander to get rid of pohe dust and chaff and pick the paddy bits, if any. Wash the pohe in cold water and drain in the same colander and keep aside for about 8-10 minutes.

Heat the oil in heavy bottomed kadhai. Add mustard seeds and let them crackle. Add hing, chillies, curry leaves and cubed eggplant and sauté for a few minutes. Then add chopped onions and sauté till translucent and then add the cubed boiled potatoes and green peas and cook for a few minutes.

At this stage add the turmeric – if you don’t cook the turmeric too much, it will give a nice light yellow tinge to the pohe. Now quickly add the soaked pohe, salt and sugar to taste and mix well. Cover with a lid and cook for a further 5 minutes till you see white steam escaping the lid.

You will have to test the grain of poha to see if it is cooked. If the pohe are dry, sprinkle some water, cover and cook further for a few minutes. Remove from heat. Add the lemon juice and mix.

Serve hot garnished with chopped coriander leaves and grated coconut.

Some people like it with toppings like sev or crushed or whole papads. It is also served with yoghurt or a hot and spicy gravy called ‘tarri’ in Nagpur and surrounding areas.

I use a combination of tomatoes and lemon juice sometimes- tastes great. Also, adding vegies like cauliflower, carrots, capsicum, etc. Or just some peanuts and a lot of chopped onion also make great kanda pohe!

This is my fourth entry for my friend Preeti Deo's Ruchira Videshini giveaway event !

Terms of taste

Bakarwadi

As kids, we were always happy to have houseguests, known as 'pahune'. We would hang around them, observing their ways, curious about the novel or different personal effects and habits of guests, asking them umpteen questions, rushing to serve them and guide them around. And if they had kids of our age, all the more fun to play with!

In the days of postcards and inland letters, when the telephone was seen more as a status symbol rather than being an instrument of utility, these houseguests dropped in without notice. A telegram would sometimes harbinger their arrival, but often it was just a knock on the door and then the ensuing excitement or perhaps exasperation (for our elders)!

Whatever the case, we kids would only see that they were welcomed warmly and nobody thought it was disruptive of their routine to have unannounced guests- in fact it was routine to have them!

Every meal prepared at home always had the potential of being stretched comfortably to feed a few extra mouths and our mothers and their mothers before them weren’t flustered one bit, at least we didn’t hear of it. One didn’t have put them up in a ‘guest bedroom’ – they were happy to sleep wherever they could be accommodated - on futon like cotton mattresses or dhurries or satranji rugs spread in the drawing room or even on the roof top terrace. We would happily join them, so we could chat away into the wee hours. Even the houseguests were prepared to put up with whatever inconveniences they had to face.

Guests usually brought some gifts or the other. Barely patient for them to settle down, we lay in wait for their unpacking of their stuff – yes you are right- for gifts! If they came bearing none, their departure was awaited. Don’t get me wrong! We knew from experience that if they hadn’t got us any gifts in kind, they would give us cash while leaving! We always touched the feet in a namskar to seek the blessings of grown-ups. At such times, it was customary for them to dip into their pockets and press some notes or coins into us kids' hands. The earliest memories of this ritual I have is of receiving a shining coin of one rupee, known as ‘banda rupaya’. We used to love to hoard these coins and use them to supplement our very scarce pocket money! Gradually this gift was jacked up to 5, 10, 50, 100 rupees and so on… On a recent visit to India, I discovered that this cash gift has now gone up to thousands of rupees!

Back to why the houseguests of yore were exciting, we kids looked forward to the sweets and savouries they brought with them. Another nice custom guests followed was to bring gifts of homemade sweets like besan or rava laddus and barfis and savouries likes chaklis and chivda. We also looked forward to  gifts of shop-bought specialty stuff like the petha (candied ash gourd) from Agra or Bhopal, banana chips fried in coconut oil from Kerala, pedhas from Dharwad, kunda and mande from Belgaum, chikki from Lonavla, Mahim halwa from Mumbai, chocolates from visitors coming from overseas… the list is endless. But our most favourite was the mango burfi (amba wadi) and the savouries like the Lakshmi Narayan chivda and spring rolls called bakarwadi from the famous Chitale Bandhu Mitahiwale of Pune! These were absolute delights and such a treat!

Today, all major Indian snack food producers make the bakarwadi. What more, we get Chitale’s bakarwadi not only in Hyderabad but even in Melbourne! However, in keeping with the general (populist?) trend of jacking up the heat factor of all savouries (Why, oh why!!) these bakarwadis literally scald and skin your mouths! 

This Diwali, I recreated the bakarwadi of our childhood, at my terms of taste!

Bakarwadi – a savoury spring roll slice or wadi, with dry stuffing known as bakar!

For the pastry

¾ cup plain flour

¾ cup besan (garbanzo flour)

2 tbsp rice flour

1 ½ tbsp oil for shortening

Salt to taste

Water to make a stiff dough

For the filling

2 tbsp desiccated coconut 

1 tsp poppy seeds

1 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp fine sev

1 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander (optional)

½ tsp coriander powder

½ tsp cumin powder

1 tsp garam masala or Maharashtrian goda masala powder

1 tbsp red chilli powder (or more)

¼ tsp turmeric

¼ tsp hing

1 tsp fennel seed powder

1 tsp amchur (dry mango powder) (you can use an equal amount of thick tamarind paste instead and to taste)

1 tbsp brown sugar

Salt to taste

1 tsp oil to bind the mixture

Method

Mix the flour, salt and oil together and knead into a stiff and smooth dough using as little water as possible. Knead well for a few minutes and keep covered for about 30 minutes, so the dough relaxes.

In the meantime, lightly toast poppy seeds and sesame seeds in a pan. Remove in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients for the stuffing. Adjust the taste to your liking. Add the oil and mix it thoroughly. The stuffing should hold itself together if pinched together, but still be dry enough to be sprinkled onto the dough circles.

Divide the dough into equal sized balls. Roll out a ball into a thin chapati like disc shape and sprinkle the filling evenly in a thin layer all over the chapati. Roll the chapati tight and fold the ends. Pressing it firmly but without changing the shape of the log, tightly seal the ends. Roll the log lightly to ensure uniform distribution of the stuffing between the layers. Cut the log into equal sized thick slices about 2 cms wide. Make sure each piece is rolled up securely. In this process, the slice or roundel will become slightly flattened, but that is to be expected.

Heat oil in a kadhai and fry these pieces by placing them in the oil, upright and not flat. Fry the wadis evenly until golden brown. Some of the filling may escape the rolls, but that doesn’t matter! 

Drain on kitchen paper and allow to cool and crisp. Repeat this with all the balls of dough, and fry them batch-by-batch. Serve as a snack with drinks or with a cup of tea. Or just pop one into the mouth whenever you feel like!

Store in an airtight container.