Showing posts with label Posto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Posto. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2020

Narkel Posto Bora -- inspired by Mitan Ghosh

Narkel Posto Bora, Postor Bora
Narkel Postor Bora

Y
esterday I got a delivery slot from Costco on Instacart. Yessss!! Never thought things like this will give me so much joy.

If a month ago to this day, you would have asked me what was the greatest accomplishment in life? I would have fumbled. Now I know the answer. Getting a delivery slot on Instacart after trying for a whole week! That is my major accomplishment.

The husband-man is kind of the nonchalant types and is ready to go to Costco once a week at least. During this quarantine he misses Costco the most I think. More when he is stuck at home with all of us all the time. However I don't want to go out in the next two weeks since our Governor keeps saying that cases will peak in our state in these two weeks. Honestly, I don't think anyone knows the correct model that predicts the peak but given that we have been in lockdown for 3 weeks now and the curve hasn't flattened, this better be the peak!

So I am trying to get essential grocery items home delivered and it has not been easy. Delivery slots are never ever available and harder to get than winning a lottery.


However I am not going to complain about this lockdown at all. It has given me time to relax a little both mentally and physically. We are also connecting with friends a lot over Zoom and Hangouts. We even celebrated our favorite twins' 14th birthday over Zoom.

We have had  Virtual chai time with the neighborhood ladies on Zoom, each with our own cup of chai in our own favorite corner.
No one had to make 8 cups of chai or wash all those cups or clean house before guests were coming😂😛
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We have even had Zoom morning meetup with college friends from different parts of the world which has not happened before because weekends are always busy.🤩
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Every day now, I have the time to video chat with my parents 2-3 times a day. 💕
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LS's Bharatanatyam class with 14 others girls and teacher is via Webex. I don't have to drive her to class and I can now watch her dance😍


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We had enough time to watch movies like Tootsie, Murder on the Orient Express, Wajda  so far🎬. Not many but this is a rare occasion in my home. The four of us hardly have time together or if we do, each wants to spend that little free time doing their own thing.
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The girls are baking and even cooking a lot, making lunch for themselves almost every weekday. Lil Sis has become quite the baker with her steady supply of banana muffins for our breakfast and is often seen making pasta for lunch during the week.
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I have never had better weekends!! And never as connected as with social distancing in place!
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This is a difficult time indeed and my prayers for all who are suffering. But for others, whose only fallout of the pandemic so far, is quarantine, we really have NOTHING to complain about.


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Now today I made these Narkel Posto Bora aka Coconut Poppy seeds fritters after drooling over my friend Mitan's photo of the same. Mitan is a talented designer and also an amazing cook. Every day of this quarantine she has been luring us with her food.

Since Posto is nothing but Xanax for us Bengalis, I finally gave in and made these following her recipe. Since I am running low on Posto, the addition of coconut was a very welcome idea. These are so good and makes you feel so happy, that you will exude positvity when you make them


What You Need

Grated Coconut -- 1 Cup (we get frozen grated coconut. I have defrosted and used that)
Poppy seeds -- 1/2 Cup

Green Chilies -- 2-3 chopped fine
Kalonji/Nigella seeds -- 1/2 tsp

Maida/AP Flour  -- 2 Tbsp

Mustard Oil -- 2-3 tsp

How To make the Paste when you have a good mixer

Soak the Poppy seeds in little water for 10-15 minutes. Strain the poppy seeds

In the mixer jar add
1/2 Cup of Poppy seeds with a little water
Make a paste

Add grated coconut to the above. Now blitz to make a fine coconut+ poppy seeds paste

How to make the Paste when you only have Magic Bullet which is not working at its best

Bring out the Coffee Grinder, it is an inexpensive and a familiar feature in a sambar smelling, begun bhaja greasing grad student apartment (I hope!).

Put 1/2 cup of Posto/Poppy Seeds in the coffee grinder and make a fine powder, as fine as the machine can without burning up that is.

Transfer the powder to a bowl. Make sure it's not too grainy.

Add approx 2-3 Tbsp of water to this powder and try to make a paste.

Now in your Magic Bullet jar, add 1 Cup of grated Coconut. With a splash of water make a paste.

Add the Posto/Poppy seeds paste to the Magic Bullet Jar and blitz to make a Coconut-Poppy seed paste.

Now make the Bora aka Fritters

The paste will look a little runny. There is no way you can make bora(fritters) with them. So add a little Maida/AP Flour. Depending on how much water you added while making the paste, you might need Maida anywhere from 2 tsp to 2 Tbsp. Mix well.
Note: If you happen to have a good mixer or a sheel or anything where you can wet grind the posto to a fine thick paste, you might not need the flour.

Next add the chopped green chilies, kalonji and salt to the Coconut-Poppy seeds paste

Grease a flat pan with few drops of Mustard oil and put on the hob. Very little oil is needed to make these, 2 tsp at most.Mustard oil is the oil of choice here. If you don't have that again weep and use Canola.

Shape a flat fritter/tikki/bora kind of structure with your bare hands, it will be irregular and just hold its shape. Put it on the pan and let it cook at medium heat. Once the edges have browned flip. Now it will be flippable. Do the other side till both sides are nicely browned.

You can have these just by themselves or with rice. Tastes awesome. Ok, you already know that.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Salmon Posto -- Salmon in Poppy Seed paste


Salmon was not a fish I loved when I first set foot on the shores of this country. I liked neither the taste nor the smell. The very thought of ordering a salmon sent me into bottomless despair. "What is this country where the fish does not taste like Ilish or Rui", I would often cry, my patriotic heart wailing for fish from my motherland. It is always about the food and the fish, isn't it?

I was convinced that my husband's Bong colleague who had gone about the office inviting folks in what sounded like "Plish come to my house, I make pish for you" was actually referring to salmon.

But then the only salmon dishes that we had were in the restaurants, which then were very bland for my taste buds. I was also not fond of the skin-on-salmon and had no idea that I could request the fishmonger to take the skin off.

But we live and learn. We adapt. We love new things and then cannot live without them

Learning from friends, improvising and experimenting, searching the web. we have now found many delicious ways to eat Salmon. It is one of the few fish which adapts itself well to Bengali style dishes like "Shorshe diye Salmon", "Doi Salmon", "Salmon er paaturior even a Salmon kalia. Our Salmon experience improved for the better when a friend suggested to bake salmon at a lower heat than other fish. It keeps the fish juicy, he said. And by God, it did. It was so much better and moist when baked at 275F.

Salmon is one of our favorite fish these days and we have it often

A couple of days back I made a Salmon Posto. Rui Posto is something that my Mother makes. I love anything with Posto and so to give salmon a makeover, I made Salmon Posto or salmon in Poppy Seed Curry. You can use any other fish like Rui, Kaatla, Bhetki, Swai or Tilapia in this recipe too. The traditional way is to fry the fish before adding to the posto gravy but of course I baked my salmon.

Also do remember, anything with Posto tastes best with white rice, so though the photo has red rice on the plate, if you have white rice stick to it.


Sunday, June 01, 2014

A is for Aloo Posto and Aamer Tauk

Yesterday I asked a question on my FB page
"If we did a A-Z of Bengali Cuisine, what dish would you choose to start with A?"

There was a huge response of about 78-77 answers and guess what ? The winner was Aloo Posto, as I had feverishly hoped.Please God, please, let the folks say Aloo Posto and then I can have one more reason to cook and eat it. Not that eating Posto needs any reason or season but it is always nice to have some validation. 

Aloo Posto or Potatoes with Poppy Seeds
This Posto is made with potatoes and other vegetables. The traditional Aloo posto has only potatoes

Now "Aloo Posto" or Posto with Potatoes is actually  a dish of posto or poppy seeds where the aloo (potato) is simply a qualifying adjective. This posto in Bengali cuisine is so versatile that we could do a whole A-Z of Posto with Aloo Posto, Begun Posto....Zucchini Posto and not even so much as glance at any other dish.But still the general consensus was that "A for Aloo Posto" is uniquely Bengali and even though there might be a North Indian aloor dom or a Mexican Mango Chaatni, there could never ever be an Aloo Posto that spoke anything but Bangla.

Given the season and abundance of green mangoes, coming a very very close second in this poll was  Aamer Tauk which I have blogged about in Aamer Chaatni or Ambol and Aamer Chaatni Version 2

The other A dishes that make a Bengali proud

Aloor Dom

Aloor Dom Niramish

Aloor Chop

Aloo Seddho or Aloo Bhaate

Aam Doi and Aam Kheer keeping in mind the mango season 

Aloo posto was one of my very first dish on this blog some eight long years back. A lot of water has flown in the Ganges and Hudson since then but this dish is still a favorite in my home and heart.



"Posto or Poppy Seed is an oilseed obtained from opium poppy. The seeds are harvested from dried seed pods and have no narcotic effect. Posto or the dried white poppy seeds are hugely popular in Bengal. It was actually the food of the people of Rarh, the "land of red soil" on the westernmost corner of West Bengal. More so for the people of Bankura and Birbhum district in this area. This region has a very dry and hot climate and they believe posto has the effect of a coolant and protects them against the heat. In the days when there was no restriction in cultivating Indian poppy and farmers in this area grew poppy in abundance, the posto seeds became an integral part of their diet. A mid morning meal of posto and bhaat protected the farmers from the searing, dry heat as they worked in the open fields.

But the reason why they started growing posto or poppy seeds goes back to the 18th-19th century when the last Bengali Nawab was dethroned by the British East India company. The East India company found that opium generated huge profit not only in local markets but also in China. Thus started the Indian Opium trade. The conditions in Birbhum-Bankura area were probably most suitable for poppy cultivation and the reason why the British colonists forced farmers in that area of Bengal to grow mostly poppy on all available agricultural lands. It was natural that farmers in those areas had little choice but to incorporate posto, the dried poppy seeds a by-product of the crop, in a suitable form in their daily meal. They ground the dried seeds to a nutty flavored paste(posto bata) which they had either raw with some seasonings(kaancha posto bata) or cooked with whatever little vegetable they could avail of. Little did they know that a dish invented out of necessity would one day be representative of Bengal."

Posto was mostly cooked in my home during the summer months keeping its cooling properties in mind and so it felt perfectly the right dish for a sunny, warm day in May today.


Traditional Recipe

Prep 

Soak 1/4th Cup of  White Poppy seeds in water for 10-15 minutes. Next strain the water and then wet grind the seeds in a grinder with little splashes of water. Ideally the seeds would be ground on a flat block of stone called shil-nora. The grinding should ensue a creamy white paste.


Alternately, you can also dry grind the seeds to a fine powder in a spice grinder. mix water with the powder to make the creamy paste.

Peel and chop 1 large potato in small cubes.

Start Cooking

Heat 2 tbsp Mustard Oil in a kadhai

When the oil is smoking hot, temper the oil with
3/4th tsp of  Kalonji/kalo Jeere/Nigella Seeds
1 Dry Red Chilli
2-4 Green Chilli slit along the center

When the spices start popping, add the cubed potatoes.

Saute the potatoes with a sprinkle of turmeric powder. Now this turmeric is  a cause of much consternation as there are two camps-- one who believes in turmeric in posto while the other doesn't. Choose which party you belong to.

Saute the potatoes until they are a pale golden brown. Don't over fry them. Now add the posto bata aka the poppy seed paste. Mix well and saute for a few more minutes making sure that the posto has coated the potatoes.

Now add water(about 3/4th cup), salt to taste, give a good stir and cover and cook.

Check for potatoes to be done. Once the potatoes are cooked, open the cover and drizzle a little Mustard oil. Give a good stir and cook for a few more minutes until the water has dried off.

Serve with white rice.

Modern Touch

Now on most days I throw in some vegetable or the other along with the potatoes and posto. The most recent usage by the husband-man has been about half cup of frozen vegetable mix(a mix of carrots, beans, corn and peas). He defrosts half a cup of this vegetable medley and throws them in with the potatoes. It tastes oh so good and looks as good as in the first picture.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Posto Bhape or Bhapa Posto in Microwave



This post is about Posto Bhape but first we will not talk about Posto Bhape. Instead we will talk about Little Sis. If you can think of nothing but Posto then scroll down the page.
 

This is something way back from February and I have been meaning to write it down here but I always forget

Little Sis telling me about her Valentine's day project in school, " Mommy in our art class today, we made love."

Since a lot of this conversation happens in the car, my hands on the wheel wavered.

Big Sis gave her a look and said "LS, how can you make love in art class?"

My hands wavered again.

LS with an air of non-nonchalance " Oh very easy. You cut out L, O, V and E from pink neon paper and then spread glitter over it. Done"

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Little Sis's class was learning about deserts in school.

The Big Sis, trying to act smart because she is ten after all asked "Which Dessert ? The one you eat?"

LS went into deep thought and then said, " Yes, you can eat there if you want. Deserts have some kind of cactus which we can eat"

I choked on my laughter as LS has a temper and gets very angry if I laugh at anything she says. She is very confused with "laughing at someone" and "laughing with someone". So if any natural action on her part ellicits laughter on our part, she doesn't like it. However when she makes goofy faces or a joke which I do not understand, I am supposed to break into peals of laughter or she gets mad again.



*************

LS has a friend in class called S. I have met her only briefly but from what I gather S is a spunky little girl. So LS comes home from school and calls me at work, to talk about S.

"Mommy, S is K and R's boss", she said with an air of finality, K and R being two spunky boys in her class.

"Okay, but why ?", I asked

"Because they are in the same bus and also in the same class, she is their boss. And they have to do anything that she asks them to. HAVE TO."

I was very impressed by this logic and also by the said S who has concocted this rule.

So this little girl S apparently being the boss of K and R, did something which irked K and R and they wanted to complain to the teacher. S however forbade them to do so and this is what Little Sis explained to me, "If K and R complain to the teacher, then the teacher might tell her parents and S's Mommy and Daddy will think S is not a good girl. But S wants them and everyone else to think that she is a good girl so K and R should not complain about her."

I was as amused by LS's logic as by S's antics.Go Bossy.

***************

LS knows the right moments to call me and get her things done. Every day around 2:30 in the afternoon, she calls and asks if she can have a cookie or a pack of fruit snacks. Now usually these are not part of her everyday snacks and so I ask her to have yogurt or some fruits instead. But she knows that I don't haggle much over the phone and she tries her best with pathetic calls every few minutes.

Now to explain "Persuasive Writing" to BigSis, I was giving her LS's example and how she uses "pathos" to persuade me. BS thought for a minute and then said, "Not only "pathos" she also uses "threatos" a lot. She always threatens to cry if things are not her way."

***************



Now to this Bhapa posto which is my friend J's recipe. Among all the different dishes made with Posto, the very basic is Kaancha Posto bata or raw poppy seed paste where the wet poppy seed paste is mixed with raw onion, green chilli, salt and mustard oil and then had cold with rice. It is a solution to many of our Friday night dinners. When J, who is an amazingly good cook suggested this one more step which would take all of 3-4 minutes beyond the raw and whip up posto in a new avtaar, we had to try it. And of course we have been hooked since and also buying a packet of posto every other week.

This Bhapa Posto (Steamed or baked Posto) was traditionally steamed in a small steam bowl along with the rice or later in a steel tiffin box placed inside the pressure cooker. Cooking it in the microwave is the most modern you can get. And yet the taste is the same. Clean, fresh, pure and of course delicious.

More Posto Fun
Postor Bora -- Poppy seed fritters
Jhinge Chingri Posto
Aloo Posto




Soak about 1/2 cup of posto/poppy seeds in 1/4th cup of water for 15-20 minutes

Then make a smooth wet paste of the seeds -- posto bata-- in your wet grinder. I use my magic bullet for this purpose. While making the paste add splashes of water, only as little as necessary to aid in grinding.

Alternately, you can also dry grind the posto in a dry spice grinder or coffee grinder. Mix the dry ground posto with water to make a thick wet paste.

Take the wet poppy seed paste in a bowl.

To it add
finely chopped onion(half of a medium)
finely chopped tomatoes(a smal one or half of medium)
4 green chillies finely chopped
1 tbsp mustard oil
salt to taste

Mix and then put in the microwave. Cook in MW for 2 minutes. Mix and then cook for 2-3 more minutes until the posto turns a little brown in color. If your MW is a lower power than mine you might have have to cook for few more minutes

Add more Mustard Oil. VERY VERRY IMPORTANT.

Eat it with hot steaming rice

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Potol Posto -- stuff dreams are made of

PotolPosto1

Potol. Posto. Potol Posto. Period.

Oh no wait...first I need to tell you this conversation I had with Little Sis. Okay ? Okay. Period.

So it is one of those days and I am tired and I tell LS: "If I knew magic I could come home from work in a second and wouldn't have to drive so long".

LS: " Well, for that you need to ask someone who knows that kind of magic".

Me: " Well, how do I know someone like that?"

LS appears to ignore this and then after a minute says : "Or you could Dream. Dreams come true, you know?"

Me, excited at this optimistic, positive child of mine: "Really? So what do you dream of ?"

LS: "Well that I am a famous singer". Whaa...at, really???? " And that I am eating chocolate cake" That is better. "And I am watching Food Network". Really kiddo...this...this is your dream... of watching stupid Chopped on FN.

But I don't say all that. Instead I say: "Ahhh that sounds great. So tonight I am going to dream then".

At this LS goes into deep thought and then after a minute says : "Well, actually dreams don't even come true. They say all that in the TV. Anyway nothing that they say on TV is true. On TV, Franklin the turtle talks. Do turtles ever talk in real life ? No.They are all puppets on TV and dreams will never come true"

I give up. Let us eat the Potol Posto instead. Don't ask me why I added Onion, you might as well skip it.And if you don't get Potol, don't even dream of it. Will not help. Period.


PotolPosto2

Scrape the skin off Potol/Pointed gourd/Parwal and peel strips in alternate. I had about 10 small potol .Chop each potol in 4 along the length. Chopping in two should have been fine but these potol were not very fresh so I did 4.

Toss them with salt and turmeric powder and keep aside for 10 mins.
Meanwhile dry grind 1/4 cup of posto aka poppy seeds and mix with little water to make a thick-ish wet paste.

Heat a tbsp musard oil. Fry the potol till they develop brown spots. Need not get all crinkly. Remove and keep aside

If there is not enough oil in the kadhai/frying pan, add about 1 tsp more.

When the oil is hot temper the oil with 1/2 tsp of Kalo Jeera/Kalonji and 4-5 hot green chili slit through.

Once the spices pop add half on an onion chopped in thin slices and fry the onion till it is soft and light brown.

To the pan add the fried patol and toss it with the spices and onion. Next add the poppy seed paste and with sprinkle of water fry for next 3-4 minutes till raw smell of posto is gone.

Now add a little more water, a little less than 1/4 cup, add salt, sugar to taste and cover and let the patol cook till done. Remove cover and serve with rice.

Pin It!

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Posto Bora/Poppy Seed Fritters -- to save the soul




Friday was her Ma's Puja day. A day of thorough cleaning, sparse vegetarian eating, smoky incense sticks and hour long prayers.

She didn't like Fridays much. Ma would not let her sleep in late. Early morning the swoosh of the water across the courtyard followed by the broom would wake her up. Thwack-thwack it would go clearing the dirt, chalk dust from yesterday's hop scotch and dry leaves from the Neem tree.That was a signal for her to get out of the bed and take an early bath to avoid Ma's ire.

Before the morning newspaper hit the front veranda Ma would be in the kitchen trying to remove the turmeric stains from last night's maacher jhol. All those sounds of scraping and scrubbing would trouble her innards as she hurriedly dressed to catch the early bus. She wanted to be out before Ma started cleaning the green slightly rusted gas stove and soaping the red gas cylinder. Ma was never one to enjoy such tasks and the rituals she thrust on herself visibly irked her.

Outside she would breath and laugh and discuss Ma's rituals as ridiculous. She would take a bite of her best friend's egg roll ignoring the rule of being vegetarian on Fridays. It never occurred to her to question Ma's belief, to defy Fridays with any more stronger rebellion than this.

Some Fridays would be different though. Manu'r Ma, the maid would arrive early and amidst the clanking and scrubbing, she would hear the harsh monotonous sound of stone grating on stone. Manu'r Ma sitting on the floor would grind posto on the sheel, a pock marked slab of stone, turmeric stained by use and age. The red and green glass bangles on her thin, rough wrists would make a sweet tinkling sound while she rolled the smooth black nora, grating the poppy seeds by rhythmic regular pressure of her hands.




This is the shee-nora/sheel-batta the flat stone used to grind spices back home. Pic Courtesy my Dad


Those days she rushed home early. There was posto waiting at home. Earthy posto bata mixed with a liberal dose of pungent mustard oil and kancha lonka, the lightly crisp, flat posto bora and then aloo posto. Those Fridays she spent five whole minutes in the Puja room, muttering the only shloka she knew and promising to eat only vegetarian on all subsequent Fridays.

She smiled as she thought of those Fridays. How long has it been ? 20? or maybe more ? Her coffee grinder made a soft purring noise as it pulverized the white poppy seeds to a fine Powder. The Merry Maids scrubbed the upstairs bathroom. As soon as the Posto Bora would be done, she would light an incense in the Prayer room. Today was Friday.

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Though this is fiction with heavy dosage of writer's imagination, Fridays were and are days we eat vegetarian and back home almost always my Mom would make posto on Fridays. She wasn't one to stick to rituals though. This goes to Chalks and Chopsticks -- 3 hosted by Sra and created by Aqua. I am not sure if this fits but this IS a very basic recipe/ingred/method in the Bong Kitchen so this post also goes to Jaya's B2B -- Back to Basics, if accepted, basically.




I am sure every self respecting middle aged Bong has made posto bora and know how to.

So this recipes is not really for them.

It is for those young bespectacled Bong grad students on their meager stipends and heavy work loads. Those who have used up all the minutes on their calling card for today is the 27th and pay day is not until end of the week. For those whose emotional balance is so skewed that desire of posto bora with mususrir dal and bhaat sits high up just next to an appreciative nod from the advisor.To give them some pleasure on a scorching hot Tuesday I will tell them how to make posto bora.


Read more...






Posto Bora/Poppy Seed Fritters


Today I will not use my Magic Bullet which will make a better paste of Posto or Poppy Seeds. Instead the Coffee Grinder will be brought out, it is an inexpensive and a familiar feature in a sambar smelling, begun bhaja greasing grad student apartment (I hope!).

Put 1/2 cup of Posto/Poppy Seeds in the coffee grinder and make a fine powder, as fine as the machine can without burning up that is. This will make 4-5 posto bora.

Transfer the powder to a bowl. It might be grainy, you can't help it.

Add approx 4-5 tbsp of water to this powder and try to make a paste. Throw is some finely chopped onion, 2 green chili chopped real fine, salt and few drops of Mustard Oil. You don't have Mustard Oil ? Ok forget it and weep.

The paste will look runny. There is no way you can make bora(fritters) with them. So add a little Maida/AP Flour. I think 2-3 tsp should be ok. Add a tsp of flour, mix well and see if the consistency is still very watery. If yes --> add a half tsp more.
Note: If you happen to have a Magic Bullet or a sheel or anything where you can wet grind the posto to a fine thick paste, you might not need the flour.

Grease a flat pan with oil and put on the hob. Very little oil is needed to make these, 2 tsp at most.Mustard oil is the oil of choice here. If you don't have that again weep and use Canola.

Shape a flat fritter/tikki/bora kind of structure with your bare hands, it will be irregular and just hold its shape. Put it on the pan and let it cook at medium heat. Once the edges have browned flip. Now it will be flippable.Do the other side till both sides are nicely browned.

You can have these just by themselves or with rice. Tastes awesome. Ok, you already know that.

Similar Recipes:

Alu Posto

Kundru Posto

Jhinge Chingri Posto

Sharmila's Posto Bora -- one of my fav bloggers and I hope she comes back soon

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Kundru Posto -- Tindora in Poppy Seeds Paste



I am a sucker for Posto. Even as a kid, I loved Posto more than anyone at home. Posto or the tiny beige seeds of Indian Poppy(Khus Khus), ground and seasoned with mustard oil, green chili and little coarse salt, the Kancha Posto bata was a favorite. The fresh smell of the wet ground posto, ground with little water on the shil-nora the black pock marked stone, was like the smell of the wet earth after the first rain. When this ground paste was mixed with a liberal sprinkle of golden yellow pungent mustard oil and slit fiery green chilis the simple paste became filled with a sharp new taste. With white rice it was heaven. The bare wet ground posto formed the base of several other dishes in Posto loving Bengal. The mornings my Ma doled out those fine beige poppy seeds to be soaked in water and later to be made into a paste by the daily house help, I would be ecstatic. I knew there would be alu posto, posto'r bara(poppy seed paste mixed with rice flour etc. and made into fritters) and always a little posto bata waiting for me at dinner. My Probashi and Ghoti family teased me for my love of Posto. They said, that I should be married off to a Bangal and then I could have as much Posto as I liked.Being away from Bengal for long, they didn't know that Posto or Poppy seeds was not a staple for the Bangal, in fact for people from East Bengal(now Bangladesh) Posto is not even deemed as important as it is to People from West Bengal. Posto was actually the food of the people of Rarh, the "land of red soil" on the westernmost corner of West Bengal. More so for the people of Bankura and Birbhum district in this area. This region has a very dry and hot climate and they believe posto has the effect of a coolant and protects them against the heat. In the days when there was no restriction in cultivating Indian poppy and farmers in this area grew poppy in abundance, the posto seeds became an integral part of their diet. A mid morning meal of posto and bhaat protected the farmers from the searing, dry heat as they worked in the open fields. As the price of the posto or Indian Poppy seeds has been rising, the poor in Bengal can hardly afford an ingredient which once formed a key part of their meal.



Now to the Kundru Posto or Tindora in Poppy Seeds Paste

Kundru or Tindora was not vegetable common in Bengal. I can barely recall any Kundru-is dish from my childhood. In fact Tindora is or was as far removed from the Bengali Food Culture as is Posto Bata from the Punjabis. I started cooking Tindora or Kundru only after coming to the US, sometimes you need to travel miles to recognize something that was once close to you.But even then I made it not too often. 

When I saw Sharmila's Kundru Sabzi, I loved the idea of tossing the vegetable with so many spices and then cooking it. And then I also loved how a friend made fried Tindora with some whole poppy seeds sprinkled on top. 

So why not make a Kundru Posto I thought and as a fusion why not toss the Kundru with some spices before cooking ? And that is how we made Kundru Posto or Tindora in Poppy seeds paste, an inter-region marriage of a vegetable and a condiment from two different regions of India. A bowlful of this vegetable followed with a bowl of dal is a satisfying meal by itself. But to get the full flavor and taste you need to eat it with white rice Read more...

Kundru Posto

Sadly I have no measurements and will update this recipe when I remember to take measures next time

Chop Kundru or Tindora vertically in 4 longitudinal slices. 
Chop Potato in long half-moon slices

In a bowl toss the chopped kundru/tindora with little cumin powder, coriander powder, red chili powder , dry mango powder(aam choor), little turmeric and salt

Heat Mustard Oil in a Kadhai. 
Add the Tindora and saute for 5-6 minutes until it is soft. Remove and keep aside.

Now temper the oil with Nigella Seeds/Kalonji and Dry Red Chili When the spices pop, add the potatoes and saute with a sprinkle of Turmeric powder .
Saute for a 4-5 minutes. Add the sauteed Tindora. Cover with a lid and saute intermittently till kundru softens. 

Add poppy seeds paste, salt and a little sugar, and mix well. Add a little water and cook till the tindora is cooked and the water has dried up. Adjust for salt and seasonings.

Other similar Posto dishes: Alu Posto Jhinge Chingri Posto

Trivia:In 1757 the last nawab of Bengal was dethroned by the British East India Company, who concentrated on maximizing the cultivation of opium in Bengal. The drug promised to generate huge profits, not only in the local market, but also in a far bigger one—China. The company’s greed was so great that at one point they forced farmers in much of Bengal to devote all their arable land to its cultivation. So it’s not surprising that the posto seeds produced in this enormous poppy-growing zone became such an important element in the local diet. (From this lovely article by Chitrita Banerjee)