Kolkata Egg Roll -- quick easy version

Vacation over for Big Sis S and kind of for us. Big Sis S proclaimed that it was her best vacation ever and why, 'coz she was allowed to stay up til midnight almost every day of last week. With a party almost every other day, a sleepover, a late night show of "The Princess and the Frog", dancing past midnight on New Year Eve and a birthday bash at her favorite jumping place, no doubt she had fun. It turns out Baby A likes a lot of hullabaloo and jumping. She was sleepy and yet dancing with the older kids on 31st.I had a very relaxed time too, watched "3 Idiots" and ate, ate and ate. Did I say I ate, a lot.

I seriously wanted to go on a diet of nothing but salads from Sunday but then D made these delicious egg rolls and I thought "the salad can wait to add woe to Monday morning blues, why spoil Sunday".

Egg Rolls are the most popular of all street foods in Kolkata. In fact "phuchka"(golgappa) and "egg roll" were the only street food that I was allowed to eat as an angsty teenager. "Phuchka" was more of a girlie kind of a thing and though some of my friends survived on a diet of "phuchka" and "tak water"(sour tamarind water), I wasn't one of them. When it came to egg roll it was another story. I can give anything for the authentic egg roll.

Even now when I go back home, the first thing I reach out for after the jet lag period is the egg roll at the street corner. That upsets my now mollycoddled tummy, I take entroquinols and after the dosage is done, again reach out for the egg roll.

All egg rolls or egg chicken rolls are not created equal and so do not spoil your senses by chomping on a egg roll at a tom-dick-harry place. If in Kolkata go out with a connoisseur to the right place. Hot Kati on the corner of Park Street was my personal favorite. Their rolls were oh so good. My Baba used to get egg roll from a place near home (some branch of Rahmania) which was also great. D's town has its own favorite egg roll stall and they swear by it.Every para(neighborhood) has their own famous egg roll counter and also their very own famous phuchkawala and you need to know the locals for that information.Update 01/07: Jhantu's Roll on the corner of NMC and Brabourne is another one that we would haunt often.

Here in the US, the Kati Roll Company in NYC makes great egg rolls. But everyone does not live in NYC so then what does one do ? You make your own of course. D makes great egg rolls, really really great. Not only me, everyone else who has had it, loves it. It is very close to the authentic one and his version is the quickest and easiest . He uses Kawan Malaysian paratha as the base and so no doubt he serves delicious rolls in less than 6 min flat.

Kolkata style egg roll is the perfect fast food in my imagination. Standing on the corner of a busy city street, biting into an egg roll, tearing the wrapper around, gulping a coke on the way back from work or college is something I would love to do maybe everyday. Ok, except the busy city part, that I don't like.

Get this recipe in my Book coming out soon. Check this blog for further updates. 

Follow this step by step recipe and you can make and enjoy yours too.


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Kolkata Style Egg Roll

Buy Malayasian Paratha. This is really IMPORTANT. The quality of the Paratha plays an important part in egg roll. If making your own paratha, make the dough with Maida(All Purpose Flour) and enough shortening so that the paratha is very soft and pliable, You can use tortilla or the regular parathas, but it WILL NOT taste the same. The Malaysian parathas are very soft and make perfect rolls

Heat a tawa or a griddle on the stove. Put the paratha and cook both sides. Remove and keep aside

Beat one egg + 1 tbsp whole milk + little salt

Smear the tawa/griddle/frying pan with little oil and pour the egg. Spread it out in a circle.

Once the egg is a little cooked on the edges, put the paratha on top

When the edges of the egg starts browning flip the paratha + egg.Give it a couple of seconds

Remove and assemble the filing. The filling goes only on the egg side.The standard filing for a Kolkata egg roll is thinly sliced red onions, thinly chopped green chili and thinly sliced cucumber. Squirt a little lime juice on them and put the filling on the center. Add tomato ketchup in a thin squiggly line along the center.

Roll, wrap it up in a foil or any paper, even newsprint and eat.


Check out other egg rolls around the blogs:

Sudeshna's Egg Roll

Mandira's Tortilla egg roll

Egg Roll Hangouts in Mumbai -- Kalyan likes fried onions in his roll


Trivia:The egg roll with chicken or other such stuffing is also known as kati roll. Kati roll is street-food originating from Kolkata, India. Its original form was a kati kabab enclosed in a paratha, but over the years many variants have evolved all of which now go under the generic name of Kati Roll.

Dhone Pata Chicken -- to wrap up the year

Why do you love food ? Because it satisfies you, it gives you pleasure, sheer unadulterated pleasure.

But why do you remember food ? Why do you want to go back to the comfort of dal-chawal even when sushi lures you? Why does cooking and eating a certain something open a floodgate of memories ? Why do dome food remind you of homecoming as no other ?

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While some food like alu posto and musuri'r dal remind me of home, a home where I was brought up, there are others which remind me of a home , I made for myself.

Like the Dhone Pata Chicken ( chicken cooked with corriander leaves). This is a chicken dish we would cook almost twice every week, when we first set up home a decade back. So if I was not making my trademark egg curry and dal, D was making this Dhone Pata Chicken. It was very different from any of the bengali chicken dishes my Ma used to make, yet it was hard core Bengali, with its fragrant paanch phoron and dry red chillis. Cooked in a pressure cooker with lots and lots of fresh green corriander leaves, it would fill up the corners of our home with a fragrance that I can never forget.

When I crossed oceans and continents, survived canceled flights and delayed landings into a new country, I remember this dhone pata chicken that I had sitting cross legged on bare, polished wood floor, scraping clean the white china plate kindly given by some good hearted chinese colleague of D's.

For a while after that this was an often cooked chicken dish at our home not only for ourselves but for anyone who cared to drop by. Over the years as I have picked up new cooking skills and new recipes, this dish has been pushed aside, in favor of Chicken casserole or Chicken Korma.Dhone Pata Chicken just never got made because I had something else bookmarked.

To wrap up the year and to welcome the new, I wanted to cook something to remind me where I stand, of what is important to me, to reinstate my faith in what I already have. And what could be better than the fragrance of paanch phoron mingled with fresh corriander to remind me Home is the most important pace to be, bookmarks can always wait.

This lovely dish is light and subtly spiced, no heavy spices or creamy richness mars the dominant flavors of corriander. It is comfort personified in a bowl with some white rice. In the initial days when we cooked this, there was no blender or processor used, everything was just plain chopped. I have made pastes and purees here but you can replace all that by plain simple chopping or coarse pounding using a mortar-pestle

Chicken with Corriander -- DhonePata Chicken

Serving size
I used 2-3lb of a whole small Chicken cut in small pieces. This was good for 4-5 people.Note: I usually buy whole chicken skinned. So when I say 2-3lb chicken I mean the weight of the chicken with bones et al



Prep

Marinate the chicken pieces with
1 tbsp of lime juice,
1 tsp of Mustard Oil
3/4 tbsp of ginger paste,
1 tsp of garlic paste,
salt
and little turmeric for an hour or two. Note: For a little more spice add a little cumin and corriander powder to the marinade.

In a blender make a paste of
3 cloves of garlic,
1 tbsp of chopped ginger(1 & 1/2" ginger peeled and chopped),
3-4 green chilli,
1/3 cup of chopped coriander leaves,
1 tbsp of water

Start Cooking

Heat about 5-6 tbsp of oil in a Kadhai or saute pan

Add about 1 tsp and little more of Paanch Phoron and 2 cracked dry red chili

When you get the fragrance of the spices add about 1 cup of chopped red onion(sliced in half moon shape). I went ahead and also added about 3 shallots chopped in quarters but that is optional and you can just add some more regular onion. Fry the onion with about 1/2 tsp of sugar till onion is pink and translucent, turning little brown on the edges

Add the ginger-garlic-coriander leaves paste to above and fry for a minute or so

Add finely chopped 1 plump red tomato or just puree the tomato and add to above.Saute till the raw smell from the tomato is gone

Add about 1 tsp of coriander powder and almost 1 tsp of cumin powder. Some Kashmiri Mirch or Paprika gives a nice color so add about 1/2 tsp of that. With a sprinkle of water, fry the masala till it is nicely incorporated with everyting else and the whole thing looks like a brown mess with oil seeping from the edges

Add the chicken pieces and with about 1/4 tsp of turmeric saute the chicken till they turn a nice yellow color. Around 10 minutes.

Add 2 cups of chopped green fresh coriander leaves(stalks and all),
salt to taste
and about 1cup of water.
Cover the lid and let the chicken cook. If you want more jhol/gravy then add little more water.

Note: I usually make this chicken in the pressure cooker. After adding the coriander leaves, salt and water in the last step, I let the gravy simmer. Once it starts simmering, I close the pressure cooker lid. My pressure cooker is a Futura brand which doesn't whistle and I have to time it. I usually cook it for approx. 3 minutes at full pressure. The chicken pieces become fall apart soft this way.

Every time you lift the lid this beautiful fragrance will engulf you, so for your own pleasure do that. Else just let the chicken cook. Once it is done garnish with some more fresh coriander leaves and serve with hot white rice. The gravy is usually light and soupy and tastes best with rice or just by itself

Wish you all a Magnificent Year Ahead

Dim diye Palang Shak -- Egg-Palak Burji

Today I will be very honest with you, bare soul honest. A decade back I was not interested in cooking, at all. All that bovine poop about " smell of jeera bringing me solace" that I have in my About section, was well "bovine poop" to me. I never even dreamt that cooking could actually be therapeutic. Now eating was another genre altogether, that I loved. I sincerely believed Eating good was not only therapeutic but also pushed you closer to that non-attainable Nirvana.

It is not that I didn't know how to cook, I knew the basic dal, bhaat, macher jhol and also noodles and chili chicken. I did help my Mom to some extent around the kitchen but that was in fits and start and I wasn't one of those prodigies who bake cake at age 8 and biryani at age 12.Relatives in their right mind didn't often ask me to help out in the kitchen, for that I had that "prodigy cousin".

I started cooking for survival, once I moved out to my first job in Bombay. After a month of eating out, me and my room mate got a cute red clix stove and decided to venture out in the hitherto unknown land of homecooking. My room mate was worse than me, she claimed "she had never cooked before". So with my minimal repertoire, I started and every evening cooked either an egg curry or dal while roomy made rice.

There are mythical tales of my cooking from those days, which will make a nice story for a future post and so we shall hold onto them for now..

D, the husband on the other hand was a cooking geek, a freak of nature, the kind who chop vegetables in equi dimension and whose eggs boil just right each time, every time. He is and always was like Alton Brown (strictly cooking wise), very much into the techniques and science of cooking.

So while I was trying out new dunking techniques(another story !!!) in Mumbai and trying to cook with passion, he was creating a new following 998km away in another city. He was the self appointed chef of cooking morons who thought he was the domestic diva, just because he could make the perfect omlette and delicious chicken curry. I hope those morons learned survival skills on the way or got beaten up by their wife in later life.

Anyway to impress such people, this guy, the now husband twisted old recipes and created new dishes. One of them was Palak Burji, a spinach stir fried with eggs. This dish impressed me so much, that I decided to marry him and wrapped up my belongings and moved the 998km distance. Ok actually not this dish exactly but my cooking skills were so short of my own aspirations, that I was ready to marry any decent willing guy who would happily cook a good meal and clean up after that every evening and still maintain a decent paying day job.

That such "eagerness to cook & clean do not last forever" and "grass on the other side is always greener" and "people in glass houses...." is another proverb but who am I to complain, there is always Palak Burji aka Dim diye Palang Shaak and a guy who occasionally cooks and loads the dishwasher every night.

Egg-Palak Burji on toast for fussy 6 year olds

This Egg-Palak Burji is a very simple, yet excellent dish, too simple if you have frozen spinach 'coz that is the only way I have done this. If you leave the egg out, it is my Ma's plain old palang shak bhaja but she never had frozen spinach and she could also chop her spinach really really fine. So if you don't have frozen chopped spinach but can chop your spinach real fine you are good to go else pressure cook your spinach and coarsely mash it up before proceeding.


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Egg Palak Burji

Cook 3 cups of frozen chopped spinach in microwave for a minute or two. When the green is cool to touch, squeeze out any excess water. Note: If you don't have frozen spinach, you can use fresh spinach chopped really fine. Or you can cook the spinach in pressure cooker and mash it up coarsely

Heat Oil in a saute pan

Temper with 1/4 tsp of Paanch Phoron

When the spices start dancing around, add 2 cloves of garlic minced, 2 slit green chilli and quarter of a red onion chopped fine

Saute till the onion is brownish pink

Add the spinach and saute till spinach is no longer releasing water and is cooked. Note: With frozen spinach and microwaving this step is like almost pre-done. With fresh spinach which has been cooked in pressure cooker and mashed up, it might take a while for water to dry up

Move the spinach to the edges and add a little more oil to the same pan

Break an egg (or two) into it and vigorously stir till egg is scrambled up

Add salt to taste and combine to bring in all the flavors.

This goes excellently with some hand mate Rotis or Phulkas. I love it with Rice. For fussy 6 year olds, put it on a toast and garnish with some cheese.