Aloor Chop or Alur Chop

Aloor Chop | Bengali Potato Fritters

Alur Chop or Aloor Chop, spicy discs of mashed potatoes that are coated in a batter of chickpea flour and deep fried are the best Bengali snack with cups of ginger tea on a rainy evening. They sell like hot cakes in the very popular "telebhaja" shops in bengal.

"Knock, Knock"

"Who's there?"

"Apple"

"Apple, who?"

"Orange"

"Orange, who?"

Thus it goes with names of whatever fruits available at home. And then

"I am a fruit salad"...with peals of laughter

Right on cue we start laughing too. We have to. For that my folks is a joke in LS's realm

She has a whole repository of Knock, Knock jokes. She makes them up. None of them make sense. They are not even funny. But we laugh.

It really doesn't matter. Laughing does though.

Yesterday while watching the Oscars Big Sis asks me,
"If you were a director of a very important movie and one day something very important had to be done for the movie and also the same day something very important needs to be done for the family, what would you choose ?"

I was stunned by the question. These are the kind of questions I would expect at the last page of Ladies Home Journal, not from a 7 year old. I am waiting to see if she spurs such stuff at Daddy too.

I made Aloor/Alur Chop (Potato Fritters) after a long long time. I make these things so rare that sometimes I am not even sure the taste lingering in my memory is real or laced with imagination.Should it taste like this or should it taste like that ? The that is illusionary.

This time I made it more spicy because I thought I prefer it that way. The husband's version is a tad less spicy. He says, mine are pretty good but not like Shoshthida's. Shosthida, the neighborhood telebhaja guy, spiced the potato less.

Makes sense. Shosthida, with all my apologies and admiration, had his perspiration, diesel fumes and dirt under his nails to make up for less spices he used. I perspire too, but not when the temp is at 45F and central heating is just making us comfortable.

Deep frying however makes up for anything I lack. With a bowl of muri on the side and a steaming cup of tea you won't ask for anything more. Ok, a "knock, knock" joke perhaps to complete the scene.

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

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Alur Chop -- Potato Fritters

The Husband's original version

What You Need

For the Chop/Patties

Potatoes ~ 4 medium
Onion ~ 1 medium chopped fine(about 3/4th of the large ones found here in the US)
Garlic ~ 3 cloves minced
Ginger ~ 1 tbsp minced
Green Chili - 4-5 chopped fine(adjust to taste)
Chopped fresh Corriander leaves ~ 1-2 tbsp if desired

Roasted Cumin Powder or Bhaja Moshla  ~ 2 tsp
Bhaja Moshla -- To make this dry roast 1 Tbsp of cumin seeds, 1 Tbsp of coriander seeds and 2 Dry red Chilli until fragrant. Cool and roast to a powder. Use 2 tsp of this. Store the rest in an airtight spice jar. you can sprinkle it to spice up anything you are making.

Red Chili Powder ~ to taste
Chat Masala - 1/2 tsp
Pink Salt (Beet noon) -- to taste
Salt ~ to taste
Mustard Oil ~ a few drops(optional)

For Batter

Besan/Chickpea Flour ~ 1 cup
Rice Flour ~ 1 tbsp
Baking Powder ~ 1/4 tsp
Salt ~ to taste
Water ~ 3/4 cup

For Frying

Plenty of Vegetable Oil

How I Did It

The Patties

Boil the potatoes thoroughly in a pressure cooker or in a pot of boiling water.Once cooked, drain excess water, peel and let it cool for 30 mins.
Now mash them using your fingers or a masher.
Note: Drain the water well from the potatoes before mashing. The mashed potatoes should not have lumps so make share to mash well

Heat 2 tsp Oil in a Kadhai/Frying Pan. About 1-2 tsp should be fine.

Add the chopped garlic, minced Ginger, the green chillies and the onion.All of these should be chopped real fine so that you do not bite into anything but the potato when eating the chop.

Sauté till the onion wilts and is pinkish brown.

Add all of the masala to the mashed potatoes.

Add the Roasted Cumin powder or Bhaja Moshla, Red Chili Powder, Chat masala to the mashed potatoes.

Add salt and mix the masala well with the potatoes. Add a few drops of Mustard Oil to the potatoes if you want. Taste and check for seasonings and adjust flavor .

Let this cool

Make small balls of the mashed potatoes which is now spiced up with the masalas
Flatten them between your palm and place them on a lightly greased surface. They should be really flat and NOT thick like alu tikki.

Batter and Frying

Make a batter with the ingredients under Make Batter. Add the water gradually as you don’t want the batter to be runny. The batter should be tight as it has to form a coating on the potato patties.

Heat Fresh Oil in Kadhai/Frying Pan. The patties would be deep fried so add enough oil.

Dip the patties in the batter, so that the batter uniformly coats the patties
Gently release the dipped patties in the hot oil and hear the sizzle. Keep heat at medium.

Fry till both sides are golden brown.

Remove with a spoon/chalni which has slots/holes so that the excess oil drains out
Drain excess oil by placing the fried patties on a kitchen towel.

Sprinkle some Chat Masala or kala namak/black Rock salt(beet noon) on the patties while serving

Gokul Pithe -- sweet delight for past Sankranti

Note: This post was drafted in January just after Sankranti. I never got around posting it. I am doing it now because it is a precious recipe with wonderful results.

"What are you making?", asked my 7 year old. It was cold outside and hinted of snow. She was housebound and hovered around the kitchen.

"Pithey", I said, not wanting to go into details at that moment. Pithey was not my strong point and I needed all the concentration I could muster.

"Whaat, a back, how can you make a back ?", she was bewildered.

She was familiar with the only meaning of pithe in the bengali language, which meant the back of the human body. She had no clue about the sweeter meaning of the word, a dessert that is strongly associated with the harvest festival and made on Sankranti or Poush parbon.

My fault totally. I rarely ever made pithe. And then again you did not make a pithe at any random time of the year. It had to be in mid-January on and around the day of Sankranti, when rural Bengal celebrates Poush Parbon, the harvesting festival.

My thama, my Dad's mother was not a very enthusiastic cook and did not encourage devoting time on making or eating pithe on Poush Parbon. She made a great Paayesh and notun gur er paayesh was the only sweet that got cooked on Sankranti.

I was never too fond of pithe or paayesh and remember sankranti as days of excruciating cold in the plains where winter was usually mild. The cold winds from the north would rustle through the glossy leaves of the jackfruit tree in the garden and in absence of central heating, the only warmth would come from the mid-day sun. To soak up its warmth we would sit on the terrace, our freshly washed hair strewn across our back, the golden sun streaming down on us.

The few winters that we spent at my Dida's home in Kolkata, Poush Sankranti shone with its fervor. My Dida, a petite frame, with silver hair and betel-juice stained mouth was a cook who loved her job. She celebrated with food every small and big festival listed in the bengali almanac. Poush Sankranti in her home was a 3 day affair with sweet and savory pithes of all kind imaginable. The first batch of ashkey pithey she would store in an earthenware container as an symbolic offering to gods and later immerse it in the river. Then there would be puli pithe, gokul pithe, ranga alu'r pithe, nonta pithe and pati sapta. My grandfather would beckon to all and sundry to come and take a taste of the wonderful sweets and my poor, harried grandma would rush about grating, grinding, stuffing and frying. And that is how I like to remember her, busy around the kitchen, folding betel leaves to make a paan in between her umpteen chores and always ready with a story for us.

Once on my own, I had enough excuses to not mark Sankranti on my calendar with a red dot. After the eating orgy all through December, I had no wish to grate, grind, stuff and fry in January. This was going to be a month of sparse salads with low fat olive oil dressings.

But this Sankranti, it was different. We were going to have a different sort of party this year, a pithe party. Yes, I have an enthusiastic bunch of friends.

Goaded by all the peer pressure I gave in and started calling across oceans to get the perfect Gokul Pithe. My Ma-in-law makes the best gokul pithe to date and she was the one I needed. She gave me detailed instructions over the phone, sans any measurement of course.This time though I needed measures and did not want to risk an entire batch of pithe so I sought help over the internet and got some support here.

The gokul pithe turned out to be absolutely delicious. D had his own wise opinions and even dared to say that his Mom's were better. But really do we even believe him ? Anything with a khoya + coconut stuffing, deep fried and then soaked in sugary syrup has "delish" wriiten in its genes, irrespective of whose Mother or Mother's neighbor made it.

They were also easy to make even in large number. Even though Sankranti is 11 months away, this can be served as a delicious dessert for any occasion, so roll up your sleeves and try some. Believe me these are sinfully easy.


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Gokul Pithe

Make the Stuffing

Grated Coconut(I used frozen pack) ~ 2 cups
Khoya ~ 12oz almost 2 cups. Note: Ideally home made khoya/kheer is best but store bought khoya works fine.
Sugar ~ 1 cup

Heat a Kadhai.

Add coconut and sugar and lower the heat.

Mix the grated coconut with the sugar slightly pressing with your fingers till sugar melts and mixes with the coconut. Note: You can add add some cardamom powder. I didn't.

Now add the Khoya. Keep stirring till mixture becomes light brown and sticky. It should easily come off from the sides by now. At this point take a little of the mix and see if you can fashion a flat disc out of it. If it is too sticky you may have to cook a bit more, else you are good.

Take a little of the mix, roll a small ball between your palms and then flatten between your palms to make a disc about 1" in diameter and thickness of a 1 Rupee coin. Make equal sized discs. I made about 30.

Make the Batter

In a wide mouthed bowl add
2 Cups of AP Flour
1 tsp of Ghee
1/4 tsp of Baking Soda
Mix lightly

Now add 1 cup of Whole Milk + 1 Cup of water. Mix scraping the sides to form a batter. You will need about 1 more cup of water but add this gradually till you get a batter thick enough like a pakodi batter.

To the batter I added a generous pinch of saffron

Make the Syrup

Bring
3 cups of water
4&1/2 cups of sugar
to boil till you get a syrup of one string consistency
Add a few drops of Kewra or Rose water to the syrup to get a sweet smell

Frying

Heat enough oil for deep frying in a skillet.

Dip the discs in the batter so that they are well coated. Now fry them in the hot oil like a fritter. Remove with a slotted spoon when both sides are golden brown. Dunk in the syrup and remove when they become little soft.

In one version of Gokul Pithe you can make the sugar syrup thicker and then coat the fried pithe with the syrup instead of soaking them in it.

Toddler Menu -- Egg Curry with Veggies

As much as I love traditions and festivals, I abhor rituals that most times comes with it. You might say that it is the rituals which make actually make up a tradition and there is no point celebrating Diwali with unlit candles. But I like to adjust the rituals to my convenience, to bend them around to suit me instead of bending backwards to comply. A lot of it comes from sheer laziness and finding joy in lighting up tea-light candles for Diwali instead of spending hours rolling cotton wicks between your palms.

I liked rolling the cotton wicks and maybe I will do it again some day when I have nothing else to do.But what I am saying is the fact that I have the liberty of not doing it and lighting up the tea-lights instead, liberates me.

Ditto with Saraswati Pujo. I am not a morning person and as a kid I loved my morning sleep on holidays. On foggy mornings of Saraswati Pujo, this was not to be. We had to wake up early, really really early and take shower in the water from the overhead tank, which was still cool to touch. With remains of sleep in my eyes I would then help Ma set up the Pujo. Pujo at home was usually done by my Dada(paternal grandfather) or Baba. Both were stickler to rituals and wanted to start the Pujo at the exact time written in the crumbling pages of the jacaranda colored Panjika. Somehow when I think of Saraswati Pujo along with the nicer parts, I also remember the early morning part and my reluctance in getting up.

So now that the baton has been handed over and I am the Master of Ceremonies I have shifted the Puja time very conveniently from early morning to late evening. That is how we had it last Tuesday, after work, after school, in the confines of the home, we prayed for Knowledge and enlightenment.

Little S also had her "haathe khori", literally translated as "chalk in hand" on the same day. This again is a tradition to make a child write her first letter, thus initiating her into the world of knowledge. But instead of taking her to the temple or any such place, we did the honors ourselves. While I guided her hand to trace out the curves of the first Bangla letter, Big Sis helped her trace the straight lines of the English alphabet.Then Little S went totally berserk and scribbled structures which she declared as lowercase t and p. She, who has to always share Big Sis's markers and easel and such, loved all the attention and the chalkboard and refused to budge from the scene.

Talking of Little S and food, as I have said before she is not really into food. She is also not exactly crazy about veggies. So like all sane Moms who hyperventilate about five serving of vegetables and their kid, I have to find ways to sneak it in. It was easier when she was smaller and did not know much. A Khichuri with plenty of vegetables could be shoved down her throat. But she is 2 and has a mind of her own. Thanks to Didi being around she has tasted lollipos and cheetos. Khichuri is not exciting any more and she loves Chicken Biryani.

So I try to put in a good amount of vegetables in the gravy dish that I make for her. It is usually a chicken curry or an egg curry. Vegetables like beet, carrots, butternut squash, sweet potato, sometimes spinach makes its way there and gets blended to remove any trace of its original appearance. I tweak the recipe around every other day to give a new flavor. I would not go so far as saying she loves them but at least she gets her quota of veggies that way.

This is an egg curry with butternut squash and sweet potatoes. It can be other veggies. It can be anything other than egg. This is just a base recipe. You can alter and make your own changes around it.


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Egg Curry with Butternut Squash & Sweet Potatoes for the Kiddo

Boil and peel 2 organic eggs. keep aside.

Heat 2-3 tsp of ghee in a deep saucier or kadhai.(Making your own ghee is easy)

Temper with 1/4 tsp of whole Cumin Seeds. Let the cumin sizzle to flavor the Ghee.

Add quarter of an onion finely chopped. Saute till onion is soft and pink.

Add about 1/4 tsp of fresh Ginger-Garlic paste(I make it over the weekend and store for a week)

Fry for a few seconds. Add half of a nice juicy tomato finely chopped. Saute till it is mush and there is no raw smell.

Add about 1/2 cup of peeled and chopped sweet potato. Add about 1/2 cup of peeled roasted butternut squash(I always roast and then peel butternut squash, you can add them raw too).

Add about 1/4 tsp of fresh roasted Cumin powder + a little Turmeric Powder. Saute the vegetables so that they are nicely coated with the masala. When the veggies start browning a little, add about half cup of water. Add salt and let the veggies cook.Add more water if necessary.

Once the veggies are cooked, puree them, either with an immersion blender or by putting them in a regular blender jar.

Add a little more water to the puree and bring it back to a boil. Add a pinch of Garam Masala.

Now add the boiled eggs. Since LS does not like the texture of cooked egg yolk, I halve the boiled eggs and mix the egg yolk into the gravy.

Make the gravy as thick or thin you desire. Adjust for seasonings and garnish with some corriander leaves.

I usually serve this with rice. You can feed it by itself too along with a bread toast or chapati.