Alu Potol er Dalna

Alu Potol er Dalna | Potatoes and Parwal in  Curry

The Dalna in Bengali Cooking is a gravy dish where the gravy is thicker and richer unlike a jhol where the gravy is soupy and runny. In this Alu Potol er Dalna recipe, I have shared a rich gravy made with potatoes and potol/parwal/pointed gourd. This recipe is niramish/vegetarian. In a non-veg version of this same dish, you can add shrimp or prawns.

Little S loves bandhakopir tarkari or cabbage sabzi. Only she calls it "Baba Kopi". This makes us laugh because "Baba"=Dad in Bengali.
She does not like Fulkopi or Cauliflower as much as "BabaKopi". Also she refers to Cauliflower as "White Broccoli".

And then she calls Swami Vivekananda -- Ferdinando.

Otherwise her Bengali is impeccable.

The Dalna in Bengali Cooking is a gravy dish where the gravy is thicker and richer unlike a jhol where the gravy is soupy and runny. For evey jhol there is an equivalent Dalna. So if there is a Alu-Kopir jhol there is the Alu-Fulkopir Dalna, for a Alu-Potol er Jhol there is an equivalent Alu-Potol er dalna, so on and so forth.

The Dalna can be Niramish, which means vegetarian with no onion or garlic or can be Aamish with not only onion and garlic but sometimes fish being added to it. Also almost always dalna has a phoron of Whole Garama Masala and is cooked in Ghee or White Oil but it might vary a little amongst families.

I made the Alu Potol er Dalna yesterday after years. Potol/Parwal or Pointed Gourd is a summer vegetable back home. No one pays much attention to it after first few days of its arrival in the summer market. After that it is just one more staple summer veggie.

Here Patol/Parwal is expensive, not in its best form and seen occasionally in the Indian Grocers. Me buying Patol is same as someone buying Celery sticks in the heat of Mumbai.Does not make a whole lot of sense except for making mundane Potol a very fancy vegetable for me and cooking it as a special Sunday meal.

I made a Niramish Alu Potol er Dalna, no onion to chop always tips the scale for me. We really enjoyed it with some Rice and for once did not miss the mandatory meat or fish that is on the Sunday lunch menu.


Read more...

Alu Potol er Dalna

Chop the ends of the Potol/Parwal and then scrape the skin.Chop in halves. I had about 10 potol/parwal

Heat Vegetable Oil in a wok and fry the potol with a pinch of turmeric till they are a pale golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

Heat some more Oil in the same wok

Temper the Oil with
a pinch of Hing/Asafoetida(optional)
1&1/2" tin stick of cinnamon
1 small Bay Leaf
4 small green cardamom
4 clove
2 Dry red Chili

When the spices sizzle add 1 medium potato peeled and chopped in quarters. Sprinkle about 1/4 tsp of Turmeric Powder and saute the potatoes until they start taking on a pale golden color

Take 2-3 peeled whole tomatoes from a can or 1 big juicy tomato and blend to make about 1/4 cup tomato puree. Add the tomato puree to the pan.Add 1 tbsp of grated Ginger OR 1 tsp of Ginger paste

Add a little salt and fry the tomato till the raw smell is gone. If you are not the smelling type, check to see if the oil is separating from the masala. This will take about 6-8 minutes at medium heat

Time for the masala.
Mix
1/2-3/4 tsp of fresh ground Coriander Powder +
1/2-3/4 tsp of Roasted Cumin Powder
1/4-1/2 tsp of Kashmiri Mirch or Red Chili Powder

in little water and this.

Alternately, you can mix the spices with 1 Tbsp of yogurt and add the masala paste.

Note 1: I roast coriander seeds and grind them to a fine powder. Ditto with Cumin Powder. My Ma however uses jeere bata or cumin paste in this recipe. You can do that too. I also use Kashmiri Mirch so use Red Chili Powder according to taste.

Note 2: In a variation of this masala you can do this --> Dry roast 1 tsp Coriander seeds + 1 tsp Cumin seeds + 1/2 tsp Fennel seeds + 1 Dry Red chilli til fragrant. Cool and grind to a powder. Mix this powder with 1 Tbsp of yogurt to make a masala paste. Add this masala paste.

Sprinkle a little of the tomato juice or a little water and fry the spices for about 5 minutes. This is called "kashano" in Bengali or "bhuno" in Hindi and a lot depends on this step. You need to fry the masala till the oil surfaces and the masala takkes a deep red color. Don't try to hurry it. I have done that and there has been a difference in taste.

Add the lightly fried poto/parwal and gently mix everything together.

Add 1 cup of warm water. Add salt to taste. Cover and cook till potatoes are done. Potol/Parwal should be done by now. Remove the cover and reduce the gravy to your desired thickness.

Add about 1/4 tsp of sugar for an authentic Bengali taste.

Adjust for spiciness, add a little ghee and garam masala powder if you wish. Keep covered and serve hot with rice or chapati

Have a Ha-Tea Weekend

...drinking Tea and reading a book in a rocking chair by the window. Mine will definitely be an antithesis to that but a girl can always dream.

The two cups in the picture were my Mother's day gift from BigSis and Little Sis, who rather whose father knows about my cup fetish too well. There were also lovely hand made cards and a home made brunch. The books, Orhan Pamuk's "Museum of innocence" and "Best food writing 2009" were picked up by me at an amazing price when Borders near my home was going out of business.

While I am going slow with the Pamuk, I am enjoying the short essays in "Best Food writing". It is a lovely collection and though I cannot say I love all the writings, some of them are true gems. Apparently this collection goes back a few years, so you will find one for every year going back to god knows when.Try to get your hand on a copy if you enjoy food writing and love essays on food as much as food itself.

Edited to add: I am hosting this month's edition of  "Of Chalks and Chopsticks" started by Aqua.

The Picture: The Picture that you see in this post is what will be your cue for this month's entry. For details about this whole concept check here

And here are some more rules, shamelessly copied from Sra's blog:

1. Spin us a yarn - an original one. It could either be based on a real incident or could be something competely imaginary. Explore any genre: humour, romance, mystery, paranormal etc.

2. The story you write has to have some food - it doesn't have to be a recipe.

3. There is no word limit on the story you write, but it has to be written in one single post.

4. Posts written for this event CAN be shared with other events.

5. Please link to this post and Aqua's original post mentioned above.

Post your story and the recipe between now and June 30 and mail it to me at: sandeepa(dot)blog (at)gmail(dot)com


Include the following details in your mail:

1. Name and URL of your blog

2. Title and URL of your post

Dal, Bhaat and Omelette or Strawberry

No, no, not me.

My wife.

Yes, the one on the far right, with the expensive camera around her shoulder. She is the Food Blogger. At least when our nosy neighbor asks her "What do you do?", that is what she says with a toss of her head. Our neighbor is stumped, I tell you. These people, our neighbors, they do not have a modern outlook. All they know is to eat dal, bhaat, maacher jhol. And they also speak Bengali at home. What is this ? How can you advance if you don't speak English all the time ? This is modern world, no. But who will tell them ?

They ask me, "If your wife is a food blogger, why do you do all the cooking in the house ?". "Arre Baba, I only cook dal, rice and chicken curry, my wife she makes rhubarb clafoutis", I tell them. Those moron neighbors look at me like they have never heard of rhubarb. People can be so closed and backward in this part of India, it is like you are in the forests of Congo or something.

But to tell you the truth if I don't cook, what will the kids eat, what will I eat ? I cannot live on Hollaindaise sauce all my life can I ? Or a Blueberry Flan or even a Rhubarb Clafoutis ? My wife, she cooks only that from expensive books with glossy pages and bright pictures. Shiny kids with golden hair and a fairness that hurts, smile out of them. In the book they smile at the strawberry muffins set out on plates in a green meadow.


Now my kids are not like that. They have black hair that catches the warm sun and they eat mangoes with juice straining down their brown elbows.I tell them to lick it up, like I did sitting on the branches of the mango orchard in my Grandma's village.

My wife does not like mangoes.She makes strawberry creme fraiche for them.She is very very talented.She also knows all the right places to get out of season imported fruits. In the heat of Indian summer she manages to get strawberries. Yes, they don't look plump and juicy and don't taste that good but so what ? Also I have to agree that it is very expensive and it is hard for me to pay every month for all this, but what can I say ? She is so creative, I need to support her Food Blogging, no.

The neighbors, the ones who do not know a rhubarb from a rabbi, tell me "Oh your wife must be making good money in blogging. Always she is buying celery sticks from Reliance Fresh , never kundru from the our local vegetable seller".Arre what money, who will click on those Google ads to give money ? Money minded they are as if everyone does things for money only. Did Van Gogh paint for money ? Did Steinbeck make rich in his life ? No, na. So ?

Now what can I expect from such morons whose only aim to cook, is to eat that food. They don't even know what "plating" is.

See, after my wife makes the creme fraiche or whatever it is, she does something called "plating". She puts the food in very beautiful plates, the ones we are never allowed to use for dinner and then arranges them with pretty flowers and napkins and silver candlesticks. Now I don't know why candlestick is necessary for food but it all looks very pretty. We watch from afar. The baby, the 3 year old wants to lick the creme fraiche but I hold her tight. My older child says he is hungry. I tell him to go do his Math homework till Mommy finishes work.

My wife then starts taking pictures. Sometimes she gets on a step ladder and click pictures from top, at other times she sets up the camera on a tripod. She changes the camera lenses, places the plate on the ledge our balcony, lets it hang precariously and balances herself to take a closer shot.I stand there, my heart going "thud-thud", fearing that those expensive plates can fall 5 floors down. If my wife was born a few decades back, Satyajit Ray would have been very proud of her.I look at her with admiration.

My wife takes like thousand pictures. In between she downloads them on her laptop and edits them.Too much work she does.

I know the kids will soon ask for dinner. So, I start getting dinner ready, I wash the rice and the lentils and then put them in the pressure cooker. I chop onions, peeling their magenta skin carefully and then slicing my knife through them. I like cooking our meals, it gives me a lot of satisfaction to see the kid's happy faces as they enjoy my chicken curry.

My wife used to cook before, 'before" as in before she became a Food Blogger. She would make charchari, jhinge posto, tyangra maacher jhaal. But now she only makes things we cannot even pronounce well. She says they picture better.Also everyone makes dal, shukto and chicken curry. What is so great about that ? It is all your middle class Bengali upbringing, she scorns.

All is well, I think. If she started taking pictures of our everyday food, we would never get to eat anyway. And anyway everyday she is so busy, where is time to cook ? In between Twitter, Facebook and her blog she can only make those things that she can blog about no ? Let her make creme fraiche and pour billows of shaving foam on it to make it look better. Who cares ? I am feeding the family, no. I am liking it also, so what is your problem ? Everyone cannot be a Food Blogger, can they ?

Only today I am late and don't have much time so I will make dal, rice and omelette. My wife likes omelettes with onion, green chili and tomatoes.I don't think she will eat the strawberry creme fraiche, what with the foam and the shriveled berries it might be actually poisonous. Tomorrow she can write how decadent and delicious it was, how her family enjoyed it and post pretty pictures of them with candlesticks around.


This is my entry for Of Chalks and ChopSticks, a food Fiction event started by Aqua last year. After a period of dormancy it is hosted this time by Sra. This time Desi Soccer Mom suggested there should be a photo cue and the picture Sra had showed a camera, some strawberries and a man's hand holding the camera.


Since I generally like to do timepass, I enjoyed writing a food fiction after a long time.Any resemblance to people in real life is totally unintentional.

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

Omelettes are my all time favorite food. I can write lengthy paeans on it. If I did not have kids and did not have to blog, I could survive on Omelette alone. Toast & Omelette for breakfast, rice-butter and omelette for lunch, Roti rwapped around an omelette for dinner. Perfect, happy life and then came the vegetables and spoiled it all. Arrrrrrrgh.

To make an omelette like ours, crack an egg into a bowl. Add 1 tbsp of Milk. Beat with a fork till frothy. Add chopped onions, chopped green chili and chopped tomatoes. Add salt to taste. Mix. Heat Oil on a fry pan. Pour the pale yellow egg mixture and swirl the pan around a little, so the egg mixture makes a circle. At low heat cook till the omelette looks flippable(check the edges, should look done). Slide a spatula gently under the cooked side and flip. Cook the omelette on the other side.