Sheem Posto with Kasundi -- Snow Peas with Poppy seeds and Mustard

I have this habit of switching veggies, concocting recipes, substituting one ingredient with another. So it is no surprise that I hardly ever buy sheem, which we never find fresh at our Indian grocers anyway. Instead I buy the fresh, tender, translucent green snow peas from the Asian Market and substitute it for sheem!

With those fresh, tender, translucent green snow peas...ahem, I mostly make Dhonepata Bata Sheem. That dish is so freaking good that I cannot even begin telling you.

The one time that I actually cooked with sheem, and made a Tel Sheem, was when a blogger friend Soma, who grows amazing vegetables, sent me a box of tender sheem from her own garden. Those were soft and buttery and one look at them and you would fall in love.

Recently a friend had made Shorshe Sheem and the husband-man loved it. With snow peas in my refrigerator I thought of making a "shorshe sheem" today. Only, I felt extremely lazy and did not want to soak mustard seeds and then make a paste of it. I also don't have the smaller Magic Bullet jar anymore and to make a paste in the bigger jar, I would have to make a larger quantity. Instead, I decided to make a "Posto Sheem with Kasundi". So there would be posto and kasundi from a bottle and it would taste as wonderful.

Salsa Fish -- when Mexican meets Bengali

I don't have a lot of time to write today. I had promised to post this last week but then last week was super busy like any other. So if I start writing, this recipe will never see the light of the published blog!!

A quick note to say, that this Salsa Fish is my recipe, mine and mine alone. So don't compare it to salsa fish of a mom from Tijuana or to your neighborhood TexMex restaurant. Maybe she makes it this way or maybe the restaurant makes it better, I don't know. I have never had it at any Mexican restaurant here either. The inspiration came from our very own tomato fish and of course salsa.

So I make a mean salsa and my salsa has tomatoes, garlic, cumin, jalapenos, coriander leaves, sugar and salt. And then a couple of weeks back I thought since I am already making this why don't I use this to make a fish. That is what I did and called it Salsa fish. It had gravy and tasted like maacher jhol that a mom in Tijuana would make.

I served it with rice, and loads chopped onions, tomatoes and some jalapenos.

Then again few days back I made a similar fish, but not much gravy. I also added green peppers. Same salsa as the base. This was a drier salsa fish.

This is when I saw my housecleaning lady had put up her dinner photo on her WhatsApp status and there were tacos and guac and salsa and all very authentic as the mother in Tijuana would make. Not the American tacos that on the border makes.

Inspired I assembled a similar dinner. Multigrain tortillas made the base. Rest all were already there, how we served it, changed the scene and country!! So if you want, you can serve the salsa fish that way too.

Nolen Gur Shooters -- for Ma Saraswati

So all this shooter-wooter was initiated by a single text. A text from a friend's little sister living in London.

Last month she sent me a message "BMdi, do you have a Nolen Gur er souffle recipe?"

Until that very moment I had no idea of any existence of "Nolen Gur er Souffle". A souffle as I know it is this --"A soufflé is a baked egg-based dish which originated in early eighteenth century France. It is made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert."

So would a Nolen Gur er souffle be an egg based dessert sweetened by Nolen gur or would it be a faux eggless version? I didn't know!

"How do they make it I asked?".
This particular young lady had earlier shared her secret malai kabab recipe with me and they were the very best, and so I hoped she would know this one too. (Will post that kabab recipe sometime).

"I don't know. Balaram Maullick has it," she replied back.

Since that day, I kept on thinking of Nolen gur er souffle. After a bit of research and since I wasn't sure if I should or should not add eggs, I finally decided on a mousse kind of recipe. After all a mousse -- a mousse is a soft prepared food that incorporates air bubbles to give it a light and airy texture-- is a close cousin of a souffle. The bonus point was mousse can get its foaminess from whipping cream and not always eggs. Perfect!

Now since I am a very lazy-bone, I found the simplest of all mousse recipes that needs only two ingredients. And then decided to jazz it up and serve them as shooters.

Now, Nolen gur or Khejur Gur is a very precious commodity for me. I don't get good ones here. My Ma buys them in winter and then saves some for me. She usually tries to send it through anyone who is flying to USA from DumDum Airport. Actually she did that more frequently earlier until folks stopped telling her that they are flying to USA. "Nope,  I am not flying to US. Jhumritalaiya has a new airport called JFK."

I use my limited stash very very judiciously. Birthday paayesh and such only gets to see my Khejur Gur. So I wasn't just going to make Nolen Gur shooters for my own pleasure. Nope. So I waited and waited for the right moment... and here its.

These Nolen Gur Shooters are Ma Saraswati's proshad tomorrow. I bet she will be very happy.