Paurutir Dohi Vada -- Bread Dahi Vada

Paurutir Doi Bora | Bread Dahi Vada

Made with soft white breads and thick yogurt, this faux Dahi Vada or Bengali Doi Bora is a quick snack, the ones that you can make while chatting with your guests. It is good that is quick, for it needs to be devoured as soon as you make it and does not stand well if served later.

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A large chunk of my growing up years have been spent in small town India. Small towns, small buildings, narrow roads, greener trees, wider skies and smiling people. This town I am talking about was so small that it did not even have an air-conditioned restaurant or a public movie hall. The township had a movie club and showed 4 showings of the same movie each week. Every family got two passes each week, 8 for the month and you went and saw whatever movie they played that week. By you, I mean only the adults, no one thought kids needed to watch movies and so there were no passes for the kids. 

Did we feel we were missing something ? No, nothing that I can think of. 

I remember seeing "Mr.Natwarlal" after the final exams, sharing a seat with a friend when my Mother lend me her pass after the exams and I don't think it was a movie worth remembering if not for the rarity of the situation. 

Though the town had no decent restaurant, it boasted of a very delicious sweet shop. The shop was nondescript with its thatched roof sitting limply on sturdy bamboo poles, rickety benches and tables where the flies made merry and grubby glass counters displaying the sweets. The owner and also the sweet maker aka pastry chef, however had a character. He was rotund, with white walrus seal mustache and sat stirring the milk down to khoa so happy and contented that he personified the sweet shop. And his products were to die for. If I close my eyes I can still imagine how good his lyangcha and cream chop was and it has been two decades since I have tasted them.

 

Now this post is not about the movie hall nor the sweet shop. I digress. It is about the small town though, where neighbors dropped in without making an appointment a month early and my Ma happily entertained them without thinking her time was being wasted. 

She enjoyed making a quick snack on such occasions and a very popular one was the Paurutir Doi Vada or Bread Dahi Vada. Made with soft white breads and thick yogurt, it was a quick snack, the ones that you can make while chatting with your guests. It is good that is quick, for it needs to be devoured as soon as you make it and does not stand well if served later. My Ma says, this recipe is from my Dida(my Mom's mom) who in turn had got it from a now defunct Bengali magazine called "Amrito". I am sure there must be other versions of it around but this is my Ma's or my Dida's or maybe the now defunct Amrito's or someone who raked her very creative brains to make her family eat bread long long time ago... Though my Ma insists that I use ONLY WHITE BREAD for this dish, and that is how it tastes best, I have stuck to my guns and used WHOLE WHEAT BREAD. If you have white bread, do use that as the vadas are crispier that way. 

Bora'r Jhaal/Jhol/whatever -- Lentil Fritters in gravy

So here is the answer to the big question "What I did with the Daler Bora"

A couple weeks back my Ma made a borar jhol which was just too good. It was so good that I could not stop eating it. When Ma is here, I don't ask for recipes and then lament loss of those recipes only when she leaves. So any way this bora'r jhol that she made was a light soupy gravy with potatoes and brinjal and the recipe sounded like this Macher Jhol except of course this had no Fish but Lentil Fritters.

Did I say it tasted awesome ? I did ?
Ok, so is that how I made this dish ? No. Of course not.I have ADD, I cannot follow instructions.

Last weekend morning the entire family was out on errands and me & BS were the only one home. Not because we have the laziest bones in the whole family but because I had to take BS for her swim class later in the day. Having some time to myself I experimented with the Appe Pan and made those daler bora. Yeah , there are full grown adults(like the husband) in my house who interfere with sagely advices when I cook so I need to save all experimentation for such times.

After I made those tiny boras, I decided to make a Bora'r Jhaal, the stress is on the word Jhaal here as Jhaal is different from Jhol.

I had no idea about making a jhaal. Does that deter me ? No. Of course not. I have a hypothetical confidence in my abilities syndrome.

So I heated up some Oil. Once the oil was hot and fiery, added a tsp of Nigella Seeds/Kalonji and 3-4 slit green chili.
The spices started popping and I added quarter of a red onion chopped fine.
When the onions started browning, in went half of a red juicy medium sized tomato chopped fine.
A tsp of ginger paste followed suit
The tomato was stirred and cooked till it was mush. Satisfied by the tomato's final looks, I threw in a potato chopped longitudinally. Don't know why I say "longitudinally", actually chopped in quarters would do just fine. A pinch of turmeric and frying the potatoes for 2-3 minutes till they were golden ensued.
Now the spices went in, a tsp of Corriander Powder, 1/2 tsp of Cumin powder and 1/2 tsp of red chili Powder was all that I added.
Everything mixed together with a sprinkle of water and sauted for the next 2-3 minutes till the masala seems you know cooked.
Add about 1 cup of water, salt to taste and cover and cook till potatoes are done.
Once the potatoes are cooked add the bora/lentil fritters, about 12-14 of them and let them simmer in the gravy for 3-4 minutes.
The fritters will soak up the gravy fast and become plump, so you might want to remove them from the gravy and add back only at time of serving.

So this is how I made the borar jhaal, put it in the serving dish, making a mental note that I should increase the gravy a little since the boras had soaked up most of the liquid and took BS out for her class. Before leaving I told Ma, who had just come in that I had made a Borar Jhaal for lunch.

An hour and half later, sitting down for lunch, the dish that I had cooked that very morning, my borar jhaal looked very different from what I had last seen of it. Not only did it look different, it also tasted very different from the dish that I had cooked. It tasted very very good, but different, different from my vision of borar jhaal.

"Did you do something to this dish?", I asked my Mom

"Hyaan, tui to bolli jhaal, oita jhaal hoini, ami sorshe bata diye ar ek bar photalam" (You said it was a jhaal, that was no jhaal, jhaal has to have mustard paste so I added mustard paste and gave it a good simmer) she said, nonchalantly.

"But I wanted to put it in the blog, how much mustard paste did you add", I wailed.

"Ta jani na, oi ek chamoch hobey"(I am not sure, maybe one spoon), my Ma replied

"What spoon, teaspoon or tablespoon?", I continued grilling, trying to think what my blog readers with their critique remarks would say to that.

"Kichu ekta likhe de to, blog, blog korish na"(Write something, anything and don't nag me about your stupid blog), she was now visibly irritated at the offspring's ignorance and did not encourage any further questions. Ok, she did not say "stupid" either but you could sense it.

So for a jhaal you need to add mustard paste, maybe a tsp of mustard paste would suffice for this quantity. I honestly do not know. My Mom might have put in other things too. If you don't know my Mom, go ahead skip the mustard, but never ever tell her that.

Daler Bora -- Lentil fritters

Daler Bora -- Lentil Fritters

Has anyone been following "Along the Grand Trunk Road" on NPR ? It was last week that I heard first of the series when Philip Reeves started out on his journey from Calcutta and spent a good few hours searching for the start of the road, with a banter typical of Calcutta on the background.

For a route of such enormous historical stature, the Grand Trunk Road makes a surprisingly modest start to its journey across the breadth of northern India, through Pakistan to the Hindu Kush.

Maps suggest that the road sprouts out of the heart of India's great eastern city, Calcutta (also known as Kolkata), not far from the banks of the mighty Hooghly River, a distributary of the Ganges.

But if you go there -- as NPR did, at the outset of our trip along this ancient highway -- the starting point is not particularly easy to find.

Residents of Calcutta love nothing better than a good debate; the city's famous for its militant left-wing political activism.

Stop in the street and ask local residents where the road begins, and they will happily launch into a lengthy argument on the subject.

We were finally directed to a large banyan tree, beside a railway crossing, where a small throng of truck drivers were sitting in the shade, drinking tea out of clay cups, and playing cards. There was a consensus among the drivers that we had found the right place -- the spot where the Grand Trunk Road began during British colonial rule when Calcutta was the imperial capital.

I couldn't follow the series on the air waves thereafter but I am reading it on their site.

On May 14, NPR was at the city of Aligarh along the G.T Road and they threw a very pertinent question. In India, Can Schools offer a path out of Poverty ? Millions of Indians definitely think so and education is highly rated amongst the mass but the Government obviously thinks otherwise and very little thought is given to public education.

India has some stellar educational institutions. The government-supported Indian Institutes of Technology churn out thousands of world-class engineers every year.

The fields of medicine and business have similar elite colleges. Hundreds of thousands more young men and women graduate from colleges and universities just a rung or two below in terms of excellence.

Yet as students toil in classrooms and coaching centers, desperate to get into these elite institutes, even larger numbers of Indian youths barely get a start. Last year, UNICEF estimated that about 8 million Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14 were not in school.

And those that do attend are educated at government-run primary schools like the one in Nandpur Pala, a village just outside the city of Aligarh on the Grand Trunk Road. We visited the school as part of NPR's series of stories on the lives of people living along the route that crosses India and Pakistan

Isn't that so true ? In a country where education holds such high esteem, it seems abstruse that literacy rate is so low . And even getting a primary education when you can modestly afford it, is not easy either.

The other day someone in the family who lives in the technology hub in the southern part of India was discussing the lengths they had to go to get their two year old admitted to a reputed school. The reputed school is one of the few which do not demand huge sums of donation and so has a stringent entry policy. The two year old was interviewed by a posse of 4 teachers to be admitted into what but a 2 hours play class.

I am sure my kids would be illiterate if they were in present day India.No way would I allow 2 year olds be asked questions on color, creed, alphabet or animals. Yeah, I might grill them on such things but not any stranger throwing such stuff at innocent minds, thank you.

Follow the series here, I am sure there will be some very nice moments along the road.

********

There is nothing great about Daler Bora or Lentil fritters. Every cuisine has its own version of it. Simple delights to tide you on rough days.

What is different about today's dal bora is how I made them, using a strange contraption that looks like an instrument used by aliens in 6000BC and later excavated from Harappa. It was this, this and this and this that played a major role in me ordering this strange stuff for only $10 on the internet. Yeah, they sell such relics from the past on the internet and call it Dutch with a still stranger name, ebelskeiver pan.

You would think there is a link between the Dravidians and the Dutch, yeah more similarity than the "D", for this same Ebelskeiver pan is popular in Southern India as the Appe pan or the Paniyaram Pan( a staple in the South Indian kitchen as my friend indosungod says).

I had never ever heard or seen such a thing in all my life in India and so though I bought it in December, it sat uptight and conscious waiting to be of any service.. And then this gave me the push and since then I have been on a roll. I have made pakodis and fritters and all kind of fried stuff that I would normally not make much.

With this pan my oil usage was way less. I did not have to heat a whole lot of oil for frying only to be thrown out after use. Also my pakodis/ boras/fritters were tiny and cute which meant we could eat more of them thinking we were doing portion control.

This time it was the very Bangali Dal er Bora made in the Southie Appe Pan, something like Mani Ratnam making a Tollywood(Bengal's Holywood) movie.


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Daler Bora/Lentil Fritters

Soak 1/2 cup of Matar Dal(split peas) & 1/2 cup of red Masoor Dal in water for half an hour. If you want only Musur Dal er bora, You can increase the masoor and decrease the Matar till Matar Dal becomes 0 cup. If you don't have matar dal use chana dal.

In the blender add

the soaked lentils
1" piece of peeled and chopped ginger
3-4 green chili
1/2 cup of water

and make a smooth paste.

Add salt to taste to this paste. If you wish add 1 tsp of roasted cumin powder . Since I was making niramish bora I did not add any onions. Ok to tell the truth I forgot and decided it was a niramish bora. But you can add 1/2 of an onion chopped fine.

As a reader "khabarpagol" says in the comments, finely chopped corriander leaves and a few nigella seeds in the batter makes the bora tastier. So go ahead and add that.

Beat the lentil paste with a fork till everything is well mixed up.

Now add oil to each of the round slots of the ebelskeiver pan and heat. Since my pan is cast iron, I add a little more oil(about 2tsp oil in each slot) for the first batch. For the next batch, I just add drops of oil along the edges.

Add a spoonful of lentil paste in each of those dark crevices and see the oil merrily bubbling around. Keep the heat at low medium. Once one side is golden brown with the help of a fork, a spoon or a skewer turn the other side and cook till both sides are brown and crisp.


If you do not have this pan, don't fret, you can always fry this the regular way.

Tomorrow I will tell you what I did with these daler bora or fritters, other than eating them just like that of course.