Cơm Chiên / Vietnamese Prawns Fried Rice....

Fried rice is one of the very popular dish originated from China, it is very commonly sold on the streets of Asia. In some Asian countries, there are some small restaurants, street vendors and cart hawkers that only serves fried rice. To make the fried rice, leftover rice is generally used as the moisture in freshly cooked rice will cause it to steam instead of fry. It is stir-fried in a wok with oil to prevent sticking. The oil is seasoned with garlic and onion for flavouring before adding the rice and other ingredients to it, which is then stir-fried together in a wok. Other ingredients like egg, meat,seafood, vegetables, salt, pepper, different types of sauces are added as per the choice. It is popularly eaten either as an accompaniment to another dish, or as a course by itself. Popular garnishes that are added into the Fried rice are sliced cucumber, tomato or sliced chilli sprinkled on top of the rice.

Here is my adaptation to the recipe. I have added some green sorrel leaves to it along with other vegetables for a change.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups of Cooked Rice

1 Onion chopped

1 small size Carrot chopped

1 small Capsicum chopped

1/4 cup Green Sorrel Leaves

2 Green Chillies chopped

1 tsp Ginger minced

1 tsp Garlic minced

1 tbsp Red Chilli sliced

2 Eggs

10 medium sized Prawns cleaned

3 tbsp Fish sauce

2 tbsp Rice Vinegar

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp Pepper powder

1/2 tsp Sugar

4 tbsp Sesame Oil

Method

Break the eggs in a bowl. Sprinkle salt and pepper and beat it. Take a wok, add  1/2 tbsp oil, heat it. Add the egg,cook it and make a fried scramble egg. Remove it and keep it aside. Add another tbsp of oil in the same wok. Let it heat. Sprinkle some salt and pepper on the prawns,mix it. Fry it till it is cooked. Remove and keep it aside. Add the remaining oil in the same wok, heat the oil. Add the chopped onion, garlic and ginger mince. Stir fry for a minute on high flame. Add the capsicum, carrot, red chilli and the green chillies. Stir fry it for 2 minutes. Add the green sorrel leaves and stir it for few seconds. Add the rice, stir fry it for a minute on medium flame. Add the salt, pepper powder, sugar, fish sauce and the rice vinegar. Stir it for another minute. Leaving few pieces of prawns and fried eggs for garnishing, add the rest of the prawns and fried egg pieces in other wok. Stir for it for another minute or 2 until all the ingredients are well co-operated. Garish with the remaining fried egg pieces and prawns. Serve it hot.

Potoler Khosha Bata....

Peel of Pointed Gourd made into paste... 

 "Bata" means paste. It is a kind of a coarsely ground chutney. It is a dish from Bangladesh and West Bengal. It is served as a side dish and eaten with the hot steaming rice. There are different types of Bata, made from any vegetable peel like raw banana, green peas, pumpkin, bottle gourd, pointed gourd etc or green leaves or fish. Earlier days people living in the country sides having large families preferred to use all the parts of the vegetable for cooking. Apparently now with nuclear family, moving into cities and change in generation, this dishes are rare to find. 

You can actually land up eating a good amount of rice with the Bata. Today I making Potoler Khosha Bata / Pointed gourd peel paste. There are different ways to make this dish.. This is my version of making it...

Ingredients

Pointed Gourd peels from 300 grams Pointed Gourd

2 Green Chillies 

1 Garlic clove

1/4 tsp Nigella seeds / Kalonji 

1 tbsp Fresh or Desiccated Coconut 

Salt to taste 

1/4 tsp Sugar ( Optional ) 

1/8 tsp Tumeric powder

1 tbsp Mustard Oil 

1/2 tsp Mustard Oil for garnishing 

Method

Add the pointed gourd peels, 1 green chilli and garlic into the grinder. Grind it into a coarse paste. Take a pan, add 1 tbsp oil. Let it heat. Add the Nigella seeds and 1 green chilli into the oil. Sauté it till the seeds crackle. Add the paste, on a low flame stirring it continuously, cook it for 5 minutes. Add salt, sugar and turmeric powder. Continue to cook for 5 minutes more or till the rawness of the paste disappears. Add the coconut, cook it for another 3 minutes. Before serving add 1/2 tsp Mustard oil. Serve it hot with steaming rice. 

Jamaican Jerk Fish Wrapped in Banana Leaf and Steamed.....

When yesterday morning one of my friend shared with me a Jamaican Jerk Chicken recipe..... I instantly fell in love with the easy recipe. The spices in this dish are full of flavours... enough to linger around your tastebuds.. I decided to make it.. with a twist...

I have adapted the recipe as per my convenience and experimented it with fish.. wrapped in banana leaf and steamed it..... This dish can be served as a starter.

For the Jerk Spice

Ingredients

1 tsp  Garlic powder

1/2 tsp Onion powder

1 tsp Hot Chilli powder

1/4 tsp Pepper powder

1/8 tsp Cinnamon powder

1/8 tsp Nutmeg powder

1/8 tsp Clove powder or 2 Cloves

1/2 tsp All Spice powder  ( I did not use the powder... but I have the all spice plant at home so substituted it by roasting 3 leaves and grinding it)

1/4 tsp Chilli flakes

1/2 tsp Brown Sugar

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp Dried Thyme

1/2 tsp Dried Parsley

Method

Mix all the above ingredients and blend it in a blender.

For the Steamed  Fish

Ingredients

Any whole Fish.. I used 3 medium size whole Pomfrets cleaned and slited

Jamaican Jerk spice

Salt to season

3 tbsp Olive oil

Juice of 1 Lime

Banana Leaves cut into rectangular shape

Method

Take the fish. Rub salt and lime juice and let it stand for 15 minutes. Mix the Jerk spices with olive oil. Rub the Jerk spices and let it marinate for 2 hours or more. To make the banana leaf more pliable, slightly warm up the banana leaves over low flame for few seconds. Apply oil on the lighter side of each leaf. Place the fish on the leaf. Add the marinated juices on the fish. Wrap the fish in the banana leaf. Heat up the pan. Brush some oil in the pan. Cook it covered on medium high flame for 10 minutes on each sides. Serve it hot with lime slices.

P. S. Instead of steaming the fish you can grill it too.

Rasgulla... From the village of Pahala

A sweet controversy....

Uptill now I grew up knowing that Rasgulla's were invented in Bengal by Nobin Chandra Das in 19 th century. The other day when I had posted Rasgullar payesh, a friend pointed out that this is not the truth... According to historians of Odisha, the rasgullas were originated in Puri, as Khira Mohana which later was know as Pahala Rasgulla. It has been traditionally offered as offering  to goddess Laxmi at JagannathTemple in Puri. The Jagannath Temple scholars Laxmidhar Pujapanda and researchers like Jagabandhu Padhi state that the tradition has existed since 12th century.  According to people of Pahala, a village which is on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, had large number of cows and the milk was produced in excess.  The villagers would throw away the milk when it got spoilt. When a priest from the Jagannath Temple saw this, he taught them the art of curdling the milk and including the recipe of rasagulla. Hence Pahala become the biggest market for chhena-based sweets.

This claim is contested by Bengali historians. According to food historians K.T Acharya and Chitra Banerji, that there are no references to cheese (including chhena) in India before the 17th century. The milk-based sweets were mainly made up of khoa before the Portuguese ruled our country. Their influences led to the introduction of cheese-based sweets. Therefore, the possibility of a cheese-based dish being offered at Jagannath Temple in 12th century is highly unlikely. According to Nobin Chandra Das' descendant Animikh Roy and historian Haripada Bhowmik, rasgulla is not even mentioned as one of the chhappan bhog ("56 offerings") in the early records of the Temple. They also state that it would have been a blasphemy to offer something made from spoiled milk to a deity. However,  Michael Krondl argues that Hindu dietary rules vary from region to region, and it is possible that this restriction did not exist in Odisha.

Recently it is declared by an Odia researcher Asit Mohanty (research scholar on Jagannath culture and traditions) that there is mention of Rasagola in the Jagamohana Ramayana of Balaram Das a text of 15th Century.The text mentions that Rasagola, along with other sweets were found in Odisha. There is also mention of many other cheese made sweets like Chhenapuri, Chhenaladuand Rasabali.

However Bengal claims that the spongy white rasgulla is believed to have been introduced in 1868 by a Kolkata based confectioner Shri Nobin Chandra Das. His descendants claim that his recipe was an original, but according to another theory, he modified the traditional Odisha rasgulla recipe to produce this less perishable variant. Yet another theory is that rasgulla was first prepared by someone else in Bengal, and Das only popularized it. In Banglar Khabar (1987), food historian Pranab Ray states that a man named Braja Moira had introduced rasgulla in his shop near Calcutta High Court in 1866, two years before Das started selling the dish.  In 1906, Panchana Bandopadhyay wrote that rasgullla was invented in 19th century by Haradhan Moira, a Phulia-based sweetmaker who worked for the Pal Chowdhurys of Ranaghat. According to Mistikatha, a newspaper published by West Bengal Sweetmeat Traders Association, many other people prepared similar sweets under different names such as gopalgolla (prepared by Gopal Moira of Burdwandistrict), jatingolla, bhabanigolaand rasugolla.Food historian Michael Krondl states that irrespective of its origin, the rasgulla likely predates Nobin Chandra Das.Bhagwandas Bagla, a Marwari businessman and a customer of Nobin Chandra Das, popularized the Bengali rasgulla beyond the shop's locality by ordering huge amounts.

In 2015, the Odisha government initiated a move to get Geographical indication (GI) status for the rasagulla made in Pahala. On 30 July, the people of Odisha celebrated "Rasagola Dibasa" ("Rasgulla Day") to reaffirm Odisha as the place of the dish's origin.In August, West Bengal decided to legally contest Odisha's move to obtain GI Status.

In 2015 The odisha state government constituted three committees to claim over the Rasgulla .The committees submitted their interim report to the government. Noted journalist and food researcher Bhakta Tripathy and a member of the committee had submitted dossier containing historical evidence of Rasgulla origin in Odisha.The Science and Technology department of the West Bengal government also started the process to get its own GI status for the dessert.

In 2016 an official of the West Bengal government stated that they only wished for a Geographical Indications (GI) tag only for the local varity of Rasgulla known as'Rasogolla', stating that "There is no conflict with Odisha. What we want is to protect the identity of our Rasogolla. Their product is different from ours both in colour, texture, taste, juice content and method of preparation."

Based on Net Sources.....

For me a sweet is to indulge, irrespective of the state it belongs.

Here is my adaptation of the dish....

Pahala Rasgulla

Ingredients

Home made Chenna / Cottage Cheese made from 11/2 liters Cow Milk

1 tsp Sugar

1 tsp Semolina

2 pinches of Cardamom powder

1/2 liter Hot Water

For the Sugar Syrup

21/2 cups Sugar

5 1/2  cups Water

Method

Take the a plate, add the chenna, semolina and sugar. Mix and knead it into a smooth dough for 5 to 7 minutes. Take sugar and water in a pot for making the sugar syrup. First let it boil and and let it simmer on low flame. Meanwhile make equal size balls ftom the dough. Roll it into a balls and drop it in the sugar syrup. Let it cook on medium flame covered for 15 minutes. Remove the cover and let it boil for 5 minutes on high flame. Remove the rasgulla from the sugar syrup and put it in the hot water for 10 minutes. Remove the rasgullas from the hot water. Put it in a bowl and pour the sugar syrup on top of the rasgullas. Cover and let it sit for 30 minutes before serving.

Chingri Macher Paturi ......

Macher Paturi is a very popular dish of Bengal. It can be made with fish like Hilsa, Bhetki or Prawns. It is cooked in a banana leaf or incase the banana leaf is available then pumpkin leaf or bottle gourd leaf. The main ingredients for the paturi are fish and mustard paste which is wrapped into a parcel made with banana leaf and then steamed. 

Here is my version of making the paturi. 

To Marinate the Prawns

Ingredients

270 grams medium sized cleaned Prawns 

1/4 tsp Turmeric powder

Salt to taste

Method

Marinate the prawns with salt and turmeric powder and keep it aside for 15 minutes.

For the Paste

Ingredients

1 1/2 tbsp Mustard seeds

3 tbsp shredded fresh Coconut or Desiccated Coconut

5 small Green Chillies

1 Garlic clove

1/2 tsp Turmeric powder

3 tbsp Curd

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp Sugar

1 to 2 tbsp Water 

Method

Soak the mustard seeds in water. Drain the water out.  Blend the mustard seeds and all above ingredients in a blender into a fine paste.

To make the Paturi

Ingredients

Marinated Prawns

5 Green chillies slited lengthwise

5 Red Chillies  (Optional) 

3 tbsp Mustard oil

Banana Leaves

Thread

Method

Take the wet paste in a bowl. Add the mustard oil. Mix it. Add the marinated prawns. Mix it with the paste. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Cut the banana leaves into rectangular pieces. To make it more pliable, slightly warm up the banana leaves over low flame for few seconds.  Apply mustard oil on the lighter side of each leaf. Place 6 prawns along with the mustard paste in the center of the leaf. Place one green and red chilli on top of it and fold the sides of the banana leaf by overlapping each other to make a parcel. Tie a thread around the parcel to secure it. Steam the parcels in a steamer for 10 minutes. Cut the thread to open the parcel before serving it. Seve it with hot steaming rice.