Cholay Palak

I met my favourite 'leafy veggy seller' in Mahim bazaar today on my way back home after meeting Peter. Since it was evident that sales had not been good, I felt sorry for the guy and bought two bunches of palak (spinach) just as he was shutting shop and starting on his way back.


I came back and remembered that I had soaked cholay (chick peas or garbanzo beans). So I started by putting out some spices. I tried a different combo that would have a "sweetish" taste with a jhal/tikha/fiery undertone...

I had soaked 250gm of chickpeas. After a day of soaking in the fridge, they now weighed in at 526gm after draining the excess water.
I kept the water and the soaked chickpeas aside for the while...

I ground the roasted whole spices in the pestle and mortar ...

Next I tended to the tomatoes, ginger, and garlic...

 A few whirrs in the grinder and I had some ginger-garlic paste

I added this and the ground spices to the tomatoes and  puréed the mix a bit to work everything in.

Till I got it to this consistency...

I added this to the chickpeas and added the water that I had set aside from the soaking phase of the chickpeas and used it to wash down the remains of the purée from the grinder. I pressure cooked the mix for about 20 minutes (four whistles). I did not want too much liquid for the next stage and wanted to save some gas as well. 


So, I turned of the gas and let the chickpeas cook in the pressure cooker while I worked on the palak...


I thought that there was a lot of palak and I wanted the cholay to dominate, So I took one and a half bunch and roughly chopped the palak, leaving quite a few large bits in. I prefer palak that you can feel while you eat instead of the green paste that you get in restaurants when they serve you anything made with palak.

The ginger and garlic went into the oil with a few bay leaves (tej patta)

I wanted to taste the ginger even after I'd cooked things through, so I did not bhunno it too much, besides I wanted the palak to absorb the garlicky-gingery taste, and lose its own intrincic typical 'acridity' in the process... Anyways, then, the palak joined the ginger and garlic.

I par-cooked the palak till it wilted just a little bit and started releasing water...

I then added the chick peas (cholay) from the pressure cooker and let everything cook and combine.

I covered everything and let things cook till it looked like this...

The cooked cholay and palak

Now, it is 1 AM, the cat has woken up to try and play with the chapptis while I eat 'dinner'... Hmmm.


The morning update... Now this is how the leftovers look in my lunch box :)

Paanch Phoron...

Anchal asked me for the ingredients of paanch phoron. To make quintessential Bengali food you MUST have this in  your kitchen armoury.


The wikipedia article about paanch phoron is quite succinct and and to the point:

Panch phoron has the following ingredients in equal measure:

• Fenugreek (মেথি methi)
• Nigella seed (কালো জিরা kalo jira)
• Cumin seed (জিরা jira)
• Radhuni (রাধুনি radhuni)
• Fennel seed (সঁওফ sőf or মৌরি mouri)

I usually buy the ingredients separately and and roast them on a tava before cooling and mixing them. I find that I get better flavour this way rather than buying the spices pre-mixed.

Radhuni is rather exotic and difficult to get outside Bengal. At a pinch I replace it with plain mustard seeds (very neutral as a flavour when fried). The end taste is almost similar but I'd rather wait and use radhuni instead of substituting it. Adding ajwain (it is from the same family as radhuni) does not really go well. The flavour goes completely ka-bing.

People looking for kalo jira, outside Bengal/Orissa, I'm sure, have faced problems like I did. You get offered everything from shah jeera to sabza, till you realize that it is called kalonji in many places. In fact it there is a disambiguation page for black cumin on wikipedia!

(To digress a bit, sabza is actually a bunch of basil seeds... I'm sure most people don't realize this when they have it in falooda :) ) 

What really intrigues me are the similarities with the balance of flavours 

in panch phoron when you compare it to Chinese five spice, both:

• Share fennel (mouri/saunf) as a common 'sweet'ening element
• Have a spice that gives another undertone of sweetness (star anise in Chinese five spice and fennel in panch phoron)
• Share an element of 'heat' as an undertone (radhuni in panch phoron and sichuan peppers in Chinese five spice)
• Work on the principal of balancing flavours (yin and yang as the Chinese would put it 

I will cook a few things with panch phoron and post later. Makes no sense in writing so much and not using the darn spice :)