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Tapioca & Corn Fritters with Mint Yogurt

tapioca mais fritterHello, it’s me, I’m still there! Maybe you didn’t notice, but I didn’t post anything for a whole month. Meanwhile it got really hot here, India has voted and I turned a year older. Happy birthday to me.. happy birthday to me.. gifts and congratulations are still welcome.

If you’d have come to my birthday party I’d offered you a cool beer and made you these tapioca corn fritters. They are light and crisp, a bit sweet from the corn, a bit spicy from the chilli. A very delightful snack.

eingeweichte tapioka perlenTapioca is also called sago or sabudana and is made from the cassava root. The little pearls might look a bit strange and artificial, but are just made from the powdered root. They are easily digestible and create a fantastic crunch once fried.

You have to soak the tapioca pearls overnight, but otherwise this recipe is super easy. I serve them with a fresh mint yogurt and some chilli sauce. If you want to make a full meal out of them, just offer some salad on the side.

tapioca mais fritter
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Tapioca Corn Fritter with Mint Yogurt

Makes about 12 fritters.

Ingredients

For the fritters

  • 3/4 cup small tapioca pearls
  • 1/2 cup corn kernels (I used frozen)
  • 2 small potatoes, boiled & mashed
  • 2 green chillis, deseeded & cut in small cubes
  • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Oil for frying

For the mint yogurt

  • 1 cup yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons mayonaise
  • 2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Wash the tapioca pearls in a sieve. Put them in a bowl and cover with water. The water should stand about 1/2 inch above the pearls. Soak overnight in the fridge (or at least for 6 hours). The soaked pearls should be so soft that they can be mashed between your fingers. Drain thoroughly in a sieve.

Mix the tapioca, corn, potatoes and spices together by hand. You should have a sticky and easy to form mass. If it feels too loose you can add 1 teaspoon flour to make it a bit more dry. With wet hands form into 2 inch long, flat nuggets.

Heat 2 cm oil in a pan or wok till it’s very hot. Drop a bit of dough into it, if it sizzles and bubbles the temperature is right. Add the fritters and fry for 2 minutes on each side till they are golden brown. You might have to work in batches if your pan/wok isn’t big enough. Transfer to a paper-lined tray. Serve immediately. They will loose their crunch once cold but still taste nice.

Fresh Mint Yogurt

Mix all the ingredients till smooth.

 

Spring Onion & Poppy Seed Curry

Frühlingszwiebel und Mohn Curry in PfanneI grew up with eating a lot of poppy seeds and absolutely adore them. They somewhat make me feel snug and my grandmothers poppy seed cake is one of my most delicious childhood memories.

After marrying my Bengali husband I figured that Bengalis love their poppy seeds as well. They are used lavishly in Bengali cooking, but in a very different way to what I knew.

Posto is the Bengali word for poppy seeds and they are mostly ground to a creamy paste, which is often mixed with vegetables and eaten with rice. It’s fascinating how a familiar ingredient incarnates to something else in a different cultural background. I quickly fell in love with this posto. And my husband, on the other side, became a big fan of poppy seed cake. Yeah.

This recipe for poppy seed curry is loosely adapted from a dish our Bengali cook Budhan-da cooks. Traditionally posto is cooked with white poppy seeds, but it also tastes nice with the black variety. It’s best eaten together with some plain white rice, but we also like it over mashed potatoes.

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Spring Onion & Poppy Seed Curry

For 3 - 4 people.

Ingredients

  • 60 gram poppy seeds (white or black)
  • 2 medium potatoes
  • 3 - 4 spring onions
  • 1 tablespoon mustard oil 
  • Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Add the poppy seeds and 100 ml water to a small blender and grind the seeds to a paste. Add a bit more water if it feels too dry.

Grinding the poppy seeds properly is the most important step in this recipe as poppy seeds only release their flavour when ground. The paste won’t be completely smooth, but don’t give up too early. You will understand it best by rubbing it between your fingers and tasting it. Once the seeds are broken down properly it will feel slightly creamy and the taste will change. Set the paste aside.

2. Peel the potatoes and cut into small wedges. Boil in salted water till almost soft.

3. Separate the white and green parts of the onion. Cut the white onions into wedges and the green part into 2 cm long pieces.

4. Heat the oil over medium high heat and add the white onion wedges. Fry for 3 - 4 minutes till they are soft and slightly brown. Add the potatoes and green onion pieces and fry till soft. Add a few tablespoons of water if necessary. Reduce heat too low.

5. Now add the poppy seeds paste to the pan. Clean the blender jar with another 100 ml water and also add this. Heat through and it is ready to eat. Make sure you don’t cook the poppy seeds too long, especially the black poppy seeds tend to get unpleasantly dry quickly.

Black Cardamom Tomato Rice

Black Cardamom on Tomato RiceThis black cardamom tomato rice is one of the most satisfying meals I had in a long time! But it started very unglamorous out of leftovers thrown together for lunch.

I don’t like to chuck food and always try to make something out of leftovers. But honestly speaking I often don’t like food which lingered in the fridge. I could never do meal prep or so, as the thought of 3 day old quinoa gives me the shudders. Thus I didn’t expect much when I tossed some old rice and leftover spicy tomato sauce in a pan.

But once I tasted it I was staggered – it was better than the day before! I suddenly remembered that my grandma used to cook something similar when I was very little and that I loved this combination already as a toddler. She used much less spices though.

I mainly used black cardamom here as it’s one of my favourite spices and adds a smoky depth to the tomato rice. Black cardamom has big, rough pods and is stronger and less floral in flavour than its green cousin. Traditionally the pods get dried over open fire, therefor the smoky flavour.

You can cook the tomato rice from scratch or use leftover rice for it. I’ll explain both versions below.

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Black Cardamom Tomato Rice

For 3 - 4 portions.

Ingredients

You need thick bottomed a pan with a lid

  • 2 medium sized onions
  • 5 cloves garlic, smashed
  • 1 piece of ginger (3cm), peeled & grated
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 4 black cardamom pods
  • 3 cloves
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 2  tomatoes, cubed
  • 100 ml red wine
  • 150 ml tomato puree
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 - 2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 tablespoon cream
  • 200 gram long grain rice (washed) or 3 cups pre-cooked rice*

Instructions

Open 3 of the cardamom pods slightly with a pestle. Take the seeds out of the 4th pod and crush them in a mortar, keep the powder aside.

Heat the oil I a pan and add the 3 cardamom pods, cloves and cumin (slowly and one after the other in exactly that order, from big to small). Fry them for a minute or so till it smells aromatic. Add the onions and salt and fry for about 5 minutes. Now add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 2 - 3 minutes, till the raw smell goes away.  Keep stirring and add the tomatoes, cardamom powder (from the 1 pod you crushed), fry till the tomatoes loose their shape. Deglaze with the wine and then add the tomato puree, cayenne, cream and sugar.

If you use raw rice please proceed as follows:

Add the washed rice and pour in water till it stands about 1cm above the rice. Stir and close the lid. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes (please also refer to the cooking directions on the package of your rice, as cooking times vary widely)

If you use pre-cooked rice, please proceed as follows:

Add 200m water, stir and close the lid of the pan. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Then add the pre-cooked rice, sir carefully (if it feels to dry add a bit more of water). Simmer for a few minutes till the rice is hot.

Serve with fresh herbs, boiled or fried eggs, salad, pine nuts, etc.

Notes

*you could use pretty much any rice, but check for cooking time and amount of water and cooking time needed. Basmati and jasmine rice are more fragile than long grain or brown rice and you have to be carefully to not break the grains while stirring.

Rustic Corn Flatbreads

 

These rustic corn flatbreads are best eaten with the saag/leafy greens from my previous post. In India they are called makki ki roti. They are also nice with other curries, salads, etc. But eat them fresh as they will become hard if kept too long.

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Rustic Corn Flatbreads

For 4 flatbreads

Ingredients

Dry ingredients

  • 1/2 cup wheat flour
  • 1/2 corn flour
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon ajwain seeds (optional)

Wet ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon oil & some ghee/oil for frying
  • Little less than 1/2 cup water

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the oil and the water (you might not need all water) and knead for about 4 Minutes into a soft dough. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Divide the dough in equal portions and roll them into balls. Flatten a ball by hand and rollout into a 18 cm disc with a rolling pin.

Put a little bit of ghee or oil in a little bowl and keep aside.

Heat a pan over medium low heat and start frying the flatbread without any oil. Change sides from time to time. Once the flatbread starts to get brown spots smear a thin layer of ghee or oil evenly on both sides.

Keep warm in a towel or some tin foil. Eat soon.

Leafy Greens Punjabi Style (Saag)

It’s getting warmer and the spinach, radish and fenugreek in our garden is growing at dramatic speed. All these leafy greens have to be eaten fast now before they start flowering.

Indisches Blattgemüse Punjabi SaagIn India a big variety of leafy greens is eaten and every region has their own recipes for them. You probably have eaten Palak Paneer, which is the best known and tamest of leafy green dishes. More  rough, wild and multifaceted is the Punjabi Sarson ka Saag. It’s a hearty, spicy puree from mustard, spinach and other leaves. Eaten with a lot of ghee and rustic corn flatbreads, it warms the belly much better than any green smoothie!

You might not be able to source mustard leaves, but you can also cook a delicious version of it with other leafy greens. In my experience it is only important to use at least 3 different greens for a more layered flavour. I also use a bit of raw mustard oil at the end to give it more kick. You cold use spinach, arugula, radish leaves, parsley, coriander, cress, dandelion, kale or chard leaves.

It maybe sounds a bit complicated to source all these greens, but it’s fun to get creative here. You can really mix it up and don’t need to worry which greens you use. Greens mellow down after cooking and blend together nicely.

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Leafy Greens Punjabi Style

About 4 portions.

Ingredients

  • 1 kilo mixed greens
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 6 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 1 piece ginger (ca. 3 cm), grated
  • 2 green chillis
  • 1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika powder (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon of native mustard oil
  • ghee
  • salt

Instructions

Clean and wash the mixed greens very well. I like to swish them around several times in a big bowl full of cold water to make sure all earth and sand is removed. Keep aside.

Put 1 tablespoon of ghee in a pan over medium heat and, when hot, add the onions. Fry for 10 minutes till the onions are cooked and starting to brown.

Fill a very big pan halfway with water and bring to a boil. Add some of the greens in the pot and blanch for 2 - 3 minutes. Takes the cooked leaves out with kitchen tongs or something similar and keep aside. Repeat till all greens are cooked. Keep the cooking liquid.

Add the cooked greens, onions, garlic, ginger, chillis, chilli powder and paprika powder (if using) into a blender. Add a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid and blend into a chunky puree.

Add salt to taste and return the puree to a pot. Cook the puree for 10 minutes over medium heat. Stir regularly. If it gets too thick add some of the cooking liquid. Once it is cooked add the mustard oil.

Serve with a generous dollop of ghee or butter. It tastes best served with fresh flatbreads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vegetarian Frikadellen

In German there are many names for meatballs – Frikadellen, Fleischpflanzerl, faschierte Laibchen and my grandparents called them Kabernatln, which is probably an abbreviation from the Czech Karbanátky. However named, I think my mother makes the best. As I had some boiled sweet potatoes and black chickpeas in my fridge, I turned my mother’s recipe into a vegetarian version. Not because I am vegetarian, but I thought it might taste nice. And it did. They of course have a different texture than the original, but nevertheless taste very Bavarian with mustard, marjoram and paprika. All flavours I grew up with and love till today.

The black chickpea I used is quite nutty and has more chew than its white cousin. I guess they are available at Asian stores or health food shops, but of course you could also use the standard chickpea. This is not the recipe to be too precise. But whatever bean you use, please cook them yourself. The canned ones are gross and just produce unnecessary garbage for a handful of chickpeas and a little saved time.

It’s easy to cook chickpeas and all kinds of pulses yourself. Just soak the chickpeas overnight, change the water and cook till they are soft. The cooking time can vary a bit, depending on how old they are already. If you really want to speed things up, you could get a simple pressure cooker, which cooks them in around 10 minutes. Once cooked, they keep well in the fridge for a couple of days. Just keep them in their cooking water, so they don’t dry out. Some people also freeze them, but I have never tried that.

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Vegetarian Sweetpotato & Black Chickpea Frikadellen

Ingredients

  • 1 big sweet potato
  • 150 gram black chickpeas (you could make a bigger batch and use the rest later for something else)
  • 1 onion
  • 1 handful parsley
  • 4 tablespoons breadcrumbs (plus more for covering)
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 teaspoon paprika powder
  • 1 teaspoon marjoram
  • 1-2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  •  
  • Ghee (or oil), for frying

Instructions

Soak the chickpeas overnight or at least 6 hours. Change the water and boil till soft around 30 - 40 minutes (it depends on how fresh they are). I cook them in an Indian pressure cooker for around 10 whistles. Cut the sweetpotato in half and boil for around 15 minutes, till soft.

Finely chop the parsley and mince the onion.

Peel the cooked sweet potato and roughly mash with a fork. Add the drained chickpeas and all other ingredients and mix. Take the mixture on a chopping board and chop it with a big knife to cut down the chickpeas a bit. Taste the mix and adjust the salt and other spices.

Take a small handfull of the mix and form patties of around 5 cm diameter. Toss the patties in breadcrumbs. Heat a good amount of ghee in a pan (I use 2 pans, to fry everything in one go) over medium heat and slowly fry the patties from both sides. Be careful while turning them around as they tend to break easily.

They are nice warm or cold. You can eat them with some salad on the side, in a bun or just as they are with some ketchup or good mustard.

Red Lentil Soup

Things were quiet here on the blog, we’ve been to Germany for Christmas and although I planned to post from there, it was impossible with so much family and festivities around. And I don’t know where the January went – once back in India our son refused to return to Kindergarten or speak any other language than German. Switching between India and Germany is not always easy and it felt difficult to pick up blogging again.

While in Germany I also met my best friend. When we spoke about my blog she suggested I should post a red lentil soup recipe. The dick I am, I replied something like “what a stupid idea, there are already thousands of lentil soup recipes online”. But then that’s pretty much the general problem with food blogging these days – who really needs more recipes ?

But best friends do normally know best, because actually I DO NEED A LENTIL SOUP RECIPE ON MY BLOG. Turkish red lentil soup or mercimek corbasi is not just any soup, for us it was the food of our student days.

L. and me met while studying photography in Bielefeld, a small town with a sizeable Turkish population and very good Turkish restaurants. Turkish food in Germany is cheap (too cheap in my opinion) and you could eat a big bowl of lentil soup for only 3 Euros. Black tea was always free and nobody minded if you sat for long without ordering more. So we spend many hours with lentil soup and tiny glasses of cay, discussing life and dreams.

In retrospect this was probably one of the most enjoyable times of my life. Old enough to do what you want, young enough to feel limitless, surrounded by good friends and studying something you really enjoy.

Nowadays life feels less carefree, friends are scattered all around, but at least I learned how to make a really good red lentil soup myself.

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Red Lentil Soup

For 3 - 4 people

Ingredients

  • 1 Onion
  • 1 Carrot
  • 1 Potato
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 200 grams red lentils, washed
  • 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon tomato paste
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika powder
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 teaspoons salt

For serving:

  • Red chilli flakes (ideally turkish pul biber)
  • Lemon wedges
  • Bread

Instructions

Peel the onion, potato, garlic & carrot and roughly chop them. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a pot and saute the vegetables for 2 minutes without browning them. Add the lentils, thyme, 600 ml of water and boil for 20 - 25 minutes till everything is very soft.

Puree with an immersion blender. The soup should be smooth but not too thick.

Melt he second tablespoon of butter in a small pan and fry the paprika powder and tomato paste for a minute. Add into the soup. Taste and season with salt and Worcestershire sauce.

Serve with lemon wedges, chilli flakes and some nice white bread.

 

 

Ghee spiced Cabbage Galette

Ghee Weisskohl GaletteAlthough me and Budhan-da do most of the cooking in our house, my husband is a great cook too. His speciality is cabbage. It maybe seems odd to have perfected such an ordinary vegetable, but I love cabbage and he is the king-of-cabbage, so that makes us a great team.

Some form of cabbage is nowadays grown almost everywhere and most cultures have one or the other typical cabbage dish. In West Bengal cabbage is often eaten as bandhakopir torkari, a lightly spiced dish, with a perfect balance of sweet & salty, rounded off with a dollop of ghee.

The ghee gives the cabbage a silken mouth feel and makes the umami rich vegetable even more savoury. It really is the ingredient which elevates it to another level.

Indian ghee shouldn’t be mistaken with plain clarified butter because it can have great depth of flavour, from nutty undertones to a cheesy funk. For making Indian ghee the butter is cooked till the milk solids caramelize and the funkiness comes from fermenting the milk/cream before churning the butter.  There are regional varieties too, my parents-in-law in West Bengal mostly use a brownish ghee, which gets cooked for hours and is so strongly caramelized and intense, that you only need a tiny amount to flavour a dish.

I grew up with the uniform taste of german butter and butterschmalz (clarified butter) and discovering that there are so many more flavours hidding in the humble milk fat still feels exciting.

This cabbage is one of the best dishes to explore the magic of ghee. The recipe is based on my husbands, although I didn’t manage sticking to it completely and used it as a filling for a galette. This is actually totally unnecessary, but on the other side works fantastically well, so why not?

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Ghee Cabbage Galette

Ingredients

For the pastry dough

  • 160 grams all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt
  • 110 grams cold butter, cut into pieces
  • 60 grams yogurt
  • 10 ml lemon juice
  • 60 ml ice water
  • 1 egg for glazing

For the cabagge

  • 750 gram white cabagge, finely sliced
  • 1 tablespoon oil (I use mustard oil)
  • 1 piece cinammon bark (cassia)
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 3 cardamom pods, seeds only
  • 1 tablespoon ginger paste (or grated ginger)
  • 1 tomato, grated
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1 teaspoon garam masala
  • 1 teaspoon salt (per taste)
  • 1 teaspoon sugar (per taste)
  • 1 tablespoon ghee

You will also need a pan with a lid

Instructions

Start with preparing the pastry dough. Mix the flour with salt in one bowl and the yogurt, lemon juice and water in another bowl. Sprinkle the butter pieces over the flour and rub them in with your fingers till you have a coarse, crumbly mixture. Take care to not overwork the dough, there should still be some bigger, pea size butter pieces. With a spoon mix in the water/yogurt mixture till a large lump forms. Wrap in plastic and rest in the fridge for an hour.

Prepare the cabbage. Heat the oil over medium heat and once it’s hot add the cinnamon, cumin and cardamon seeds (in this order). Fry the spices till they release their essential oil and smell nicely. Add the ginger and grated tomato and fry till the raw smell disappears. Add the turmeric powder and finely cut cabbage. Stir and fry for a minute or so till everything is nicely mixed up. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan with the lid and let the cabbage steam in its own juices till it’s soft (ca. 10 min). Once the cabbage is done season with garam masala, salt and sugar. At last add the ghee and stir it through.

Let it cool down. Once it’s cool, separate the egg and mix the egg white into the cabbage. Mix the egg yolk with a bit of water and keep aside for glazing the galette later.

Assemble the galette. Heat the oven to 180 degrees. Flour your working surface and roll the dough into a 30 cm round. Transfer it to a parchment lined baking sheet. Distribute the cabbage in the middle of the dough, leaving a 5 cm edge. Fold over the edge, pleating where it’s necessary to make it fit. Glaze with the egg yolk.

Bake for 30 - 40 minutes till golden brown. If the cabbage turns too dark, cover it with a piece of tinfoil. Take out of the oven, let it cool a few minutes and cut into wedges. It also tastes nice cold.

Budhan-da’s Ginger Tea And Pumpkin Pakora

It almost feels like a confession, but I do have a cook. Not that he would do the cooking for my blog, but despite I’m so much into food, it’s actually not always me who is sweating in the kitchen. Half of the food we eat at home is made by him. His name is Budhan-da, actually only Budhan and the Da is the Bengali way to show respect to someone who is elder to you.

portrait of our cookBudhan-da works in three different houses and cycles for more than 2 hours each day to go from one workplace to the next. In his lunch break he always reads three newspapers and always knows what’s going on. I think I have never seen him in a shirt which wasn’t checked. His parents where farmers in a little Bengali village, but as their land wasn’t big enough to support all of their children, Budhan-da and his brothers had to leave to find work in the city. He is warm, caring and you can always count on him. But he doesn’t like it much to cook, it’s something he has to do for a living and he often speaks about the chances he missed because he couldn’t go to school longer. His cooking is straightforward without frills or experiments. But he has a natural understanding of things we richer people have to learn again, like wasting less or using seasonal and local vegetables. If we buy something at the market which isn’t in season, he’ll scold us and says that it’ll be now our own fault if it doesn’t taste good.

cutting pumpkinIn middle-class India it is very normal to have domestic help, we have a maid, a gardener, a lady who irons the clothes and a boy who cleans the car. We are not rich, but they are poor. There are millions of domestic workers in India, but no followed laws which protect their rights. If they meet on an employer who isn’t considerate, their life can be hard. We try our best to be good employers and I think they like working at our house. But it’s difficult to understand poverty when you don’t know how it feels. Sometimes we wonder how they manage, now, as vegetable prices have risen so much. But then we shrug our shoulders and go on with our own problems.

I always look forward to Budhan-da’s arrival in the evening. He reaches around 7.30 pm and before he even starts cooking he makes us a cup of his special ginger tea. That’s the time I know the day comes to an end, our son will do his last crazy stunts before going to bed. If it’s a cold day or we feel indulgent we ask Budhan-da to make us some pakora and he’ll whip up the best pumpkin pakora in no time.

eating pumpkin pakorasPakora is a common Indian snack and I have eaten it hundreds of times, but while working on this post I realized that I actually never made them myself. Probably because of my fear of deep frying and also because Budhan-da was always there. They are one of these simple things which nevertheless can go wrong, my husband was laughing about my first attempt. But now I got it, although not in Budhan-da’s speed. You can make them with a variety of vegetables, but we like pumpkin pakora best.

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Ginger Tea & Pumpkin Pakora

Ingredients

Ginger Tea

  • 3 teaspoons grated ginger (with peel)
  • 450 ml water
  • 2 tablespoons high quality Darjeeling tea
  • 2 tablespoons sugar, honey or jaggery

Pumpkin Pakora

  • 300 gram pumpkin, peeled and deseeded
  • 1 cup besan (Indian chickpea flour)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 - 2 teaspoons salt (taste it)
  • 1/2 teaspoon carom or 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • Mustard oil for deep frying (or any other oil with a high smoke point)

Instructions

Ginger Tea

Put the water with the grated ginger in a pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 3 minutes, then add the tea leaves. Simmer for another 2 minutes. Add the sugar, stir till it dissolves and strain into cups.

Pumpkin Pakora

Cut the pumpkin in long, thin pieces. They should not be thicker than 0.5 cm, otherwise they will not cook through. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle the other ingredients over them (apart from the oil). If there are lumps in the besan or baking powder sieve it first.

Slowly add very little water while mixing everything with your hand. A thick clinging batter, which covers the pumpkin pieces, should form. Check if there is enough salt, otherwise add a bit more. You could also make the batter separately and then dip the pumpkin pieces in it. But Budhan-da does it this way around, which is much faster and I feel the paste also sticks better to the pumpkin.

Heat enough oil for deep frying in a karai or deep pan. Check if the temperature is high enough with dropping a bit of besan paste in it. If bubbles form around it and it floats up it’s hot enough.

Add a few batter covered pumpkin pieces in the hot oil. Be carefull as it will splutter. Budhan Da does this by hand, but you could use a spoon as well. Don’t overcrowed the pan, otherwise the temperature of the oil will drop.

Fry the pakoras for 1-2 minutes on one side, then turn them around and fry for another 1 - 2 minutes.

Take the pakoras out with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. They should be eaten immediately and are nicest with some chutney or ketchup.

Sprouting Potato Salad

When I talk about potato salad I have to talk about  Christmas as there is no other day I so closely connect with it. For my and many other families in Germany it is traditional to eat potato on Christmas Eve as it is considered a Christian fasting day and the food should be simple and vegetarian.

The christmas potato salad of my family was always made by my grandmother, but it was neither simple nor vegetarian. Apart from gherkins and onions it also had apples, chives, pickled herring, cabanossi and eggs. It was a wild mixture of flavours and extremely delicious.

I actually never wondered why my grandmother put all these crazy things in it and when this started. But after having made it through the war and afterwards many years of counting every penny, there must have been a sense of indulgence once the German economy grew. Ingredients were suddenly affordable and my grandma started to add them lavishly to our christmas salad and that’s how it became such an elaborate affair.

I haven’t eaten grandmas potato salad now for many years and it also seems a bit outdated in times like these (I would still enjoy though). But simple or lavish, potato salad will always be one of the best things I can think of and make me feel at home and comfortable. Here is my version for the year 2018.

There is an egg and apples, coriander, turmeric and a lot of sprouts, as sprouts and potatoes are simply meant to be together. It is a damn good potato salad and I had it for lunch now five days in a row! You should do that too, at least once.

You will have to start 1 – 2 days before with growing the sprouts. Don’t let that discourage you, it is hardly any work and feels a bit like growing your own vegetables. I’ll explain you how to do it.

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Potato and Sprouts Salad

For 2 - 3 people as a main dish.

Ingredients

Sprouts

  • A handful of whole mung dal and/or chickpeas (white or black are both fine)

Salad

  • 500 gram potatoes
  • 5 gherkins
  • 1 onion
  • 1 apple
  • a small bunch coriander
  • 2 handful sprouts
  • 3 eggs

Dressing

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 - 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoon pickling liquid (from the gherkins)
  • 1 tablespoon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon salt (or more)
  • 1 teaspoon sugar (or honey)
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric powder

Instructions

Sprouts

Start 1 or 2 days ahead with soaking the dal/chickpeas in a sufficient amount of water for about 8 hours or overnight.

Strain off the water and wash them in fresh water. Take a clean cotton kitchen towel, dip it in water and wring it out. Layer a colander with the towel.

Add the drained dal/chickpeas into the colander and fold the corners of the towel over them. Keep the colander on a plate at a relatively warm place in your kitchen.

Sprouts need a humid and slightly warm environment to grow. Check from time to time if the towel is still moist. In Indian climate my sprouts are normally ready after 10 hours. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen it might take a bit longer. It doesn’t matter how long the sprouts are, the dal/chickpeas are eatable as soon as you have soaked them. Keep the sprouts in the fridge, they will keep growing at a very slow pace and keep fresh for about a week.

Potato salad

Boil the potatoes in generously salted water. Boil the eggs in another pot.

While eggs and potatoes are boiling cut the gherkins, onions and apple in small cubes (you could peel the apple, but I don’t). Clean and chop the coriander (leaves and stem, it’s all tasty).Add all the dressing ingredients in a glass jar. Close the lid and shake vigorously till it emulsifies.

When the eggs are ready, peel them and set aside.

Once the potatoes are boiled, drain the water and wait till they have just cooled enough to be peeled. Peel and cut in slices (or whatever shape you prefer). Layer with all other ingredients and add the dressing. You can now either eat it immediately or mix everything well and let it soak for a few hours.

Whenever you are ready to eat, cut the eggs in half and serve on top.