Food Talk
 A one-dish meal

Kachori can survive in the 21st century only when people restart making it at home,
says Pushpesh Pant

PURI and kachori are quintessential festive foods—pakka khana, ritually cooked at home till some years back. These deep fried breads have a long shelf life and were prepared in bulk on the eve of long-distance train travel or when orthodox elders, who shunned ‘polluting’ hotel food, accompanied.

Puris are encountered occasionally, most often as set North Indian breakfast or as components in a thali meal, but the made-at-home kachori has almost become an extinct species. True, that at places like Jaipur and Jodhpur, the locals insist on treating the visiting guests to specialties like pyaaz or mawe ki kachori but these temptations are bought from the most famous, at the moment, outlet or scion of some legendary halwai.

Chef’s Special

Ingredients

Flour 100 gm
A pinch of salt
A large pinch of soda bicarb
Oil 1 tbsp
Oil for deep frying

Filling

Cottage cheese (made with skimmed milk, cubed) 100 gm
Sprouted beans 100 gm
Curds 100 ml
Small tomato (diced) one
Green chillies (deseeded, chopped) two
Sweet corn kernels four tbsp
Rock salt ¼ tsp
Zeera powder (freshly roasted) ½ tsp

Method

Sift the flour with salt and soda bi-carbonate and make a heap on a flat surface. Pour oil and sufficient water and knead to obtain dough of medium hard consistency. Roll out into four discs of about 4 inch diameter. Heat oil for deep-frying in a pan and fry the kachori on medium-low heat. Remove and place on kitchen towels. Carefully puncture at top and remove a small piece to make an opening for the filling.

Wash the sprouts well, put equal portion in kachori with cottage cheese and tomato dices. Add 1 tbsp of corn kernels, whisked curd and a sprinkling of green chillies. Sprinkle rock salt and zeera powder. Pour over lightly some more curd and a spoonful each of green (mint-coriander) chutney and sonth. (You can prepare a quickie sonth by blending six-eight seedless dates with a teaspoonful of dried ginger powder and a few slices of amchoor (or imli extract) and boiling it with two whole red chillies and `BC tsp of rock salt and 3 tbsp sugar).

For many of the younger generation these are synonymous with khasta kachori, an avoidable snack paired with the oily samosa. Smaller still is the number of those foodies who can recognise a bedami when they bite into one. And, when was it when we delighted in radhaballabhi— the delectable Bengali version of muttar ki kachori? Kaleva and Bengali Sweet House in Gole Market have tried valiantly in recent years to revive the old favourites—the latter serves an almost oil-less bedami but dishes it out with an indifferent alu chole subzi. How one misses the methi ki chutney!

Actor friend Vinod Nagpal believes that to taste the real thing one must, just must, travel to Old Delhi. We are firm in our faith that kachori can survive in the 21st century only when people restart making and enjoying it at home. The scare about deep-fried bread is misplaced. Low-fat oils substituting for ghee or vanspati render it far less lethal—taking adequate care to remove excess oil makes the home-made stuff quite harmless for most of us, even the Raj Kachori.

The Raj Kachori aspires to be the mother of all kachoris and can easily serve as a one-dish meal. The only problem is that filled as it usually is with myriad difficult to digest or fattening stuffings—bada, boiled potatoes, and chana—it flirts dangerously with junk foods. Try the recipe at home and feel the difference.

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