New Year's Eve Snacking

ডালের বড়া 

Daaler Bora or Lentil Fritters

My batch of NYE daal bora, all plated up for us to devour

Happy New Year everyone! To kick-off 2018, I'm posting a very traditional recipe for daaler bora, or lentil fritters. 

The daaler bora is very different from the other fritters I've written about for the blog. First of all, it has no flour - gram or otherwise - and the daal or lentil is what goes straight into the hot oil. Secondly, making a batch of them is a bit of a challenge: the lentils need planned pre-soaking, followed by blending and careful frying to avoid disintegration. Oddly enough, in generations past they were considered an easy enough snack to whip up. I assume this is because households would have lentils soaking anyway as part of their daily routine, and making daaler bora would just involve swiping some from that stash. Things have changed nowadays though, and in our family the daaler bora is usually bought from neighbourhood eateries - at least when we're in Bangladesh. It's much less frequently made at home, and usually only for special occasions like Ramadan, when it's an iftaar staple. In general, the daaler bora is a tea-time snack, though it can also be eaten as a side during a larger meal. The fritters are also the first phase of another dish called the doi bora, though I'm not a big fan.

The ingredients used vary from family to family, and change between Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, as well as between Hindu and Muslim families. My family recipe is quite basic, using only one type of lentil, salt, chilli, turmeric and onion. Other families may use a mix of different lentils, and also add spices and herbs to liven things up. In the recipe below I've added coriander, but otherwise I've kept things pretty simple. I've also snuck in a bit of baking powder, something one of our chefs taught me to do, as it makes the boras stay crunchier for longer. This is really useful if you want to make them a little ahead, as I was doing to take to a New Year's party an hour away. Boras like these are usually served with dips and sauces. I served my most recent batch with sriracha, but tamarind-based sauces or ketchup are the more common accompaniment. The recipe below makes about 24 boras, each about 3.00 centimetres across. 

Breakfast during Mango Season

আম দিয়ে দুধ-ভাত
Rice with mango-milk

Rice and mango-milk, topped with mango
What's not to like? :) 

It's mango season! In Bangladesh this means a glut of mangoes everywhere. Their sheer number has people scrambling to find ways to use them up. On top of cooking, pickling and drying, making mango-milk is another common way we at the fruit growing up. We mixed the pulped flesh of a sweet, ripe mango into hot milk, creating a warm alternative to the mango lassi. Sometimes, we would pour this onto rice - the result of a family habit of pouring any kind of milk onto rice. In fact, whenever we didn't like the food on offer for a particular meal, rice with milk was the go-to substitute dish for the kids in my generation. 

Of course, unconventional meal replacements aside, this dish makes a great breakfast. I also have it for seheri (the pre-fasting meal during Ramadan), as it makes a nice change from cereal. Folks who've had Thai mango with sticky rice will be familiar with the flavour and textures. To make this, you want mangoes that almost melt when crushed, rather than those with firm, springy flesh. In the UK, safe bets are South Asian mangoes sold as Alphonso or Kesar. When fresh mangoes aren't in season, tinned mangoes are another option. The recipe below makes a full "meal" for one, or serves two to three as a snack.

Ingredients:

• 1.00 small South Asian mango (around 175.00g whole, unpeeled)
• 150.00 g cooked rice
• 100.00 ml whole milk
• Sugar, to taste

Method:

• Heat the milk in the microwave for a minute
• While the milk is heating, peel and slice the mango
• Crush the flesh to form a pulp, and remove any overly large pieces of fibre 
• Mix the mango into the milk, and taste for sweetness. Add sugar if desired
• Place the cooked rice in a bowl. Pour in the mango-milk and mix
• Serve while warm

Additional Info

If you want something a bit richer, heat and thicken the milk on the hob before adding the mango. For a different flavour, swap the mango for banana, something we would also do quite commonly in our family. 

Another Iftaar

স্যামন ভাজি 

Bangladeshi Pan-Fried Salmon

Courtesy of my brand new camera!

Looking back through the blog, I find it highly amusing that my last post for fish was also during Ramadan - and that I'd lambasted doing anything with salmon other than smoking it. I have to admit I've changed my mind slightly on salmon: pan frying it with the correct spices makes for a nice, easy meal. The recipe below is slightly experimental and based on how we traditionally approach fried fish in Bangladesh. Caught fresh, fish needs nothing more than a bit of seasoning, chilli and turmeric before being fried to a crisp. This rule is applied to pretty much any fish, which are descaled, cut into chunks along the spine, marinated in spices and launched into a pan of hot oil.

This process is easily replicated wherever in the world you are, provided you have access to freshly caught fish. When cooking frozen fish or supermarket fish in general, however, the starting product tends to lack flavour - and the end result is often not so satisfying. So I've taken inspiration from last year's recipe, and added mustard powder to the ingredient list below. I find it cuts through the "preserved" whiff of supermarket fish. And thus, served with scattered coriander, caramelised onion, daal and some steamed rice, salmon suddenly makes for a rather traditional Bangladeshi meal. 

Mastering Beef

গরুর চাঁপ 

Tenderised Beef

Apologies for the crappy picture, and all the oil!

I've let myself down a little over the last few years in terms of home cooking beef and red meat. This is unforgivable really, given how beef is meant to be my favourite meat. I've tried to compensate with steak, but no matter how much peppercorn sauce I slather onto a slab of meat it does nothing to recreate the Bangladeshi experience. Until recently any red meat I cooked at home came out smelling just a little off-kilter. I experimented with various modifications to mom's recipes and took on board friends' suggestions - doing everything from adding extra spices to boiling, frying or searing the meat before cooking. In the end, it seems I've found a solution with this beef "chaap" (or tenderised beef) recipe, which I cooked slowly for a significantly longer time than my mom had recommended. 

Fakruddin, at midday before the Ramadan evening iftaar rush

Beef chaap is not an average, everyday dish. It has rich, complex flavours achieved by infusing the meat with an unusual number spices over the length of the cooking process. Chaap is thus reserved for special meals in our family during Ramadan in Dhaka, traditionally bought from Fakruddin’s. The late Fakruddin was originally a chef who ran the canteen at my cousin's old school Viqarunnisa, before branching out to serve food to the public. His sons operate a much bigger business now, built on the back of their father's culinary reputation. Fakruddin is famous for his biryani, but good biryani is easy to come by in Dhaka and it’s his more unique beef chaap that I remember most vividly. Bangladeshi food markets are always heaving during Ramadan, especially near iftaar time. Fakruddin’s is definitely no exception and so it’s always safest to get in early like in the photograph above. By 3 PM the place is packed, and getting to the food counter seems nigh on impossible amidst the crush of people.

Chaap is usually store-bought for special occasions and I've never really heard of anyone cooking it at home. Mom had to resort this as we had no access to Fakruddin while abroad - much like how and why I run this blog now. I don’t know where her original comes from, but I don't consider my version of it complete as some of the spice amounts below aren’t yet very well defined. I will therefore be coming back to this with edits and updates so please check back and for now, proceed with caution!

The End of Ramadan

কাঁচা ছোলা

Raw Chickpeas

Raw chickpeas as part of a healthy iftaar with various fruit.
And one unhealthy cauliflower fritter.

Raw chickpeas form an essential part of the healthy iftaar in my family, especially on my mom's side. We have heaps of this stuff alongside fruit and salad while minimising our consumption of deep fried vegetable fritters and cooked chickpeas. They're a great source of protein. In fact, in the past they weren't a Ramadan-only staple - members of the local bodybuilding club near my grandma's house used these as a diet supplement. 

Peeling them for consumption can be quite time consuming, and I remember our aunts often set us - the cousins - the job of sitting down and preparing them before many iftaars. Working communally sped things up considerably so consider applying the same strategy if you can!

Ingredients:

• 100.00g of raw chickpeas
• 1.00 teaspoon of sliced ginger
• Lemon juice from 2 wedges of lemon
• Salt, to taste

Method:

• Soak the chickpeas overnight
• Once soaked, they should grow and become easier to peel. Peel and discard the shells (this will take time and patience!)
• Mix the chickpeas, ginger, lemon juice and salt together
• Either serve immediately, or refrigerate for an hour and serve cold

Additional Information:

Potentially something to add to a fresh, zingy salad.

Let the Fasting Begin

ছোলা ভাজা
Chickpeas

My first batch of chickpeas this year

It's that time of year again. Fasting while growing up was always exciting. Getting up for seheri after midnight felt like a bit of an adventure, especially if I was in Bangladesh with the extended family (read: cousins my age). There was also an element of competition with said cousins - and yes, I do know this isn't the point of Ramadan. But all of this gave Ramadan an extremely festive mood, and made for a great feeling when coupled with the charitable spirit that permeated the air during this time.  

What really cemented this feeling for me was the food. In Bangladesh, this is when restaurants and other establishments retract their normal menus in favour of Ramadan staples: kebabs, various vegetable fritters, haleem, chaap and so on. Opening times change to match iftaar and seheri times, and footfall into food halls and open markets often starts early afternoon and continues into the early hours of the morning. These flipped-around living patterns, queuing for elusive Ramadan-only food makes for a very unique experience.

But food for Ramadan doesn't always need to be bought. Certain staples, like chickpeas, have always been home-cooked in our family. Chickpeas form the bulk of our family's iftaars, substituting carbs for a month. This makes them a somewhat immutable part of Ramadan for me and as such the perfect first recipe to share. At iftaars, we serve this with vegetable fritters, a garnish of salad, fruits and dates to form a full meal. If you're not having this for Ramadan, it can also be served as a snack or a side dish as part of a larger menu.

Another Fry Up!

বেগুনি, পিয়াজু, সবজি বরা ও ইত্যাদি

Vegetable Fritters

Spinach fritters, boxed up and ready to go.

Apologies for being away so long. If you know me personally or through Instagram you'll know that I have still been eating so it may seem inexcusable that I haven't been posting. But this is actually the first uninterrupted week I've been able to spend at home in about two months. In fact, my last post was blogged on the go from my hard drive. But the travelling should be at an end now, and (Britain's excuse for) summer is finally here.

Hopefully for me that'll mean a few days of rest and a few days of good weather. Ramadan is also coming up, so I thought I'd share the recipe for something that we often eat during this time: vegetable fritters. Of course, their consumption isn't limited to Ramadan iftaars. In my grandma's house, they'll often make an appearance at tea or as a snack when we have guests over. On the odd occasion, as leftovers they'll function as a side dish as well.

They're incredibly versatile in the sense that you can pretty much throw any soft vegetable you have in the fridge into some batter and start frying - a very easy snack or appetiser to a multi-course meal. They'll also help contribute to your 5 (7, 9, 11?) a day, but maybe that benefit is nullified by the frying!

The Iftaar Series: Part 2

Iftaar with Family

Okay, I realise it's not Ramadan but I did a part 1 to this a while ago and promised a part 2, so here goes. 

In Spain

Our table, with a close up of all the unhealthy but very traditional fried foods!

On my way to Bangladesh I stopped over in Madrid for a day, meaning I spent a day fasting and having iftaar there. Wherever our family may be in the world, our iftaars are still pretty traditional. So while there are tomatoes, cucumbers etc. on the table, we also do the more traditional fried foods. Looking to the picture on the right above, at the front left we have dal bora. Dal boras are usually served as snacks, and are made from lentils mixed with chilli and onion. This mixture is then covered in maize flour and deep fried. The shaag bora on the front right is similar except the lentils are replaced with spinach. Finally, in the background you have begunis, where the spinach or lentil is replaced with sliced eggplant. While it wouldn't be unusual to have these foods throughout the year, their popularity peaks in Bangladesh during Ramadan. 

The Iftaar Series: Part 1

Iftaar Alone in Birmingham

It's Ramadan. The eighteen hour fasting time here in England has reduced my life to two meals a day - iftaar and sehri. Normally this would be fine as both these meals are special to me. They're both communal affairs where the whole family gets together, something which becomes especially meaningful in Bangladesh at my grandmother's. There the meals give way to impromptu reunions with aunts, uncles and cousins. Iftaar and sehri are also when certain Ramadan-only favourites like chaap (tenderised beef or lamb curry) and haleem make their appearance at the table, which keep me further placated. 

However, here in Birmingham I'm getting none of this! The family is currently scattered all over the world and my culinary prowess definitely doesn't extend to chaap or haleem. I've actually been eating pretty weird things for iftaar and sehri and now, I've decided to share these meals with you instead of my family. You should feel special. And yes, I think I've officially degenerated into look-at-what-I'm eating posts, but I promise they do serve a purpose. See the title saying this is part 1? Well, I'm flying to Bangladesh sometime in August, and hopefully part 2 will be a more interesting post on the traditional Bangladeshi iftaar.