CURRY AND SPICE: KASURI METHI ALOO STUFFED POROTA

WE CAN GO RUSTIC IF HAND ROLLED BREAD IS ON THE PLATE!

Your's truly got late wrapping up her commitments today! Then she had to do a bit of exercise; which was throwing the legs & arms to the Bollywood tunes and some stretches! And now it is 5:15 pm, when do I finish my blogpost? I love giving body, shape, life to my still food photos! Its never a compulsion! If I had enough vocabulary, better photography skills; CURRY AND SPICE would have been an art house! Visitors would have queued for a glimpse of it! What are day dreamers called? Lazy Bum; your's truly is the best example of it! She wants to lie down with nothing but a Bengali novel at this time and doze off in few minutes! Then, her blog has to be updated today which is an equally interesting job! Today, I wish to get a stuffed flatbread recipe to the blog; we swear on it! It also got packed for a dorm room last August!

WISH I HAD A CLAY TANDOOR OVEN!

These days I crave for tandoori roti, self made pickle, onion, green chilli the most; miss having a proper tandoor to make those breads! The reason may be the unavailability of my choice of fish, freshest of them! I can be happy with an anchovy curry but the man cannot, neither the son! I am unhappy with the mutton variety here; enjoy vegetarian hand rolled meals! Most surprisingly, I admit I can enjoy egg curry meals twice a week these days! I wonder when back to Kolkata, I would remain like this or take interest in the wet markets all over again? I think, this clinging to Bengali Food & Culture is more of mental to me than a need or necessity! As a KG school goer, I wondered how people eat flat or puffed breads with pickle alone. I had a couple of non-Bengali speaking friends since then! I used to get surprised looking at the size of their pickle jars. In high school, when our father got transferred to Raghunathganj, Murshidabad for few years; I watched the lifestyle of a Rajasthani family on our visits there during our vacations! Their's were a close knit family with five kilograms of whole wheat flour used in a day! No exaggeration, I remember their chapati making sessions! Oh no! One girl got friends with me, lamented her father & uncles would get her married sooner! She would wait for me until the next vacation! After three years, the father came back! They owned the biggest "mudi dokan" in Raghunathganj, was customer of the State Bank Of India! Oh God! Spare me the memories or gift my palms to write down a memoir! Anyway, we are working only with 2 coffee mugs of whole wheat & refined flour today! Yup, I vividly remember the women kneading 5kg atta on vast wooden bowls, our mother was looking tiny beside them!

WHAT IS KASURI METHI ALOO STUFFED POROTA?

KASURI METHI is dried Fenugreek Leaves used to enhance the flavour of food, I guess! I guess because it is not in general a Bengali usage; but we do use these days! In season, our families used to get fresh fenugreek leaves; not in the same frequency like pea shoots, amaranth, kang kong! In the present day, I use dried fenugreek leaves purely to enhance the flavour of breads & a few vegetarian recipes! I did not like it in a fish curry!May I tell you; dried fenugreek leaves & potato is a match made in heaven! If all matches were made in heaven, then why are there many cases of divorce, why kids are put into the worst situation of choosing either of the parents? If our son or the brother had to choose between the two, they would have been destroyed! Let us get to food! This KASURI METHI ALOO STUFFED POROTA is a stuffed, vegan flatbread! The stuffing is of a spicy potato filling made extremely flavourful with the use of dried fenugreek leaves! To make it gluten-free, I have to learn rolling a gluten-free dough! I must share what we ate since yesterday! I prepared the quickest chicken in oven and served T with an egg roll! I had it with a store bought nasi lemak, that fish fry did not smell! Here, nasi lemak costs anything between 1:90$ to 15$!

I got some chicken ham for their sandwich and tried a sandwich today, may be after 3-4 years? Last evening I had a malpoa, two in fact with my tea & naan with cauliflower!