Bengali Five-Spice Blend - Panch Phoron

 Panch phoron is a spice blend used in Eastern India, in Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya cuisine and also in Bangladesh and Nepal. It is a blend of black mustard, nigella, fennel, fenugreek and brown cumin seeds and, really, it couldn’t be easier to make!

 

According from which region the blend is made, the five spices can be added in equal quantities or vary slightly. I make mine with equal quantities of mustard, fennel, cumin, and nigella seeds and half the amount of fenugreek seeds, which have a bitterness that can be a bit overwhelming for some people, although I love it. Panch phoron is typically fried in hot oil, which causes the spices to start popping to release the flavours and temper the oil.

 

This spice blend is worth having to hand when you are in a bit of a hurry and want something that tastes good, but without putting in too much effort. Make a simple dal or vegetable dish, by frying the usual garlic, ginger and diced green chilli together, with a chopped onion, if you want. Then add the dal/vegetables and cook to your taste. You can then fry a tsp of panch phoron in some oil and add this tempering to the dal or vegetable dish before serving.

 

Makes about 3 tablespoons

 

Ingredients

 

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp black mustard seeds

2 tsp nigella seeds

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

 

 Combine the whole spices and store in an airtight container.

 

Courgette curry

I find it hard to get excited about courgettes. Baby ones, fried in good olive oil and garlic are delicious, but that’s largely because of the olive oil and the garlic. They sop up the flavours well.    They are also good in ratatouille, especially with cannellini beans, for the same reason and indeed, can be used in all sorts of soups and stews; however when there’s a glut of them, it isn’t usually the time of year that you want to eat soup and stew.  Now I realise, that to many people, curry is not only similar to a stew, but because of the chilli and warming spices, might seem even less appealing in hot weather, but I adore curry and can eat it any time and in any weather. so to me it is a perfect way of using a bounty of courgettes.  I already have a recipe for courgette with chana dal, however this recipe is is quite different and more of a side dish than a main one, althoughI have some suggestions for using it as a main course.  However, you can add as many courgettes as you want (maybe up the spices a litle) to make it into a full main course, without any extra additions, if you want to use them up. This is a pretty straightforward recipe and I think most people would be happy to tackle it, but because it uses non-standard ingredients, I'll call it a Curry for Cooks.

This recipe is based on one of Swasthi's recipes and I think it’s a great way to cook courgettes.    The coconut milk makes it rich and substantial and all it needs is some rice to go with it, but of course a pan of dal would turn it into a generous meal. Alternatively, you can serve it with quinoa, whose protein will turn this into a fully-nutritious meal. I confess to finding quinoa worthy, but dull, particularly compared to brown basmati rice. However, if you're concerned about your protein intake, it's a good choice.

Even though this is made with Kashmiri chilli powder, rather than chilli flakes or cayenne, it packs quite a zing. If you don’t like too much heat in your curry, reduce the amount of chilli powder.

Serves 2 for a main course, 4 as a side dish

Ingredients 

1 tbsp coconut oil 

1/8 tsp mustard seeds 

1/2 tsp cumin seeds 

1 green chilli pepper, minced 

1 tsp ginger paste 

1 tsp salted lime or lemon, finely diced

1 medium onion, finely diced 

3/4 tsp garam masala 

3/4 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder 

1/2 tsp salt 

1/4 tsp turmeric 

1 large courgette or equivalent, chopped into chunky pieces 

2 tomatoes, finely diced 

1/4 cup freeze-dried peas*

1/2 cup coconut milk 

1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves 

 

Method:

• Heat the oil in a saucepan and when it’s hot, add the mustard and cumin seeds
• When the mustard starts to sputter, add the green chilli and cook for 30 seconds.
• Add the chopped onions and ginger and cook for several minutes until the onions start to turn gold.    If you are using salted lime, (or lemon) add this now.
• Lower the heat and add the garam masala, chilli powder, salt and turmeric.
• Now add the tomato and courgette and fry for a few minutes, stirring from time to time.
• Add the peas and the coconut milk and bring to the boil. Mix well and turn the heat low.
•  Cook the courgette until its soft enough to suit your taste. 
• Just before the curry is ready, add the fenugreek leaves and mix them in.
• Taste and add more salt or garam masala if required.

Serve with rice, quinoa or flatbread.

Notes: 

•  Ideally, don't substitute coriander for the dried fenugreek leaves.
• *Freeze-dried ‟Surprise” peas are very useful to have on a boat.    Substitute with fresh or frozen if you have such a thing.  Or perhaps 1/2 cup cooked dried, green peas, which would make this recipe much more substantial.  Or maybe some diced carrot.
• If you don’t have a green chilli leave it out (try to buy pickled ones, if you think you'll be making a lot of curry). 
• Substitute 1/4 tsp cayenne or chilli flakes for the Kashmiri chilli powder.
• Substitute 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds if you don’t have the leaves; add them with the other spices.
• Use less coconut milk, or leave it out for a drier curry.
• Add cooked chick peas or other beans to turn this into a main course meal, if you feel it doesn't look very filling.
  

Refried Potatoes

These are so delicious, that I often cook extra potatoes the night before so that I can have them for breakfast next day.

Ingredients

 

Cold boiled potatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper or Annie's Seasoned Salt

 

Method:

• Cut the potatoes into chunky pieces, while heating the oil in a frying pan.
• Ensuring that the oil is hot, put the pieces of potato into the pan. Although it’s a bit fiddly to do them one at a time, it actually makes sense, because all the pieces are in contact with the oil and can be turned over to brown the next face.
• By the time you’ve put every piece in the pan, you can start turning the ones that were put in first. Ideally, they fry brown and crisp. Grind salt and pepper over them while they’re cooking.
• When they’re all heated through and crisp, serve with fried or boiled eggs, a fried tomato – or just one their own!
   
  
  
  You can find more vegetable side dishes here.
   

Thrifty Smashed Potatoes

 

In my wanderings through food blogs, I keep coming across the serving suggestion of ‛smashed potatoes’ and for a long time, I assumed that this was a new and trendy way of saying ‛mashed potatoes’.  However, I saw a recipe for them, linked under something else I was looking for and All Was Revealed.  

 

I suspect that the better celebrity cooks are trying to improve people’s dietary habits; they also realise that many of their fans are as lazy as the rest of us (and probably much more so than their grandparents) when it comes to cooking, so they make a lot of use of an oven, on the principle that it does the work without being supervised. I thoroughly endorse their first goal – smashed potatoes retain their skins; I am much less enthusiastic about the latter – ovens require a lot of energy and we should all be using as little as possible.  (I should be so much happier if celebrity cooks and food bloggers enthusiastically endorsed counter-top ovens, which are, of course, a complete irrelevancy to Voyaging Vegetarians.  Apparently, according to Vegan Punks, smashed potatoes can also be finished in an Air Fryer, which is even more of an irrelevancy!)

 

Anyway, below is my way of producing smashed – or far more accurately, squashed – potatoes without an oven.

 

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

 

8 smallish potatoes (about 50mm diameter), scrubbed

½ tsp garlic granules

1 tsp Annie’s mixed herbs

salt and pepper

olive oil

Method:

• Put the trivet in the pressure cooker, add (sea)water just up to the level of the trivet, put in the potatoes and cook at full pressure for 5 minutes
• Reduce the pressure at room temperature
• Put a large frying pan over a low heat and add some olive oil – just enough that you can swirl it round the pan.
• Take a potato, put it on a chopping board and just split the skin with a sharp knife, in a cross – if the skin is a bit tough, it may not split on the top of the potato unless you do this.
• Now take a broad spatula, or – if you don’t mind making washing up – the base of a cup and gently squash the potato so that it splits into several lumps, still joined by the skin at the bottom. Carefully lift it into the frying pan, followed by the others, dealt with in the same way.
• Sprinkle them all with garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper and cover. Cook for about 15 minutes until the base of the potatoes is crisp. If you cook the potatoes first, they can be crisping up while you make the rest of the meal. They will stay hot long enough for you to cook a separate vegetable, too, if you only have two burners.

These potatoes are, in fact, a great substitute for mashed potatoes: not everyone likes peel in their mash, but most people love crispy potato skins! 

 

Variations:

• You can use whatever herbs or spices take your fancy, of course and fresh ones would be lovely.
• I suppose you could always serve these smashed potatoes ‛loaded’ as USAnian food bloggers would say, which I gather means covered in whatever takes your fancy. I’m not a fan of heaps of different ingredients piled haphazardly on top of something else, but I can see the toppings that you might put on baked potatoes, to turn them into a full meal, would work well on smashed potatoes.
   
   
  You will find many more vegetable side dishes here