Sunday, 24 June 2018

Chingri or prawn is always favorite sea food for us. In Bengali cousin we have lot of famous dishes with prawns like Lou chingri, Chingri malaicurry, Vapa chingri, Dab chingri etc. Actually prawn has an awesome taste which can turn any dish a delicious one from a very average. And cooking time is also very short. In my blog you will get lots of recipe with prawn. This time I am sharing steamed prawn recipe which is one of our favorite prawn recipe.
I learned this dish from my mom and she learned from her friend. In this recipe I added coconut but my mom and aunt never added it. One of friend said they generally add poppy seed paste. But we don’t. Some people obviously will say no need to use chopped onion but I  used. If you want to skip coconut, onion you can. Even you can add poppy seed paste. But don’t replace mustard paste. Without mustard paste this dish will be incomplete. In most of the steamed recipe in Bengali cousin you will get use of mustard paste because of its pungent taste, which makes the dish more sumptuous. For more steamed fish recipe you can check vapa Ilish recipe in my blog.
The quantity of ingredients is for 2 persons.

prawn steamed with mustard paste - Bengali recipe
Steamed Prawn or Vapa Chingri

Ingredients:

Prawns – 15/20 medium size
Mustard paste – 1tbsp
Coconut paste – 1tbsp
Chopped onion – 1small size
Salt
Turmaric powder – 1 tsp
Mustard oil – 1and1/2 tbsp
Green chilli – 5/6pcs

Recipe:

Clean the prawns, deveined and deshell it. If you want to keep head portion you can keep.
Take a mixing bowl and put all ingredients except green chilli and oil.
Mix it and add ½ tbsp oil in it.
Now take a steel tiffin box and put the mixed prawn with spices.
Drizzle remaining oil on it and put green chillies.
Cover the box.
Now you have to steam it.
Take a large vessel and put some water.
Then keep a small stand in the vessel and keep the box on the stand.
Cover the vassal and steam it for 10 - 12 minutes.
Prawn cooks very fast.
When the water comes to normal temperature, remove the box and your steamed prawn is ready.
Serve with hot steamed rice and enjoy your meal.


Monday, 11 June 2018


Ingredients for chole:

Black chickpeas – 1 and ½ cups
Chopped onion – ½ cup
Ginger-garlic paste – 2 tsp
Salt
Tomato puree – ½ cup
Turmaric powder – 1 tsp
Red chilli powder –1 tsp
Chana masala – 1 tbsp
Garammasala powder – 1 tsp
Chopped coriander leaves – ½ cup
Chopped green chilli – 2 tbsp
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Lemon juice – 1 tsp
Oil – 2 tbsp
bature with chole or chana
Chole Bature

Recipe for Chole:

Soak the chickpeas for 4-5 hours, then boil it with some water.
After boiling strain the chickpeas from water and keep the water aside. We will use that water for gravy.
Heat oil in a pan and put cumin seeds.
When you start getting the aroma of cumin, add chopped onion and fry it.
After that add ginger-garlic paste and fry it.
Add tomato puree, turmeric and red chilli powder and stir it.
Add boiled chickpeas and salt.
Mix it and add chana masala powder, coriander leaves and chopped green chilli.
Stir it gently and add the water (used for boiling chana) that you kept aside.
Let it boil for 5 minutes and sprinkle few drops of lemon juice.


Ingredients for Bature

Flour – 2 cups
Rawa (semolina) – 1/4 cup
Yogurt – 1cup
Baking soda – 1/4tsp
Salt
Oil – 2 tbsp
Oil – for deep frying

Recipe for Bature:

Take a large mixing bowl and mix all dry ingredients. Now add 2 tbsp oil and mix it. Now add yogurt and knead it and make a dough. I did not use any water to make the dough. Cover the dough with a wet kitchen towel and keep aside for 45 minutes or allow to raise it to double.
Form this quantity of dough you can make 10 bature. So from this dough make 10 balls.
Heat oil in a pan for deep frying the bature. On other hand roll out the ball and make some puri, try to give it oval shape, for rolling you can use dry flour or oil, I used oil. Now fry it.

Serve with hot bature with chana, pickle and salad.