shakarkandi ke roth or shakarkandi ki meethi poori | deep fried flat breads with sweet potatoes

Shakarkandi is Sweet potato in Hindi. Indian Sweet potato is basically a yam whose leaves are also edible but we are taking about the use of the tuber right now, in the making of a deep fried flat bread.

Someone was talking about shakarkand ki poori and I was reminded of the last time I made them. I was in an impression that I had already shared the recipe of shakarakand ki poori on the blog so came here to search for it. And lo, I couldn't find it here. Because I never posted it. Damn.

The blogs of mine serve as a cloud storage for me and my mind automatically comes here to search for what I had cooked long time back. This shakarkandi ki poori or roth as we call it, was cooked 2 years ago and I had forgotten to share it. Not a good thing as the recipe wont be accessible for even my own use.

Thankfully this shakarkandi ki poori is a traditional recipe and I have cooked it several times in the past to know it like the back of my hand.

If you are getting confused between the names shakarkandi ki poori and shakarkandi ke roth (roT), let me explain it for you. Yes these two are a little different from each other.

Shakarkandi ki poori is a little softer, uses some milk too while kneading the dough and uses a little more flour compared to the quantity of sweet potato pulp. 

Shakarkandi ke roth are made using very little flour compared to sweet potato pulp (mash), just enough to bind the boiled and mashed sweet potatoes. So shakarkandi ke roth are almost like a crusty flat bread that cooks on medium flame for a long time to get crusty on the outside and softer inside.

To make the frying time shorter, I make a hole in the middle (just like a doughnut) so the cooking is even and quick. We like them hot but these are great at room temperature too and make great picnic or journey food.

For picnics you would like them served with some nice chocolate dip of fruit preserve. When eating them hot, we like to drizzle some raw honey over them. Yum.

It is a great breakfast option on weekdays when the family is relaxed and can have as finger food reading the heap of weekend newspapers.

ingredients...
(makes enough for 2 and some leftovers too)

sweet potatoes cleaned and rinsed thoroughly 250 gm
whole wheat flour 100-120 gm
*green cardamom powder 2 pinches (optional)

*You can use cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder or clove powder individually or in combination for a deeper flavour. I use a mix of these three mostly.

No sugar required, but add a little jaggery if you like it really sweet.

Ghee for deep frying. These roth do not absorb much ghee as the dough is not too loose, take care to boil the sweet potatoes with skin to ensure lesser moisture in them. If boiled after peeling and slicing they absorb a lot of water and the dough will be loose in consistency and the pooris may absorb more ghee while frying.

procedure...

After through cleaning, boil the sweet potatoes in pressure cooker with just about 1/4th cup water. It takes about 2-3 whistles to cook.

Cool the pressure cooker and start mashing the sweet potatoes while they are still warm. I prefer using them with the peel but you may discard the peel if it looks scabby or dirty. For such vegetable I always recommend getting organic produce.

Now add the spice powder of choice and add the flour slowly while kneading it into a dough. No water or milk is being added, the quantity of the flour will just to make a smooth dough. If the sweet potatoes are more moist they may take some more flour.

Heat the ghee, divide the dough in about 20 gm portions and roll them into small thick discs, make a hole in the center and fry on medium heat till they get lightly browned. At the stage of frying too you may fry them on high flame to get softer pooris and fry on low or medium to get firm roth.

Serve hot or cold with honey, fruit preserve or even some fresh cream or yogurt if you like.

There is the natural sweetness of sweet potatoes that you wouldn't want to spoil using sugar or jaggery. I suggest eating this roth with some sweet condiment if you find it not as sweet as you like.

And please fry it in ghee only, oils don't suit such traditional recipes.

I have seen some people enjoying these sweet pooris with pickle too, try it you may start liking such sweet and sour combinations in food.

And I just got to know that Maharashtrians also make a similar fried bread with sweet potatoes with a slightly different recipe and call it Ratalyacha Gharya. I am sure this meethi poori with shakarkandi is made all over India in some or the other form.

banarasi kachori aur subzi : ras wale alu, palak paneer, kale chane aur kaddu ki subzi, alu baingan palak ki subzi

Someone asked me about the difference between a poori and kachori and I realised how diverse a kachori can be while answering. How much the kachori has evolved to be a sassy cousin of poori. While poori remained the plain jane, kachori took on to different fashions with different seasons and became matar ki kachori, daal ki kachori, hing kachori, alu ki kachori blah blah blah blah , most of them stuffed kachoris, some of them are softer inside and crisp outside while others are so crisp and dry that they keep well for days.

This banarasi kachori is more of a plain version of a pretentious kachori but packs the same punch when it comes to taste. All spices and the stuffing material is mixed in the dough itself and the kachori are often double fried to ensure a crisp crumbling kind of poori. These are the ones that stay puffed even when cold if you don't crush them. I have shared a recipe of banarasi kachoris here, with ras wale alu and a pumpkin subzi. Sharing a few more subzis again to go with the famous banarasi kachoris.

Banarasi kachori recipe..

The kachori is made with a mix of coarse whole wheat flour and urad daal flour (skinned black bean flour), the dough is made using water that is infused with cumin, hing and ajwain. Just mix a cup of coarsely milled wheat flour with 1/3 cup of urad daal flour or 1/2 cup of soaked urad daal paste, add salt to taste and a tbsp of ghee and rub everything well. Boil 2 cups of water, add a tsp each or cumin and ajwain to it and let it simmer for a minute. Add a pinch of hing, dissolve and let the water cool down. Use this water to knead a firm dough. Use this dough to roll out pooris and fry them all in hot ghee or oil. Hot crisp banarasi kachoris are ready.

Add a bit of red chilly powder or black pepper powder and a little lime juice if you are planning to eat these kachoris without subzi, yes the slightly spiced up kachoris go well with our milky tea.

I served it here with ras wale aloo and a simple palak paneer. This palak paneer used to be more regular when Mithi was younger. It was her favourite subzi, very lightly spiced and creamy in texture.

This version of palak paneer is easier, simpler to cook and less spicy than another version with more rustic spicing. That recipe will be shared some other time.

Palak paneer recipe..

To cook this simple palak paneer, you just have to choose tender spinach leaves with stems or mature spinach leaves only (mature fibrous stems to be discarded) so the resulting spinach puree is creamy and flavourful. Steam about 500 gm spinach either in microwave or in a pan with 2-3 tbsp of water at low flame and take off heat as soon as the leaves get limp and soft. Cool down and puree in the blender, without using any water. Now heat 1 tbsp ghee in a pan, add cumin seeds and wait till they splutter, and then dump the spinach puree in it. Add a pinch of nutmeg powder, 1 tsp black pepper powder and salt to taste and stir and cook the spinach puree till it starts bubbling and puffing. Add 200 gm paneer cubes to the bubbling spinach mix and simmer for about 5 minutes. Adjust consistency by adding a little water. Add 2-3 tbsp fresh cream to finish and serve hot.

The yellow coloured chutney seen in the above thali is the amla chutney I make every season and we love it with almost every meal.

Another very popular subzi with kachoris is the chane aur kaddu ki subzi. It is a simple black chickpeas and pumpkin curry that goes very well with crisp hot kachoris. We use mature orange coloured pumpkin for this subzi and the slightly sweet pumpkin balances well with kale chane lightly spiced up.

Kale chane aur kaddu ki subzi recipe..

Soak 3/4 cup of black chickpeas overnight.

Peel the hard skin of mature pumpkin and cube the flesh in 2 cm dimensions. It should be about 400 gm cubed pumpkin.

Make a coarse paste of ginger, green chilly, whole dry red chilly and some garlic. About 1 tbsp or more ginger, chillies to taste and 2 cloves of garlic to be used.

Heat 1 tbsp of mustard oil in a pressure cooker pan and add a pinch of hing, about 10 grains of fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp fennel seeds, 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds nd 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, all together in one go. Let them all splutter and get aromatic, taking care not to burn them.

Add the ginger garlic chilly paste and a tsp of turmeric powder to the hot oil and let the mixture get fried. Take about 15 seconds on medium heat.

Now add the soaked and drained kale chane and mix well. Add salt to taste and the cubed pumpkin, about a cup of water and pressure cook the subzi for about 5 minutes after the first whistle. Cool down, mash the subzi a little, add amchoor powder to taste and serve immediately.
Chopped spinach can be added to the same subzi just before pressure cooking it. It makes the subzi more mushy and yummy.

We enjoyed this kachori subzi meal with a bowl of grated mooli salad on the side. The mooli salad is just grated while radish, some grated ginger, some finely chopped green chillies, salt and lime juice to balance. One of the most frequent winter salad with any meal.

Another very popular subzi to go with the kachoris is this alu baingan aur palak ki subzi, a mushy curry cooked with new baby potatoes, black round brinjal and spinach. The subzi is called alu-bhanta-saag in local dialect and is a much revered subzi for pooris during pooja etc. I often cook this curry with the green aubergines that is growing in the garden right now, but the round ones are perfect for this.

You can make the subzi a bit dry or make it a little coated consistency type.

Recipe of the alu baingan palak ki subzi..

Wash and clean 200 gm baby potatoes and quarter them.

Chop a small round brinjal in cubes. It should be about 200 gm.

Clean, wash and chop 300 gm spinach leaves and keep aside.

Mince or coarsely grind a tbsp of ginger, 4 cloves of garlic and 2 dry red chilies.

Heat 1 tbsp mustard oil in a deep iron or cast iron pan (kadhai) and tip in 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp fennel seeds, 1/2 tsp cumin seeds and a generous pinch of hing. Add the coarse paste of ginger etc and the potatoes immediately as the spices turn aromatic. Cook for a couple of minutes and then add a tsp of turmeric powder and the cubed brinjal. Toss and mix, let everything get coated well.

Add the chopped spinach, mix well, add 1/2 a cup of water and cook covered for about 20 minutes or so. Lightly mash the subzi after everything is cooked through. Serve immediately. Though the subzi keeps well in the fridge and can be served after reheating too.

Here I cooked the alu bhanta saag using the round purple brinjals and some Amritsari vadi, the perfect taste of this curry. Yes, you can add about a tbsp of crushed Amritsari vadi along with ginger, garlic and red chilies and let it fry till fragrant and proceed to add other ingredients. This addition makes this curry irresistible.

But alu baingan palak can be made without the badiyan or vadi as well. 

A long post finally, I hope you find it useful when planning meals for the family. Such foods from the hinterland become exotic in urban life, but we do make  away to keep enjoying them frequently.

daal bhari puri UP style | chana dal stuffed poori and recipe of green papaya stew

This is an old traditional recipe of stufffed poori from eastern Uttar Pradesh called as daal bhari poori, made for festivals and on arrival of a new daughter in law in the family as that is seen as the arrival of laxmi too (this is my guess as I am terrible regarding wedding traditions and rituals). Daal ki poori or puri is unlike any other poori as it is bigger and fatter than other pooris, softer when it comes on your plate and feels like a stuffed paratha but not quite a paratha.

One thing is for sure that this poori is considered auspicious and I remember this being made on the day of Anant chturdashi, Dussera and Raksha Bandhan, probably a few more religious rituals.  

The version of daal bhari poori made in my parental home was a bit dry, the stuffing used to scatter on the plate and one always needed some patience with it.

I made a few changes in the process of making the pooran (filling) while keeping the ingredients same, the result was better than I expected and this procedure became a permanent fix in my recipe of daal bhari poori.

My mom used to boil the chana dal and discard the water ( to be used in a yummy soup), grind the chana dal with tempering and then filling the almost powdery crumbly dal to the pooris.

I did not throw the water and blended it with dal with the help of a stick hand blender, tempered it and cooked for a while to make it dough like. Read on to know how this pooran or stuffing is made.

Boil the chana dal with double the amount of water salt and turmeric powder till soft and mushy (in a pressure cooker 8 minutes after a whistle) blend with a stick blender when it is still hot, you can do it in a mixie jar too but keep the lid covered with a towel as it may spill n splatter...

Make a tempering by heating mustard oil, popping a tiny piece of asafoetida and some cumin seeds in it, add finely chopped garlic and green chillies to it and let them brown a bit. Add this to the chana dal batter and cook till a soft dough like consistency is achieved, it takes about 4-5 minutes and keep it in fridge to become firm as it will be easier to fill it in the dough....

A normal chapati dough is used to make this poori and you have to take care of the consistency of the dough. 

It is a tip I learned from my grandmother that if you keep the consistency of the dough and the filling same , it will be easier to stuff, roll and lift the stuffed poori  from the chakla (rolling board), the stuffing will be distributed equally throughout the poori and it will not get ruptured in frying oil.

This precious tip helps me always. So make a dough which is of the same consistency as the filling you made, and use freshly made dough for good results. I hope all the pictures showing the stuffing process will be useful as many people find it very tough. The poori gets ruptured while frying and can't be used after that. Shallow frying using a tawa is the only option left then, but the texture becomes very different.

The pictures below show how the stuffed poori is flattened first and then rolled.

 
Fry in hot oil to get puffed up, making fluffy soft daal pooris.

We enjoyed them with low oil green papaya masala stew as I did not have pumpkin that day which is the traditional pairing with this poori.

The poori tastes very good the next day too, so make it in good quantity as you may want the basi poori too. It is a keeper recipe from simple ingredients and great flavors, just like all traditional recipes.

finally the list of ingredients.....

chapati dough as required
chickpea skinned or chana dal 1 cup
salt to taste
turmeric powder 1 tsp
oil for deep frying ( mustard oil is used traditionally but is optional )

for the tempering...
 mustard oil 1 tsp
hing or asafoetida 1/8 tsp
whole cumin seeds 2 tsp
green chillies chopped 1 tbsp
garlic finely chopped 1 tbsp

Puran pori or puran poli is a sweet version of a chickpea stuffed poori, a maharashtrian-gujarati recipe. This dal bhari poori seems to be a cousin of puran poli.

Here we had it with beetroot raita, raw papaya stew and ambde ka achar. 

green papaya masala stew recipe...

It is a very healthy and appropriate side dish with any kind of poori (or chapati) as it is very low on fat and makes the meal balanced regarding calorie and fat consumption.

You need 400 gm of raw, peeled and cubed papaya, 1 tsp of mustard oil, 1 tsp whole cumin seeds, 12 whole peppercorns, 1 black cardamom, 2 green cardamoms, 3-4 cloves and a small piece of cinnamon, a tbsp each of garlic, ginger and green chillies chopped, 1 whole red chilly, turmeric powder and salt to taste....

All you have to do is, heat oil in a pressure cooker pan and throw in all the spices and ginger garlic and green chillies together into it, followed by turmeric powder after a few seconds and then the papaya cubes and salt. Add 2 tbsp of water so that steam can be formed and pressure cook till one whistle. Cool to release pressure and serve hot with or without garnish of mint or coriander leaves.

The same stew can be made with pumpkin too, just replace green papaya with pumpkin.

Again simple ingredients resulting into a yummy healthy stew.

Remember this daal bhari poori tastes great the next day too so make some extra.