Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Bhuteko Farsi ko biya ko sukkha achar/Roasted pumpkin dry achar


Farsi ko biya ko achar



I have been thinking for long, by long I mean years and years to do some research about Nepali traditional foods. Whenever we type Nepali food, mostly food from Nepal is displayed in the internet. I belong to a small Himalayan district in the state of West Bengal, India, so basically I am an Indian Nepali. Our traditional foods have almost disappeared from our table we are more influenced by other cultures. Look at Momo aka dumpling, it was introduced by the Tibetan refugees and now it has become one of our most loved foods.

There is a joke in Darjeeling, before the joke I  will tell you that eating out is not in our culture majority of the people still have their main meals at home. It’s the snacking that happens in the market .I remember in the 80’s when I  was a kid my parents would take us for a bowl of thukpa (soupy noodles) or a plate of momo after a movie. That was it!  So here is the joke (weirdness of Darjeeling jokes, mostly its only the locals who understand ha ha).... Finally The joke.... we (we as in people of Darjeeling) enter a restaurant and the waiter gives us the menu we take 10 minutes to look at the menu from top to bottom reading all the dishes the hotel has to offer and at last we order a plate of momo ha ha ha .....



 I am not here to revive our food culture but I would like to find out more so that they do not disappear from the face of this earth. I am more curious at this point.

Growing food in the hilly terrain is a challenge and people make do with whatever they have. We don’t have the luxury of beautiful ingredients but look for nutritious and fulfilling meals. So I am in search of those simple fulfilling meals of the past. But for now I would like to give a simple recipe of the humble pumpkin seed which has emerged as a super food of today. For people in olden days it was to utilise every bit of what they had.
For this recipe have made changes to the original recipe by adding skin removed pumpkin seed you get in the market and replaced lemon juice with chaat masala.

Ingredients

Pumpkin seed 1 cup(whole seed with cover)+ 1 table spoon of pumpkin seed (skin removed)

An inch of dry ginger

Garlic 5-6 cloves

Red chilly powder 1 tablespoon (or as per your heat tolerance)/or whole dry red chilly 4 nos

Sesame seed 1 tablespoon

Chaat masala 1 tsp (please adjust to taste it has to be a hint of tanginess)

Salt to taste



Method

Remove the pumpkin seed from the pumpkin wash it and let it dry. You can collect it over a period of time. What I do is collect wash, dry and roast slightly in oven and store till I get another batch of pumpkin seed .If you cut a big pumpkin you can collect at a go.
I had half roasted the pumpkin seed about 5 to 7 mins in microwave oven before roasting in the gas .You can do it directly in the gas stirring it so that it does not burn in one side only in low flame. Roast it evenly till you start to hear the popping sound of the seeds.I added the whole dry ginger 1 whole chilly and garlic as well when I roasted the seeds.
Remove from heat and let it cool.
Dry grind all the ingredients together till you get a fine powder, taste for salt and the tanginess and adjust .Store in clean glass jar. You can keep it outside or in fridge for longer life.

Enjoy !







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