Aloo chokha

Mashed boiled potato taking its mustard oil raw, the side that goes with litti.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 700 g floury potatoes
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 4 green chillies, chopped fine
• 3 tablespoons mustard oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• a handful of coriander leaves, chopped

Method

1. THE MUSTARD OIL GOES IN RAW, AFTER THE MASHING, and that is the dish. Its article is four lines long and every word counts: aloo chokha, or aloo bharta, is MADE BY MASHING BOILED POTATOES AND MIXING CHOPPED CHILIES, ONION, SALT AND MUSTARD OIL. Nothing is cooked after the potatoes come out of the water. The oil is a seasoning, not a frying medium, and raw mustard oil is pungent in a way that heating destroys.
2. SO THERE IS NO TEMPERING, WHICH IS UNUSUAL. Most Indian mashes of this kind start with spices bloomed in hot fat. This one does not, and adding a tarka turns it into something else.
3. BOIL THE POTATOES IN THEIR SKINS UNTIL A KNIFE GOES THROUGH. Thirty minutes for large ones. Drain and let the steam off before peeling.
4. MASH THEM COARSE, NOT SMOOTH. Fingers or a fork. This is eaten in lumps against bread and a puree has the wrong texture for it.
5. ONION AND CHILLI GO IN CHOPPED AND RAW. Four chillies in seven hundred grams of potato is hot, which is the register the dish sits in. Chop the onion as fine as you can -- raw onion in big pieces is all you taste.
6. THEN THE OIL AND THE SALT, WORKED THROUGH WITH YOUR HANDS. Three tablespoons. It should be glossy and smell sharp enough to catch the back of your nose.
7. SHAPE IT INTO ROUGH BALLS IF YOU LIKE, AND CORIANDER OVER. How it is usually put on the plate beside litti.
8. IT IS A SIDE AND ITS ARTICLE SAYS WHAT FOR. In Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh, particularly the Bhojpuri areas, it is SERVED AS ONE OF THE SIDE DISHES AS PART OF LITTI CHOKHA, and it is USUALLY EATEN WITH KHICHADI in the east of the subcontinent.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under India · All recipes