Well, it had been a recent wish to share the recipe of this dish that is so hassle free to do and yum to eat. This variety of chillies are available here easily and in abundance. They are less hot and makes for a wonderful ingredient for fritters and stuffed vegetarian or even non-vegetarian dishes. Having chillies as a side dish is not a Bengali thing, I saw my non-Bengali speaking friends in school getting wonderful pickles made with chillies, the varieties my family never made. I am ahead of my family when it comes to the acceptability of a varied kinds of food, so I have to experiment with different ingredients and include in the family menu card those which more or less appeals to our taste buds. I see my visiting family choosing the "lyangra" variety of mango among at least ten variety of it. What was causing me irritation was that why do I have to choose a mango that might have been packaged a month ago keeping aside the freshest produce coming in from the neighbouring states. I do follow Bengal while in the market, I am not the kind who will get Bengal from there and try to install it here, I go to the Bangladeshi shops for fresh vegetables our kinds, long back I have stopped buying the stale, frozen fish coming from there.... they would do no good to my men. Then, if your men are happy with salmon, prawn, chicken and snapper, you would not go to that extreme. The mother did not have problem in her 11/2 month of stay, she got fresh "rui and chingri", she can survive on prawn+noodle soup, salad, even chicken strips in soups, fruits.... moreover the daughter prepared different vegetarian dishes. She does not fancy chunks of meat, no problem.... her daughter prepared a stuffing with minced chicken, did kofta... this... that! She enjoyed this vegetarian side, oven grilled SPICY CHILLI, but loved more the chilli pakoras I prepared last Friday when we had a visiting guest with us.... you can see some fish tikki beside.
Our guest loved what we served, then our son loved both the dishes with this fat, big variety of red chillies. This mother taught her son to have moderately spicy and hot food, problem is with the husband who does not enjoy too much of hot and spicy stuffs. I do not like his this trait, but so long he provides me enough to eat, eat and eat more of pizza and kueh, food in general.... I have no problem. Yesterday was pizza night which we have every fifteen days, the mother loves it too.
By the way, if you want to have good quality "kueh" here, always buy from shops which sell it fresh.
Being obese, I have them may be once every six months but from such shops usually. This restriction does not work when it comes to lemon rice, in fact rice is a love though made laccha paratha for the husband's lunch box, the rest's breakfast. Instead of paratha or chapati, I preferred serving the vegetarian, yum dish SPICY CHILLI last week with LEMON RICE. It definitely is not innovative, some parts of India and South Asia do eat it, where I stand out is using our Bengali "bhaja moshola" for the marination that I made to garnish a pickle.
INGREDIENTS FOR THE FRESHLY GROUND DRY ROASTED SPICES:
DRY RED CHILLI / SHUKNO LANKA : 2-3
CORIANDER SEED / DHONEY : 1TSP
CUMIN SEED / JEEREY : 1TSP
FENNEL SEED / MOURI : 1/2TSP
CAROM SEED / JOYAN : 1TSP
INGREDIENTS FOR THE COOKED DISH :
BIG FAT RED CHILLI : 12-15
THE FRESHLY GROUND DRY ROASTED SPICES / BHAJA MOSHOLAR GURO
GRAM FLOUR / BESAN : 1TBSP
SALT : AS REQUIRED
LEMON JUICE : 2-3TBSP
TURMERIC POWDER : 1/2TSP
OIL : 2TSP + 1/2TSP
PROCEDURE :
Wash the chillies, pat dry. Make slits in each one of them and de seed. Wash again and pat dry.
Now marinate each one of them with the lemon juice, turmeric and salt as much as required.
Keep aside for 1/2 an hour.
Dry roast the ingredients required to prepare the freshly ground spices for 2 minutes at low heat. Cool and dry blend to get a coarsely ground powder.
Now add the besan / gram flour, dry roasted coarsely ground spices, 2tsp oil to the marinated big, fat red chillies and fold in well.
Keep aside for 10-12 minutes.
Grease a grill proof plate with 1/2 tsp of oil and place the marinated chillies in a single layer on it.
I work with a convection mode microwave oven, so I placed that high stool inside and then placed the plate on it.
I grilled it for 8-10 minutes one side. Then we will take out and turn over.
I grilled the other side for 5-6 minutes. We are done.
Doing it in a pan on stove top may require few more time and a little more amount of oil.
Whatever you are serving it with, LEMON RICE or other varieties of rice or chapati, serve it fresh and hot, else the crunch of the gram flour goes away.
