March 3, 2012

Niramish Dum Aloo – Spice Coated Baby Potatoes

Potatoes have always been a comfort food. And Dum Aloo will always have a special place. Tiny little potatoes which are cooked slowly and coated with spice will always be a dish to make me swoon.

There is a certain extent of soothing calm in this simple homey dish; a lot of which probably comes from the sweet memories of the winter time and spending time in the kitchen with maa. With the advent of the chilly winter air, the tiny little potatoes with flaky paper thin skins began to flood the bazaar.

We call these potatoes, “Notun Aloo” (new potatoes or the potatoes from the first harvest). They are about the size of the ping pong ball, or even smaller.

The typical scene in the kitchen with my maa on a relaxed winter evening lingers; of shelling fresh peas and rubbing the thin but slightly muddy skins off the potatoes. Breads were to be stuffed with the peas and little potatoes would end up in Dum Aloo. And here I dive deep into nostalgia. It amazes me how these memories create an overwhelming surge of happiness within me, but tinged with pain.

During those years we did not have access to all the vegetables all year round. Instead we looked forward to each season to enjoy the fruits and vegetables offered only for those few months. The winter brought in deep orange carrots, sweet tomatoes, fragrant cauliflowers, fresh peas, oranges, misthti aloo (sweet potatoes) and notun aloo. The taste and flavors of these seasonal vegetables were distinct and memorable and the reason that made us wait all year long. The “notun aloo” which I so miss, has its own rustic charm no where to be found now where we live.

Toss the pierced potatoes with salt and turmeric and shallow fry them until light golden…

There are a zillion ways to cook Dum Aloo (well may be that is an exaggeration but you get the point). There are so many that they are even marked by names of the region. Not only do the ingredients and the spices for Dum Aloo vary from one region to another, but every household might have a different way to cook this particular dish.

The basic concept of Dum Aloo is cooking potatoes with spices in a tight well covered pot, until the flavors of the spices infuse and the potatoes are tender. (Dum = cooking process in a tightly covered pot where steam is not allowed to escape, Aloo = potatoes.).

Braise the golden fried potatoes with pastes and spices and cook in a tightly covered pot until potatoes are tender.

The north Indian Dum Aloo is rich; simmered in a cream or yogurt sauce, often with the addition of nuts and raisins, it is a delightful dish to savor. In West Bengal, Dum Aloo for special occasions is cooked in the similar fashion with ghee, cream and nuts, but the quick everyday affair is quite different. I have mentioned before that Bengali cuisine has plenty of recipes where no onion or garlic is used; these are the niramish (satvic) recipes. The widows have rigorous dietary restrictions and with my grandma at home, most of the food that were cooked every day had no use of onion and garlic. These dishes make comforting, light, and simple meals.

The Niramish Dum Aloo is definitely a much simpler version of the classic more popular Dum Aloo. Once in a while, some yogurt would be used, but during winter fresh juicy tomatoes were used to thicken the sauce and have the little tart in it. The weekends were special when ma made Aloor Dum (= Dum Aloo) and Luchi (Poori made with enriched flour) or peas stuffed breads.