Sunday, June 19, 2011

Aloo Posto [ পোস্তো ] or Potatotes cooked in Poppy Seed Paste

Aloo Posto (Potatoes cooked in Poppy Seed Paste)

পোস্তো or Posto is common name for white poppy seeds in West Bengal and used widely as base ingredient for many bengali recipes.

Probably ‘aloo posto’ is one of the most famous Bengali vegetarian delicacies.

Almost a month without mom’s Bengali food is difficult, but it is even more challenging to cook something when you are away from home. Today, watching rain wash away my summer Sunday afternoon plans; I decided to make aloo posto! This is the perfect way to have house-warming party of my new 18th floor room in the Netherlands. Aloo posto is a simple recipe cooked with potatoes and poppy seed paste. And fortunately, the Netherlands has one of the best qualities of potatoes as well as poppy seeds.

Jewish food shops is best place to buy culinary poppy seeds in the Netherlands: If you are planning to buy best quality poppy seeds (known as maanzaad in dutch/ graine de pavot) in the Netherlands try to get it from one of Jewish food shops. Though I prefer white poppy seeds, the blue poppy seeds they sell here are good and less bitter.

What do you need?
Nice big potatoes
Posto paste (poppy seed paste)
Water
Vegetable oil
Turmeric powder
Bay leaf (optional)
Panchphoron – it is five spices; refer my previous blog post(optional)
Green chilies
Salt

How to make poppy seed paste?
Clean and soak the poppy seeds in luke warm water for about half an hour. Drain the excess water and grind it to thick paste. If you like bit hot add the green chilies in the grinder.

Aloo Posto
Wash and peel potatoes. Often I don’t peel potatoes and it tastes good too!  Cut them in small cubes. The number of potatoes and the amount of poppy seeds paste depends on your taste. I prefer lots of poppy seed paste about five tablespoons for two medium sized potatoes. Heat the oil (typically mustard seed oil, but any vegetable oil is ok too) and add the potatoes, panchphoron and bay leaf (optional), salt, turmeric powder and fry them for couple of minutes in slow flame. Add the posto (poppy seed paste) and fry for another four mins. Add sufficient water to cook till potatoes are done (not overdone) and dry. Aloo posto is ready to be served with steamed rice along with other side-dish.

I remembered after lunch that we missed to click photograph of my aloo posto! I'm using this image from webpage :)