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Feed your appetite for cooking with Penguin’s expert authors

Feed your appetite for cooking with Penguin’s expert authors

Dinner with Rukmini

Browse all of the recipes in Rukmini Iyer’s cookbooks by ingredient.

Crunchy Street-Food Chaat with Tamarind and Coriander Chutney

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Crunchy Street-Food Chaat with Tamarind and Coriander Chutney

This Bengali-inspired street-food dish is packed with texture and flavour, perfect for snacking with friends over a drink or two.
Serves 6
Total 35 min
Prep 25 min
Cook 10 min
Easy

Introduction from Rukmini Iyer

This version of chaat owes something to the Bengali jhalmuri, with puffed rice, and bhel puri, which uses tiny crushed puris as part of the mix. I’ve adapted this with supermarket ingredients: you can find puffed rice in the gluten-free aisle, and readily available mini poppadoms to replace the puris. But if you’re passing an Asian grocer, do head in and grab some sev to add in – it’s crisp chickpea vermicelli and has a lovely flavour and texture.

Ingredients

For the chaat:
1 medium potato, peeled, cut into 1cm cubes
3 tbsp vegetable or mustard oil
2½ tsp chaat masala
50g puffed (brown) rice
50g mini poppadoms, roughly broken
100g unsalted peanuts (ideally redskin)
For the coriander chutney:
50g fresh coriander, leaves and stems
10g mint leaves
1 inch ginger
1 tsp sea salt flakes
1 lime, juice only
60g natural yogurt
For the tamarind chutney:
50g tamarind paste (I used Bart)
50ml boiling water
20g dark brown sugar
To serve:
natural yogurt
Handful of pomegranate seeds

Essential kit

You will need: a high-speed blender or Nutribullet.

Method

Boil the potato cubes for 6–7 minutes until just cooked through, but not mushy. Drain well, and leave to cool before dressing with 1 tablespoon of oil and ½ teaspoon of chaat masala.

For the base mix, stir the puffed rice, mini poppadoms and unsalted peanuts together in a large bowl. Mix the remaining oil and chaat masala in a small bowl, and place it alongside.

For the tamarind chutney, mix the tamarind paste, boiling water and dark brown sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil, simmer for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and leave to cool. For the coriander chutney, blitz all the chutney ingredients together in a high-speed blender or Nutribullet until you have a thin, vibrantly green sauce. Taste and adjust the salt.

Arrange your prepared ingredients and sauces together as a ‘station’. Just before serving, mix the oil and chaat masala through the mini poppadom, puffed rice and peanut mix; think of it as a salad dressing – you want everything evenly coated. Divide into bowls and top with the dressed potato, chutneys, yogurt and pomegranate seeds. Advise everyone to mix their ingredients up in their bowls, adding more of the chutneys and yogurt to taste, and eat immediately.

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From the book: India Express: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Every Day

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