The pointed gourd or Potol has a smooth ability to adapt its flavour to the ingredients and tempered spices it’s cooked along. That makes it a perfect choice to be cooked with strictly vegetarian ingredients, or non-vegetarian ingredients. You can experiment a lot with Potol. We, Bengalis, have a wide range of dishes made from this vegetable, right from the starters, through the side dishes and desserts. We make Potol Bhaaja, Potoler Dolma, Potol-Alur Chocchori as starters; Alu Potoler Dom, Potol Chingrir Korma, Doi Shorshe Potol as side accompaniments with hot rice; and Potol Kheer as dessert.

I cooked this Potoler Dolma with homemade chicken keema filling but it can be done with prawns or eggs as fillings or fillings made from grated coconut, cashew paste and posto baata (poppy seed paste). Whichever way you choose to cook, the taste will be equally amazing.

Ingredients for Potoler Dolma Recipe

• Potol (Pointed Gourd) – 5 (You can take more if you are preparing for more people)
• Chicken (minced and cooked)– 5 tbsp (Please follow this link to know how to cook minced chicken in Bengali style)
• Onion – 1 small
• Garlic – 2 pods
• Ginger – ¼ inch
• Mustard Oil – 3 tbsp for frying; 1 tbsp for cooking the filling.

Preparation

• Slit the Pointed Gourds as shown in the below photo.
• Scoop out the seeds and the pulps inside them.
• After scooping the seeds out, smear some salt on the pointed gourds and keep aside. The salt will help them to become softer.
• Throw out the seeds which have become hard and fully formed and take the pulps. If you feel like the pulp part is inadequate, take two or three fresh and unripe pointed gourds with bare minimum seeds. While preparing the filling this time, I had to take two kochi Potols (fresh and unripe Pointed Gourds) for adding up the filling.

• Prepare the Chicken Keema as instructed. In case you have stored it in the refrigerator, bring it outside in order to normalize the temperature.
• Chop the onion, garlic and ginger in dices and add to the mixer. Add the Pointed Gourd pulps and unripe seeds too. Mix them to a fine paste. Keep aside.

• Heat 3 tbsp mustard oil. Fry the pointed gourds till light brown. Keep aside.
• In that same oil, add 1 tbsp more oil if required and sauté the pointed gourd pulp, onion, ginger and garlic paste. If you feel like you can add green chilli paste or chilli powder too. I have opted that out because we don’t like the hot taste that much.
• When the paste starts getting reduced and the oil starts coming out while stirring, mix 5 tbsp chicken keema or according to your requirement. Mix well.
• Add a dash of Garam Masala and keep aside the filling for cooling a bit.

• Take the fried pointed gourd shells and fill up the insides with the cooked filling and serve hot.

The Potoler Dolma goes best with piping hot rice as starters, but you can also have it alongside Rotis during dinner or as snacks with tea.

Recipe by Parna’s Mother In Law, a silent but prominent recipe blogger of KolkataFusion.

The post A simple preparation of Potoler Dolma – Bengali Style Stuffed Pointed Gourds appeared first on KolkataFusion.

Tedious job, isn’t it? That’s the reason, the shortcut yet equally delicious Potol Baata was started to get prepared in the traditional Bengali households. Though the preparation has lost its earlier popularity because of busy lifestyles, yet, is still being prepared in a few of North Kolkata houses (I am not sure about whether the food item is prepared in the similar way in parts of South Kolkata or not).

So, here it goes. Recently, I have prepared the dish using eggs as we had no prawns in our refrigerator, neither I wanted to use coconut). The ingredients required and the preparation style follows right below:

Ingredients (Serves 4)

Potol (Pointed Gourd, 6 large)

Onion (2 medium)

Garlic (4 cloves)

Ginger (1-inch piece)

Eggs (2)

Green Chillies (I used 2, if you like the hot taste, you can use more)

Garam Masala Powder (1 pinch)

Mustard Oil (1 ½ Table spoon)

Turmeric Powder (A small pinch)

Salt (As per the taste)

Sugar (A small pinch)

Preparation

1. Peel the skin off the pointed gourds, remove the seeds keeping the pulp intact. Roughly chop the pointed gourds in dice like shapes.
2. Roughly chop the onions, garlic cloves and ginger.
3. Put in the chopped pointed gourds, chopped onions, chopped garlic cloves and ginger pieces inside the mixer pot and get a smoothly ground paste. You can add in the green chillies in the paste as well or keep aside.
4. Heat the mustard oil in a heavy bottomed pan or wok.
5. Add the green chillies, fry them in the oil and remove them from the wok or pan. (If you don’t like hot taste, you can do this because in this process, the flavour of the chillies will get added in the dish not the hotness.)
6. Add in the smooth paste slowly. (If you like chillies, you can grind them along with the paste and add in the pan together.)
7. Put the flame of your gas oven in simmer. Sauté the paste in the oil. Stir occasionally and keep a check whether the paste is getting burned or not. 
8. Add salt, turmeric powder and stir the paste.
9. When the raw smell will go away, break the eggs and stir them along with the paste.
10. After the oil separates from the paste, add a pinch of sugar and a generous pinch of garam masala. Turn off the gas oven.
11. Allow a standing time of 5 minutes before serving it along with piping hot, steamed rice or tawa fresh hot rotis. 

P.S: If you want to add prawns instead of eggs, marinate small prawn pieces for 5 minutes with a pinch of turmeric powder and salt. Shallow fry them and keep aside. When the pointed gourd paste will get done, add the fried prawns and stir along. Make sure that you don’t heat the prawns for a long time, they will turn rubbery.

Also Read: The other star starters of Bengal, – Shukto and Kankrol er Dolma

The post Potol Baata – A Bengali avatar of pointed gourd paste appeared first on KolkataFusion.