Veg Momo

Given a choice, I'd never eat vegetarian dumplings if I could have ones with meat in it, but as it happened, I wasn't given a choice. We were having a few people over and they were vegetarian. Of course, I need not have made momos at all, but I've been itching to try them at home in Calcutta -- my first attempt here -- and this was a perfect opp. to test my skills on a captive audience. No, captive tasters. An actual employed food taster might quit and thus escape, but guests, once served, have little choice but to stuff their faces.

And if you catch their expression during the narrow window between tasting and expressing polite delight, you'll know what they really think of your cooking.

Our guests thought really highly of my cooking, or their shelves are missing a few well-deserved Oscars.

Ingredients:

Flour shell -- make a stretchy, soft, well-kneaded dough with flour, a touch of salt, and warm water.
4 or 5 scallions/pNeyaajkoli -- chopped tiny.
Half a red or white onion -- minced or diced miniscule.
Half a large carrot -- grated or minced. Or diced really small.
Half a cup of shredded cabbage.
3 or 4 green beans, 'cause what the heck. 8 or 9 soya bean/nuggets, for the same reason.
Garlic, ginger -- minced.
Soya sauce, salt, sugar, sunflower/canola oil.
An egg.

Shobhadi, bless her, saw the carrots and beans I had set aside and helpfully chopped them for me, because I think she imagined I'd be making fried rice or some such. I could take a knife to these and dice them, but you know hard it is cut already chopped veggies? So I just put everything in the mixie -- including a few dry soya nuggets -- and gave it a whirl.

Whirled veggies :-)

Splashed with a couple of tablespoons of soya sauce, some salt, a little sugar, and the pieces of water-soaked, softened soya nuggets

Added eggs. All right, so I added two instead of one.

The filling was ready. Then, I made small balls from the dough, rolled them out, didn't care enough to make them perfect circles. Then...

Scooped a little filling in the centre of the imperfect disc.

Cabbage because I like cabbage in momos.

Tied them up like a putuli. What is a good English word for a putuli?

A whole set of putulis.

Then, I bough a wokful of water to boil. A proper rolling boil. The momos were dropped in with minimum splash, because splashing boiling water is not fun. The boiling continued till the momos grew plump and slightly translucent, and the water reduced considerably. More water was promptly added, keeping the flame on high.

Each batch of momos (say, eight each) needs three boilings, and the whole process should take between half hour to forty minutes. After half an hour, they were lifted off with a slotted spoon, draining the extra water off them.

At this stage, the momos were delicious, and I ate about three just standing there next to the stove, but my father insisted that "just boiled" food could not be served with tea. So I fried them lightly in sunflower oil, but had my revenge by not making the red-chillies-in-vinegar dipping sauce. Hah! Take that!

Then again, this deprived ME of the slightly sour-edged chilli sauce too, so perhaps this wasn't the right revenge after all. But, Pou Chong brothers' chilli sauce saved the day. Thank you, sirs.

Presenting, first ever made-in-Cal vegetarian momos by Rimi. Ta daaa!

Up next: veg momos in sweet-and-sour sauce, inspired by Blue Poppy :-)