Cointreau-soaked bread Swiss roll

Man may not live on bread alone, but he can have quite a lot of fun with it. I don’t think we give the poor bread its due on the high table. But the plain loaf of bread has been contributing to good food for quite a while. And, remember, we are not talking about those fancy breads that have a “foreign tag” attached to them (such as garlic bread, French bread, baguettes and so on) but the plastic wrapped loaf that we buy from the market, or the paus that we get in western India.

I quite live on bread — starting right with my breakfast, and occasionally ending with a post-dinner midnight snack consisting of a toasted buttered slice sprinkled with sugar. But I am equally guilty of relegating the bread to the margins of culinary art. Then Pradip Rozario, who runs K.K.’s Fusion amongst his other restaurants in Calcutta, brought the bread to my notice last week. “It’s used in so many ways — from crumbed dishes, to thicken gravy and in a wrap or a roll,” he said.

Batter-coated pau roti sandwich with shaved Parmesan cheese

Indeed, where would we be without breadcrumb? The Bengalis’ repertoire of delicious snacks would be greatly dented if we denied them their usual supply of breadcrumbs. There would be no prawn or mutton cutlets, and no fish or chicken chops. Without the fish fry — fillets marinated and fried after being rolled in breadcrumbs — the special Bengali meal would be a real flop.

Even as accompaniments, bread works well. The chef suggests that you grill bread and serve it with a cutlet cooked with prawn and chicken , or with mackerel topped with wasabi.

Of course, bread as an entrée doesn’t do poorly either. When I was very young, I used to go with a couple of friends to a canteen in North Avenue in central Delhi. We would order a plate of buttered toast, and then upturn an entire bottle of ketchup over the toasts, generously sprinkle pepper on top, and then eat them. Even now, after all these years, I get all nostalgic when I think of the pure joy that the bread and ketchup lent to our young lives.

Bread, in fact, has been doing its bit to keep hungry stomachs from growling in different parts of the country. The pau bhaji in western India is a meal in itself — consisting of the special paus of Portuguese origin that are served with spicy mashed vegetables. My friend Teesta, who is Mumbai-based, holds forth on the pau, pointing out that they are of different kinds too. The Irani pau is soft, while the guthli pau is hard like a baguette and the peti pau is like a treasure chest.

Breaded chicken with spinach, walnut and honeyed vegetables

In the north, you will find queues in front of halwais frying the bread pakora, which is another wonderful example of merging culinary traditions. Slices of bread are filled with a potato lining, almost like a sandwich, and then dipped in batter and fried.

But chef Rozario goes beyond that. His sandwich with shaved parmesan is a dish of cheese and bread which is almost like a bread pakora, but not quite. You cut the sides of two slices of bread and make a sandwich with a filling of shaved parmesan cheese. Then you prepare a batter with flour, egg, water, salt and pepper. Dip the sandwich carefully in the batter and then fry it golden brown.

Or sample the breaded chicken, where boneless breasts of chicken are marinated in salt and pepper, dipped in a batter of egg and flour and finally coated with breadcrumbs before frying.

The chef’s tried to elevate the modest double-roti, or pau-rooti, as they call it in Bengal, and taken it to dizzying heights. Take his Cointreau rolled bread Swiss roll. He whisks two egg whites till stiff, and then whisks in ¾ cup icing sugar till thick. He creams 125g unsalted butter till soft, and then gently beats it into the egg white mixture bit by bit with 60ml of Cointreau. He cuts a pau into big, flat slices, adds the mixtures to each slice and then rolls it. He rolls it in a foil and refrigerates it. Before serving, he slices it, and sprinkles castor sugar on top.

If there’s a moral to be learnt from the Swiss roll, it’s this — never underestimate the double-roti. Give us this day our daily bread — for it does wonders to a meal.        

Grilled pau roti with prawn and chicken cutlet

Ingredients

• 500g potato • Seasoning to taste • 2tbs onion chopped • 1tsp garlic • 1tsp chopped parsley • 2pcs sliced bread • 60ml oil • 100g minced prawn • 100g minced chicken
• flour as required

Method

Boil the potatoes with salt till it is soft, then peel and mash them. Mix the minced prawn, chicken, chopped parsley and seasoning with the mashed potatoes and make a cutlet. Heat the oil in a pan. Coat the cutlet with flour and fry till it is cooked. Then grill the bread with a little oil till golden brown and serve it with the cutlet.