What is that you’d like to serve or eat during the Bijoya foodfest, I asked a few friends from Calcutta the other day. “Kochuris,” they all replied.

Now the Bengali or Eastern kochuri is vastly different from the northern kachori, which has a hard and crispy casing. Kochuris, on the other hand, are soft and crispy, and sometimes just plain soft. They are like puris, but prepared with refined flour, and with a filling of — usually — mashed green peas cooked with a pinch of asafoe-tida (hing).

But Bijoya is special. This is when friends and relatives visit friends and relatives and wish them well and eat well in the process. So, obviously, if you are going to serve them kochuris for the festive season, they should be special. And that’s a challenge that chefs in Calcutta have ably risen to.

Your kochuri this season needn’t just be a khasta kochuri (with a filling of soaked, boiled and mashed urad dal, flavoured 
with carom seeds) or the pea-hing motorshutir kochuri, though those are eternal favourites, says Azad Taslim Arif, the senior executive chef at Vedic Village Spa & Resort just outside Calcutta.

For the pea-hing kochuri, you need to mix flour, salt and water to make a ball of soft dough and then leave it aside for 10 minutes. Now mash green peas coarsely. Heat oil, add some hing and cook the peas with green chillies, ginger and a pinch of sugar. Make equal-sized balls of the dough, and stuff each one with the mashed pea mix. Flatten and roll out the balls into a circular shape, and cover them with a damp cloth till the oil for frying starts to smoke. Now fry the kochuris and serve them hot.

But if you really want to offer your guests a kochuri with a difference, you could try one with a filling of chocolate flavoured with aniseed and chillies. “It’s such a great contrast of taste — the mild harshness of chillies, the sweet touch and light bitter touch of chocolate and the flavours of aniseed,” chef Azad says.

Other chefs, too, have been preparing interesting kochuris. 
 

“We serve different kinds, including a khasta kochuri chaat and club kochuri,” says Ashish Bagul, executive chef of Novotel Kolkata. The first, he explains, is mashed and covered with curd and chutneys. The second is a small puri with a filling of urad dal and onion seeds. 

“But my favourite is the motor-shutir kochuri. That goes very well with the Bengali alur dom. It’s a perfect combination meal with well-balanced flavours and textures,” chef Ashish holds.

Suprabhat Roy, the executive chef of Delhi’s Eros Hilton Hotel, loves the pea kachori, too. But for special occasions, he likes to prepare a filling with red chilli pickle masala. “It has a mildly tangy taste which everyone enjoys,” he says.

Chillies, as you can see, are kochuri favourites. While chef Azad prepares his pyaaj-kancha lanka kochuri with onions and green chillies, Joydev Paul, chef de cuisine at Hotel Hindusthan International (HHI) Kolkata, does a special chilli-paneer kochuri — flavoured with soya sauce and chilli paste. “It’s delicious,” he says.

The filling doesn’t have to be vegetarian, of course. Chef Azad prepares keema kochuris with minced meat, and another one with Bombay duck boiled, mashed and sautéed with onion, ginger and garlic, and bhetki kochuri as well.

What should you serve your kochu-ris with? I love them without a side dish, but alur dum does work very well. Chef Azad serves them with either sweet tamarind chutney or various kinds of potato curries — cooked with tomatoes, black peppercorn or coriander leaves.

So roll out the dough — and let’s have a merry Bijoya with kochuris!

Photographs by Rashbehari Das
Courtesy: Vedic Village Spa & Resort, Calcutta