A street snack from Kolkata

I did my Hotel Management course from Mumbai. When I was in college, I never liked the being in the kitchen. In fact, I hated it. I prefered working in the service section.
After I completed my course, I worked at a restaurant in Mumbai as a captain and I didn’t like what I was doing.

I was unemployed for a while when a friend told me that his friends is a chef at ‘Under The Over’, a popular restaurant in those days.

I was desperate. I took up the offer and worked with a young chef. He turned out to be an awesome person to work with. I learnt everything I had to through him. It helped as he encouraged me to experiment with various things.

A year later, when he moved abroad, I was given the opportunity to run the kitchen. That’s truly how my journey began.

It’s been 22 years since I joined the industry and a lot has changed since then.

We didn’t have internet back in the day. We didn’t know what to refer to if someone asked us for broccoli. Books were our only source.

However, that is not the case today. Things have changed for the better.

Back in the day, my mother wasn’t happy to tell people that I worked in a kitchen. She felt ashamed to let others know that her son was a cook. But now, the culinary industry has become glamorous and popular.

Dining out is a common practice and the hospitality industry has become a grown.

When it comes to cuisines, my favourites are Mediterranean and European. I do enjoy Indian dishes too but I prefer not to make them. When I’m home, I prefer to have ‘dal chawal’. I also love biryani.

A good knife sharpener is a must-have for me in the kitchen. In the case of ingredients, black peppercorns is a must. There is nothing like freshly grounded black pepper!

Now, let’s get to the recipe. I am a Bengali, born and brought up in Mumbai. As a child, my mother used to take us to Kolkata for vacations. There, my cousins and I used to roam the streets and relish the various street food available there. Calcutta Egg Roll was one of them and therefore inspired me to share the recipe today.

Years have passed by and it’s the one iconic dish that has stayed close to my heart.

The recipe is fairly simple to make and it’s a dish that we can all enjoy.

Calcutta Egg Roll

Ingredients

Julienne cut of cucumber - 20 gm

Julienne cut carrots - 15 gm

Julienne cut onion - 5 gm

Julienne cut beetroot - 5 gm

Green chilli - 1 tsp

Coriander leaves - 1 tsp

Lemon juice - ½ tsp

Roasted peanut - 1 tsp

Tomato ketchup - 1 tbs

Kasundi - 1 tsp

Egg - 2 nos

Flour roti - 1 nos

Olive oil - 1 tbs

Salt to taste

Method

Preheat the pan, put oil in the pan, let the oil get little heat, put eggs wait for 30 to 40 seconds, and then put flour tortilla, cook the tortilla both sides for 1 minute.Then remove the tortilla.

Now mix all the vegetables and peanuts green chills coriander, and put sauce and salt,

Then stuff the vegetable mixture in the tortilla and wrap.

Mrinmoy Acharya,
culinary chef at Ciclo Cafe, Indiranagar