Pepe dolma

Maumita’s Pepe Dolma fills baby green papayas with a cooked fish stuffing and serves their roundels in a milk sauce. This selected Bengali recipe uses the offered sea-bass branch and is served hot.

Sea-bass steaks are pressure-cooked with quartered onion, smashed garlic, bay leaf, crushed green cardamom, cinnamon, salt and water. After cooling, the fish is deboned and mashed, then cooked with fried chopped onion and garlic, tomato purée, green chilli and salt; the same stuffing is left to cool.

The papayas are peeled with a kitchen peeler, their heads cut off and saved, and their insides scooped out with a spoon. They simmer in hot salted water, cool, are drained and patted dry, then receive the fish stuffing; the heads are replaced and secured with toothpicks.

The stuffed papayas sit on a stand in a pressure cooker with water just touching them. They cook, cool on their own and are checked with a skewer, with further pressure cooking if needed.

For the sauce, oil heats with black peppercorns and cumin seeds, followed by onion, grated ginger and green-chilli paste. The pan is taken off the heat and cooled before milk is poured in while stirring; it returns to low heat with salt and black-pepper powder until thickened. Seasoning is adjusted, ghee and garam masala finish the sauce, and it is poured over sliced papaya roundels for hot service.