Peyanj posto

Debjani Chatterjee Alam’s Piyaj Posto cooks onion with a smooth poppy-seed paste in mustard oil. This Bengali preparation selects her tomato addition and uses green chilli both in the paste and sliced through the pan mixture.

The poppy seeds soak in water, then are drained and blended with green chillies and part of the salt until smooth. A little water can loosen a thick paste; onions are roughly chopped, further green chillies sliced and the selected tomato chopped.

Part of the mustard oil is heated and the onions cook until light pink. Tomato and the remaining salt are added and cooked until the tomato softens and oil separates, followed by the sliced green chillies.

The poppy paste is mixed through, then water is added and allowed to evaporate as the mixture cooks. Once oil appears at the edges, the remaining mustard oil is stirred in and the heat turned off.

Debjani recalls quick meals of rice with Piyaj Posto in her family and continues making the dish at home. Her selected finish is an onion-and-poppy mixture with the stronger mustard-oil flavour of the final addition, served with hot rice.