Bangladesh - Fuchka

I love street foods so I decided to try Fuchka for my foray into Bangladeshi foods. Well technically stuffed fuchka as the dough part is called fuchka on it's own. They're meant to be crispy hollow balls with different stuffings. This recipe is for fuchka stuffed with potato and dipped in a tamarind sauce. I've never tried using tamarind before so I'm curious to try it.

Ingredients:

200g of wheat flour
100g of potatoes
1 pinch of baking powder
10g tamarind
1 green chilli
Salt
2 tsp of coriander powder



 I'm so ashamed. I thought I had potatoes but I didn't. So I'm using good old Smash instead. I'm not much of a posh foodie type, am I?

Put the flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl.


 Add warm water until a dough is formed. Knead for a few minutes.


Form the dough into balls. They're meant to be bite-sized and in hindsight I over-estimated the size of my mouth a bit.


 Heat up some oil in a pan and fry the balls until crispy on the outside.


 Now to start the filling. I didn't have coriander powder so I crushed up some coriander seeds instead.


 I made up the Smash then added, a pinch of salt, the chopped green chilli and the coriander powder.


 Stir until the stuffing ingredients are all combined.


 Soak the tamarind in some hot water.


Drain the dough balls and make a slit (hehe it looks like a mouth) in the side of each with a knife. Stuff with the potato mixture.





Sieve the tamarind, pushing through as much of the pulp as you can. This should make a thick sauce to dip the fuchkas in. I served mine on a bed of lettuce and cucumber.


I don't think I made a very good job of making my fuchkas. They weren't hollow but doughy inside although I was able to push the soft dough to the sides and fill them with the stuffing. The potato filling was delicious even though it seems weird to fill a dough with another carbohydrate. Like eating a mashed potato sandwich in fact! JD will be jealous, haha. The flavours all went well together but I wasn't keen on the tamarind sauce, it was too sweet. I'd love to try some properly made Bangladeshi fuchkas someday :)


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