Calcutta St Coriander Poppy Seed Fritters
With the success of Shrimoyee Chakraborty’s first restaurant, Calcutta Street, in Fitzrovia – a second branch launched in Brixton last month. With a completely different atmosphere to the original, the new south London space in heavily inspired by Calcutta’s Park Street, a lively neighbourhood not too dissimilar from Brixton.
Serving a menu similar to the Fitzrovia site, the new space has a prominent focus on street food and home cooking-inspired dishes, plus smaller plates at a lower price point than in the West End. These classic Bengali coriander and poppy seed fritters, for instance, are simple but packed with flavour. They’re also relatively simple to recreate at home, following the recipe below.
Coriander, 50g
Poppy seeds, 30g
Mustard oil, 1 tsp
Gram flour, 1 Tbsp
Dry mango powder, ½ tsp
Lemon, juice of one
Green chillies, to taste
Oil, for frying
Salt
Coriander
Mint chutney
Roughly chop some coriander.
Soak the poppy seeds in some water.
Take a big bowl, mix the coriander, poppy seeds, mustard oil, gram flour, dry mango powder, lemon juice, freshly chopped green chillies and salt together.
Now make some small flat balls of this mix. Drizzle some oil in a pan and then shallow fry both sides and serve it hot with some coriander and mint chutney.
Further information on Calcutta Street can be found at calcuttastreet.com.
