righto folks we're here we're stuck in quarantine on lockdown so what we're
gonna do is bring the flavours from the street food that we've had all around
the world back to the home kitchen so you will normally find us pounding the
streets of the world filming for this YouTube channel and eating the best
local food in the world but right now we're at home in New Zealand so we want
to bring those flavours that we've had out on the streets of the world back
into the home kitchen and replicate those recipes we want to make some food
taste exactly like we had it when we were out on the streets of the world
today we are going to be recreating a street food from the streets of Kolkata
in India and it is called pav bhaji this is it right here
so a whole bowl of the bhaji oh perfect and this is such an exciting
dish to eat and also to watch being made so when we were in Kolkata we
wandered up to this street food stall one we'd heard that was really exciting
did a really good pav bhaji and it was so cool watching the street food vendor
make this dish this atmosphere is awesome I love straight side eating in India because
it's so intense he takes a whole bunch of vegetables he's got a huge giant tava
a frying surface and he's mashing up the vegetables adding a ton of different
spices and serving it with these buttered buns and that's what we're
going to be doing today we've got to take all of these vegetables all of
these ingredients that we have that we have just found in our pantry and do the
mashing create the vegetable smush create those warm buttery buns it's
gonna be really tasty it's all about working with what we've got figuring
out ways to make the dish exactly like we had it in the original video so we're
bringing pav bhaji from Kolkata India into the home kitchen and trying to
replicate that particular dish I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing
a Plate let's get cooking
pav bhaji is a super popular street food snack in India and it's one that we eat
loads when we're in India essentially what it is is a vegetable stew or I like to
call it a vegetable smush the gentleman is really smushing up those vegetables
because the street vendor takes a bunch of
different vegetables and he mashes the vegetables up adds a load of different
spices and then serves it with these toasted buttery buns called pav now
we're going to be recreating the street food dish the pav bhaji that we ate in
Kolkata now this street food stall was amazing
it was located in the heart of Barabazaar which is the largest wholesale
market in Kolkata and this place was electric you can see we're in front of
like a whole lineup of street food stalls the place is crazy there's so much color
so there's all sorts of um sort of fabric shops and places selling saris and what not
and then this whole lineup of street food vendors
it had so much energy it was super colourful there were tons of people
now we were able to check out what the street food vendor was or the steps that
he was taking to make the pav bhaji because all of it happens right on
the street virtually every step of the process and so we were able to see what
vegetables he was using and what he was doing to create this dish so we have
quite a lot to go on so I've assembled all of the ingredients
that I think we're going to need today so as Thomas mentioned before we're in
quarantine we're in lockdown we can't get out to the supermarket often so we're
having to use what we've got in the pantry in the fridge to replicate these
dishes so let me talk you through what we've got we've got some potatoes
tomatoes onions some coriander cauliflower capsicum I've got a bunch of
spices with which to create the pav bhaji masala the spices that I think
that the street vendor would have used we've got butter and we're going to
toast these pav up so the buns up on the hot plate so I'm just going to
get peeling the potatoes
I've chopped up some potatoes and also some cauliflower the potatoes have been
boiling for a bit now I'm just adding the cauli so that can soften up now at
the stall the vendor had this huge vegetable mash around the edge of his
tava and that's what we're working on now so this is the sort of pre smushed mash
so it's got peas it's got potato it's got capsicum here tomato
but we're going to be working on the capsicums now and adding them to that
lot on the stove
Sheena has cooked down some capsicums with a whole lot of turmeric so this is
for this first element this big wall of sort of base smush that went in the dish
so on his tava in Kolkata this wall of this so we've got the potato and
the cauliflower there ready to go so nicely boiled up we're gonna add this
we've got all the turmeric for colour and then hopefully those capsicums are soft
enough that we can smush them up with the potato masher so this was the most
spectacular thing to watch was all the mushing at the stand this section of the
mush we did not see so this section of production so this really is all just
intuition to us trying to figure out what flavors we tasted how it came to be
so we're just trying to create all the elements of the dish and this is element
one and it's coming together really nicely look at this yellow mush folded
some peas through there as well so it is just like it was at the stand visually
let's see what it tastes like so obviously at the stand we only ate the end product
not the steps along the way but we've still gotta eat these steps to try and
discern if we're getting it right so we can bring that end product together hmm
oh that's good turmeric's strong very heavily seasoned and so that's got a lot
of flavor even though there's not many ingredients in there I think that's
going to work perfectly and now we're going to get onto the second step which
is the more runny mush and this is the mush that's really gonna give it
the bang that massive amount of flavour this was the dark runny one full of
spices so we've got to put this all together and we're using sort of a
visual guide here because you walk up to a street stall you order a dish you do not
know exactly what goes in it so on the stand he had a whole lot of vegetables
but they included some things that we don't think were actually in the dish
like cabbage there was a cabbage sitting right there on the stand it had no
taste of cabbage no sign of cabbage we just do not think
it was in there so we're not adding cabbage but we have added cauliflower
which was not on the stand so we're doing a little bit of twisting and changing
based on what we tasted but we're using that visual guide of all those
vegetables as a guide to what we need to go in so in the second one we've got
onions tomatoes a bunch of spices garlic ginger ready to go into the second smush
we have been chatting while I've been cutting up these ingredients for the
second smush and we've thought hang on we have made a huge boo-boo here those
tomatoes they need to go in this smush we should have put them in earlier on so
we've been thinking back to what we saw at the stall this is part of the fun of
this we're just trying to figure it out as we go along we've realized we've made
a mistake so now we're gonna cook down those tomatoes and get them into that
smush so they're in the right place in the recipe
we fixed the stuff up by cooking up some of the tomatoes with turmeric and water
and now I've added it to the smush just gonna fold that in oh yeah that is
looking real good
I'm just working on the next part of the dish which is the
spice mix and the spice mix is going to be cooked with the onions and the garlic
that Thomas prepared some ginger crush some crushed ginger and so I've
got cumin I've got coriander cloves cardamom just making it up as we go
along the spice mix that the vendor was using
was a rich red colour and now I know that some pav bhaji vendors add a red
coloring to create that deep a dark red color in the mix if I had it I would use
paprika probably to achieve that but we don't have it in the spice cabinet so
we're just going to go with chilli and see what happens
that is all the prep done so it's time to get cooking of the pav bhaji but
there's one more key ingredient that we need and that is chives now it had a lot
of Indian chives in which we don't have but we do have a little herb garden here
that we've got access to with just some normal chives so these aren't nearly as
robust as the Indian chives but they're totally going to do the trick so we'll
just whack off some chives so we can chuck them into the dish
that is all the
initial prep done it's time to get this on the barbecue our closest
representation to how they were cooking in India is the barbecue so we're gonna
put it all on the hot plate we've got everything portioned up as it needs to
go on this is gonna get fun now we're gonna get into the the cooking and the
mashing and smooshing of all of these ingredients let's get it on the hot
barbecue
I'm in the hot seat I've gotta get this pav bhaji started so as Thomas
mentioned before we're using the hot plate section of the barbecue to
cook this up and we've got to get the onion and the garlic and the ginger onto
the hot plate cooking up with the spices so I'm just
going to add some butter to get us started now the street vendor was using
a lot of butter and I think a lot of ghee which we don't have but I've got a
little bit of oil with me in case I need to add that too all right that butter
is all melted we're gonna chuck the onions garlic and ginger into the mix
at the stall I remember the vendor adding some water to his mix so that's
what I'm gonna do too add some water and then chuck the spice right on into that
lot whoooo
the spice just caught my throat and then he threw in the chives and some
coriander so chuck some of that in there too okay let's get this all mixed up I
think we're actually gonna add more water because I remember the smush
being quite watery at the stall like it had a quite a loose consistency so let's
oh yeah look at that the color is really bleeding out of that chilli pepper now
we're gonna add a bit of salt like he did make sure we've got some real
seasoning going on and then some lemon juice which I saw him add too he was very
liberal with the lemon juice okay and now I think it's time to get this a
little bit smushed up
I'm trying to get this onion mixture as smushed up as possible and the sound
that I was just making with the potato masher took me right back to Kolkata
because those were the sounds the clanging sounds that were coming from
the stall when he was working the bhaji mixture
so I've got it sort of quite
liquid the smells are really intense really spice filled air like wafting up
from the barbecue and the next thing I've got to do is add this potato
mixture to this lot here and then smush it all about
I'm gonna mix everything up
now and see what the consistency is so get that spice mixture into that potato
whoa look at that the colour's really changing I think I might add a little
bit of water
all right the smells are just incredible
we've left the
bhaji to hang out on the hot plate for a bit and we've whipped back inside so
that we can work on the pav which are the buns a really important part of this
dish because you use the buns to scoop up that vegetable smush and these were
so soft and buttery at the stall they had stacks and stacks or bags of buns
and they were literally just sloshing ghee onto the middle of the tava
and then smushing the buns into the ghee and wiping it around a bit and then
they're basically ready we don't have any ghee we've only got butter but I know
I'm not complaining about the butter so let's just get this frypan heated up
we've got a block of butter so I'm just gonna stick a very healthy wodge of that
into the middle and get it melting
my butter is all melted and we're going to
stick the buns in we're just using everyday white dinner rolls so pop them
all in like this he was literally just stacking them into the tava
and smushing them around like this with his hand so that they'd get all buttery
it's time to plate up in Kolkata they served the pav bhaji in this really
beautiful leaf bowl a disposable leaf bowl which is great for the environment
we've come as close as we could get which is a little ceramic cabbage leaf
bowl so I've got the bhaji to a consistency where it's quite loose
so I'm just gonna put that into the little bowl the final flourish so butter
coriander and some red onions so let's just get some of this red onion over the
top some coriander and then he sliced off a nick of butter and whipped it
on so it could melt into that bhaji
all right that is one of India's ultimate street foods prepared at home
but now the ultimate test for us have we nailed the taste of the one in Kolkata
here's a pav thank you oh nice soft bun super buttery ok definitely gonna be lacking that ghee
though I think the flavor's not gonna be there but we don't have it can't get it
so Thomas said he thinks that the bhaji could be a little bit looser in
consistency and I tend to agree it's sort of a bit thick now but you know
what those fresh ingredients going on the onion and the coriander the fresh on
top that hitting the heat that smells like Kolkata can you smell it? Yes
ohhh chilli it's spicy
whoa spicy great lemon flavour mmm that's what I was gonna say
next the lemon is super strong like a real tang wow that's taking me right
back this is good I like it you can get a
little bits of the fresh onion and fresh coriander
what's really hitting it
for me is the lemon the chilli and the fresh ingredients so the coriander and the
red onion and the lemon is what is making me think of the Kolkata one it's
transporting me back and I'm tasting it like I was sitting on the street and I
think it's the lemon that's doing that for me whoa the differences like the
colour is a different colour to what was at the stall but the flavor's pretty good
the flavour is bang on mmm probably needs a bit more water to
loosen it up a bit but the flavor is banging the buns aren't as flavorsome
they're just cause there's no ghee they haven't sucked up as much moisture so they're
not as as luscious they're not sort of covering your fingers in the
in the ghee and but they still delicious they're just they are what they are
oh man I can't get enough of this I'm on bun two already this has been a really fun
one to recreate yeah so using the hot plate instead of the tava but then
still having that potato masher tool to get that smush on man that was super fun that is
taking me back loving bringing the flavors of our
videos our past videos back into the home kitchen while we're in quarantine hope
you're enjoying this one let us know what meals from our videos you want to
see us recreate comment down below hit that thumbs up button hit that subscribe
button if you haven't already ohh heaps more street food recreations
coming from our kitchen straight to you see you next time thanks for watching this one