Gol Guppay: Puffed Pastry Shells filled with Tamarind, Chickpeas and Potatoes

I love tamarind, but unlike my sister in laws who can drink it by the bucket loads, I satisfy my quench for it when my taste buds desires by making a zingy Tamarind drink, but it is Gol Guppay's that I now and again crave, and sadly it is one dish from my childhood that I don't make that often.

A good while back to mimic the flavours, I made a slow cooked tamarind vegetable pot with cumin dumpling, but I have never made Gol Guppay at home.  Its one of those social dishes, like tapas or a mezze that is best made when you are in good company, family, friends or just a social gathering.   You pick it up and pop it in on go in your gob.  

For those of you unfamiliar with Gol Guppay, it is a street snack from the Indian Sub-Continent - crispy puffed pastry shells known as puris that are filled with flavoured tamarind potatoes and chickpeas (aloo chaat and channa).  

I have been wanting to make some Gol Guppay quite recently, namely for the Inheritance Recipes challenge set by Solange at Pebble Soup last month.  The theme this month is Back to School hosted by Coffee and Vanilla.  

Well with Vegan Mofo asking participants to recreate a meal from our childhood, well it gave me the perfect reason to actually make it.  I have to confess though, my mother never prepped this for our lunch box, but we did have it often after school for tea before being shooed to after-school clubs.  

Although my mother has her own way of making Gol Guppay, I will link you to a recipe close to the way she makes it, in case you care to make it at home. The part where my mothers recipe differs is that she also includes white sweet potato and minced red onion and she also uses tamarind pulp for the tangy sauce, rather that tamarind concentrate.  Oh and we cheat, although we do know how to make the puffed pastry shells from scratch, most South Asian people very rarely make the the puffed pastry shell from scratch, most people pick them up from an ethnic grocers and I admit that is what I did this time round for convenience, more than anything else. I am also sharing this with Healthy Vegan Fridays #63

Down on the allotment

After a long lie in, I managed to get out of the cosy warmth of my duvet to put in some labour on the plot. There is quite a bit to do, so no excuses of the rain falling. Actually the weather was kind to us today, other than the blowy wind, it stayed relatively dry.
Before we started to work on the plot beds: D on the potato bed and me on the Legumes bed, we were visited by a Painted Lady butterfly on her way to North Africa (we think), she was magnificent. We both felt blessed to have her on site and even more fortunate to capture on camera.

Some of the Autumn sunflowers are still standing their ground, others have well and truly been bashed by the wind and rain.

These were the two main beds that we put our physical energy into: digging, weeding and raking over. On the left the potato bed, and on the right the legumes bed.

Here is a progress shot of the fenugreek I planted about a fortnight ago. There plot is still productive. Still growing are lettuces, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, broccoli, turnips, raspberries, as well as

Rainbow and Bright Lights Swiss chard doing extremely well.

Canary and ruby chard.

Brussels sprouts getting bigger every time I look at them.

Red Marner cabbage have been a little disappointing, they are the size of an eating apple.

Unfortunately, I can' quite remember what type of cabbage this is. The slugs seem be liking it though.

My musselburgh leeks at slowly fattening.

These are Fuseau Jerusalem artichokes. Look how tall they have become! We did cut them down, and whilst digging the potatoes, D also managed to dig some Jerusalem artichokes, they were not at all nobbly, but smooth.

He also dug up the last of the Desiree potatoes.

and King Edward potatoes. All of which are now stored away in jute bags.

Last month I showed you a picture of these thistle heads in their full glory, now the cardoon flowers are starting to lose their royal colour. The marigolds are still doing very well and so are the nasturtium flowers.

I decided to cut down those sunflowers that had been treated harshly by the weather, saving the sunflower heads of course, to dry for bird food in the near future. The stalks of the sunflowers are quite hard and take a long time to compost down, so we will at some point be having a bonfire on the plot, so we can burn them with some of the weeds.

There is still quite a lot to do on the plot, but for now I think we've had a good day down on the allotment plot.

Blue potatoes or Purple potatoes?

Last year, I grew these potatoes in my garden in big ceramic pots given to us by Ds Dad. They are called Edzell Blue and are a floury potato. I admit I wanted to grow them more for novelty factor.

When dug up, they were more purple than blue and looked fantastic. They were also a bit on the small size.

Will I grow edzell blue potatoes again? No. I did not find them versatile in the kitchen. On cooking, the potatoes lost their colour, turning a dull grey rather than retaining their vibrant colour.

This won't stop me from growing other colourful varieties if they they take my fancy.