Masala Cook:: Indian Food, Indian Cooking, Indian Recipes & More

What is Bhel Puri?

A street food that’s virtually synonymous with Mumbai city, bhel-puri is a nutrient rich snack with a mind boggling variety of flavors. Puffed rice, a fried savory mix, and sev (tiny, crisp, gram flour noodles) form the base. To this are added boiled potato pieces, finely chopped onions, tomatoes and green chilies A dash of  date-and-tamarind chutney,  coriander-and chili chutney and  you’re ready to spoon it down with a couple of small puris!

Bhel puri is best eaten in a newspaper cone, on Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, with a salty breeze blowing through your hair. If that’s not possible, try it out at home. You can’t really go wrong with bhel puri!

What is Pao Bhaji?

Finger-lickin’ good stuff, sold off the streets of Mumbai and Pune. It’s nourishing, too! Pao means bun in Marathi, the local language, and Bhaji is a generic term for a vegetable dish. Urban legend has it that the dish was dreamed up by a vendor decades ago to cater to the workers of Mumbai’s textile mills.

Assorted vegetables added to a mashed potato, onion and tomato base, form the thick gravy, cooked on an enormous griddle. The 12-spice mix added to it imparts a unique flavor that sends one’s taste buds into a tizzy. The pao is sliced in half, pan-fried with a dollop of butter and served with bhaji.