Mashed Potato or Aloo pitika

      

      This whole week I have been thinking about food. And I can't wait for the Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends. Also, I have been wondering about the similarities of food between one culture and another. How the resembles favorite entry's to one another. Where in our thanksgiving dinner I relish mashed potatoes, my assamese taste bud adore aloo pitika, aloo means potatoes and pitika means mashed. How the main ingredients of the entry are the same but the difference is the spices or secondary ingredients. Today I wanted to share the Assamese aloo pitika recipe.

      Humble and simple aloo pitika is a quintessential side in assamese cuisine. Like Fish curry, aloo pitika is also an essential entry. Most of the time, even though considered as a side, the place of aloo pitika is nothing less than the main course. In western countries, butter is popularly used for mash potatoes. But, like many other recipes in Assam, mustard oil is widely used for aloo pitika as well. It gives the recipe a more distinctive and unique flavor.

Ingredients:-

1. 2/3 medium-size potatoes
2. 1 tablespoon mustard oil
3. 1 green chili
4. a few strands of cilantro or coriander leaves
5. one small onion finely chopped 
6. some fenugreek seeds about 1/2 teaspoon
7. salt to taste 

Process:-

      First, boil the potatoes. Make sure that potatoes are cooked very well yet not too watery or mashy. Now peel the skin of the potatoes and place it in a wide plate and mash it either with hand or a fork. Then add the finely chopped onions, slit green chilies and coriander leaves. In the meantime put a pan and heat the oil, once the oil comes to the smoking point, add fenugreek seeds and let it crackle then turn off the heat. Add the oil to the mashed potato and mix it well. 

      Fenugreek seeds give a mildly bitter taste if you don't like you can skip it but it adds the quintessential assamese flavor. Now serve it with plain rice and yellow lentils.