Family recipe: star chef Soenil Bahadoer’s bara
Crispy on the outside, doughy on the inside and incredibly flavorful: bara are the ultimate snack. Straight from the kitchen, with a lick of sambal or chutney, or filled with salted cod, yardlong beans or chicken, anything goes. How do you make this Surinamese-Hindustani delicacy perfectly? Like this:
When I asked star chef Soenil Bahadoer (De Lindehof restaurant) for his ultimate family recipe, he immediately called out: Bahadoer’s bara! He learned them from his mother, who learned them from her mother, who learned them from hers, and so we could go on for a while. Normally, this is passed down by word of mouth, but fortunately Soenil wrote down the recipe.
How to make star chef Soenil Bahadoer’s bara:
1. Soak the mung beans a day in advance.
2. Roll the spinach into a bundle and cut it into very thin strips.
3. Grind the soaked mung beans, garlic and pepper (without the seeds) in a blender. Optionally add a little of the water in which the mung beans were soaked to make grinding easier.
4. Put the flour, yeast, cumin and salt in a large bowl and knead everything together well. Add the mung bean mixture, spinach and water. Mix well until you have a dough. The dough should be neither too wet nor too stiff. Add a little extra water if necessary to achieve this. Let the dough rise for 2–3 hours.
5. Heat sufficient oil in a pan. Use medium heat; otherwise, the bara will brown quickly while the inside is still undercooked. If you use a deep fryer, preheat it to 150 ˚C.
6. Take a ball of dough onto a damp palm, flatten it and make a hole in the center. It will then look almost like a small pineapple slice.
8. Let the bara slide from your palm into the oil. The most important characteristic of a bara is that a hole remains in the center. Fry until golden brown and drain on paper towels. Serve warm with chutney.
Also read:
