BORI BHAJA

This is a very simple and plain recipe, very different from all the fancy ones that appear in this space. My mother in law who is from Digha, E. Medinipur taught this. It goes really well with plain rice or with dal bhaat, the only prerequisite being that the rice should be piping hot.
For this one can use the white coloured bori made out of kalai dal or urad dal. The bori can either be home made or bought from the market. The bori needs to be dry roasted very carefully till the colour changes to light golden brown. For this you have to keep stirring them frequently over a low flame in order to avoid excessive browning or even blackening!
Once you get the required colour, you add a little mustard oil on the roasted bori. Here the good thing is since you are adding the oil later, you can see to it that the bori is evenly roasted. Otherwise if you follow the normal trend of adding oil first and then the bori, some of them become black while others do not even get the chance to brown. This often happens with people like me who mostly enter the kitchen for everything else but cooking!
Once you add whatever amount of oil you want to (it is your choice- if you are a CCC i.e. Crazy Calorie Counter, even a little oil is enough!), you remove the bori bhaja from the fire, crush it coarsely using your fingers and add a little salt, finely chopped onions and green chillies and mmmmm...bori bhaja diye gorom gorom bhaat khan!!
My shashurima is a great one for not wasting things. Therefore she makes bori bhaja this way so that she can use all the bori which often break due to handling. Even if the bori is totally crushed and cannot be otherwise used, you can make crunchy and tasty bori bhaja out of them.