7 secrets of happiness and Alu-kopir chochchori

Okay, so before we go to the eighth secret of happiness -the yummy alu-kopir chochchori, let us quickly go through  the first seven:

1. Delink your happiness from possessions. As long as you have a long “To possess” list – you cannot be happy!
2. Seek happiness from your achievements
3. Keep yourself extremely busy – so much so that you crave for some free time, and when you actually get it, it feels like the best thing on earth. Believe me lots of free time are the root of many troubles.
4. Take very good care of your physical being – your health, your weight, your skin and your appearance in general.
5. Re-kindle an old passion – it can be reading, writing, gardening, cooking, pottery, art, craft, anything you can get lost into for hours without even realising. Please don’t choose shopping –it has to be something which is either free or very cheap…..remember rule no.1!
6. Involve yourself in some social service. Look around for work that needs to be done and don’t wait for the Municipal Corporation or an NGO to do it …do it yourself. Trust me, it gives you unparalleled satisfaction.
7. Keep-in-touch. With parents, relatives, friends, ex-colleagues, your babysitter – all the people who touched your lives in some way and are far away now. NOW…that does not mean hook yourself to Facebook or Twitter or Orkut. I by no means want to belittle these wonderful networking platforms, they have made the world a small place in the real sense, but how you use them to your benefit and not to detriment – is up to you!

My recipe today is another simple dish which is a very integral part of all Bengali households – alu-kopir chochchori. We used to have it with roti’s on normal mornings and with luchi’s on special mornings.

Alu-kopi’r  chochchori

Ingredients:

Potato: 1 large

Cauliflower: ½ , cut into little florets

Jeera: 2 tsp

Dry red chillies : 2

Salt: ½ tsp

Oil: 1 tsp

How to:

Step1: Roast 1 tsp of the jeera and the dry red chillies and grind them into a coarse powder. (For pictorial details of this step check out kochu kumror chhokka)

Step2: Chop the cauliflower and the potatoes into small pieces. If you wish, you can peel the potatoes, I donot.

Step3: Heat 1 tsp of oil and add 1 tsp of jeera.

Step4: Once the jeera is fried properly, add the potatoes first, and then the cauliflower after 5 mins. Potatoes are added first as cauliflower cooks very fast.

Step5:Add the salt, stir and cover.

Step6: When both the cauliflower and the potatoes are cooked, (in about another 5 mins), add the roasted jeera  pdr, mix well and your chochchori is done ! Goes very well with rotis, plain triangular parathas and puri/luchis.