Pani puri recipe: how to make golgappa at home

Pani puri (panipuri) is an Indian street snack: small, hollow balls of thin fried dough, filled with potato or chickpeas and topped up with cold, sour and spicy water flavoured with mint, coriander and tamarind. In North India it is called golgappa, in Bengal puchka. You eat each one straight away, whole, in one bite. In Poland you will not find the puris in a supermarket; Indian shops sell them ready-made in packets, under the name pani puri or gol gappa.

What pani puri is

The name says it all: "pani" is Hindi for water, and "puri" is a fried bread. The puris for this snack are small, a few centimetres across, and puff up like a balloon when fried. The shell is thin and very crisp.

The dish has three parts:

• puri: the crisp balls, ready-made or fried at home;
• filling: boiled potato, chickpeas or sprouted mung beans, sometimes finely chopped onion;
• pani: cold water flavoured with mint, coriander, green chilli, tamarind, cumin and black salt (kala namak).

It is often served with sweet date and tamarind chutney and with boondi, tiny fried balls of gram flour. Pani puri belongs to the chaat family of snacks, together with bhel puri and papdi chaat.

Ingredients (serves 4, about 40 puris)

Puri:

• 1 packet of ready puris (about 40)

Pani (spicy water):

• a large handful of mint leaves
• a handful of fresh coriander
• 1–2 green chillies
• a thumb-sized piece of ginger
• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste or tamarind pulp
• 1 teaspoon roasted ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon black salt (kala namak)
• 1 litre cold water
• instead of the last four seasonings: 2–3 tablespoons ready pani puri masala

Filling:

• 3 medium potatoes, boiled in their skins
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas (tinned is fine)
• 1 small red onion
• 1 teaspoon chaat masala
• salt and chilli to taste

To serve: sweet date and tamarind chutney, boondi.

Method, step by step

1. Blend the mint, coriander, chilli and ginger with a little water to a smooth paste.
2. Tip the paste into a jug. Add the tamarind, cumin, black salt and cold water. Stir and taste: the pani should be sour, salty and hot at the same time.
3. Chill the pani for at least 30 minutes. It tastes best cold. Strain it through a sieve if you like.
4. Peel the potatoes and mash them with a fork. Do not make a smooth purée; leave some pieces.
5. Add the chickpeas, finely chopped onion, chaat masala, salt and chilli. Mix.
6. Just before serving, make a small hole in the top of each puri with your thumb or a teaspoon.
7. Put in a teaspoon of filling, a few drops of sweet chutney and a pinch of boondi.
8. Dip the puri in the pani, or spoon the pani inside, and eat it whole at once.

Puris go soft quickly once filled, so fill each one just before eating. At a party, set out a bowl of puris, the filling, the chutney and a jug of pani, and let everyone make their own.

Ready-made or home-made puris

Home-made puris are made from fine semolina (suji) with a little wheat flour. The dough must be stiff, rolled thin and cut into small rounds, then fried in hot oil until they puff up. It takes practice: dough that is too thick will not rise, and oil that is not hot enough gives hard, flat discs. So most people in Poland buy ready puris in a packet. Check that they are crisp before serving. If the packet has been open, a few minutes in a warm oven makes them crisp again.

Where to buy pani puri in Poland

Ready puris are sold, for example, as Haldiram's Pani Puri Gol Gappa. For the water there is MDH pani puri masala, and for the sweet side, Suhana panipuri chutney. Black salt, chaat masala and jal jeera masala are also useful for the pani. Little India has shops in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk and ships orders across Poland.