Patra

colocasia leaves spread with spiced gram flour and tamarind, rolled into a tight log, steamed and sliced into pinwheels, then fried in mustard seed

Origin: Gujarat & the Konkan Coast

From the journey of Taro.

Patra is the most inventive thing anybody has done with a taro leaf. The leaves are laid flat and overlapping, spread with a thick paste of gram flour, tamarind, jaggery, and spices, stacked, rolled into a tight log, and steamed; the log is then cut across into spirals and tempered in hot oil with mustard and sesame seed. The finished pinwheel is sweet, sour, savoury, and hot at once, and the green spiral running through the pale gram flour is the reason it looks the way it does on a Gujarati thali. The method exists because of a problem. Colocasia leaves are large, free, and abundant across western India, and they are also inedible raw, being dense with the calcium oxalate that makes every part of the plant burn the mouth. Tamarind is the answer: acid attacks the crystals, the paste is deliberately sour, and the long steam finishes what the acid begins. The sourness that now defines the dish began as a safety measure and has become the flavour anyone would name first. It is one of the clearer cases in this atlas of a technique inventing a taste. The dish belongs to more than one coast and changes its name as it goes. Gujarat calls it patra and makes it sweeter with jaggery; Maharashtra calls it alu vadi, from alu, the local name for the leaf, and makes it hotter and less sweet; the Konkan and coastal Karnataka call it patrode and frequently steam it in a different shape entirely. All three are the same idea and none of them is the original, because the leaf grows everywhere along that coast and the notion of spreading it with gram flour is unlikely to have occurred to one village only. It is monsoon food, made when the leaves are at their largest and most tender, and it belongs to the tiffin box, the festival plate, and the roadside snack stall in roughly equal measure.

Ingredients

Leaves

  • 12 large colocasia (arbi) leaves, stems and thick central ribs cut out

Paste

  • 250 g gram flour (besan)
  • 3 tbsp thick tamarind pulp
  • 50 g jaggery, grated
  • 2 tsp ginger and green chilli paste
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1.5 tsp red chilli powder
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 0.5 tsp ground cumin
  • 0.5 tsp asafoetida
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 150 ml water, approximately

Tempering

  • 4 tbsp neutral oil
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 2 tbsp white sesame seeds

To finish

  • 3 tbsp fresh coconut, grated
  • 3 tbsp coriander leaf, chopped

Method

  1. Wash the leaves and cut out the thick central rib of each with a knife held flat, taking care not to tear the leaf. Pat them dry.
  2. Lay each leaf face down and run a rolling pin firmly over the remaining veins to flatten them, which stops the roll cracking.
  3. Mix all the paste ingredients together, adding the water gradually, to a thick spreadable paste with the consistency of soft butter. Too thin and it will run out of the roll.
  4. Taste the paste. It should be assertively sour and noticeably sweet at once, because the tamarind is doing chemical work as well as culinary work.
  5. Lay the largest leaf face down, tip towards you, and spread it thinly and evenly with the paste, right to the edges.
  6. Set a second leaf on top facing the opposite way, spread it, and continue until you have stacked four leaves in alternating directions.
  7. Fold in both long sides by about 3cm, spread the folded edges with paste, then roll the whole stack up tightly from the base into a firm log.
  8. Repeat with the remaining leaves to make three logs, and smear each all over with the leftover paste.
  9. Steam the logs for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. They must be cooked through, since undercooked colocasia leaf will burn the mouth and throat.
  10. Let them cool completely. Slicing them warm will tear them; slicing them cold gives clean pinwheels.
  11. Cut the cooled logs into slices about 1.5cm thick.
  12. Heat the oil in a wide pan, crackle the mustard seeds, add the sesame seeds, and lay the slices in a single layer. Fry two or three minutes a side until the cut faces are crisp and browned.
  13. Scatter with coconut and coriander leaf and serve warm, with a sweet and sour chutney.

Notes

The tamarind is not merely a flavouring: acid breaks down the calcium oxalate in the leaf, and a patra made with a bland paste will scratch the throat however long it is steamed. Do not reduce it. Colocasia leaves are sold fresh in Indian grocers through the monsoon and summer months and frozen year round; choose young leaves, since old ones are tougher and more irritant. Wear gloves if your hands are sensitive to the sap. The steamed logs keep for four days refrigerated and freeze well, and many households steam in bulk and fry slices as needed, which is how the dish is generally eaten at home rather than all at once.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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