From our Permit Room menu to your own kitchen, this hot and flaky pastry puff is heartily filled with Keralan pepper-fry chicken. Warm, spicy and deeply delicious: this tasty little parcel is a firm Irani bakery favourite.
Dishoom Permit Room pays homage to the permit rooms of 1970s Bombay, which sprang up after the 1949 Prohibition Act made licences mandatory to get a drink in the city. Alongside stiff local booze, crunchy chakli and savoury-spicy delicacies were a must – to be washed down nicely by soft-eyed patrons.
METHOD
Step 1
Prepare dry masala.
Dry-roast masala ingredients in a pan. Let cool, then grind into a powder.
Step 2
Cook pepper fry masala.
Heat oil, then add mustard seeds, red chillies, and curry leaves. Add onions and cook until golden brown. Add ginger and garlic paste, cook for 5 minutes. Add powdered spices (including 1 tsp dry masala), and cook until oil separates. Add tomatoes, then cook until dissolved and oil separates.
Step 3
Prepare chicken.
Sauté chicken in oil with salt until fully cooked and browned. Add pepper fry masala and cook until thick – no water should remain. Set mixture aside to cool.
Step 4
Assemble chicken puffs.
Place 4 tbsp of chicken mixture on each puff pastry square. Fold and seal edges with a fork. Apply egg wash.
Step 5
Bake.
Place puffs on a baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for around 15 minutes. Serve hot with any dipping sauce of choice. (A little tamarind or chill chutney would be very good, but in Bombay you would eat them with good old tomato ketchup.)
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