Veg Momos

Throughout the lockdown, I have felt quite happy at home. I feel there’s no place I would rather be. Just that it would be awesome if my home was on a farm or better still in the mountains.

So my way to bring the mountains to my haven in the not-so-bustling-anymore city of New York is by making some momos and chai.

When Neel and I went to Assam and Sikkim, we thrived on momos and Thupka for breakfast and dinner at our hotel. During the day we we would go on hikes and excursions and mostly ended up eating spicy maggi from roadside stalls and that was lunch. Of Course for me, the exquisite tea there was an accompaniment with every meal and a couple more cups in between 😛 !

L: My Daily breakfast in Sikkim/ Assam – Momos and Thupka;
R: Neel and Me at Lake Tsongmo

I can never make up my mind between chicken momos and Veg momos, I think I like both! The recipe below is for Veg momos, and here’s the one for Chicken momos.

You will need:

For the outer coating/ Dough:

2 cup all purpose flour/ Maida (I used 1 cup APF and 1 cup atta, hence the color is not as white)

Salt to taste

Water as required

For the Veg filling:

1 cup finely chopped cabbage

1/2 cup finely chopped carrots

1/2 cup finely chopped green onions

1/4 cup chopped coriander

salt to taste

1 tsp dark soy sauce

1.5 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

1-2 tsp finely chopped green chillies – optional

For the Momos Chutney:

2 large tomatoes – chopped tomatoes

6-8 dried red chilies – soaked in hot water for 1 hour

Salt to taste

3-4 garlic cloves

Procedure:

Mix the flour, water and salt and knead into a soft pliable dough. Let it rest for at least 20 minutes.

Finely chop the veggies – I chopped mine in my food processor, as my FP is very powerful and chops veggies very finely without juicing them.
Add salt to the veggie mix and let it sit for 15-20 minutes
Squeeze out all the excess water. You can use this water to make thupka or veg clear soup. You can find the recipe for the soup here.

Add all the rest of the ingredients for the filling to the veggie mixture.
After resting the dough, lightly dust a surface with some flour and take manageable portions of the dough at a time and roll it out thin. I made 4 balls from my dough. The size would depend on how large your rolling surface is.

The thickness should be about 1-2 mm not thicker than that.
With a cookie cutter cut circles – about the size of your palm
In the center of each circle place about a tablespoon of the veggie filling and seal the edges to shape a momo.
There are many different designs you can make. Choose whichever is convenient and easy. I like this one because its very easy, stands up stably in the steamer and can hold a lot of filling!

While making the monos, start heating water in your steamer. You can either use an idli steamer or steam it on a flat strainer placed over a boiling pot of water.
Light oil the surface that comes in contact with the momos place the Nokia spaced apart as they puff and expand as they steam.
Steam the momos for 15- 20 minutes in the steamer.