Kashundi biscuits

Some time back I had the opportunity to cook with something called a Pommery crumble which I discovered was like a biscuit or crumble dough flavoured with mustard. Intrigued by the taste, I wondered if I could do the same thing using kashundi. Kashundi as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, is a pungent mustard sauce very common in Bengali cuisine.

There was only one way to find out. So I took my very basic biscuit dough recipe – 1 part flour, 1/2 part butter,  about 1 tablespoon of kashundi and balanced it with a bit of salt and sugar. Chilled it for a while, rolled in out and baked it for 15 minutes. The taste was surprisingly good…very more-ish. And the texture firm yet crumbly.

• 110g plain flour
• 55g butter, chilled
• 1 1/2 tbsp kashundi
• pinch of salt (to taste)

Method:

Take a medium sized bowl and add the flour into the bowl. Cube the butter and add to the flour. Gently mix the butter into the flour till it resembles crumbs. Now add the kashundi sauce and salt and mix well. The addition of kashundi should help form the mixture into a dough. If the kashundi is dry, you can add a little cold water to help form a dough. Don’t add extra kashundi, else the dough and resulting biscuits will become too pungent. Cover the dough with clingfilm and keep it in the fridge to chill for at least 30 mins to 1 hour.

Take two baking papers of an equal size (roughly A3, but depends on the width of your baking paper). Flour the baking paper gently. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it between the baking papers. Given the heat in Singapore, this helps me roll out the dough without having it stick to the rolling pin.

If you want round biscuits, gently start rolling the dough out till you get to roughly 1/2cm thickness. Then using biscuit cutters of any size you prefer, punch out the biscuits. Round up the remaining dough (which now looks like a sheet with holes all over) and bring it together to form a dough again. Repeat the rolling and cutting process one more time. To avoid leaving too much uncut dough, cut the circles as close to possible.

If you want rectangular biscuits, roll the dough out gently into an even sized square/rectangular shape. I find that if I fold the baking papers at the end and roll the dough out so that it fills the pocket created by the baking paper, it gives me an even sized square or rectangle. Then depending on how good you are with judging size (which sometimes is a challenge for me!), I either cut rectangular sized biscuits or I use a ruler to get a more precise rectangle.

Once you have cut the dough into the shape you want, chill it in the fridge for 15 mins. Because of the heat, trying to handle the biscuits at this stage usually results in some wonkiness. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 180 degree celcius.

After 15 mins, place the cut biscuits on your baking tray, lined either with silpat or baking paper, and place the tray in the middle rack of the oven (My oven does not have a gas mark, so I go with the temperature & timer) The biscuits should take about 10-12 mins to bake and you’re looking for a nice golden colour only. Don’t let them go over on the colour, else they start to taste unpleasant.

Once baked, take them out of the oven and let them cool for 10 mins. After that I gently remove them and keep them on wire rack or plate to cool down completely.

Priya