Yeh Mera Dill … [Dukkah-crusted Dill Potato Croquettes Stuffed with Cottage Cheese]

I’m in love with a weed called dill.

With it’s spray bouquet of yellow baby’s breath flowers, its feathery leaves, its versatile flavor that seems a perfect companion to potatoes and chutneys and fish and yogurts and cheeses alike.

Dill widely used in Kannadiga and Maharashtrian cuisines (where it’s called sabbasige soppu and suwa, respectively). So when I travel to these other realms, my dill [Hindi for “my heart”] is what I bring home. I think I love it all the more because dill isn’t native to Pondicherry and is scarce here; for all the broccolis and strawberries that arrive here from elsewhere, dill is fragile and doesn’t well withstand such journeys–it barely survives mine. Local shopkeepers will try to substitute fennel fronds for dill, so buyers beware. Rub leaves between your fingers to test for the scent of fennel, and know that real dill here is almost never available.

During Pondicherry’s few cooler growing months, dill reigns queen over our kitchen garden, allowed to grow wild and with free abandon like few other things are. Her leaves are carefully rationed, and, unlike all our severely curtailed basils, she’s allowed to bolt into blossom so we have seeds for the next planting cycles.

Dill goes into our dals, our rices, our khichdis, our parathas (along with potato) — and now into our cutlets.

Here’s how you make them.

There’s a panneer or cottage cheese filling, which I crumble and mix with minced onions, and crushed roasted cumin. That gets shaped into little balls or urundaigal as we say in Tamil, like so:

As much dill as you please gets mashed with boiled potatoes, asafoetida powder, turmeric powder, and salt. Then hand-formed into little patties, which encase the panneer/cottage cheese balls like so:

Then the little croquette gets flattened a little and rolled about in a breadcrumb-dukkah mixture like so:

Haven’t yet encountered this spice mix called “dukkah“? Prepare to have your life changed when you find the recipe here.

Finished stuffing and shaping your potato croquettes? You’ll wind up with a series of these:

Which you’ll pan-fry until they look like these:

And sit back to savour with mint chutney (as pictured) or really just no chutney at all. Dill weed flavors are enough to see you through to the next one, and the next one. And maybe then just one more.

Yeh mera dil… [Here here, my heart…]