Kamala Khan is just an ordinary, adorkable American teenager from Jersey City, who loves comics and writing fan fiction…until she discovers that she herself has inhuman genes which give her superhuman powers! She’s a shapeshifter in scale, who can stretch her arms and legs and change her size. With this discovery Ms Marvel is born, and Kamala’s ordinary life becomes an adventure.
Kamala came on the scene around the same time my daughter Zoeya took an interest in comics – and she is the perfect role model. Created by Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, incredibly well-written by G. Willow Wilson and brought to life by artist Adrian Alphona, she’s the first Muslim to headline a Marvel comic, and a first generation Pakistani American. In addition, Kamala is nerdy and spastic and smart and goodhearted and powerful, a complex heroine that little girls like Zoeya can aspire to.
I had a lot of fun collaborating with Jamie from The Comic Vault to come up with this menu for his Comic Kitchen series in which he imagines three course meals inspired by characters. I had a lot of ideas around typical Pakistani dishes, and his thought was to combine that with food your typical American teenager would be into. So here we have a samosa starter with cute little lightning bolts, a main course of shami kebab burgers with cheese and shiitake bacon (no pork! That “delicious, delicious infidel meat”) with pakora fries, and a dessert of jalebi, a Pakistani street food as polymorphous as Ms Marvel’s stretchy arms and fists.
As the final course of our Ms Marvel menu, Jalebi seemed appropriate – it’s as stretchy and winding and polymorphous as her limbs, and a fun Pakistani street food besides. It’s basically a funnel cake, but after frying the dough is soaked in a cardamom rose syrup that takes it to the next level.
I’ve eaten it many times before, sometimes fresh and sometimes from a shop, but this was my first time making them. I didn’t get them nicely coiled, but they are delightfully tangled and the cardamom rose flavor is just lovely.
For the jalebi
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons corn flour
1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 cup water
pinch baking soda
food coloring (usually yellow or orange, but I used red)
oil for frying
Heat several inches oil in a pot or wok. Mix ingredients well and put in a pastry bag. When the oil is hot, pipe into the hot oil in circles, starting with the outside going in. Fry until golden, and remove into a pan of sugar syrup (below).
For the sugar syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
seeds of 2 cardamom pods
2 teaspoons rosewater
In a wide pan, heat sugar and water until all sugar is melted, swirling occasionally to dissolve. Add cardamom pods and rosewater. Keep very warm but not boiling.
Once the dough is in the syrup, let it sit 30 seconds or so on each side and remove to a plate. Cool and serve warm or room temperature.
Spicy, savory shami kebabs make awesome burgers, and go just as well with ketchup as they do with green chutney. It seemed like the perfect thing to make as a main course for our Ms Marvel menu, Pakistani food that an American teenager can get excited about. And since on the very first page of the comic we find our heroine drooling over “delicious, delicious infidel meat,” I thought I’d make some shiitake bacon that everyone from Muslims to vegetarians can enjoy – because we have both in our house.
In fact, though I’ve made Chef Vah’s shami kebabs many times (delicious, and I love how excited he gets about food in his videos), since we’ve shifted to eating vegetarian at home I decided to convert these to meatless. They have double the chana dal, and are well-spiced with jammy tomatoes and soy sauce to up the umami. They came out zabardast! Chef’s kiss!
And duh, pakoras are the best, who can turn down fried potatoes?
Half of a 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes (or 2-3 romas, diced)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon red chili (lots more if you’re not cooking for kids or wimps)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Salt to taste
Handful mint, chopped
1-2 tablespoons besan (chickpea flour), optional
1 egg
Cook chana dal in 2 cups of water until soft, adding more water if necessary.
Meanwhile, heat ghee and cook onion until very golden brown. Add garlic and ginger and stir for a minute or two, then add tomatoes, cumin, coriander, garam masala, turmeric, red chili and soy sauce. Cook until tomatoes are completely broken down and jammy. Add dal and mint into the pan and warm through.
Transfer everything to a food processor and pulse until well combined. Don’t over mix, and don’t worry if there are unmashed lentils, a little texture in these is nice. Transfer to a mixing bowl and mix with a spatula. If the mixture is very wet, add a tablespoon or two of besan to help them hold together. They will be delicate, but once cooked they should hold together fine.
Heat a few tablespoons ghee, and mix an egg on a plate with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of water. Make patties from the lentil mixture, dip both sides in the egg, and fry on both sides until golden brown. You can rewarm these in the oven before serving if necessary.
Serve alone with green chutney, or on buns with a slice of cheese, ketchup, and shiitake bacon!
Whisk together olive oil, salt, liquid smoke, sesame oil, and smoked paprika. Toss shiitakes with the mixture and marinate for at least 20 minutes.
Heat oven to 350°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange mushrooms in a single layer. Bake for 10 minutes, flip, then bake 15 minutes more. Increase heat to 375°, flip, and bake 10 minutes more. Serve hot.
For the pakora fries
1 cup besan (chickpea flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon red chili
1 large Russet potato
oil for frying
Mix together besan, salt, coriander seeds and red chili. Mix in enough water to make a medium thick batter. Peel the potato and cut into batons and place in the batter to coat.
Heat an inch or so of oil. Fry the potatoes in batches, turning gently, until golden and cooked through. Drain on a paper towel and serve hot with mint chutney or ketchup.
Samosas are one of those foods that are easy to buy but fun to make at home, even if they are a little labor intensive. You just have to put yourself in the mindset of it being a compliment that the dish you spent forever working on gets gobbled up in seconds. They’re universally popular, and can be filled with all kinds of yummy ingredients – tandoori chicken, keema, or fluffy potatoes. These particular ones have a mixture of chickpeas, carrots and peas that are lightly spiced and delicious with chutneys.
Since these were for our Ms Marvel menu, I made some very cute little lightning bolts for the outside of some of the samosas. I had no idea how they’d turn out – I’d made samosas before but this part was a pure experiment. I colored the dough for the lightning bolts yellow with turmeric which turned out to be wholly unnecessary as they got nice and toasty brown; they looked great regardless!
1/2 teaspoon nigella seeds (kalonji, or black seed)
2 tablespoons flavorless oil
1/4 cup warm water
Whisk together flour, salt, nigella seeds, and oil to sandy crumbs. Pour in water, and form into a ball. Knead on a floured surface until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Set aside in a bowl covered with a damp towel.
For the filling
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 large carrot, diced
1/2 cup peas
1-2 tablespoons flavorless oil
3 green onions, sliced, white and green divided
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon red chili
salt to taste
Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil. Add chickpeas and carrots and simmer until carrots are soft. Add peas and cook another minute, then drain and rinse with cold water.
Meanwhile, heat oil and gently saute the whites of the onions. Add cumin, coriander, and red chili and cook for a minute until fragrant. Add in the drained chickpeas, carrots, and peas and cook until mixture is fairly dry. Transfer to a food processor and pulse, scraping down the sides, until mixture is combined but not homogenous and still has lots of texture.
To assemble samosas
Several inches of oil for frying
Heat oil on medium in a pot or wok (I like using a wok, you get more surface area and need less oil).
Optional, pinch off a piece of the dough to use for lightning bolts. I colored this with turmeric, but I’ll skip this step next time as it gets browned too much to tell. Divide remaining dough into 12 balls. Keep them on a plate covered with a damp towel so they don’t dry out while you work.
Roll each ball out to about 6 inches and slice down the center so you have two semicircles. Fold the sides of the semicircle to the center of the curved side to form a triangle, and seal with water. Hold the dough in your hand to make a cone, and fill with a spoon or two of the filling. Roll the open side together and seal with water. You can reshape your samosa to a triangle at this point. (And if this all sounds crazy, watch this video at about 9:30 for folding technique).
Fry in batches, turning, until golden brown. Drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Serve hot with green chutney, tamarind chutney, yogurt, or ketchup!
