potonthefire
Page 35
(adapted from Julie Sahni’sClassic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking )
[serves 4]
1 cupmoong dal, picked over and rinsed
½ cup long-grain rice, picked over and rinsed
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric, divided in half
1½ teaspoons salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 tablespoonsghee or vegetable oil
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and diced
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
½ teaspoon ground hot red pepper
Place themoong dal, rice, half the turmeric, and 1½ teaspoons salt in a heavy pot and pour over 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, stir once, lower the heat until the gruel just simmers, and cover. Cook for about 1 hour, or until the mixture is smooth and thick. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon during the last half hour of cooking to keep thekhichri from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Season to taste with black pepper.
Heat 2 tablespoons of theghee or vegetable oil and the remaining turmeric in a skillet over a medium-high flame, stirring constantly. When hot, add the potato cubes and fry these for about 5 minutes. Add the diced green pepper and, still stirring, cook until the peppers are wilted, another 5 minutes. Reduce the heat, cover, and cook until the potatoes are soft. Season to taste with salt and black pepper and transfer to a warm bowl.
Wipe the skillet clean, add the remaining 2 tablespoons ofghee, turn the heat back up to medium-high, and, when theghee is hot, add the cumin seeds. Fry them just until they begin to turn dark and release their aroma. Sprinkle over the hot pepper and immediately pour this mixture over thekhichri, cover for 1 minute, then mix well and serve in bowls, accompanied by the potatoes and peppers.
The next step in the evolution ofkhichri is its transformation into a pilaf. Madhur Jaffrey writes that this form ofkhichri is called “khili hui khichri khichri,” or“khichri that has bloomed,” since the rice is allowed to cook until it is dry and puffed up. Although still inexpensive to make, a khichri pilaf is a more “civilized” dish. The amount is fixed rather than flexible; it requires more skill and attention to make well; and, while Indians sometimes eat it as a simple repast with a salad of cucumbers dressed with yogurt, it is more often served as a side dish to a larger and more varied meal.
Lazy cooks prepare the beans and rice separately, stirring them together just before thekhichri is served. However, this not only breaks up the cooked rice kernels but impedes the subtle blend of flavors that is one of the pleasures of the dish—another being the contrast as the mouth encounters the smooth, waxy bits of bean among the softer, rough-textured grains of rice. As has already been mentioned, there is no set formula for the proportion of rice todal —and akhichri that is, say, half one and half the other is a very different dish from one that we offer here, in which the rice predominates and themoong dal is given the supporting role.
KHICHRI
[serves 4]
4 tablespoonsghee or vegetable oil
½ cupmoong dal, picked over and rinsed
1 cup long-grain rice, picked over and rinsed
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon whole cumin seeds
¼ teaspoon each ground turmeric and hot red pepper
crispy onion shreds (see pages 312–13)
4 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and sliced (optional)
Heat theghee or vegetable oil in a small skillet over a medium flame. When hot, add themoong dal and rice and fry, stirring constantly, for a few minutes. Add the salt, cumin seeds, turmeric, and hot red pepper, and continue stir-frying for another 2 minutes. Add 3 cups of water and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes. Then remove the pot from the heat and let stand, covered, for another 15 minutes. Serve warm, topped with the crispy onion shreds and garnished, if you like, with the rounds of hard-cooked eggs. (Many Indian cooks would sharply disagree with the addition of the hard-boiled eggs, which do not usually appear in recipes forkhichri. But they are an occasional and very tasty accompaniment and, as we shall see below, they open a door to one possible origin of the dish.)
Cook’s Note.Split peas, if substituted formoong dal, should be precooked for about 30 minutes; lentils, unless very small, for about 15 minutes. Use any remaining cooking liquid as part of the rice-water measurement.
Variation. Khichriwith fresh ginger and cashews: Add to the above list of ingredients a healthy pinch of ground clove, 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh ginger, and ½ cup coarsely chopped cashews, preferably raw. Divide theghee in half and use the first half to stir-fry themoong dal and rice as directed above, adding the clove and ginger at the same time as the turmeric and hot pepper. While thekhichri cooks, heat the remaining ghee in a small skillet over a medium flame. When hot, add the cashew pieces and cook until they are golden-colored and aromatic. Mix these into the finishedkhichri and serve topped with the crispy onion shreds.
CRISPY ONION SHREDS
If I had come away with nothing but this delicious fried garnish at the end of the explorations recounted here, I’d have still felt myself richly rewarded. The traditional use for these crisped onions is to lend a caramel color and sweet fried-onion flavor to sauces—the onion slivers, cooked to a crackly dark brown all through, will dissolve when stirred into hot water. A generous handful on top of a bowl of the simplestkhichrior mujaddarahcan make it into a satisfying repast, and once you master the recipe you will almost surely find that crispy onion shreds will become an integral part of your cooking.
This method takes pointers from Julie Sahni’sClassic Indian Cooking,Copeland Marks’s The Varied Kitchens of India, and Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking.While the concept is quite simple, the trick is never to let any of the onions actually burn, since this will impart an acrid taste to the dish. (I remember a pot roast recipe from my youth famous for the flavor that burned onions gave to it during the long cooking. I was unimpressed. Now I understand that the idea was to stop just this side of burning.) Like Cajun cooks, Indian cooks push the envelope, trying to get the onions super crackling brown. Resist the temptation to hurry things by cranking up the heat. Be patient and alert, turning the onions gently and continuously with a spatula so that they cook evenly. Then whisk them out of the pan the moment they are done.
3 large onions
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
½ cup peanut or other frying oil
Peel the onions but leave the root ends untrimmed. With a razor-sharp knife, cut them into the thinnest possible rings, starting from the end opposite the root end (this will hold the onion intact). When the onion becomes too small to slice thin, discard the remnant.
Toss the onion rings with the salt in a bowl, making sure the rings are all separated. Let rest for 15 minutes. Then spread them on paper towels and cover with another layer of towels. Press firmly to remove as much liquid as possible.
Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion rings and turn with a spatula until all are coated with oil. Continue turning them gently as they cook. First they will release any remaining moisture, then wilt, and then begin to turn brown. Watch them carefully at this point, stirring all the time, until they are a deep-colored reddish brown, with darker brown (but not black) bits. Then quickly remove the pan from the heat and, with a spatula or slotted spoon, scoop the onions out onto a plate. From there, scatter them over paper towels and let them drain for 15 minutes. When they have cooled, they should be very crispy.
Cook’s Note.These onions can be used at once or kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days. Larger batches can be frozen until needed. Copeland Marks points out that the frying oil now has an aromatic onion flavor and can be reused to good purpose.
2
Their ordinary diet [is] kitsery, which they make of Beans pounded, and Rice, which they boile together. Then they put thereto a little Butter melted.
—
John Davies (1662)
Khichrican at times seem almost as central to Indian national identity as the Upanishad, and Indian food writers can be fiercely possessive about it. Certainly, it is an ancient dish. As early as 1340, Arab travelers described it much as it is now—“a dish of rice cooked withdal, usually that ofmoong .” At least one Indian food historian places its origin in the kingdom of Gujarat, now an Indian state, which lies just north of Bombay and south of Pakistan, with a coastline on the Arabian Sea.
If you go to read about Gujarat, one of the first things you are told is that this is where the Parsi settled when, long ago, they first arrived in India. Although these people were familiar to me as members of an Indian religious sect that had provided the British Raj with a corps of skilled government administrators, I didn’t realize until I began reading aboutkhichri that the wordParsi actually means “Persian.”
In the eighth century, when Islam swept into Persia and began to extirpate the religion of the Zoroastrians, many of these persecuted believers fled east into the area that is now Pakistan. Eventually, when this refuge, too, became threatened by the Moslem advance, a group of Parsi set out from the port of Hormuz in seven junks, sailing first to the island of Diu and then to the mainland, which was even then called Gujarat. There, agreeing that their men would bear no arms and their women would don the sari, they were given a tract of sterile land, which, according to some early writers, they turned into a “garden of heaven.”
Over the centuries, the Parsi evolved from a farming folk into an increasingly urbanized, artisanal class of weavers and carpenters and, eventually, merchants. Although they are now scattered all over India, their largest community—about eighty-five thousand people—resides in Bombay, with a much smaller one in Calcutta. They continue to follow the teachings of Zoroaster, a creed based on “good thought, good word, and good deed,” worshiping in fire temples and burying their dead in towers of silence.
The Parsi have a distinctive cuisine, one that exhibits a Persian taste for nuts and dried fruit. They also have a rich repertoire of egg dishes and a long tradition of combining legumes with rice. According to the Indian food historian K. T. Achaya, in Persia they used therajmah bean, but in India they abandoned it for the lentil.
Did the Parsi introducekhichri to India? If so, I’ll probably be the last to know. The important thing is that as this suspicion—and a suspicion is all it is—began to grow, I again felt one of those little seismic tremors, a moment or two of that delicious sense of certainty dissolving into mystery. Or, not to be so romantic about it, into amess … into akhichri. Because, whatever else you want to say, here is one of those subversive dishes whose goodness and appeal quietly goes about undermining nationalistic ossessiveness.
Of course, every culture that has encountered rice and beans has learned to put them together in single dish. That the inhabitants of Osaka and New Orleans both sit down to red beans and rice doesn’t mean the two dishes are the same. In other instances, however, the family resemblance is obvious. When Middle Eastern food writers discuss the rice-and-lentil dish that today is mostly known by the Arabic wordmujaddarah (as we shall spell it), they can matter-of-factly note, as Arto der Haroutunian does inMiddle Eastern Cookery, that “it is known askitry in Iraq,adas pollo in Iran,muaddas in the Gulf States, and in far away India askhichri. ”
India, as we are learning, wasn’t allthat far away, even hundreds of years ago. Sometime after the Parsi emigrated, the Mongols united Persia and India into part of a single kingdom. There, the Moghul emperor Akbar the Great was so entranced by the taste ofkhichri that it (or, rather, a highly elaborated version of it) became a favorite palace dish. Much later still, in the late sixteenth century, Sephardic Jews began to emigrate in large numbers from Baghdad to Calcutta. Even more than the Parsi, these newcomers were drawn to Indian flavorings. Copeland Marks describes it inThe Varied Kitchens of India as “love at first sight,” and the resultant melding of their cuisines as a “culinary marriage between the cooking of Baghdad and that of Calcutta.”
One Indian dish that they immediately took to waskhichri. Gradually, it began to make its way to the parent Sephardic community in Baghdad, where, as Claudia Roden told us, “Iraqi Jews … ate it every Thursday night as part of a meatless meal to prepare their stomachs for the rich Friday night meal.” It then spread from Baghdad Sephardic kitchens to neighboring Moslem ones, where it was received with such approval—the shade of Akbar the Great must have smiled—that it is today perceived as an Iraqi, not a Sephardic, dish.
In an essay read at the 1984 Oxford Cookery Symposium, Sami Zubaida rememberskhichri as a favorite dish from his boyhood in a Jewish household in Baghdad. Most Iraqi main dishes, he notes, combine at least some meat with such dairy products as yogurt and butter, something forbidden to Jews.
Khichriwas the only “proper” main dish which had no meat, and as a result all dairy products were lavishly used: not only was it cooked in butter but melted butter was added at the table; yoghourt was used as a sauce and as an accompanying drink; and as an extra refinement, fried slices of cheese would also be added on occasion.Khichri then was a culinary compromise in the clash between the general culture and the subculture. It rectified a deprivation and as such becomes a remarkable dish, a candidate for inclusion in the Ideal Cook Book!
Here, slightly adapted, is Zubaida’s very buttery Sephardic version ofkhichri.
KHICHRI AL-BAGHDADI
[serves 4]
8 ounces (about 1½ cups) long-grain rice
8 ounces (about 1½ cups) red “Egyptian” lentils (see note)
4 to 6 ounces (8 to 12 tablespoons) butter orghee
4 to 6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 to 2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon tomato purée
salt to taste
OPTIONAL GARNISH:
1 onion
2 tomatoes
4 ounces Haloumi cheese (see note)
more butter orghee
Rinse the rice and lentils separately and soak in cold water, rice for 30 minutes, lentils for 1 hour. Melt half the butter orghee in a saucepan and gently fry the minced garlic for a few minutes, or until soft and translucent. Add the cumin and fry for another minute. Mix in the drained rice and lentils (if using larger lentils, it might be wise to boil these for 10 minutes before adding to the rice), and sauté these for a few minutes in the hot butter. Add the tomato purée and mix well. Pour in water to cover by about half an inch, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil on a high flame, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered until the li-quid is absorbed. When only a few bubbles remain on the surface of the rice-lentil mixture, cover tightly and allow to steam over a very low flame for another 15 minutes. Turn out onto a platter. Cut the remaining butter into pieces and distribute it over the hotkhichri.
For the garnish: Cut the onion into thin rings and the tomatoes and cheese into slices. Melt more butter orghee in a skillet and fry the onion rings over medium heat until they begin to brown. Place the cheese slices on top of the onions. When these turn soft, lay the tomatoes on top of them. Continue frying until the tomatoes soften. Then slip the contents of the pan on top of thekhichri before serving.
Cook’s Notes.Red lentils are available at Middle Eastern and natural foods stores. Interestingly, Zubaida says his own preference for this dish is the Indian splittur dal (alsotoor dal ortoovar dal ), which although called a lentil in India is, in fact, the pigeon pea—unknowin gly, he has devised an Iraqi version of rice and peas!
Haloumi is a hard Middle Eastern cheese. An aged Gruyère is a possible substitute, but the Greek cheese Kefalotyri, if available, would be an even better one.
Sephardic Jews, by the way, brought khichri to other parts of Asia as well. Copeland Marks told us that “the Jews of Uzbekistan combine rice and mung beans and call it îkhirch-iree.’” They consider it a Chinese import!
Mujaddarahshares many characteristics withkhichri, including the fact that it is prepared both as a thickcongee o
r gruel, where it is eaten like hummus, and as a pilaf, where it is cooked until dry and eaten as a side dish. And it resonates in Arab cuisine with similar evocative force. As Claudia Roden recalls inA Book of Middle Eastern Food:
It is such a great favorite that although said to be for misers, it is a compliment to serve it. An aunt of mine used to present it regularly to guests with the comment, “Excuse the food of the poor!”—to which the unanimous reply always was: “Keep your food of kings and give usmujaddarah every day!”
Although Arab cooks vary the proportion of rice to lentils, the recipes are astonishingly consistent in their simplicity, whether they come from Saudi Arabia or Lebanon; mujaddarah seems not to be elaborated into the extravagant variations that Indian cooks have devised for khichri. However, in areas where rice is expensive or not a traditional grain, bulgur is used instead. The following recipes are good examples of the congee and pilaf styles of mujaddarah.
MUJADDARAH (1)
(adapted from Mary Laird Hamady’sLebanese Mountain Cookery )
[serves 4 as a meal, 8 as a side dish]
cup olive oil
2 large onions, sliced thin
1 tablespoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup short-grain rice, picked over and rinsed
2 cups lentils, picked over and rinsed
olive oil for drizzling
ACCOMPANIMENTS:
pita bread, slivered scallions, radishes, lemon wedges, ground black pepper
Prepare crispy onion shreds as directed on pages 312–13, but remove only half of the browned onions from the pan. Add ½ cup of water to the onions in the pan and stir until the water is absorbed. Return to the heat and stir in another ½ cup of water. Let this simmer until it is almost absorbed and add a final ½ cup. The onions should now be reduced to a sauce. Stir in the salt, pepper, rice, and lentils, and add 1½ quarts of water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 hour, or until the consistency is very thick, like oatmeal. Remove from the heat, put in a serving dish, and let cool to room temperature. Drizzle with olive oil and serve with the accompaniments, including the reserved crispy onion shreds.