The khichdi conundrum

(From my food writing files, in honour of the weather, this August 2010 piece on khichdi, carried in the Business Standard.)


As the rain clouds settle in and the skies darken, a primitive instinct kicks in: like so many Indians, I must make or eat khichdi, preferably with the accompaniments, but at need, just the plain rice-and-dal dish that has travelled down to us from the time of the Vedas. (Note: There are recipes for rice dishes in the Upanishads, too, but they may have unintended consequences--see below.)

Khichdi is perhaps one of the universal Indian dishes, found in some form or the other across all regions; and yet it’s rarely found in restaurants, and outside of Bengal, khow-swey parties would be more common than khichdi parties. This is not so much household food as langar food, puja pandal food; it hasn’t yet migrated to coffee shop menus. (Given the number of road warriors who look eagerly for home-style food in their fancy hotels, I’m willing to bet it would be a hit if anyone took the plunge and introduced it.)

The closest equivalent to khichdi-on-the-menu is Karnataka’s Bisi Bele Bhath, a complex union of toor dar, rice, tamarind, spices and an assortment of vegetables that may have originated in its present form in the Mysore Palace. Bisi bele bhat enthusiasts will argue hotly over such minutiae as whether one can add green peas (no, say the purists, and I agree), what accompaniments may be served (none or an assortment of vegetable dishes, according to taste) and whether bisi bele bhat tastes even better reheated the next day (no, but it remains edible, unlike leftover sambar-rice).

The Bengali version of khichdi I grew up with had many variations: there was the soupy invalid dish that resembled nothing more than the gruel described in the grimmer work of Charles Dickens’, flavoured austerely with salt, and then there were the infinite variations on the grand “party dish”. Perhaps this is why khichdi doesn’t make it to restaurant menus: anyone can make an average khichdi, but it takes a master to blend the deceptively simple array of spices, lentils (roasted moong dal, the humble masoor), rice and vegetables to the correct pitch.

In that sense, a khichdi is closer to the paella than to the risotto: everything depends, not on the grain of the rice or the release of starch at the right moment, but at the cook’s ability to add in ingredients at just the right stage of cooking. It’s also a dish best made in quantity and served steaming hot; reheating dries out the lentil grains (my theory is that the tamarind sauce in bisi bele bhat makes it slightly more amenable to reheating than the classic khichdi/ khichuri).

Just a few restaurants in Calcutta offer khichdi—these used to be the old “canteen stalwarts”, formica tables, plastic chairs, the haunt of the working class clerk who will settle down in comfort, secure in the knowledge that the smart set will not invade his privacy. Kewpie Kitchen’s offers, in season, grand khichuri-thalis—platters of either hilsa-khichdi, meat curry-khichdi, or the not-to-be-despised niramish or vegetarian version. The accompaniments are classic. The purest of ghee is a must, and will be ladled on to khichuri in quantities that demolish any faint idea that this is a meal for the health-conscious.

Fried vegetables in besan batter—or in the case of aubergines, thinly sliced or cut in fat wedges and fried to an irresistible meatiness—will accompany the khichdi. As with the North Indian obsession with making different kinds of pakoras, delicacy and skill is everything: the highest praise is reserved, as the author Bulbul Sharma noted in her collection of food stories, the Anger of Aubergines, for single leaves of spinach lightly coated in besan batter, introduced briefly to a cauldron of hot oil, and flash-fried, in the same manner as parsley might be fried in the West. Meat and fish accompaniments are permissible, but not really classic.

Which brings me to another pet theory: the first restaurant to set itself up as a langar-specialist, bringing together Amritsar’s gurdwara classics alongside Bengal’s puja-pandal khichdi and labra and Kerala’s temple payasam will make a killing. All we need is the right backer, and a chef who understands the importance of the perfect plate of steaming-hot, delectable, nostalgia-laden khichdi.

The Upanishads on the cooking of rice:

Now, when the monthly sickness comes upon anyone's wife, for three days she should not drink from a metal cup, nor put on fresh clothes. Neither a low-caste man nor a low-caste woman should touch her. At the end of the three nights she should bathe and should have rice threshed.

14. In case one wishes, 'That a white son be born to me! that he be able to repeat a Veda! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice cooked with milk and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].

15. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a tawny son with reddish-brown eyes be born to me! that he be able to recite two Vedas! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice cooked with sour milk and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].

16. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a swarthy son with red eyes be born to me! that he be able to repeat three Vedas! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice boiled with water and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].


17. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a learned (pandita) daughter be born to me! that she attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice boiled with sesame and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [her].

A. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a son, learned, famed, a frequenter of council-assemblies, a speaker of discourse desired to be heard, be born to me! that he be able to repeat all the Vedas! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice boiled with meat and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him], with meat, either veal or beef.

On being fed by friends

Traditionally, it’s the women who do it. Mothers, aunts, grandmothers, wives, sisters, daughters, pouring their love and their frustrations into what they put on the plate; the extra sandesh, the meal that took six hours to cook and a week to plan.

Then we grew up, and moved out, and there were no more Mashimas or Nanis to supervise our kitchens, our tables. We learned to fend for ourselves, to pick out our own clothes, professions, sexual preferences and politics. Many of us worked very hard to escape the iron tyrannies of our respective family backgrounds, grown-ups in a constant state of teenage rebellion. Some left, to have their passports stamped with an independence that was among the many foreign luxuries that didn’t make their way to India. Some stayed and carved out a schizophrenic freedom, leading ghare-baire lives: one role for the home, one for the world.

But as we graduated from cheese-tomato-sauce sandwiches to seven-course catered or flamboyantly home-cooked meals, this one thing didn’t change; in times of trouble, we fed our friends, were fed by them.

Chicken in black pepper:

What you need for this one-pot meal is lots of roughly ground black pepper and lots of boneless chicken, also salt. Not too much oil; just make sure that the one big cooking pot you have is at the right heat, which is to say very hot. Let the black pepper sizzle, releasing its aromas. Add the chicken. Saute. Add water, add more black pepper and salt; simmer till done; serve on unmatched plates with newspaper for a tablecloth. This was what you cooked when you’d outgrown Maggi noodles, couldn’t afford real cooking, but could afford real friends, good conversation. One pot, thinned with enough water, thickened with enough banter and laughter, would stretch well into the long nights and tide you over the barsati power-cuts, the water shortages, the credit card debt and the thankless gruntwork of the jobs on the first rungs of a very long ladder.

Mangoes:

In Calcutta, mixed with flattened rice (cheera, poha) that had been soaked but not cooked and allowed to steep in plain yogurt or leftover mishti doi. Cheere-doi was what you ate when khichdi was unaffordable; the next stage would be cups of tea and cigarettes because you couldn’t afford real food, not till the tuition payments or the anorexic salary cheque came in next month. The mangoes—you need pulpy, sweet-tart ones for this dish—were what transformed humble cheere-doi from the quintessential poor-man’s-fodder to something that hinted at future sumptuousness, untold wealth. Even half a mango, or the scrapings off the stone, added to cheere-doi, would make you feel rich; to have that sweetness added to the daily struggle.

In Delhi, one Alfonso could stretch to milkshake for four, in the not-rich, not-poor days. Or it could be what a friend, just back from making a difficult decision, hollowed out inside, accepted when she couldn’t accept the invitations to talk: mango, sliced, on a plate, and quietness, and the company of a few friends was needed more than sympathy and verbal sharing. In later years we could buy them by the case. But that one mango you bought to share with three other friends, that first mango of the season, it tasted so good.

Soba noodles with prawns, buckwheat noodles with beef, cucumber and chili, miso soup:

In a time of some slight sadness and personal trouble, one of those dark winters that all of us go through at some time or the other and eventually emerge from, blinking into the light, my palate craved clean flavours, and my hands needed to keep busy.
This is what I cooked, for friends and office colleagues, over and over again, quiet, unspectacular meals that promised nourishment and lightness rather than gourmet entertainment.

Miso soup, with tiny cubes of tofu, seaweed stirring in the cloudy broth and rising to the surface. Cold soba noodles, in homemade stock with a sharp cleansing lemongrass tang, lightly steamed prawns. Buckwheat noodles or green tea noodles, heaped with thinly sliced meat or shiitake mushrooms, basil, mint and cilantro adding their freshness, red bird’s-eye chillis tamed between slices of vinegary-sweet cucumber.

There was nothing original about these meals, but they served their purpose; to ferry one across a bad time, into a better time. The satisfaction in making them was not the satisfaction of skill; it was of getting the timing right, the balance of ingredients right, and now it comes to me that cooking these very easy, very ordinary dishes were just a promise of future serenity, the possibility of balance.

Pasta, three ways:

Pasta has almost replaced khichdi or sambhar-rice as our version of comfort food. Years ago, a friend newly struggling with domesticity, adjusting to her first kitchen, made gigantic bowls of pasta with Kissan’s tomato ketchup and bits of paneer. Sensing that this might not be enough, she stirred in two packets of Haldiram’s dalmoth. It was the first time she’d ever cooked and it was the first-ever adult housewarming she’d had. In later years, she’d serve the usual staples, our decade's version of aspic and Caesar salads: clever pasta salads with avocado and shrimp, perfect linguine in homemade marinara sauce, farfalle with pine nuts and chorizo.

For now, there was this: undercooked pasta, raw to the tongue and dangerous to the tooth, the metallic tang of bottled ketchup, the dalmoth miserably mixing with the paneer. We watched her beaming as she set this out on a tablecloth crocheted for her by an aunt. We dug in, and asked for second helpings. It was as horrible as we’d feared, but she was so pleased, to be a hostess in her own home for the very first time.

Men who’ve been on their own do pasta really, really well. It’s not just their “girlfriend” dish; it’s what they pull out for old, good friends when there hasn’t been enough time to do the fancy bachelor dinner or to pick up cheese-salami-Kalamata olives. And perhaps they do know this, but they never entirely understand how relaxing it feels to be treated like a guest, to lean against the kitchen counter and watch someone else chop the onions and sauté red peppers and mushrooms for a change. To be cooked for, rather than cooking for: it’s a gift. We love it when they make the effort with the Moroccan-chicken tagine or the extra-special dal-gosht their mother taught them, but we love this too: pasta, cooked al dente, the sauce simmering alongside, ready and plated in half an hour, with or without a salad and good bread alongside.

You grow up, and you get to know chefs. And some of them become friends, and some of those friends will call you over because—why? They want to cook that night. Or their kitchen’s trying out new dishes. Or they want to introduce you to someone they think you’ll enjoy meeting. And you find yourself loving the tomato-mozzarella appetizers, the scallops and the Gorgonzola-cheese tenderloin, but slowing down for the pumpkin-stuffed ravioli.

You don’t do restaurant reviews any more, but that ravioli reminds you of a time when your city was just beginning to discover its palate, and when diners faced with ravioli stared at it in blank dismay and asked for macaroni-cheese, not this flattened momo stuff. It reminds you of the reactions to Indian nouvelle cuisine—where did the butter chicken go? Or the reactions to delicate Cantonese Chinese or the introduction of lethal Sichuan peppers: this was so not the chopsuey we knew and loved. Or sashimi, even, where people shuddered at the thought of eating raw fish. And what you love about your chef friends is that so many years later, some of them famous, some of them TV superstars, this is still what it comes down to for them. The love of feeding people, of making them taste something once new, now familiar, and feel replete.

Whether it’s Madhu Menon making braised pork for a crowd, or Ritu Dalmia—on this occasion—leaning her elbow on the table, watching our expressions, our reactions as we settle into the kind of openness and comfort that only good food can bring about among strangers, this compulsion to make people happy at the table is a chef thing. I’ve had stunningly inventive meals and spectacularly memorable ones. But there’s nothing like settling down to a meal where the chef’s goal isn’t to impress you—it’s to make you happy.

The ravioli is handmade, plump, buttery, the walnuts flash-fried to crispness, an elegant restaurant dish. And yet it comes from the same family as the store pasta I’ve eaten in so many friend’s kitchens: food intended to restore and comfort, cooked with simplicity and love.

Gluttony-II: Mocambo

Mocambo,
25-B Park Street, Kolkata, 700016
033 22172934


Chateaubriand steak for two. Sizzlers. Baked Alaska. Grilled Bekti. Prawn cocktail. Devils on horseback. What I love about Mocambo is that you can enjoy its impossibly recherche menu with no sense of irony: it's days of the Raj with a vengeance, from the smudgy paintings to the red leather couches in those trademark booths. You still find an odd assortment of characters here, from dedicated gluttons' clubs to jazz musicians who still sport the Dylan look.

Here are a few things to order at Mocambo's, just because you can.

1) Hors d'oeuvres for two: Though some of what's on offer comes perilously close to MFK Fisher's "disgusting vision... of soggy vegetables glued together with cheap mayonnaise", ask for this anyway. The asparagus--tinned, limp, a dubious shade of green, served with ersatz Edam--is dispiriting. But the Russian salad, tuna salad and prawn cocktail are grandly old-world, and very good--if heavy on the cream. And the slices of ham with hard boiled eggs and pickles are simple but excellent--there's enough here to make a filling meal on its own.

2) The steaks: If these were good enough for my late grandmother, who liked her beef but was picky about the quality of her steak, they're good enough for me. The waiter looks dourly at those who order their steaks well-done, and fetches off with the air of a man who will now ask the chef to pick out and broil a suitable shoe. Order yours medium-rare, though, and he will make sure you get a good bit of meat. The mushroom/ black pepper sauces are splendidly old-world, and in our beef-and-pork starved country, the ham steaks are suitably juicy, though I wish Mocambo's would run to an onion marmalade or a sharp mustard sauce instead of the tiresome Hawaiian sludge on offer.

3) The baked, devilled crab: Cholesterol unfriendly, but gloriously redolent of the days when pukka sahibs sacrificed their arteries in a good cause. Mocambo's has been known to eke out the crab with a pasty white sauce on days when they're full up, but arrive and order early, and you should get the real thing--heavy with cheese and cream, but generous with the crabmeat, and utterly irresistible.

4) The orange crepes/ the Baked Alaska: Like ghosts from the past, these two dishes come straight from nursery memories, and Raj-era cookbooks. Mocambo's Baked Alaska is huge, satisfyingly cold and not oversweet; the orange crepes have an uncompromising slice of generic vanilla ice cream fattening the middle, but offer a sharp, delectable sauce with classic pancakes.

One of these days, I fear that the Mocambos and Olympias of venerable Calcutta will have given way to new-wave restaurants with less gloom and more sharply contemporary menus. Before that dark day arrives, I hope to eat my way through the Mocambo menu, savouring each bite of nostalgia. The accompanying vegetables may be boiled to within an inch of their lives, the sizzlers might cremate whatever's on the platter, but stick to the old-fashioned stuff and you can't go wrong. Besides, where else would a four-course meal for six, drinks included, run to the risible sum of Rs 3,000?