A nation-spanning meal: Soup to sweets

Editor’s Note: These recipes are taken from Nobel-prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee’s ‘Cooking to Save Your Life’. This makes for an unusually erudite cookbook—that offers riffs on Karl Marx, Bengali vegetarian cooking and why soup is so consoling. All of this is interspersed with helpful tips for the everyday cook. The following 4 recipes borrow from the culinary traditions of Gujarat, Bengal and Andhra and have been excerpted with permission from ‘Cooking to Save Your Life’ by Abhijit Banerjee, published by Juggernaut.

A delicious soup: Khurdi 

This is a wonderful ‘winter soup’ from Gujarat on the west coast of India, where, as far as I can tell, there is no winter, besides being a meat soup from an area that is very much the epicentre of vegetarianism in India. It is stylish, rich and easy to make, but it needs someone who likes the rich, sweet, meatiness of cooked lamb. Make it for a weekend TV dinner. And tuck into it with your partner in crime (and taste). You might not need much more to fill you up. But maybe some melting masala cheese toast won’t be too much of an overkill?

Ingredients:

3⁄4 kg mutton from the neck, or 500 gm from the shoulder (if you don’t like lamb, use beef – oxtail, for example) 

1 tbsp grated garlic

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 onion, peeled and sliced, about a cup. The slices can be as thick as your pinkie.

4 cups water

2 1 /2 tbsp ghee or butter

2 heaped tbsp whole wheat flour

1 tsp cumin seeds

2" x 1 /4" cinnamon stick

5 cloves

6 cardamom seeds

8 black peppercorns

2 cups whole milk

2 tbsp lemon juice

18 or so mint leaves, separated

1 1 /2 tsp salt, plus to taste

Method: 

1. Pressure cook the lamb with the onion, garlic, ginger and water for 12 minutes (you start counting from when the steam starts coming out) or boil together at medium-low heat for 30 minutes.
2. Fish out the lamb pieces with a slotted spoon and leave them on a platter to cool.
3. When cool enough to handle (15 minutes is plenty), using a knife and a fork, or your fingers, extract about 6 tbsp of meat, making sure not to mash it up too much. Save those. 
4. Now put the rest of the meat and the bones back in the pot and pressure cook for another 12 minutes (or boil for 30 minutes). Once done, strain the stock and save.
5. Fifteen minutes before you need to serve the soup, heat 1 tbsp butter in a small frying pan at medium-high heat and fry the saved pieces of lamb for 2 minutes to release their fragrance. Set aside.
6. Next, put the rest of the ghee in a heavy-bottomed saucepan that can hold at least 8 cups of liquid at medium-high heat and when it is hot, throw in the spices.
7. Give them a minute to release their fragrance, and then add the flour, and reduce the heat to low. 
8. Keep stirring the flour with a long-handled spoon or a whisk, so that it does not burn, for about 3 minutes. 
9. When you smell the slightly nutty odour of roasted flour (trust me, you will notice it), add the milk, whisking all the time to make sure that no lumps form. Next, add the stock and salt.
10.  Leave it all to heat through (about 5 minutes) and you see vapours rising. Remove from heat, mix in the lemon juice and taste for salt. 
11. Serve in six small pretty bowls, garnished with lamb pieces and three mint leaves each.

A vegetarian main dish: Ponirer Dalna

Those who only know paneer as the inoffensive white cheese that shows up in Indian restaurants, often enrobed in melted spinach, would be surprised to know that it was once something of a battlefield. In the mid-1990s, when I first started spending time in Rajasthan, vegetarians lived on proteins sourced from various dried beans. By the end of the next decade, just as the vegan revolution was starting to gather force in the West, Rajasthan had moved to paneer. The traditional vegan protein sources were harder and harder to find in restaurants—and the local intelligentsia was complaining about Punjabi food imperialism. Milk-abundant Punjab, further to the north, was the fount of the eating culture that was very obviously winning hearts and minds all over India (and abroad), and paneer was very much at the heart of it. 

I am not entirely sure where I stand in this debate. On the one side, I think change is normal. It is hard to imagine Italian food before tomatoes, hot pepper flakes and pasta, or Punjabi food before potatoes, chillies and tomatoes, but these are all imports, often of relatively recent vintage. On the other hand, I find paneer infuriatingly bland, which is why I am only adding a paneer dish at the very end of this section after it was pointed out that I had an entire cookbook without mentioning the P-word. Here is a Bengali way to prepare paneer, though purists would point out that paneer, as in the pressed chunks of cottage cheese (as against cottage cheese itself), is a recent intruder into Bengali cuisine. The technique is very Bengali and is used for everything from raw jackfruit to eggs.

Ingredients: 

300 gm paneer, or roughly the same amount of tofu or tempeh or even 6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled

1 large potato or 2 small ones (about 200 gm)

4 + 2 tbsp canola/sunflower/vegetable oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 bay leaves

1 cup chopped tomatoes with all the juices ( from one very large tomato or multiple smaller ones. The pieces should be no bigger than the tip of your finger.)

1⁄2 tsp turmeric

1⁄2 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp salt, plus more to taste

1 1 /2 tsp sugar

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 tbsp ghee

1 tsp ground garam masala

Method: 

1. Cut the paneer, tofu or tempeh into 1 cm cubes (1 cm is about the length of a segment of an adult finger). 
2. Peel but don’t cut the eggs, if using eggs. Sprinkle with 1⁄4 tsp salt. Cut peeled potatoes into roughly similar-sized chunks. Sprinkle with 1⁄4 tsp salt.
3. Heat 4 tbsp canola oil in a wok at medium-high and fry the paneer (tofu, tempeh, eggs) till they start to turn red (eggs will blister) about 4 minutes. 
4. Turn off the heat and fish out the paneer with a slotted spoon; set out on paper towels to dry a bit. 
5. Return the wok to the heat and fry the potatoes, tossing so that they get gently browned. Another 4 minutes or so. Remove the wok from the heat and then transfer the potatoes onto paper towels with a slotted spoon. Discard the oil (or you can pour it through a strainer and then reuse it) and wipe the wok.
6. Heat 2 tbsp canola oil in the wok at medium-high. Throw in the bay leaves and cumin seeds and after a minute add the tomato, turmeric, salt, cumin powder and chilli powder.
7. Fry actively, crushing the tomato pieces to make a sauce. This should take about 4 minutes. 
8. Then add 2 cups water, the potatoes and paneer/tofu/tempeh/eggs. Lower heat to medium-low and cook until the potatoes are fully done (10 minutes or so). 
9. At this point, add the ginger and sugar, and let it cook for another 2–3 minutes.
10. Taste for salt. Heat the ghee in a butter-warmer at medium heat.
11. When the ghee is melted and glistening, throw in the garam masala, wait 30 seconds and pour the flavoured ghee into the dish in the wok

A main dish for meat lovers: Andhra-Style Pork Ribs

This is the dish you bring to the potluck if you want to be remembered as ‘the guy/gal, whatever his/her name is, who came with that amazing pork dish (of course, this only works for pork-eaters, who, in my circles, are getting rarer by the day). It is South Asia’s answer to barbecue, but at the risk of being stopped at the Mason–Dixon Line, let me say that it wins hands down. I occasionally serve it to Americans with the Nepali Alu Achaar and Stir-Fried Green Cabbage, as an ironic riposte to the end-of-summer ribs–potato salad–slaw combo, but it is better served with rice to soak up the wonderful sticky sauce that comes with the ribs. 

Since it involves slicing a lot of onions, it is handy to use the slicing attachment of the food processor, but if you don’t have one, give yourself time – wielding a sharp knife with your eyes clouded over can be a hazard. Someone I know insists that it is one thing that her husband has to do for her, to avenge the tears shed by generations of women.

Ingredients: 

2 kg pork ribs, separated (I use the St Louis–style ribs, which tend to be meaty and chunky, but any ribs with enough fat on them will do. Fat is essential, so no healthy loin chops, alas.)

3 cups thinly sliced onions

4 cloves garlic, minced, about

1 tbsp heaped

6 fresh green chillies and 6 dried red chillies (or less if you want less spicy, but even with these, it is not super spicy)

1 tbsp tamarind paste, dissolved in 3 cups warm water or a ping-pong-ball- sized lump of tamarind soaked in 1 /3 cup warm water and the pulp extracted, then mixed with 3 cups water

1 tsp turmeric

1 tbsp salt

1 sprig of curry leaves (10–20 leaves)

Method: 

1. Place the ribs in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. 
2. Add the onions, garlic, chillies, turmeric and salt, pour the tamarind water over them and bring to a boil over high heat. 
3. Lower the heat to a slow boil and leave it to cook for an hour or so. The time, alas, depends on the ribs. The meatier the ribs, the longer it will take and the more water you will need to add. 
4. Try a rib after, say, 45 minutes, and see if you can easily pull off a chunk of meat.
5. Whenever that happens, the ribs are ready for frying. Turn off the heat and let it cool.
6. When cool enough to handle, fish the ribs from the liquid, making sure that not many onion pieces stick to the ribs (throw the onion pieces back into the liquid).
7. Next, bring the (now) meatless liquid to a boil at medium-low and let it cook till no more than a half cup of paste is left. 
8. At this point, add the ribs back in and mix. This is where you can stop and stick it in the fridge once it has cooled, or carry it to your pot luck. 
9. When you are 20 minutes from eating, heat the pan on medium-high and throw in the curry leaves. 
10. Keep frying till you smell the pork frying in its fat. Fry for another 5 minutes, so that the ribs are a rich dark brown. 
11. They were a dirty brownish colour when you started – you should see the colour change.
12. Taste for salt. Stop when there are little bits of sauce sticking to the meat. This will serve 5–6.

A delicious dessert: Bhapa Doi

Sometimes the best strategy is not to advertise what is coming. ‘That’s it,’ I might say at the end of the last savoury course, ‘just some yoghurt for dessert, with berries.’ The guests are a bit puzzled and disappointed—after what was a bravura performance, they were expecting a showstopper. Wait till they discover that the yoghurt is not quite what they expected.

Ingredients: 

500 gm thick yoghurt (Homemade yoghurt tends to be a bit too watery, which is why I prefer store-bought dahi, but feel free to use what you make at home if it’s thick and creamy.)

1 can condensed milk

6 cardamom pods, crushed and seeds taken out

Berries, for serving

Method:

1. With a whisk, mix the yoghurt, condensed milk and cardamom seeds till they are fully blended. This takes about 2 minutes.
2. Then find a baking pot that will go inside your steamer (can be as small as 6" or as big as 8" in diameter). 
3. Pour the liquid into a glass or metal bowl, and carefully cover it with a sheet of foil, crimping the edges of the sheet to stop any water from going in. 
4. Place the bowl in an electric steamer and steam, covered, for 15 minutes or directly in a pan of very slowly boiling water, which is then covered with several layers of foil, for about the same amount of time. 
5. Take it out and check that it is firm to the touch in the middle (otherwise put it back). Serve with berries or cubes of mango on the side.