Dhansak: A story of migration

Editor’s note: The Parsi dhansak is the story of a dish on a journey—accumulating ingredients and flavour from its surroundings. It’s also why every dhansak is different and the stew lends itself to culinary rule-breaking. In ‘An Invitation to Feast’ by Sona Bahadur revisits this and other culinary treasures from around the country. Excerpted from permission from Aleph.

The Zoroastrian descendants of Parsis sailed across the Arabian Sea to escape religious persecution in Persia and landed in Gujarat, sometime during the eighth century CE. Before the Arab conquest of their homeland in the seventh century, they were a part of the great Sassanid or Sasanian Empire, one of the most developed and prosperous empires of the ancient world. 

Many elements of dhansak, including the love of meat, would have existed in Sasanian Persia. According to food historian KT Achaya, ‘pulses would have taken the place of rajmah beans and spinach used in Iran.’ He notes that ‘at least three dals, and even up to nine’ went into making dhansak, which also included ‘pieces of fatty meat, tripe

and vegetables’. 

One can only imagine the early journey of the dish. Stew-loving Zoroastrians, with their rich tradition of meat-and-vegetable blends from Iran, would have arrived in Gujarat. The unique taste of Indian spices and produce would have piqued their interest. Before long they would have succumbed to the Gujarati passion for sweet, tangy, spicy flavours, leading to the creation of dhansak.

Over the centuries, the dish would have evolved, replacing the mellow preparations of Persia with a spicier concoction through the liberal use of Indian spices and condiments. Filtered through the hands of countless cooks and melded with the local ingredients and Gujarati culture, dhansak would become, well before the twentieth century, the flagship food of the Parsis. 

The version of yore was cooked on wood fire and made with masalas prepared at home. Though the essential recipe hasn’t changed, it has become less elaborate, calling for fewer ingredients and steps. The nine dals Achaya talks about got reduced to one or two, the use of tripe got omitted, and everything went into blenders and pressure cookers.

Dhansak lessons with home-cooks

The basic recipe for making dhansak calls for vegetables—pumpkin, onions, eggplants, methi (fenugreek) leaves, and mint—to be cooked along with lentils, before straining the mixture to a smooth, velvety blend. A vaghar or slow tempering of tomatoes with masalas is then prepared, to which the lentil and veggie mush and boiled mutton (or chicken) are added and left to meld.

Each ingredient plays its part in producing the astounding range of flavours—sweetness derives from pumpkin and onions, bitterness from methi, citrusy notes like coriander and mint, tartness from tomatoes, heat from red chillies, and complexity from spices.

With as many dhansak variations as there are cooks, the devil is often in the details. Some home-cooks like to use only toor (tuvar) dal, others prefer a combination of two or three lentils (mostly masoor, toor, and moong). Some swear by the tried-and-tested red pumpkin and eggplants, others add carrots or even pineapples. Some like their dhansak smooth, others like it a bit grainy. Some like to add jaggery and tamarind, others shun them. Some dump all of its ingredients into a pressure cooker, others believe in more thoughtful assembly. 

Mahrukh Mogrelia, a food entrepreneur who owns a brand called Mahrukh’s Kitchen, holds that the flavour of dhansak should derive from the natural sweetness of vegetables like pumpkin, and not from sugar or jaggery. ‘Dhansak shouldn’t be obviously sweet; it should have that spiciness. And the dal must be strained to a smooth consistency. God forbid if a pumpkin piece gets into a Parsi’s mouth; he will know it has veggies, and never eat dhansak again!’ she said, laughing.

Homogenizing the ingredients made it easy for Mahrukh to sneak some nutrition into her unsuspecting children’s diet. ‘Mum would grind all kinds of veggies into the dhansak without letting us know. Once she added beetroot, and I asked her, “Why is the dhansak red today?” But she just said, “It’s so tasty. Chaakhi le, dikra (Taste it, son)!” And I lapped it up!’ her son Khurshed recounted with mock horror.

Jeroo Shroff, a gourmet chef and culinary teacher of forty years’ standing, strongly disapproves of the current practice of using masoor dal instead of the traditional toor. ‘Nowadays, people use masoor because it’s cheaper, but it alters the taste,’ she said. She also emphasized on the technique of giving the vaghar the love it needs. ‘You have to put the vaghar on a very slow flame and for a very long time, and cook the tomatoes till all the water dries up. Only then add in all the masalas.’

Food photographer Yasmin Khambatta’s preferred way of making dhansak, following her mother’s recipe, is to use a combination of four dals—toor, chana, masoor, and moong. ‘Mum did not use eggplants as they made the dal very dark. Instead, she added carrots along with pumpkin to make the dish a bit sweeter. And she always served dhansak with murabba made from small mango pieces cooked in sugar syrup,’ she said.

The choice of meat elicited sharp reactions, dividing the cooks I met into the mutton and the chicken camps. The former stressed that mutton dhansak cooked with the meat bones adds flavour to the dal, whereas the latter, like Khurshed, preferred the soupy texture of chicken dhansak. ‘Trust me, chicken dhansak tastes better. Always,’ he declared.

The strikingly different ways home-cooks worked with the dish is a testament to its adaptability. The ultimate validation of this flexibility comes from that most revered of Parsi cookery bibles, Vividh Vani. Authored by Meherbai Jamshedji Wadia, the late nineteenth-century tome mentions not one but three recipes of dhansak, each with slightly different ingredients and techniques. And it clearly says that either chicken or mutton could be used.

Interestingly, my own practical lesson in dhansak-making was replete with rule-flouting. Magan, my lawyer friend Pervez Rustomkhan’s cook, was a reluctant teacher. The veteran brought a devil-may-care impunity to his cooking. He omitted the vegetables

and methi leaves, sneaked in some curry powder, and threw in a handful of curry leaves.

It was a killer dhansak.