RECIPE: khichuri (rice and lentils)
Shankar Bhattacharyya
Siddharth Dasgupta posted a recipe for khichuri a few weeks ago. It was
obviously very promising.
Here is a recipe which does not call for a pressure cooker. It is also
rather less elaborate in terms of spices. It will be less complex in taste
than his implementation.
A pressure cooker is a very useful item for such a dish. Without a cooker
it takes a good bit longer, and it takes a small amount of attention to
ensure that it will not stick and burn. But it is certainly feasible. I do
this often.
This recipe is intended to be an all-in-one meal, more or less. It is
more heavily loaded with vegetables and such than is usual, but it is
within the spirit of khichuri.
It is a fairly idiosyncratically Bengali implementation, though many other
communities also make khichuri. The final texture is somewhere between
a serious soup and a serious stew.
Khichuri is regarded as a non-elegant dish. You don't invite guests over to
eat khichuri, but it is perfectly acceptable to cook some up for unexpected
guests, or for people who are close to you.
It is widely used at communal meals at the major Bengal festivals, in a
somewhat dry implementation, probably rather closer in spirit to
Siddharth's implementation than to this.
I have fed it to a group of occidental friends, with rather positive
feedback.
The meat is entirely optional. It is a common, but not usual component. In
my hands lamb works much better than beef.
If you skip the meat, this is a vegan recipe, provided you do without the
ghee at the end.
This implementation is on the fluid side. If you want a thicker
implementation, use a little less water.
Conventionally the rice gets added at T = 0, but I prefer it to have some
texture, so I add it along the way. Good Bengali mothers would be appalled.
The dish can be made with very little fat. I use some fat for browning the
onions, and the optional meat, but that is all. If you are conservative
with the ghee at the end, this is a rather low-fat dish, and you can make
it very nearly as low in fat as you want, if you skip the meat.
The usual accompaniments are not low in fat.
I usually make this on double this scale, and eat it over a couple of
weeks. You may have to heat it up along the way if you keep it that long.
The dish does not freeze well. It will lose texture entirely if you try to
freeze it.
This is very little work. Vastly less work than the list of ingredients
might suggest. It takes a little over 1.5 hours of clock time, but probably
no more than about 30 minutes of person-time. I can write meaningful
amounts of lisp code on the side.
And, if you simplify the dish, it can probably be reduced to about 15
person-minutes.
You can add stuff to make it more substantial, or drop stuff like the
vegetables to strip it down to essentials.
Formulation, suitable for feeding perhaps six people, assuming minor
accompaniments:
Materials (in the order in which you need to get them ready):
(Blank lines between groups indicate that you need to do something
at that point.)
cooking oil
lamb, cut into modest sized cubes 1 lb (optional)
water 40 fl oz (~ 2 liters)
Mussoor dal (red lentils) 1/2 cup (4 fl oz)
raw, unoiled moong dal (red lentils) 1/2 cup (4 fl oz)
(and I don't mean unhusked beans)
turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
ginger, fresh, finely minced 2 tbsp
green peppers (serranos, possibly), pierced 2 or 3
bay leaves 3 or 4, of good quality
cayenne pepper, powder 1/3 tsp
salt 1 tsp
carrots 1/2 lb
cauliflower 1 medium
rice 8 fl oz
plum tomatoes 4, quartered
onions 2 medium, sliced
peas 12 oz
roasted cumin 1.5 tsp, powdered
roasted coriander 1.5 tsp, powdered
ghee
Procedure
Brown the lamb. For a vegetarian implementation, simply skip the meat.
Heat the water to about the boil.
Rinse the dals. Add to the hot water. Maintain at a simmer for a couple of
minutes, and skim off any scum that rises.
When no more scum is formed, add the first group of spices. Consider this
time T = 0.
Maintain at a simmer, almost covered. Stir often, or else stuff will stick
to the bottom and burn. Things tend to settle to the bottom.
Cut the carrots and cauliflower into stew-sized pieces.
Rinse the rice.
At T = 45 minutes, add the carrots, cauliflower and rice.
Brown the onions, but do not burn them.
At T = 60 minutes, add the tomatoes.
If the peas are frozen, add them at this point.
If the peas are not frozen (that's a statement about their state, not about
whether they have ever been frozen), add them at T= 75 minutes.
At T = 75 - 80 minutes add the browned onions, cumin and coriander.
Mix well.
At T = 90 minutes or so, remove from heat, and serve.
A little ghee, added in on the plate, works wonders.
Accompaniments:
Wedges of lime, to be squeezed onto the khichudi (a moral imperative).
Eggplant, sliced, tossed with turmeric, cayenne pepper, and salt, and
fried.
Batter-fried cauliflower.
Eggs, cooked into something rather like an omlette, but usually with rather
more fat, at rather higher heat, which produces a different texture.
Tamarind pickle, but you can't buy that. Your loss. This is the only
Bengali dish with which a pickle is expected. And tamarind pickle is wildly
unlike anything you can buy.
A thunderstorm. You can't buy that, either.
- Shankar