Get to know rajma, the healthiest of beans.

TH : Vasundhara Chauhan 15 Dec 2013

Anita says a colleague arrived at college one morning, and, bathed in honest pride and sweat, said she was late because she had cooked rajmabefore leaving home. 

To which another colleague with a guttural voice said, “ Rajma! Kya aapke ghar mehmaan aa rahe hain? ”

 I didn’t understand what colleague 2 meant: what did cooking rajma have to do with having guests? 

So Anita questioned my provenance and pityingly explained that rajma was a party dish for many Dilli-walas. 

I think rajma is considered special because it has the fancier spices and it takes more time and effort, compared to plain yellow dal : remember to soak it the night before, then get up at the crack of dawn and pressure-cook it for hours, grate onions, pound ginger and garlic to a paste, purée half a kilo of tomatoes, grind garam masala …

 Whereas yellow dal takes a few minutes to boil, and can be tempered with just a pinch of cumin and a green chilli.

Rajma , red kidney beans, came to India from the New World, and are said to be one of the best, healthiest foods. They contain zero fats, saturated or trans-fat, zero sodium and high dietary fibre. What could be better? 

The recipe I learnt from Neetu is a little different. Though it takes as long to cook, the flavouring is different. There are no tomatoes, garam masala is optional, and onions etcetera are minimal. She cooks with imli , tamarind and gur , raw brown sugar. The end result has a sweet-and-sour taste and flavour reminiscent of pickles, redness from deep red Kashmiri chillies, and a piquant freshness from the unexpected use of methi dana , fenugreek seeds. I add a generous pinch of kala namak , rock salt, which one usually associates with chaat .

But a great breakfast side dish is rajma à la tinned baked beans. We started making this way back when the children returned from school in the middle of the afternoon, famished despite school lunch, and ate eggs and toast and baked beans, made cheap and clean in our kitchen. The beans used in tinned baked beans are a different variety, but we used regular rajma and still do, when we’re all at home for Sunday breakfast. I used to buy a variety called “capsule’, perfectly named because they do indeed look like capsules – of an iron supplement or antibiotic – long, thick, deep maroon perfect cylinders. But since my mother didn’t teach me, it was only years later that I learnt to get rajma“chitra” instead: smaller than “capsule” and less symmetrical, they’re kidney bean shaped and paler coloured, a peachy-beige flecked with brown.

 These cook faster and though they retain their shape, the beans are softer after cooking.

RAJMA WITHOUT TOMATOES

(Serves 4)

1 cup rajma soaked overnight, Salt, 1 tbsp mustard oil, Half tsp fenugreek seeds, Half tsp turmeric, 1 onion grated fine, Half tsp garlic paste, Half tsp ginger paste, 1 tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp red chilli powder, 1 tbsp tamarind pulp soaked, 2 tsp gur (grated), Pinch powdered kala namak, 1 tbsp green chilli juliennes, 2 tsp chopped fresh coriander.

Method: Discard water and pressure-cook rajma with salt in about five cups fresh water: after full pressure is reached, simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Allow to cool. In a large heavy bottomed pan, heat oil, fry fenugreek, add onions and sauté till golden. Add ginger and garlic and brown. Stir in coriander and chilli powder.

 Cook on low heat for a couple of minutes. Add beans only and stir on medium heat for a few minutes, till coated with masala. With a ladle, take out a cup of fried rajma and purée with a cup of the water used for boiling. Add the rest of the water to the pan and bring to a boil. Add puréed rajma, stir in sieved tamarind pulp, grated gur and kala namak and check for seasoning. Add fresh coriander and green chillies. Serve hot with white boiled rice.

RAJMA “BAKED BEANS”

(Serves 4)

1 cup rajma soaked overnight, Salt, 10-12 peppercorns, 1 tbsp vegetable oil, 1 large onion sliced thinly, Half cup tomato purée, Tomato ketchup, Malt vinegar, 4 green chillies slit(optional).

Method: Prepare rajma with peppercorns and only two cups of water. In a wide frying pan, heat oil and sauté onions till transparent but not browned. Add tomato purée and cook on high heat, stirring frequently, until oil is released.

 Tip in boiled rajma and water and continue to cook on high heat till sauce begins to thicken. Add about a tablespoon each of ketchup and vinegar, allow to come to a boil and remove from heat. Add green chillies. 

The taste of ' foreign " vegetables

Squash and Kakrol. Photo: Vasundhara Chauhan

 Vasundhara Chauhan, :The Hindu :19 Oct 2013

The exciting taste of unfamiliar vegetables...

This morning I saw some unusual vegetables in the local sabziwala’s cart. Not broccoli and multi-coloured bell peppers, which are commonplace now. Long light green aubergines and little green hedgehogs, kakrol.

Some years ago my father drove to Coorg in his caravan and brought back all manner of seeds and saplings, including Alfonso mangoes. Not for him the common and garden Langda or Dussehri, he had to grow Hapus in Haryana. And a few months later he sent me green aubergines he had grown, whose buttery texture I tasted then for the first time and now found again at my gate. Kakrol, which looks like a small green grenade, is another vegetable I’ve only known for the last few years. I have new help, a woman from Assam, and she saw it and said Oh, bhat karela!

The first time I saw it I just found the shape intriguing and bought it, then asked around on how to cook it and plumped for thin discs sprinkled with rice flour and fried crisp in mustard oil — it smells likekarela but doesn’t taste bitter and makes a papad-like accompaniment to dal-chawal. Razia said it grows abundantly back home, on a vine supported on cane trellises. For us, it’s so exotic that a meal is elevated with its inclusion.

Another “foreign” veggie I bought recently was pale green, pear-shaped and knobbly and about the size of a small raw papaya. The sabziwala said it was “kuskus”. Any normal person would have turned away, come back in and eaten lauki. But no, not me: I had seen it when driving past the markets of Dimapur and eaten it at the hostel I stayed in for a couple of weeks. At every meal it was served steamed, cut into long thick wedges, with rice and dal or pork stew.

So I brought it in and she said Oh, isskus! And said it was also grown back home and cooked as one doeslauki. I remembered that in Nagaland they called it squash. I cut myself a thin wedge and ate it, washed but raw. It was sweet and bursting with juice. So we made it Dimapur-hostel style and never before have I eaten such a refreshing, juicy vegetable, and certainly not from the Cucurbit family. Just steamed, without benefit of spices — not even salt — its green got intensified and the texture remained delightfully crisp and succulent.

I mentioned it to friends who were clueless, but made intelligent faces when I said “squash”. To the girl from Bongaigon, though, it was totally familiar but very exciting because it was from home.

poi ;Photo: Arun K. Attri

The third uncommon vegetable I’ve eaten this month is poi. Attri, who has a luxurious, bountiful garden, has let it grow around a tree and it’s so beautiful that even if it were not useful and edible, it’s worth keeping just for its gleaming dark green leaves and the way it winds itself on the bark of his neemtree. He gave us a huge armload and the then incumbent, Roopa, who is from Bengal, leapt up with excited cries of “pui!” I thought she was just happy to see it but then discovered she had been imbibing of the master’s stock.

Anyway she was dismissed, reeling and slurring, and I had to devise my own recipe. I thought we couldn’t really ruin it — how difficult is it to cook a bhujia of green leafy vegetables — all I needed was to sauté some garlic cloves and whole red chillies in mustard oil. But I did. I managed to ruin it. The moment the chopped leaves hit the pan they released quantities of mucilaginous slime. So it was sprinkled with rice flour and cooked uncovered for a few minutes, which got rid of the slime and made it look all right.

But when we ate it we discovered that the stalks were tough and fibrous. We should have peeled the thicker ones, which I should have known as a good Punjabi with sarson ka saag in my veins. Instead of which we had just chopped them and now had very fine, very miniature toothpicks in every mouthful. I’m now looking for a recipe to do the vegetable justice, from someone who’s familiar with it. 

To me these vegetables are the Indian equivalent of radicchio and asparagus: they’re unfamiliar and exciting. Maybe if they grew in my backyard I wouldn’t be so awestruck or so inept.

Brave new world of vegetables

Vasundhara Chauhan :the Hindu:18 June 2013

Those were the days… when you went to a Chinese restaurant and asked them not to fill the dish with green capsicum, Simla mirch.

 Now you have to say Please, no red, green or yellow peppers. I know they’re pretty, they’re crunchy and add lovely texture to a starchy dish of chow mien, but please, their flavour takes over completely and you don’t know whether you’re eating hoisin sauce or tandoori masala.

 Let alone steamed fish or vegetables. But this is the way of the world. When we’re eating out or even at home, when we’re entertaining, we feel obliged to use “exotic” vegetables. I miss the days when party fare meant stuffing Simla mirch with qeema instead of homely potatoes or cooked urad dal.

Bell peppers, Capsicum annuum, come in all colours — from green, red and yellow to purple, brown and black. Apparently all green bell peppers would eventually turn red, if allowed to ripen. 

All red and yellow vegetables and fruit contain carotenoids, anti-oxidants and a cupful of these red and yellow sweet peppers, raw, gives us almost a hundred per cent of our daily requirement of vitamin A, and three hundred per cent of our daily requirement of vitamin C.

Health benefits apart, the reason I tolerate them is because they look so lovely — as someone said, they’re the Christmas ornaments of the vegetable kingdom. Deep, vivid colour, shiny red, yellow or orange, smooth and firm, heavy for their size, firm to the touch, they look as if their vigour will add to ours. 

A handful of them, chopped raw in a salad, add freshness with their crisp bite. It’s only the smell, strongest in the green, which I find hard to take. 

Unlike chillies, bell peppers aren’t “hot”. They contain negligible amounts of capsaicin, which imparts “hotness” to peppers. Grilling them removes the strong grassy flavour and adds sweetness. So, grilled and marinated, a bell pepper’s personality changes: it becomes gentle while remaining beautiful.

And broccoli. Party menus meant serving early bhindi, okra, in April and gobhi, cauliflower, in September. Now it’s broccoli — in salads, “Italian”, even as a desi vegetable with turmeric, cumin andgaram masala, as a side dish with chicken curry and dal makhani. But somehow I don’t find broccoli offensive; apart from its heath benefits, it tastes so much like cauliflower.

The other bugbear is what we do with baby corn, a cereal grain taken from very young corn (maize). It’s delicious as it is, raw and sweet, in a salad; in this case, nothing can improve upon nature. But, like our clothes, we can’t leave well enough alone. 

The succulent, crunchy little thing is ornamented and embellished in curries, batter-fried as an hors d’oeuvres, basically, cloaked and masked to destroy its natural taste. It’s not a separate variety: it’s merely harvested early, while the ears are still immature and very small. Unlike mature corn, whose cob is tough and inedible, baby corn is eaten whole, cob and all.

 All corn produces baby corn but some seed varieties, developed specifically for baby corn, give higher yields. One of these is chosen and planted and, as soon as corn silk emerges from the ear tips — or a few days after — the ears are plucked off by hand. 

Corn matures very quickly, so the harvest of baby corn has to be timed carefully to avoid ending up with more mature corn ears. When a variety is planted to yield common sweet or field corn, the second ear from the top of the plant is harvested for baby corn, while the top ear is allowed to mature. In both cases, the ears are tiny — from 4 to 10 cm each.

ROASTED BELL PEPPER SOUP

(Serves 4/ Makes 6 cups)

5 red bell peppers

5 ripe red tomatoes, chopped (11/2 cups)

1 cup vegetable stock

Salt

Pepper

Heat oven to 200°C (400°F). Line a baking sheet with foil, arrange bell peppers and roast them for about 45 minutes or until very tender, turning them regularly so they roast evenly. They will get charred black. Remove from oven and let cool completely. If not using oven, char peppers on an open flame, turning regularly with tongs, until blackened all around. Remove skin and seeds, and roughly cut the bell peppers. In a blender, add bell peppers, tomatoes, stock and salt to taste. Blend until smooth. Add more stock or water if you want your soup to be less thick. Serve chilled, after refrigeration, or hot, after reheating.

GRILLED RED BELL PEPPERS ON BRUSCHETTA

(Makes 6 pieces)

1 red bell pepper

4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine

2 tbsp fresh basil leaves, chopped

Salt

Pinch of sugar

Juice of 1 lime

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Char bell pepper over a high flame, as you would a baingan for bharta. Remove charred outer skin, cut open into halves and remove ribs and any white fragments. Slice into thin strips. Add rest of ingredients. Serve on toasted, unbuttered slices of French bread.

After charring, seal bell pepper while still hot in a large food grade polythene bag, leaving enough room for the pepper to breathe. The steam loosens the charred outer skin, making it easy to remove. In five minutes, open and wipe clean with a paper towel. Conserve flavour — do not wash.

Yellow bell peppers or blanched, peeled tomatoes also make appetizing bruschetta toppings.

vasundharachauhan9@gmail.com

Keywords: Gourmet Files column, Vasundhara Chauhan, bell peppers, bell peppers recipe

Brave new world of vegetables

Photo:  The Hindu :S.Subramanium

GOURMET FILES, Vasundhara Chauhan:The Hindu :19 May 2013

Those were the days… when you went to a Chinese restaurant and asked them not to fill the dish with green capsicum, Simla mirch. Now you have to say Please, no red, green or yellow peppers. 

I know they’re pretty, they’re crunchy and add lovely texture to a starchy dish of chow mien, but please, their flavour takes over completely and you don’t know whether you’re eating hoisin sauce or tandoori masala.

 Let alone steamed fish or vegetables. But this is the way of the world. When we’re eating out or even at home, when we’re entertaining, we feel obliged to use “exotic” vegetables. I miss the days when party fare meant stuffing Simla mirch with qeema instead of homely potatoes or cooked urad dal.

Bell peppers, Capsicum annuum, come in all colours — from green, red and yellow to purple, brown and black. Apparently all green bell peppers would eventually turn red, if allowed to ripen. 

All red and yellow vegetables and fruit contain carotenoids, anti-oxidants and a cupful of these red and yellow sweet peppers, raw, gives us almost a hundred per cent of our daily requirement of vitamin A, and three hundred per cent of our daily requirement of vitamin C.

Health benefits apart, the reason I tolerate them is because they look so lovely — as someone said, they’re the Christmas ornaments of the vegetable kingdom. Deep, vivid colour, shiny red, yellow or orange, smooth and firm, heavy for their size, firm to the touch, they look as if their vigour will add to ours.

 A handful of them, chopped raw in a salad, add freshness with their crisp bite. It’s only the smell, strongest in the green, which I find hard to take. Unlike chillies, bell peppers aren’t “hot”. They contain negligible amounts of capsaicin, which imparts “hotness” to peppers. Grilling them removes the strong grassy flavour and adds sweetness. So, grilled and marinated, a bell pepper’s personality changes: it becomes gentle while remaining beautiful.

And broccoli. Party menus meant serving early bhindi, okra, in April and gobhi, cauliflower, in September. Now it’s broccoli — in salads, “Italian”, even as a desi vegetable with turmeric, cumin andgaram masala, as a side dish with chicken curry and dal makhani. But somehow I don’t find broccoli offensive; apart from its heath benefits, it tastes so much like cauliflower.

The other bugbear is what we do with baby corn, a cereal grain taken from very young corn (maize). It’s delicious as it is, raw and sweet, in a salad; in this case, nothing can improve upon nature. But, like our clothes, we can’t leave well enough alone. The succulent, crunchy little thing is ornamented and embellished in curries, batter-fried as an hors d’oeuvres, basically, cloaked and masked to destroy its natural taste. It’s not a separate variety: it’s merely harvested early, while the ears are still immature and very small. Unlike mature corn, whose cob is tough and inedible, baby corn is eaten whole, cob and all. All corn produces baby corn but some seed varieties, developed specifically for baby corn, give higher yields. One of these is chosen and planted and, as soon as corn silk emerges from the ear tips — or a few days after — the ears are plucked off by hand. Corn matures very quickly, so the harvest of baby corn has to be timed carefully to avoid ending up with more mature corn ears. When a variety is planted to yield common sweet or field corn, the second ear from the top of the plant is harvested for baby corn, while the top ear is allowed to mature. In both cases, the ears are tiny — from 4 to 10 cm each.

ROASTED BELL PEPPER SOUP

(Serves 4/ Makes 6 cups)

5 red bell peppers

5 ripe red tomatoes, chopped (11/2 cups)

1 cup vegetable stock

Salt

Pepper

Heat oven to 200°C (400°F). Line a baking sheet with foil, arrange bell peppers and roast them for about 45 minutes or until very tender, turning them regularly so they roast evenly. They will get charred black. Remove from oven and let cool completely. If not using oven, char peppers on an open flame, turning regularly with tongs, until blackened all around. Remove skin and seeds, and roughly cut the bell peppers. In a blender, add bell peppers, tomatoes, stock and salt to taste. Blend until smooth. Add more stock or water if you want your soup to be less thick. Serve chilled, after refrigeration, or hot, after reheating.

GRILLED RED BELL PEPPERS ON BRUSCHETTA

(Makes 6 pieces)

1 red bell pepper

4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine

2 tbsp fresh basil leaves, chopped

Salt

Pinch of sugar

Juice of 1 lime

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Char bell pepper over a high flame, as you would a baingan for bharta. Remove charred outer skin, cut open into halves and remove ribs and any white fragments. Slice into thin strips. Add rest of ingredients. Serve on toasted, unbuttered slices of French bread.

After charring, seal bell pepper while still hot in a large food grade polythene bag, leaving enough room for the pepper to breathe. The steam loosens the charred outer skin, making it easy to remove. In five minutes, open and wipe clean with a paper towel. Conserve flavour — do not wash.

Yellow bell peppers or blanched, peeled tomatoes also make appetizing bruschetta toppings.