The Sealing of the Pot

The CC received a clay pot as a gift recently.

It was a classic meen chatti (मीन चट्टी - literally: fish clay pot). The first word is from Sanskrit (= fish) and the second most likely from the local vernacular.

Instructions were provided to "season it" but the CC needs to understand what that means so he proceeded down the rabbit hole (as he is wont to do) about what that really entails.

Clay is quite porous as a material. However, it can be fired at high temperatures after which it becomes hard. That's how bricks are made which has been known since at least Sumerian times.

Clay is also an extraordinarily poor conductor of heat.

These combined facts act as an advantage in fish cookery.

The critical point about a clay pot is that no matter how hard you try to heat it in a reasonable time (= less than five hours, for example), it's very difficult to raise the temperature of the interior of the pot to above 70°C^† — which is the outer limit of the temperature that fish proteins denature.

Of course, if you fired the crap out of the pot, eventually it would rise to the temperature of the flame but we're talking cooking here not cremation!

The other critical point is that if you don't raise the temperature beyond the denaturation point of fish proteins, they will stay soft independent of the cooking time. If you held the temperature precisely at a certain point, your fish would stay perfectly tender whether you cooked it for ten minutes or ten hours!

This is how airlines control food, for the record. The temperature is never allowed to get above the denaturation point of the proteins in question — chicken, beef, fish, vegetables, whatever!

The principle of clay-pot cooking is the same as that of sous-vide cooking except that it is being done in an intuitive way rather than formally. It also has a massive advantage over sous-vide in that you can fry or sear the fish and have it cook in the complex juices generated by it. You don't need to worry about the problem of precise timing either which was a useful fact in the frenetic frazzled world of yore unlike modern day times.

There's a price to be paid for this freedom. Nothing comes for free.

The pot is a complex apparatus. If you drop one of your metal pots, it'll get dented. If you drop a clay pot, it shatters and you get to start all over again. (Luckily, they are cheap but that's not the point.)

Poor conduction also goes both ways. It's really hard to raise the temperature and it's equally hard to lower the temperature. A certain boring-ness is required in the usage of a clay pot. You can't just dial the temperature up and down like a metal pot.

Much more importantly, you can't add hot water to a cold pot, or cold water to a hot pot. It will crack. The poor conduction means you cannot have the interior and the exterior at significantly different temperatures.

The seasoning of the pot is really quite simple once you grasp the concepts. You alternate boiling cold water in the pot and toss it out followed by coating it with cooking oil overnight. The water percolates through the pot and mends micro-holes in the clay and the oil conducted via the water generates enough carbon residues to plug the holes. It also generates a non-stick surface at the bottom of the pot over time (exactly like a great cast-iron frying pan.)

There are two fallacies about clay pots and since chez CC, we tend to be the analytic sort, we're going to dismiss them.

The first is that the seasoned clay pot is not porous — it absolutely is! The water inside the seasoned pot has to be going somewhere. It's not evaporating significantly at 70°C^‡ so it must be disappearing somehow. It's evaporating through the porosity of the pot. It's being wicked^§ away.

This porosity created a bit of a problem for the CC in the second round of water seasoning when the pot had been coated with oil overnight. Enough oil/water was being wicked away through the porous clay that the CC's gas flame went a little crazy. It's basically a baby version of a grease fire. It was such a minuscule amount of oil that it posed no risk whatsoever but it was quite unnerving until the principles had been grasped.

The second which is really the flip of the first is the myth that you can't cook in a dry pot without water. You absolutely can as long if you want to raise the temperature above 70°C. You could quite plausibly cook the clay pot to up to 1000° C but the CC really doubts that your puny stove generates enough BTU's for that. (Your oven only goes up to 275°C!)

Remember, if you do amp up the temperature of the pot, you will not be able to add cold water to it. You must either cool the pot down and start over or heat the water to the same temperature and add it. Most cooks do the former not the later since it's too risky.

In fact, many recipes ask you to first boil stuff till the water disappears, take the fish out, and then use the pot just like a frying pan adding the fish back at the last step. (The reverse is also true. Some recipes ask you to use it like a frying pan and then add the fish and warm water a little at a time thus lowering the temperature back down.)

Let's abstract out the principles of the perfectly seasoned clay pot.

[1] With water inside, the temperature will not go above 70°C until the water disappears.

[2] The clay pot is a very poor conductor of heat.

[3] The dry clay pot will allow you to fire it up to 1000°C.

Now that we've grasped the principles, we're ready to roll.

One of the great glories of Mughal cooking is the perfectly cooked daal. This involves the denaturing of lentil proteins and some of these lentils tend to get slimy if the skins split. The clay pot is the ideal apparatus since it preserves the skin perfectly while letting the water and spices to enrich the dish via osmosis but not allowing the lentils to burst.

The truly great dish of Gujarati cooking is undhiyu (ઊંધિયું — literally: upside-down.) The Mughals totally envied this dish! It's a classic mélange of spring vegetables, complex vegetarian meatball-esque preparations, and spices cooked in a sealed upside-down (sic) pot in the dying embers of a fire overnight at low heat. Same logic goes for long-term low-temperature cooking and the denaturing of the proteins.

If you go to North India during winter, you'll find yogurt served in clay pots. The clay pots are being used for two purposes — heat preservation and water-evaporation. Even in the cold temperatures of the North-Indian winter, the clay pots retain the heat of the warm mixture of milk and bacteria^¶ and wick away enough water to make the yogurt rich and delicious.

So this device which is at least 20,000 years old (based on Chinese excavations that date back to 18,000 BC) is truly a magic apparatus. It just requires a little understanding.

We're just the latest in a truly ancient lineage.

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† You can verify this quickly and empirically by sticking a finger for less than a second into the water that has been boiling in the clay pot for an hour. Nothing much will happen. If you stuck your finger in real boiling water for even less than a second, you would get second-degree burns!

‡ The CC will not bore you with the details but roughly speaking in an environment with no air-flow (e.g. your exhaust fan) the evaporation rate is linear in the temperature differential between water and air for temperatures around 100°C. Estimating your house to be about 25°C (80°F), you are only getting roughly 60% of the evaporation of boiling water. The rest of the water has to be going somewhere!

§ You can test this by covering a pot and heating water in it. It will never boil but soon much of the water will be gone.

¶ The clay pots have the advantage of porosity. The yogurt bacteria are sitting in there and they help develop the culture implicitly particularly if you make yogurt every day or week in the same pot. (The clay pots that they use are small. Individual use, one might say, in modern parlance.)

Sprouted Lentils

The CC is a total sucker for sprouted lentils.

What you get in the supermarkets sucks but the process of sprouting lentils is shockingly easy.

Even in the dead of this frozen winter, the CC has had no problems getting them to sprout. The reason is that sprouting is an exothermic process which means that the sprouts themselves are giving up both heat and moisture.

You soak the sprouts overnight at first; then put them in a cheese cloth in a transparent bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Put in a warm spot that gets some indirect light. Each day you must wash them to make sure that they stay moist and remove any possible fungal buildup. They will sprout like champs in two days. Wed. night soaking for Sat. breakfast (Thu. for Sun.)

Easy peasy.

The following is a great breakfast dish as nutritious as it is simple.

Ingredients

3 cups sprouted lentils
pinch of asafetida
1 tbsp. dhanajeeru (coriander and cumin roasted and powdered)
1 tsp. red chili powder

oil
salt (to taste)

1 lime (cut into quarters)

Recipe

Fry some oil in a pan. Toss in the asafoetida and fry for a bit. Toss in the dhanajeeru and the red chilli powder and the sprouts. Sautée for 2-3 minutes.

Add water (about 1 1/2 cup.) Let it simmer on low heat until the beans are edible. You may need to add more water.

It's done when the beans are cooked and the liquid is still a little watery but not soupy.

Serve at once squeezing the lime on top. The CC loves sopping up the broth with a crusty baguette.

Beans, Good Ol' Beans

Everyone here knows that the CC is crazy about them (both fresh and dried) and that he adores them with a passion only rivalling his love for anchovies.

However, how many know that the famous Roman surnames are actually derived from beans? (Possibly, their families made their fortunes in the bean agricultural trade.)

Cicero is derived from chickpeas (modern-day Italian: cece/ceci.) Fabius refers to fava beans (modern-day Italian: fava/fave.)

Lentulus should be self-evident, and Piso refers to peas (pisello/piselli.)

Fada ni Khichdi

Documentary evidence has it that when the Emperor Shah Jahan (of Taj Mahal fame) finally conquered what is modern-day Gujarat, he was so enamored of the extraordinarily humble khichdi (a traditional rice and lentils dish) that he insisted that the royal chef make it regularly!

The chef, used to making much fanciful stuff, was more than a little peeved at making something so pedestrian. The royal chef fancified it a bit (but not too much) and a compromise was reached of making it at most "once in a while" which translated to "weekly" since Emperors can insist on pretty much get away with anything that they desire!

That this is not just some legend comes down to us in the form of the royal chef's cookbook/notes which have survived intact.

What this tells you is that even Emperors get tired of the same ol', same ol' no matter how fancy it is. Novelty is the name of the game, and even a peasant dish from a newly conquered territory can fascinate the Emperor and from there on, be elevated to finer culinary standards.

It should be noted that this is a trend among most high-end restaurants today which are busy trampling all over themselves to turn offal and lentils into new dishes, both substances being the cheapest of the cheap, and thus the provenance of the peasant not the gourmand.

The dish below is a traditional variation on the Gujarati khichdi that uses cracked wheat instead of rice (again variation and novelty, and it's even "traditional".)

The idea works on the same principle as a risotto but the mixture tends towards the soft and chewy but not mushy. The vegetables add color, nutrition and texture.


Ingredients

1 cup yellow moong daal (split yellow daal)
3/4 cup bulgur wheat #3 (coarsest grind)

1 cup potatoes (diced into cubes)
1 cup green peas
1 cup green beans (diced)
1 cup cauliflower florets
1 cup carrots (diced into cubes)

1 cup onions (diced fine)
2 tbsp ginger + green-chilli paste

1/2 tsp turmeric
sea salt (to taste)

1 stick cinnamon
3 cloves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp black peppercorns
asafoetida

3 tbsp ghee

Recipe

Soak the moong daal and the cracked wheat in ice cold water separately for at least 30 minutes.

Remove, and dry thoroughly.

(To be blunt, this last part is painful because it's hard to get enough surface area to get the stuff to dry thoroughly. Do the best you can but remember, the drier it gets after soaking, the greater your chances of making the dish "memorable".)

In a seperate vessel, bring roughly 4 cups of water to a simmer. Keep warm.

Bring the ghee to a simmer. Toss in the cinnamon and fry for a bit. When fragrant, toss in the cumin, cloves, black peppercorns and asafoetida. Fry for a bit. Add the onions and fry languidly for 3-4 minutes until limp but not colored. Add the turmeric and ginger-green chilly paste and fry for a while.

Fry the potatoes for a bit.

Then fry the daal and the cracked wheat for a bit. Add 3 cups of water, and let cook at a low simmer for about 8 minutes. Add more hot water if it gets dry.

Towards the end, add the rest of the vegetables and let cook together. (Yes, this is a little tricky since you need to time everything exactly.)

Historic Scientificity : The Anti-Farting Gambit

If you look at Indian food, you will notice a preponderance of cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, etc.

Why were these adopted?

The first principle, as always, is basic economics.

They grow abundantly on the Indian sub-continent and hence, they are extraordinarily cheap. So cheap that the Romans used black pepper as ballast on their ships sailing homewards. If all went well, you got a lot of black pepper. If your ship got caught at sea in a storm, you could toss the stuff overboard, and not suffer terribly because it was so cheap.

The second, which is a lot subtler, is that they are all carminative agents (anti-flatulents.) When eaten with lentils, they inhibit the bacteria that line the intestinal walls from generating gassy flatulence.

Obviously, the Indians learnt this by trial and error, and the "technology" has been passed down ever since. Most use this but few understand why.

The most effective are cloves, cinnamon, garlic and asafoetida. The second tier is made up of ginger, turmeric, and black pepper.

There is a related herb in Mexico called epazote which is traditionally added to black beans for the same reason.

Read carefully, and you'll notice that almost all of the "greatest hits" of Indian food are featured. What's missing, of course, is coriander, cumin and cardamom but not everything has to be functional. Some of it is just pure pleasure.

That's why the born-today vegans are basically fucked. They don't understand the functional component of how to make a successful lentil dish. You can't just boil that stuff and call it a day. You need to spice it right to make it both tasteful and functional.

Skill is required in almost every sphere of cooking even if you decide to follow some arbitrary rules, and this skill determines whether you toot through your rear horn all day or not.

Toodles and toots!

Kerala Meal

matta rice, meen (fish) curry, pappadum,
vegetable avial, prawns, lentils

India Trip : Day 1 : Post 4

This is dal pakwan, a Sindhi breakfast delicacy.

Pakwan are made of maida (refined wheat flour - that shit that's bad for you), salt, pepper and ajwain. It's deep-fried (DUH!)

Daal is a spicy concoction made with chana daal (different from chickpeas) and quite spicy.

How to eat it should be obvious from below!

Beluga Lentils

They're shiny black when cooked, and look very much like black beluga caviar. The taste is suitably lentil-ly with a slight mineral edge.

Gorgeous in salads especially with lemon and olive oil. Absolutely stunning in stuffed roasted vegetables.

When cooked in excess water, the water will turn jet black which should be used to make a gorgeous vegetarian risotto nero.

Daal Makhani/Maa ki daal

A North-Indian specialty, mostly made in craptacular lackluster fashion by so-called "Indian" restaurants. Fortunately, we can do much better even lacking a tandoor.

A quick note about the finishing step. If you want a richer taste, you would add cream. If you want a more "home down" taste, you would add yogurt (preferably home-made which has a slightly sour edge to it.) Both are traditional (and that's why the title has two names in it.)

The CC prefers the latter because it adds a slight piquancy to the dish.

Also, before the purists tan the living daylights out of the CC, he should add that the tomatoes are not totally traditional. However, they are also not not traditional. So you're on your own here.

The CC ate it with parathas but it's quite tasty with a simple pulao as well.

Ingredients

1 cup whole urad daal (aka maa ki daal)
1/8 cup rajma (red kidney beans)

1 stick cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
4-5 cardamom pods

1 large red onion (finely diced)

1 inch ginger
2-3 green chillies

whipped Greek yogurt (or cream)

Recipe

Soak the two daals overnight. This picture is taken after the soaking, when they were drained. You have two choices here. Either pressure cook the lentils before you add them (see below), or you can add them and simmer.

The mise-en-place. The stuff at the bottom is the ginger-green-chilli paste. Contrary to popular belief, the Indians don't add garlic to everything.

Dry roast the spices. The trick to the taste is the cardamom. Finely grind them in a coffee grinder.

Fry the onions at a medium heat. Add the ginger-green-chilli paste, and fry for a bit.

Now, here's the trick. Add only half the ground spices and fry them. We will use the rest to "finish" the dish. Naturally, the spices must be fried before the tomatoes. Be quick as it's a powder and will burn easily.

Add the lentils, and let them simmer for at least 20 minutes. You must gently scrape the bottom of the pot periodically or they will stick.

Note: this was the step they would've just sealed the pot (with dough,) and stuck it in the tandoor for a few hours. Lacking that, this is the best you're going to able to do.

Add the rest of the spices (not shown) followed by the finishing step -- the addition of the yogurt.

If you add yogurt, you must simmer it for a bit longer. Do not do this with cream or else you'll ruin the dish.

maa ki daal

Vaal

Also known as "split lablab beans". They have a unique sweetish taste, and silky texture.

The CC was known to compose odes to this bean at a very young age.

Fried Toor Daal

The ultimate comfort food when the world gets you down. Serve with basmati rice, or fresh parathas.

Ingredients

2 cups toor daal (pigeon peas)
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 large red onion diced
5-7 Thai green chillies (substitute by serranos)
salt to taste

Recipe

Cook the daal in 3 cups of water (+ salt.) Alternately, just pressure cook it until it is soft (but not mushy.)

When that's done, in a separate vessel, heat some oil. Toss in the cumin and stir; add the onions and chillies and fry for a few mintues; add in the daal, and cook for 5-6 minutes.

That's it!