India COVID Relief Cookalong: Rajma Chawal
Learn Curry Basics from Indian Chef & Restaurateur Nikhil Merchant! 🎉
After making a name for himself in the Indian food world with his Nonchalant Gourmand blog, Nikhil Merchant moved from Mumbai to LA to open his restaurant Imli along with his childhood friend Ashwini Jhaveri, an LA-based lawyer turned food entrepreneur.
Join us as he teaches us the basics of cooking Indian food and the recipe for his favorite comfort curry rajma chawal to raise money for COVID relief in India.
❤️ Cook’s Cause 💪🏾
India is battling a deadly variant and second wave of the corona virus. COVID patients who should be healing are dying due to oxygen shortages, there are hardly any vaccines to be found even for those most well resourced, and mass funeral pyres are burning round the clock.
Please donate to one of these organizations providing life saving resources for the people of India. 🇮🇳
ACT Grants & Swasth Alliance providing oxygen 💙
Project Mumbai procuring healthcare supplies 🏥
Khaana Chahiye & Mazdoor Kitchen fighting hunger 🍚
Mutual Aid India supporting grassroots campaigns 🌱
Rajma Chawal: A Comfort Curry That Tastes Like Home
By Nikhil Merchant
India's cuisines are diverse. You may have heard of popular dishes from the Indian food world - butter chicken, vindaloo, saag paneer and so on. These curries form but a minuscule portion of Indian cuisine, and they are mostly interpretations of the west. There is a world of Indian cuisine which not only remains untapped but also spells comfort. Enter the world of simple homestyle cooking where you will find the delicious dishes of an average Indian citizen's home.
Rajma chawal, a popular dish from the North of India, is a widely loved comfort curry found in homes and commercial spaces alike. It is a nutritious, protein-packed kidney bean curry, using a special spice mix, tomatoes, onions and ginger with dollops of ghee. Served with delicious hot steamed basmati rice (smothered with ghee again), a chili pickle and raw red onions and cilantro, this makes for a hearty meal which is fulfilling and memorable at the same time.
Rajma chawal was a quintessential northern India travel dish for me. As a kid, I would visit my aunt in Delhi during the summers and spend about a month and a half there. My aunt, though born in a coastal town of Goa, would whip up North Indian vegetarian delicacies for me every day. One of my favorite dishes was her rajma, which she would make fresh and hot. I would relish it even in the scorching, dry heat of Delhi summers (and ironically it would be around the month of May itself as that’s peak summer and vacations for us in school).
Her masala was always ground fresh, and beans were soaked the previous night. It was made with love, and reminded me of home even though I was away from mine. Oddly we never made rajma at my home as my mother had her own signature recipes she’d cook for us. Thus, this dish was a yearly special I’d look forward to in my childhood years, traveling to Delhi.
I still to-date prefer rajma homemade, and I very rarely make it myself. It holds a special memory, which hits home. Making it for this India COVID relief fundraiser brings me closer to my country and the little I can do for it from afar. It signifies the close-knitted nature of Indians and how, no matter where we are, somehow, something always connects us back to our roots, bringing about positivity and hope - as well as a sense of nostalgia. What better way than food.
Chef Nikhil Merchant of Imli
5-MINUTE HIGHLIGHT VIDEO HERE:
Indian Curry Basics
Most Indian curry recipes call for a generic Garam Masala to be added or sprinkled along with other whole spices. In reality Indian food and its complexity is derived from a special blend of spices, unique to each curry - well, at least each popular curry.
In this cook-off with me you will learn this recipe in three parts, namely: 1. the spice blend for the Rajma (which will also be versatile enough for you to play around with other meals), 2. the Rajma dish itself, and 3. the steamed rice.
I will share tips, tricks and show you some of the finer nuances of Indian cooking - good enough to wow your family and friends, and which you can proudly proclaim as authentic and traditional as it gets and makes you feel as though you run an Indian kitchen.
Each of these 3 elements will have relevant substitutes and alternates to play with in case you do not want to go for the whole she-bang.
The Rajma Spice Blend
We will take a mix of different spices, easily available from an Indian specialty store but most probably also from your local general store.
If you do not have the time to make the spice blend, you can buy a ready-made spice mix for Rajma available in Indian specialty stores. Three brands to look out for - MDH, Everest or Baadshah. These work perfectly well too. We will need a few spoons of this masala for the recipe.
Ingredients
Cumin Seeds - 3 tblsp
Pomegranate Seeds (Dry) - 3 tblsp
Dry Mango Powder - 3 tblsp
Coriander Seeds - 5 tblsp
Dried Red Chili (Kashmiri or any you find at the Indian store) - 15 pcs
Carom Seeds - 2 tsp
Black Cardamom Whole - 8 pcs
Cloves - 10 pcs
Mace - 5 pcs
Nutmeg - 1/2 tsp powdered
Ginger Powder - 1.5 tblsp
Bay Leaves - 5 pcs
Recipe
Dry Roast all the whole spices on a skillet kept on a med-low flame, Keep the powdered spices ready in a bowl.
Once dry roasted, cool and pop them in a spice grinder or even your coffee grinder and powder it fine - add the powdered spices and mix well. Set aside in an airtight jar.
The Basmati Rice
Pick up a small bag of Uncooked (Raw) Extra Long Grain Basmati Rice from the Indian store.
If you do not want to make this rice in your kitchen, Trader Joe’s has cooked basmati rice which can easily be microwaved.
Most stores will carry basmati rice but the Indian store has the extra long grain one (there is a brand called Laxmi which is very popular).
Ingredients
5 cups water
1 cup uncooked rice
2 tblsp of Ghee (can be picked up from the Indian store; Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods or Sprouts carries it too) - if you do not have ghee, unsalted butter will suffice.
Salt
1 lemon
Recipe
Boil water in the stockpot to a rolling boil. Add a tsp of salt and a squeeze of half lemon. Add rice.
Cook for exactly 8 minutes and drain.
Toss hot rice with ghee
The Rajma Curry
Ideally, buy your kidney beans in the Indian grocery. Indian kidney beans are slightly larger than regular beans available in the market. It is perfectly okay to get a can of Kidney Beans from Target or your local grocery store and we can take it from there.
Raw beans will require some prep before our cooking lesson. It is mentioned in the pre-prep instructions.
Ingredients
1 cup Raw Kidney Beans (Red)
2 tblsp Rajma Masala (either ready-made or the spice blend from above)
1 large Red Onion
3 large Roma Tomatoes
2” Ginger, julienned
1-3 Green Chilis (depending on how hot you would like your dish to be)
1 tblsp Ginger - Garlic Paste
1.5 tsp Cumin Seeds
1 Bay Leaf
3 tblsp Ghee + more for topping
1 pinch turmeric powder
1 tsp Red Chili powder
1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves (Kasuri methi - available in Indian store but this is optional)
Salt to taste
A pinch of sugar
1.5 cups water
Recipe
Active time: 45 minutes
Serves 2-3
Quarter onions and pop into boiling water for 5-7 minutes till soft.
Blend tomatoes in a blender into a paste, set aside. In the same blender without rinsing - pop in the strained onions and blend into a paste
Take a large pot (which has a cover we will use later) and heat the ghee on a medium flame. Sprinkle cumin seeds and bay leaf and let it crackle.
Once crackling add in the ginger-garlic paste and stir fry till fragrant.
Add in the onion paste and stir fry this mix till it turns slightly brown and dryish - About 7-8 minutes on a medium flame
Add Tomato paste and stir fry till the raw smell of tomato disappears and the ghee starts rising on the top (this takes about 10 minutes)
Add the Rajma Masala, Turmeric, Red chili powder and cook till it comes together - If the curry is too dry add a few spoons of hot water to hydrate. Once again the fat will rise and start separating from the spice curry, onwards to the next step
Add the Kidney beans along with salt, a pinch of sugar and water. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove the cover and mash the beans ever so lightly to thicken the curry into a nice thick consistency. Continue cooking uncovered for about 5 minutes or so. At this point we add the kasuri methi (if you are using) and the slit green chilies.
Remove curry into a serving bowl, top with sliced fresh ginger-root and serve with hot basmati rice, a chili pickle (you can pick from the Indian store and if you like it spicy) and raw red onions sliced and tossed with salt and lime.
Pre-Event Prep
1) If you are making your own spice blend - Keep the spices measured and ready with a cast iron skillet as equipment
2) If you are making fresh Basmati Rice with me - Wash the rice in a fine mesh colander till the water runs clear and soak in fresh clean water for at least half hour before our session. You can keep it soaked for 3-4 hours. Equipment needed: a large stock pot and a colander to drain
3) If you are using raw kidney beans - You will need to soak them overnight in water. The next day, discard soaking water and then boil the soaked beans in plenty of water for about an hour. 1 cup of Kidney beans will need to be cooked in a pot filled with 3 liters of water, covered. After boiling, squeeze test them - they should squish easy, if not continue cooking for another half hour. Drain and set aside to be used
4) For Ginger Garlic Paste - You can either pick up a small bottle from the store or just blend equal parts fresh ginger root and garlic with a little water in your blender and keep ready
FULL VIDEO RECORDING HERE:
