aAfter a long bout making pasta and pizza in the University of Illinois dining hall, I was exhausted—and I deserved the reward.
It was the ’90s, I was an international graduate student, and as I was walking back to my apartment in Champaign, I saw a new little Indian restaurant on the edge of the campus and cautiously entered. Familiar smells greeted me. My latent homesickness was recorded several months after my family in Mumbai, because it seemed to be getting better.
I felt like I was going to my aunt’s kitchen. Behind the table, a graceful woman scooped generous portions of rajma over heaps of fragrant basmati rice in large white ceramic bowls. I don’t remember anything else on the menu, but I remember paying for the bowl by weight. It was 115g of rajma and rice, some sauce hanging down the bottom of the bowl on the outside. I sat down to eat. Every tasty morsel hugged my insides, which was hungry for the comfort of all things familiar. I held back tears of comfort. While digging, I knew: If I could find this in the Midwest on a cold winter’s day, it wouldn’t be too far home.
Rajma has only been a part of Indian cuisine since the late eighteenth century, but Rajma every Indian cuisine is filled with a family history of immigration. Cooked red beans with onions and tomatoes and seasoned with a housewife’s favorite spice blend is a quintessential comfort food, evoking memories of warm hugs, warm family dinners, large gatherings and Sunday afternoon naps.
In my memory, Rajma was about friendship and trust, about having a quick lunch with my best friend in elementary school Pramita at her home when her mother, whom I knew as Auntie S, was calling me. In the monastery the lunch break was short. Pramita and I were closing the school gates, across the neighborhood, and going up three flights of stairs to her house. Auntie S was giving us stainless steel plates filled with warm paratha and steaming rajma in small pots from her small kitchen.
Auntie S, a cheerful Bengali woman married to a Lucknow man, was a trained nutritionist. I made Rajma which was a bit out of all the places I called home: Calcutta (now Kolkata), Lucknow, and finally Bombay (now Mumbai). It was impossibly complicated, and exceptionally convenient. Made with smaller red kidney beans from Uttarakhand, simmered in an onion and tomato gravy, and topped with homemade malai or cream. She later learned that she resented buying Garam Masalas from the store, and instead added a delicate, local blend of roasted cumin, fenugreek, black pepper and cardamom, unlike the potent North Indian Garam Masala.
And though it came from a stranger’s kitchen, Rajma Restaurant – cooked and served with such care – showed me that I was missing out on much more than a good recipe.
This sit-down meal was a luxury on the school day. On those afternoons, the untouched tree comes home on the back of a Tiffinwala bike. My mom knew I had lunch at Pramita’s house.
Although my mother stored a lot of pulses, for reasons unknown to me at the time, she never cooked rajma. As a teenager, I became a stoning revolutionary against my mother’s hatred for her; It fueled my sense of curiosity and adventure. So one summer when family obligations robbed all adults, and my parents decided that my trusted nanny and I would live on our farm outside Mumbai, I tried to do it.
My mom gave me a crash course in cooking, and my dad gave me Reader’s Digest crafting books to be my summer companions. I found a section on backyard camping full of recipes—including one for baked beans that look like rajma. I bought ingredients at a country market, including a can of beans, and enthusiastically cooked them on an outdoor wood-burning stove. But the beans taste weird and bad, and I couldn’t figure out why. We ate in silence.
Twelve years later, while at graduate school in Illinois, an unexpected sighting of canned beans in a Meijer supermarket leads to a yearning for home: family and the safety nets of trusting relationships and unconditional trust. Coming to America as a single graduate student has been the biggest leap in my faith, and it has brought a difficult lesson in learning who to trust. Thirteen thousand miles from whatever I cared about, now responsible for my meals, my time, the bills, and emotional care, I sought my mother’s advice on the monthly phone calls. And I began to appreciate her preference for ingredients, her time and kitchen budgets, and how her father taught her to cook. She explained how his techniques for layering spices made a difference in the kitchen, and how they shaped their relationship with her and her trust in people.
Her life did not give her the luxury of time or resources to watch a pot boil, something she found difficult and involved in making. Slowly, her kitchen began to make sense — as did the recipes she wrote while listening to her.
Although Auntie S’s rajma recipe eluded me, the memory of those flavors made me smile again. I tracked down Reader’s Digest The library’s baked bean recipe, and the reasons why my experiment failed: Indian ketchup was not tomato sauce; jaggery was not brown sugar; And not all canned beans were vegan. My attempt to set fire to Rajma lacked my mom’s kitchen logic and Auntie S’s care, important components of two women who had never met but shared an unspoken maternal pact of trust and caregiving. My beans also lacked my grandfather’s cooking techniques, and all the nuances of flavor that made Rajma’s Auntie S special.
And though it came from a stranger’s kitchen, the Rajma—cooked and served with such care—showed me that I was missing out on much more than a good recipe. When I ate, I realized I had to start over, learn my recipes and techniques again, and even trust again. And I knew that no matter where I lived, only trust and care would make up where I felt at home.
Godbole writes about Indian cuisine in currycravings.com.
Makhani Rajma (North Indian style creamy red beans)
(Getty Images/iStock)
active time: 30 minutes total time: 1 hour
Serves: 4 to 8 servings
Rajma, or red bean dishes, is a staple in many Indian homes. Among the many Indian preparations that use red kidney beans, makhani Rajma is a classic. This edition from food writer Nandita Godbole demonstrates the layering techniques used to build flavor, adding onions, tomatoes, and a drop of cream only when each shimmers better. The recipe can be adapted to meet nutritional needs. If you like chili, you will love makhani Rajma. This dish is usually served as a side dish in a larger meal, but it can also be eaten as an appetizer. The finished dish tastes best after it has rested overnight in the refrigerator. Serve family-style with basmati or brown rice, naan and/or raita.
Storage notes: The sauce can be made up to the point of adding the beans and refrigerated for up to 3 days.
Where to buy: Indian bay leaf (tamal patra) can be found in Indian grocery stores and online.
ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
170g finely chopped red or white onion (optional, see notes)
1 tablespoon finely grated or minced ginger
1 tablespoon finely grated or minced garlic
1 (2 inch) cinnamon stick
2 to 3 whole cloves
2 green cardamom
1 Indian bay leaf (see Notes)
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (can substitute for Kashmiri pepper for a milder heat)
200 g fresh tomatoes, finely chopped or mashed or diced canned tomatoes (see Notes)
800 g of boiled beans; Or use 2 packets, washed and drained (see Notes)
240ml water, plus more as needed
1/4 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi powder, see Notes)
1 teaspoon granulated sugar or honey (optional)
Fine sea salt or table salt
60gm fresh heavy cream for garnish optional
Cooked basmati rice or brown rice or nan
Raita for submission is optional
directione
1. In a deep, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat, heat the oil until it shimmers.
2. If using onions, add onions to skillet and cook, stirring constantly, until softened and light golden brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Add ginger and garlic and cook, stirring, taking care not to burn too, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and bay leaf and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. If using onions, sprinkle hot pepper on top and mix until evenly coated. (If you are not using onions, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for about a minute before adding the chilies, as they burn instantly in very hot oil.)
4. Add the tomatoes, stirring until evenly combined with the spices. Cook, stirring, until liquid begins to evaporate, about 2 minutes. (See notes for a finer sauce.)
5. Add the beans and stir gently so that they do not break. Add water, cover and reduce heat to low. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent the beans from sticking to the bottom of the pan, until they have thickened slightly, about 20 minutes.
6. When the sauce begins to thicken, add the fenugreek leaves. Add sugar and season with salt to taste. Return the lid and continue cooking for an additional 10 minutes until the sauce thickens and flavors blend.
7. Taste one of the beans, and if it is not yet flavorful, add 1/4 to 1/2 of the water, re-cover and simmer for another 10 minutes, then taste again. Cover and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Taste and add more salt, sugar or honey if needed.
8. When ready to serve, remove and discard the cinnamon stick and bay leaf. Stir cream over, remove from heat and serve hot, family-style, as a side or main dish, with rice, naan and raita on the side, if desired.
Notes
For a smooth sauce, mash the tomatoes and spices before adding the beans. Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes. Remove and reserve the cinnamon and bay leaf, then, using an immersion blender, process the sauce in short batches to reduce splattering, until smooth. If you are using a regular mixer, let the sauce cool completely before curing. Once pureed, return the sauce to the skillet, add the cinnamon stick and bay leaf and continue with the rest of the recipe.
If onions are not used, use an additional 200 grams of chopped tomatoes.
The dish is best when using homemade beans.
The recipe can be adapted to other types of cooked beans, including black peas and Adzuki beans. Or substitute your favorite ingredient in place of the beans, like boiled baby potatoes and cremini mushroom halves, or proteins, like shredded paneer or shredded roast chicken.
Indian bay leaf, also known as tamale patra, has a different flavor than standard bay leaves, and results in a more complex flavour.
Fresh fenugreek leaves and dried seeds differ in flavor from dried fenugreek leaves. do not replace.
Nutritional information per serving (1/2 cup), based on 8 | Calories: 139 Total Fat: 4g; saturated fat: 0 g; cholesterol: 0 mg; Sodium: 47 mg; carbohydrates: 21 g; Dietary fiber: 6 g; sugar: 3 g; Protein: 7 grams
This analysis is an estimate based on the ingredients available and this preparation. It should not replace the advice of a dietician or dietician.
From cookbooks author Nandita Godbuli of currycravings.com.
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