Three Generations and an Enduring Love for Besan
Besan has been a part of Rijuta Pandey’s family for generations and every women of the house has witnessed and survived different phases of their lives with at least one recipe made with it. Here, she shares her grandmother’s recipe for a comforting curry with besan.
Besan has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
A favourite childhood memory is that of my mother making kadhi on Diwali and the aroma of roasted besan wafting through from the kitchen.
As I grew up, I realised that besan has been the binding thread of different generations of women in my family.
The story of this love for gram flour starts with my great-grandmother, my dadi amma (Jai Devi Bajpai). She married my great-grandfather in her childhood. It was his second marriage, and he passed away soon after she gave birth to her youngest son, my grandfather. While men remarrying wasn’t much of a big deal, for women it was considered a sin. My dadi amma soon became the matriarch of the house. Every summer, I would watch scores of relatives visit almost daily, and she would feed them all. It was a long day of cooking for the women of the house, especially my nani. My dadi amma would cook several dishes, including different varieties of kadhi —palak kadhi, kadhi pakoda, aloo ki kadhi, dirhanhi wali kadhi, and others.
My nani was the only woman who was adept at using the desi clay chulha. Add to it a constant stirring of a big batch of a besan that could feed 50 people. It became an exhausting job. Being a patient of yet-to-be-diagnosed eosinophilia and osteoporosis, she would keep stirring till her hand gave up on her and my mother or my aunts would take over her. The batter had to be poured on large bronze trays, called as paraat in the UP villages, as quickly as possible to avoid the lumping of batter and overcooking. The anticipation of having fried snacks fresh from the kadhai would make all the kids linger around my nani. Soon, my Nani’s right hand went completely out of shape, but she kept stirring with her left hand. The patriarchal nonchalance of men and ignorance of my great-grandmother towards my nani, left much bitterness in my mouth. Kadhi never tasted the same after that.
My mother agreed couldn’t say much but she would help my nani whenever possible. She, in turn, filled my memories with the sweetness of besan laddus. Each Diwali, I would wake up to the smell of roasted besan wafting from the kitchen. After half-an-hour, she would call me and place the the iron kadhai containing besan roasted in ghee between us. She would add sugar to it and remind me that if it’s a kilo of besan, then we can use a kilo of sugar. Both of us would make small balls of the mixture and put them in concentric circles on a steel plate for the Lakshmi pooja at night.
The author’s great-grandmother, Jai Devi Bajpai (second woman from left), and the author’s grandmother, Savitri Bajpai (fourth from the left).
The author’s grandmother, Savitri Bajpai.
Kadhi has always been more than a way of remembrance of good times for the women of my family.
My nani would send my mother some flour at the end of my summer vacation. The railway station where we would take the train to my city, Kanpur, was five kilometres away from my maternal village. We would arrive at the station first and after a while, my maternal uncle would come on his cycle carrier, carrying a white plastic gunny bag filled with besan, black chana, moong daal, urad daal, freshly pickled mango pickles, and sometimes, a can of freshly extracted mustard oil. On reaching home, my mother would empty the bag and put the items into the allotted steel jars. The next day she would ask my father to bring some curd, preferably ‘sapreta dahi’, sour curd bereft of cream, produced from non-fat milk. She would use this to make kadhi. Watching her I learned that the trick to a successful kadhi lies in the constant yet gentle stirring of the pot. If you let it boil, the milk solids will separate and ruin the recipe. My mother would keep stirring the pot until the pale-yellow concentric circles would appear on the surface. Then she would add salt. If you add salt before the boil comes, the recipe will be ruined. While she stirred the pot, she would also shed a tear or two. Coming back from her childhood home was never easy on her. She always struggled the day following the return trip, but cooking her favorite meal with the ingredients her mother sent, helped cheer her up.
Time went on and COVID virus devoured many people, including my mother. Grief became the prominent ingredient of all my dishes, much like besan. After my mother’s demise, the sour smell wafting from the iron kadhai has become a way of marinating my heart with all the good times I lived with her.
Besan isn’t just beloved in my family, but is one of the threads of the great tapestry that is India. There is not a single sweetshop in North India where I cannot find the Gujarati delicacy khaman, widely known as dhokla in the North. In sinuous Howrah, you cannot miss the smell of beguni, fried eggplant sliced and dipped in besan batter, wafting from every snack shop. Having spent two years in Chennai, I gathered that any victory is incomplete without crumbly-yet-melt-in-your-mouth Mysore pak. And who can miss pedas and mohan thal from Mathura and Vrindavan? Rajasthani thalis are incomplete without gatta curry, so are Gujarati evenings without khandavi, Maharashtrian snack platters without batata vadas, and Sindhi breakfasts without besan koki.
Whether it is a new city, a new country, or a new phase in life, what embraces us first is the food we eat. And if the food we eat has something like besan, which can embrace anyone and anything without interfering and judging too much, life becomes a little easier. That’s what we want amidst all the uncertainties and chaos of life, something easy and comfortable, is it not?
RECIPE FOR JAI DEVI BAJPAI’S DIRHANI WALI KADHI
Ingredients
For kadhi:
1 cup besan
2 cups curd (3, if sour)
10 cups water
1-2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp mustard oil
1 tsp fenugreek seeds,
1/2 tsp cumin seeds (optional),
1/2 tsp asafoetida (hing)
5-10 curry leaves (optional),
2 whole dry red chillies.
For dirhani:
1 cup besan
1/2 tsp turmeric and red chili powder
1 tsp mustard oil
Salt to taste
1/2 glass of water
Method
For kadhi:
Whisk together the besan, curd and water.
Add turmeric in the besan mix (adding spices before applying heat will make sure the kadhi remains smooth, creamy and consistent).
In an iron kadhai, heat mustard oil and add fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds (optional), hing, curry leaves (optional), and red chillies.
Once chillies crackle, add the besan mix to the kadhai. Keeping the gas on the lowest flame, stir the mix and keep stirring till you it starts boiling.
Once you see a boil, add salt according to taste. Keep stirring the kadhi till you see darker yellow-colored concentric circles.
For dirhani:
Mix all the ingredients together.
Whisk the batter and keep adding water till it has runny consistency.
Add one teaspoon of mustard oil to an iron kadhai but on the lowest flame.
Take the ladle in one hand and the pot containing the besan batter in one hand. Add the besan batter to the kadhai and start stirring.
Keep stirring and make sure no besan sticks to the bottom off the kadhai. If the batter becomes lumpy, add water and keep stirring. Keep adding water till you dissolve all the lumps. It is best to use a whisk.
Stir until you see the besan is not sticking to the kadhai and layers of besan start peeling off of the sides and bottom.
By the side, prepare a plate or tray with a folded rim. Grease generously with mustard oil.
Grease your hands with mustard oil and pour the cooked batter onto the greased plate as soon as you switch off the gas.
Put a little water on your palms and flatten out the poured batter till it looks like a thin besan cake.
Leave the plate to cool down. Once cool, it will start leaving the bottom of the plate.
Place the cake on a cutting or any flat surface and cut it into thin cuboids of 2-3 inches.
Add the cuboids to piping hot mustard oil and fry till they look golden brown (not crispy).
PS: The sticks can also be stored for a month and eaten like a snack. Sprinkle some salt over them and voila, you get besan French fries. Add them to kadhi or you can make a curry with them too.
Rijuta Pandey is a budding writer whose works have appeared in the online literary magazines Verse of Silence, The Chakkar, Active Muse, and The Monograph Magazine. Follow her on Instagram.
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