badiyon ki chutney | बड़ियों की चटनी | a condiment from the older times

Badiyan, Badee, Bori, Kumhdouri or Adouri are the regional names of a dehydrated spiced lentil cakes made using black lentil paste along with some spices, herbs and sometimes grated gourds added to it. The lentil paste is briefly fermented and then made into drop shaped cakes before dehydrating the in strong sun. Once sun dried completely, the badiyan are kept safe for the whole year to come.

These badiyan can be deep fried whole or can be crushed and shallow fried before being added to curries. The pyaz badiyon ki subzi or simply alu badiyon ki subzi is a classic, these badiyan are mean to impart flavour to the vegetables without additional spices added to the curries.

Badiyan were generally made during early summers so the the sun drying is done perfectly for year long storage. In older times when there was scarcity of fresh vegetables during summer months and monsoons, these badiyan were use profusely to bring flavour to the table.

Now a days when all sorts of fresh produce is available all year round, we can't imagine how it might have been in the older times. Notably, these badiyan are made using some seasonal gourds that are not regarded too good for cooking purpose but lend a great texture to the badiyan. These are made using grated Ash gourds in UP and I have seen them being made using a large cucumber variety in Uttarakhand. The famous Amritsari vadi or badi has only spices and no vegetables in it, these are bigger in size and more spicy in nature.

Use of grated Ash gourd (called as petha or safed kumhda, also used to make Agre ka petha) lends a good texture to these badiyan, the way they make it in UP. Apart from the grated gourd, some chopped coriander greens, some cumin, coriander seeds, peppercorns and chillies are added to make the badiyan flavourful.

The real flavour of the deep fried and cooked badiyan is vary different from all these spices put together. The lentil paste fermented and sun dried becomes a very different flavour in it's own, a great way to add Umami to Indian curries I feel.

This badiyon ki chutney is an easy to make condiment that lasts a few days on the table. We generally break the badis into smaller pieces to shallow fry them evenly.

If the badiyan are not too spicy you can fry a couple of red chillies along with them.

Just add a few garlic cloves and salt to taste and blend to make a coarse paste.

Everything is added to taste, you can make this chutney according to your own liking of chilli heat or garlic. Grind it smooth or coarse, add water or lime juice if required and add some dhaniya patta if you like. This chutney wont disappoint you.

The resulting chutney is a dry crumbly paste that can be spread over parathas, mixed with khichdi or whatever you like with it. I remember my dad used to love this chutney and when I made it after ages I kept eating spoonfuls of it and remembering how he used to make it all by himself.

The baby onions in vinegar, sliced ginger and green chillies in brine and this chutney were his favourite condiments on the table. When I asked him a few days ago whether he still makes this chutney, he said he will make it again and that he had forgotten how much he used to love it.

With the availability of so many new products on our super market shelves, we are definitely forgetting the foods we used to relish so much.

Do try making this chutney wit any kind of spiced badiyan you get and let me know if you liked it. Please tell me if it was made in your home too and how long back. Sometimes I am surprised to bump into people who have similar food memories, are you one of them?

everyday subzi: aloo lobiya aur amritsari vadiyon ki subzi | a curry with yard long beans, potatoes and sun dried spiced lentil cakes

Yard long beans or field beans are also called as Chinese long beans. In India it is called as Lobiya, Barbati, Boda, Bodi etc in different languages. There are many more names in other languages you can see here. In north India it is a summer season bean along with Guar (cluster beans).

I find these beans quite easy to work with. Just snap the ends and gather a bundle together and shop them all in whatever size you want. I remember my grandmother and mom both used to snap the beans in small bits by hands, one by one while talking to each other or watching TV. It used to take a long time and somehow when I started cooking lost interest in lobiya. But then we planted some lobiya in our garden one season and a beautiful crop made me love this vegetable once again.
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I remember the first time I had cooked it for a few vegetarian guests from Arvind's family and I was clueless how to cook it without onion and garlic as these were elderly people who didn't eat any onion and garlic. In such times I always thought of how the kachori walas of Banaras cooked the simple jain style subzi they served and followed my instincts, the result was always encouraging. That day too those old people praised the curry so much I almost thought it was because of the garden fresh beans. Later when I recreated the recipe even I loved it and that became my favourite way to cook lobiya. Will share that recipe sometime soon.

This alu lobiya with amritsari vadiyan is another favourite of mine. Vadiyan (plural) are sun dried spice lentil cakes that are made in the shape of small cookies. The vadiyan impart the flavours of spices and a very distinct flavour of the dehydrated lentil paste that I consider Indian Umami. It livens up any curry in my opinion and I often crave for it.

I have never tried making vadiyan of my own because it takes some time for a few days to prepare the spices and lentils and then shape them on a sheet and then sun dry them for a week or so. But I am planning to do so some time. I buy them from Rupak stores and sometimes my mum gifts me some of her home made stock. These are from Rupak and look crushed. I prefer using them crushed so it doesn;t matter if they are not whole.

Lobiya is chopped like this. I often store it in a ziplock bag for a couple of days if my maid has chopped too many vegetables for my comfort.

We don;t use any spices in any curry that uses vadiyan. The spices in the vadiyan is enough to spice up the curry and bring an unmistakable Umami flavour in the curry.

ingredients

chopped lobiya 2 cups
boiled, cooled and cubed potatoes (with skin) 3/4 cup
sliced onions 1/2 cup
crushed vadiyan 2 tbsp
turmeric powder 1 tsp
chopped dhaniya patta 1/4 cup
salt to taste
mustard oil or ghee 1.5 tbsp

procedure

Heat the oil in a kadhai and tip in the vadiyan. Fry till they become aromatic. My mom used to take the fried vadiyan out and proceed with the vegetables but I let them be in the kadhai as I add on the vegetables.

Add the sliced onions as soon as the vadiyan get fragrant. Fry till the onions get a bit caramelized. Add the chopped lobiya and potatoes and fry them all for about 4-5 minutes.

Add turmeric powder and mix well. Add 2 cups of water, mix well and cover the kadhai to simmer the curry for about 10 minutes. Check once, mash some of the potatoes and let it come to a desired consistency. Some people like to add a little tomato puree at this time but I prefer it without the tomatoes.

Add chopped dhaniya patta and serve hot or even at room temperature. I summers we don;t care about hot food.

The vadiyan in the curry soak the water and get softer. The curry gets a really unique flavour due to vadiyan, you have to eat it to believe it. See this pyaz vadiyon ki subzi and you would know how only the vadiyan are capable to make a curry flavourful.

pyaz badiyon wali subzi | onion soup with 'sun dried lentil cakes' | a traditional summer curry from UP

I was reminded of this pyaz badiyon wali subzi when I was flipping through the pages of Vikas Khanna's book called Hymns from the Soil. There is a similar onion soup in the book that uses ginger and cumin for the base flavours, the simplicity of the onion soup and the way it looks brought my childhood back.

This pyaz badiyon wali subzi was made during the hottest time in summers. Back then I did not realise but it was for a purpose, it was light to digest and tickled the taste buds that were overwhelmed with more and more mangoes. This curry was actually had like a soup (in large amounts) but along with whole wheat thin chapatis.

Badiyan (singular-badi) are sun dried lentil cakes made using urad daal (skinned black lentils) paste mixed with spices and grated ash gourd or chopped coriander greens. The aroma of these badiyan is really interesting as this is one of those umami flavours in Indian cuisine. These badiyan are shallow fried in mustard oil and added to curries to add flavours. In this case it is just sliced red onions and the badiyan made it really special.

The recipe is simple, but need precision as the specific taste has to be recreated. Onions are caramelised along with crushed badiyan and then the mix is cooked with loads of water. No spice or even turmeric is added and flavours come from the onions and the spices sun dried along with the badiyan. I shall try and make these badiyan and post a recipe soon.

ingredients
(2 portions)
sliced red onions 1.5 cups
crushed badiyan 2-3 tbsp or to taste
mustard oil 1 tbsp
broken dry red chilly one
cumin seeds 1 tsp
salt to taste

procedure 

Heat the mustard oil and tip in the cumin seeds. Add the red chilly, the broken badiyan and sliced onions one after the other. Fry the onions to caramelise them slowly and the badiyan also get nicely roasted along.

Add salt and about 3 cups of water and let the curry cook on low flame for 15 minutes or a little more. Adjust consistency as desired and serve hot with thin chapatis and may be a sookhi mung daal. It makes the most divine meals in summer time.

I had it with besan wali roti and some raw salad on the side and was a content soul after having a hot meal that revived memories of my grandmother.

It will do the same to you if you belong to eastern UP or you parents have lived there. Such foods make their way into your home even if you have lived there just for a while.