Rajma and the Introduction to the Players!
I’ve had a lot of cooking issues in my life. I’ve frozen up many times when I’ve tried to decide what to cook, I’ve been prostrate on the kitchen floor, weeping, and I’ve had panic attacks in grocery stores. All true, unfortunately.
When I came to India, I discovered a way of cooking that slowly started unraveling all those tense, knotted wires in my brain.
I find that I always need a way to think about something. A philosophy or vision, I guess. So, the way I’ve started to look at food, and Indian cooking in particular, is as a combination of fresh ingredients, rocking the beans, and understanding the players.
So, today I’m going to start introducing you to the players, and to rocking the beans.
Seriously, you need to rock the beans. Look at these beans. They’re so dry! So cheap! So healthy! Indian mamas know how to cook beans, and I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from a couple of them.
This is a recipe for Rajma. Meet Rajma. Rajma, meet the readers.
Rajma is a type of small kidney bean. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think you could also use pinto beans for this recipe. (I’ll test it when I’m back in the U.S. this summer.)
So: preparation of dried beans. You need to soak them overnight, the day before you cook them, and then rinse them completely before boiling them. I can’t recommend a pressure cooker enough. I cook beans with a pressure cooker by allowing three blasts of the cooker on high, then turning them off completely. It takes way less time. If you are simply boiling them, give yourself a couple of hours and make sure they’re really soft. They won’t be good if they’re crunchy. You can fill the water up to an inch about the beans, in the pressure cooker.
(In the following dish I used 500 g of rajma and boy did we have a lot of beans. If you make as much as I did, you will be able to freeze some, which could be a good idea. Or you can cut the recipe in half.)
Okay. The players! The players are a special combination of vegetables and spices that you can add to or take away from, to make a base for almost any vegetable that you want to cook. I often opted not to cook Indian food in the past because the long list of ingredients made my eyes cross. Now that I know them as the players, I don’t even think about that long list.
This dish is a little different from some of the others that I’ll write about, because I take some of the players and cook them ahead of time so that I can blend them to make a gravy.
I’ll give you some basic amounts, but the beauty of learning to cook this way is that you can change any recipe to your taste. You like more onions? Add more. Hate garlic? Only add a little. (I can’t in good conscience tell you not to add any.)
These are the vegetable players:
Onions: (for 250 g of beans, use two small onions or one large onion. Chop them into small pieces, not too small, because you’re going to blend them anyways.)
Tomatoes: (Use two small tomatoes or one big one. Chop them into small diced pieces.)
This is me with my tomatoes.
Garlic and ginger: I use this awesome paste which makes my life wonderful. I use two teaspoons or so of the paste, or about an inch of grated ginger and three cloves of grated garlic. (But no measuring!)
And a small green chili. This is entirely to taste. Use as much or as little as you want, and you can add red chili powder for more spice, which can be more controllable, because you know how some chillies are so much spicier than others and there is just no way of knowing which ones! Slit the chili lengthwise and then chop it into teeny tiny pieces.
Begin by heating about four tablespoons of oil in a wok (Woks are best because you’ll need to cook the spices in the oil, later) and adding the onions. You want to cook on a medium or low heat.
When the onions look like this (you know, all soft and see through, yum!) add the garlic and ginger and chili. Cook them for about two minutes, and then add the tomatoes.
Then you want to cook them all until they look like this:
There is this thing that happens where the oils start to separate from the tomatoes or something something blah blah blah, I don’t know what I’m talking about but watch for it! This is when they’re ready, when they are soft and oily see through liquid comes out of them. Okay? Technical enough?
Put the veggie players aside to cool.
Now, there are spice and herb players too. These are the Indian ones, and a lot of countries have their own spice players. Some have almost none. India has a heck of a lot. I’ve omitted a couple that seem really hard to find, but here are the ones I think you’ll manage to locate. (Many big cities have Indian supermarkets, and you can search around online for distributors.)
Introducing: Jeera. Or, in English, cumin seeds. The single best spice in all of the world. Seriously, with all that stuff about spice routes and everything- I get it! Jewels? Bleh. Silks? Okay, yeah, they’re nice. But just imagine that all you’ve ever had is pease porridge in the pot, nine days old, and then you discover cumin! Wow. This is about how much I use.
Mustard seeds: These are brown mustard seeds; you can use brown or black. With both of these I use about a tsp, or maybe a little more. Once again, measuring is not important.
Bay leaves. Easy peasy. I use one large bay leaf, or two if I feel a little crazy.
Cinnamon: My friends, I have no idea how easy it is to get cinnamon like this in the Western world. People just pull it out of the jungle here, so it’s easy. But you can use the powder if you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO! Be careful how much you use, if you use powder. Half a tsp would be enough. The thing is, which it’s a stick like this, only the essence comes out. It’s nicer.
This is where I admit that it would have been a lot nicer for photos if I had just clean the pot that I’d cooked the tomatoes and onions in. But my habit is to just reuse it, because I like the crunchy flavorful parts on the sides. And I’m lazy. I have six kids!! I mean, four.
Once again, use some oil, about four tbs, and heat it up a little. Add the cumin seeds, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, and mustard seeds. Cook them until they start popping.
Then you need to add the beans. (The cooked beans) Include some of the water that the beans cooked in.
Here are a couple more players that you should add, once you’ve added the beans and stirred:
Turmeric: The trick to turmeric is that you should only use a little. Stick to half a tsp.
This is something call Kasoori Methi. It’s Fenugreek leaves. Let me know if you can find these. They make everything taste so much more Indian, somehow. I love them. I can’t get enough of them.
And I didn’t include a picture of the salt, but add a tsp of salt.
Now the veggie players should be warmish. Blend them up until they look like this:
And add them to the beans. That’s the good stuff. Then stir everything really well and allow it all to cook together for about twenty minutes. We eat this with rice and one other Indian cooked dish, usually vegetables, or maybe with just a salad.
Salt it to taste, at the end. You really want to have enough salt, friends, but don’t oversalt it or you’ll be kicking yourself.
You know what would be really nice at the end of this post? A photo of the rajma, on a plate, with rice and salad, just the way it would look if you were ready to eat it. Unfortunately I forgot to ask Chinua to take one.
But let’s cover the basics again:
The vegetable players:
Onions
Tomatoes
Ginger
Garlic
Chili
The spice players:
Cumin seeds
Mustard seeds
A bay leaf
Cinnamon
Turmeric
Salt
Fenugreek Leaves (Kasoori Methi)
If you learn to cook the players, you will be able to make a base that you can add use any vegetables to, at any time. I’ll do another post, next week, about vegetables and the players, now that we’ve covering one of the many fine beans that we share our earth with.
Thanks to Chinua, for the sweet and artsy photos. I’ll answer questions in the comments if you have any! Bon Appetit!
29 comments
Love the food post! May I request a step by step for Dhal Makhani? It is my favorite Indian dish EVER.
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Looks delicious! Is everything blended, sort of dahl-like, or just the veggies? In the final photo it all looks blended, so maybe I missed a step.
Unrelated: You have beautiful hands and I love your outfit!
Only the onions, tomato, and ginger and garlic are blended, I think in that photo the beans have sort of sunk and the liquids are on top.
*Thanks
Rae, I too love Kasoori Methi–I usually add it to potatoes..will add it to Rajma–which I make often and love as well. Thank you for this post and the photos…I know how time consuming it is to cook from scratch–but to photograph and write step by step explanation adds to the busy factor, so thank-you for sharing. I so love Indian food and this was a treat for me. Looking forward to your vegetable post.
Wow! Just this morning I thought, I really need a new dinner recipe (we’re vegan). And, well, THANK YOU! You rock (so do the beans!)
I am so hungry!
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Awesome timing Rachel. Since last week, I’ve been getting into authentic Indian cooking. I daringly made channa masala and roti for the parents of my Indian roommate and it was a success! I’ve also been obsessed with cumin seeds and green chillis recently. And after church yesterday I went to a huge Indian grocery store here in Baltimore and got all sorts of new stuff to try. I’m making green chutneys and just ate some parantha with pungent and strangely exciting pickled mango. Love it!
I LOVE Indian food! Christy has been my main-squeeze in this department but I am finally branching into my own… thanks for this awesome recipe! Soakin’ those beans TOONITE!
This is how my thoughts went:
I love the way she uses the term “the players”
Going to the US this summer?!!
Beautiful light in those photos
Wow, a picture of Rae, she’s so beautiful
Those bracelets rock, they remind me of Wonder Woman’s cuffs, you know, they deflect bullets
I wonder what the kids were doing during the photoshoot
P.S.
I hate cooking with a passion and I resent all the time I have to spend every day in the kitchen. But I know it’s a stage, and when I embrace the culinary world again I shall certainly refer back to the players
Eleanor´s last blog ..Rhyme or reason?
Thanks! I’m a long time vegetarian and always looking for new recipes. This sounds fabulous!
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That’s WusSup! I Love to cook too and I’m from New Orleans where the food is at! LoL! Nice recipe, I’m gonna have to try it.
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Awesome. Really. And Chinua’s got such great shots of you and your dish. If you ever come across a Malai Kofta recipe, please share…it’s my fav!
Oh Rae! I’m so, so glad you learned to cook. :> Because you an artist, and cooking is just another art form… I would love to sit at your table and taste your art.
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I think my thought-line was very similar to Eleanor’s! In my mind I imagine that I look “cute” and “artsy” throughout the day… but then a picture gets snapped every so often and the reality chases my fantastic imagination into a dark corner to hide.
Cumin is the bomb! And I’d put coriander in the running for Top Spice too I think. Funny how I thought cilantro was “mexican” and cumin solely for tacos when I was growing up!
Christine´s last blog ..necessity is the mother of homemade
This is THE prettiest cooking post I’ve ever read.
Beautiful.
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hooray! i loved your post on how to cook good dahl (and have often cooked it with great success!) and feel just as excited about this one. You do a great job of de-mystifying the long list of ingredients – and the photos are lovely. The beautiful colors of the spices and the vegetables sing! Thank you, thank you.
kelli lu´s last blog ..oooh, we did it!
You make cooking sound so beautiful. I have to say we cook beans the exact way until the pressure cooking point. Pasta with beans is my son’s favourite dish. From there on, it’s all different.
Thank you for sharing this, i really enjoyed the post.
Abs x
Girlfriend…you make it look easy as pie…(not so easy in the end really) and Im always on the hunt for new nutritious Indian recipes…yummy.thanks for sharing.
charm
bb- that’s the benefit of the Superstar photographer super lens man husband! One of the benefits.
Christine, mmmmmmm mexican food…
Rebeca, you have always been the biggest inspiration in the kitchen to me.
Allison, I did learn to make Malai Kofta in the himalayas in a cooking class I took in an Indian woman’s kitchen (sitting on the floor and cooking together). I will definitely share it sometime.
Eleanor, one day I will show you a video of what the kids were doing during the photoshoot and cooking time. The lighting is an off camera flash, a Chin specialty. And yes, heading to Canada and the US very soon in fact- probably in April.
The first time I saw my Indian husbands Mum cook I was terrified – the way that she left the steel pan on the heat (with it’s lid on) with it’s oil all bubbly and the mustard seeds a-popping to try and escape from the deadly bubbly ghee… My oh my, that fear doubled as she slung in the recently washed potatoes – the sizzling cacophony was awe inspiring!! James Cameron should’ve made a movie about it all!
But the freedom of my silver tin, with all it’s spices in, is just lovely. That’s the gift I received when I was finally accepted into their fold, she trusted me to care for her son so she gave me the tools to do it with.
Do you have to use the massive tongs to lift lids and pans with – I’ve never seen a pan with a handle yet in my Ma-in-laws kitchen!
Great recipe and photos.
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Rae, I have had a similar relationship with cooking. Perhaps I need to learn to rock the beans. I’ve eyed them in their bins at the bulk food store and have lacked the courage to try. Perhaps this will put me over the edge. Your blog is breathtaking. I absolutely adore it. Good to see your stuff!
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Nice banner rachel, and good blog! Chin does such a good job of photos but then so do you!
I am thoroughly inspired! Thank you for this delightful post. I look forward to all such posts. This way of cooking makes so much sense and makes time in the kitchen a pleasure, a dance with beautiful ingredients instead a “recipe” to be just be ground out in time to eat. Loved the photos!
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Love the new header.
And this looks great! I can get most of those spices here in Morocco. And you cook like I do…about this much, about that much. Measuring is for sissies
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