Bhoger Khichuri

the Durga Puja offering: roasted moong dal and small-grained gobindobhog rice cooked soft with ginger and whole spices, without onion or garlic, and distributed from the pandal as prasad

Origin: India

From the journey of Mung Bean.

This is the dish that makes the mung bean, for a few days each October, plausibly the most widely eaten pulse on earth. Bhog is food offered to a deity and then given back to the congregation as prasad, and at Durga Puja it is cooked in cauldrons at the pandal and distributed to whoever comes, which in a large Kolkata neighbourhood means many thousands of servings from a single kitchen over five days. What is cooked is khichuri, and the Bengali version is built on the same dry-roasted moong that underlies bhaja muger dal: the split bean is turned in a bare pan until it colours and smells of toasted nuts, which is what keeps the grains distinct in a dish cooked long and soft, and gives the whole pot a nuttiness that plain moong cannot. Two constraints define it, and both come from its being an offering rather than a meal. The first is that it must be niramish: no onion and no garlic, which in Bengali practice are excluded from food cooked for the gods. Everything the dish has by way of savour must therefore come from ginger, from whole spices bloomed in ghee, and from the roasting of the dal, which is why those steps carry so much weight here and why the result tastes nothing like a secular khichuri with onions in it. The second is the rice. Gobindobhog is a small, round, intensely fragrant Bengali short grain whose name means, near enough, food fit to offer to Govinda, and it is not interchangeable with basmati: it is stickier, it breaks down more readily, and it gives the dish the soft, cohesive body that a long grain will not. What comes with it on the leaf plate is as fixed as the khichuri itself: labra, the mixed vegetable stew, beguni, aubergine slices in a besan batter, a sharp tomato and date chutney, a fried papad, and payesh to end. The whole is eaten sitting on the floor in rows, and a great many Bengalis will say without hesitation that it is the best thing they eat all year, which has as much to do with the circumstances as with the cooking.

Ingredients

Base

  • 200 g moong dal (split hulled yellow mung beans)
  • 200 g gobindobhog rice, or another small aromatic short grain
  • 1.4 litre water, kept hot

Frying

  • 4 tbsp ghee
  • 2 tbsp mustard oil
  • 2 whole medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
  • 250 g cauliflower, broken into large florets

Tempering

  • 2 whole Indian bay leaves (tej patta)
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 whole dried red chillies
  • 4 whole green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
  • 4 whole cloves
  • 5 cm cinnamon stick

Spicing

  • 25 g fresh ginger, made into a smooth paste
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 whole green chillies, slit lengthways
  • 2 tsp fine salt, or to taste
  • 2 tsp sugar

To Finish

  • 100 g green peas, fresh or frozen
  • 1 tbsp ghee, raw, to stir in at the end
  • 0.5 tsp garam masala

Method

  1. Turn the dry moong dal in a heavy pan over a medium-low heat, with no fat, for 6 to 8 minutes until it has coloured to pale honey gold and smells of toasted nuts. Tip it out onto a plate, let it cool, then rinse it in two or three changes of water along with the rice, and drain both.
  2. Heat the mustard oil with 2 tablespoons of the ghee in a large heavy pot. Fry the potato and cauliflower over a medium heat, in batches if need be, until well browned at the edges, about 8 minutes. Lift out and set aside.
  3. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of ghee to the pot and put in the bay leaves, dried chillies, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and cumin seeds. Let them sizzle for 20 to 30 seconds until fragrant, then stir in the ginger paste, turmeric, and ground cumin and cook for a further minute.
  4. Tip in the drained rice and dal and turn them through the spiced ghee for 2 to 3 minutes until every grain is coated and the mixture smells toasted. Pour in the hot water, add the slit green chillies, the salt, and the sugar, bring to the boil, then lower to a steady simmer and cook partly covered for 15 minutes.
  5. Return the fried potato and cauliflower, add the peas, and cook for a further 10 to 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender and the rice and dal have gone soft and cohesive. Let it down with a little more hot water as it thickens.
  6. Take the pot off the heat, stir in the raw ghee and the garam masala, cover, and leave to stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Notes

No onion and no garlic, and this is not a matter of preference: bhog is cooked niramish, and a khichuri with onion in it is a different, secular dish. Everything the pot has instead comes from the roasted dal, the ginger, and the whole spices in ghee, so none of those three steps will bear shortcutting. Gobindobhog rice is worth seeking out and is sold by Bengali grocers and online. The nearest substitute is Bangladeshi kalijira, which is the same kind of small aromatic grain; failing that, use any short-grain rice and accept a less fragrant result. Basmati is the wrong shape entirely, staying separate and long where the dish wants softness and cohesion. If you have bhaja muger dal already roasted in a jar, as many Bengali households do, start at the second step. The accompaniments are close to fixed: labra, beguni, a tomato and date chutney, papad, and payesh. Households vary the vegetables freely, and pumpkin, beans, and cubes of fried coconut all appear in Puja versions. Khichuri keeps three days refrigerated and thickens to a solid mass; let it down with hot water and warm it gently, and add a fresh spoonful of ghee at the end, which restores most of what reheating takes away.

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