Pav Bhaji
Dark red bhaji, glossy at the edges, with a yellow cube sliding off the top. The pav goes down face first in butter and comes up brown and shiny.
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 3 medium potatoes (350 g), peeled and cubed
- 1.5 cups (150 g) cauliflower florets
- 1 cup (130 g) green peas, fresh or frozen
- 1 medium carrot (80 g), chopped
- 1/3 cup (40 g) french beans, chopped
- 3 tbsp Gir Cow's A2 Ghee
- 2 large onions (250 g), chopped fine
- 1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste
- 4 large tomatoes (450 g), chopped fine
- 1 capsicum (100 g), chopped fine
- 2.5 tbsp pav bhaji masala (buy a good brand)
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 1.5 tsp Stone Ground Red Chilli Powder
- 1.5 tsp salt, or to taste
- 1 to 1.5 cups (250 to 350 ml) hot water, from boiling the vegetables
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 4 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
- 50 g butter, bought separately (2 tbsp for the bhaji, the rest for the pav)
- 8 ladi pav
- 1 onion, chopped fine, and 2 lemons cut into wedges, to serve
Quantities are scaled up. Taste as you go and adjust the salt and spice.
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Nine at night near Juhu, and the tawa is the size of a cartwheel. One corner of it holds a low mound of dark red bhaji being worked with a flat masher, and every few minutes a stream of butter goes over it and hisses white before it disappears. On the other side, pav halves lie face down in that same butter, turning brown and shiny at the cut edges. Your plate comes with the bhaji glossy and almost maroon, a yellow cube sliding off the top of it, a small heap of raw onion, a lemon wedge, and two pav so soft they tear rather than cut.
Here is the honest part. Mumbai pav bhaji is a butter dish and we do not sell butter, so buy a good block from your grocer. But butter is the wrong fat for the first half of the cooking. It is about a fifth water and milk solids, and on a hot tawa those solids go brown and bitter long before the onions are soft. Gir Cow's A2 Ghee has all of that cooked out of it, so it takes the long hot fry of onion, tomato and masala without catching or turning acrid. Build the bhaji in ghee, finish it with butter off the heat, and toast the pav in butter. You get the tawa taste without the burnt-milk edge.
The bhaji is decided at the tomato stage. Cook the onion until it is soft and turning gold, then add the tomatoes and keep going until the mixture pulls together into a thick paste and you can see fat glistening at the edge of the pan. That takes eight to ten minutes on medium and there is no way around it. Put the vegetables in before that and you get a thin, sour bhaji that no amount of masala will rescue.
How to make it
- Boil the potato, cauliflower, carrot, beans and peas together with 1 tsp salt until a knife goes through the potato with no resistance, about 12 minutes. Drain but keep the water, you will need it.
- Heat 2 tbsp of the ghee in a wide, heavy tawa or kadhai. Fry the onion on medium for 6 to 7 minutes until soft and turning gold at the edges. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry 1 minute until the raw smell goes.
- Add the tomatoes and 1/2 tsp salt. Cook on medium for 8 to 10 minutes, pressing them down with the back of the spoon, until the mixture darkens, comes together as a paste and you can see ghee at the edges. This is the stage that decides everything, do not rush it.
- Add the capsicum and fry 3 minutes. Stir in the turmeric, chilli powder and pav bhaji masala and fry 1 minute so the masala loses its raw edge and the mixture turns deep red.
- Tip in all the boiled vegetables. Now start mashing directly in the pan with a flat potato masher, working across the pan and pressing down, for 3 to 4 minutes. Leave a few pieces whole, the bhaji should not be a purée.
- Pour in 1 cup of the reserved vegetable water. Simmer on low for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes and mashing as you go. The bhaji should be thick but still fall off the spoon. Add more water a splash at a time if it tightens up.
- Add the remaining 1 tbsp ghee, 2 tbsp butter, the lemon juice and half the coriander. Stir, taste for salt, and take it off the heat. It will keep thickening as it sits.
- Slit the pav horizontally without cutting through. Melt a knob of butter on a hot tawa with a pinch of pav bhaji masala, put the pav down cut side first, and press with a spatula for 40 to 50 seconds until the cut faces are brown and shiny. Do both faces.
- Serve the bhaji hot with the rest of the coriander, a small knob of butter on top, raw onion and a lemon wedge on the side, and the pav straight off the tawa.
Tips
- We do not sell butter or pav bhaji masala. Buy both from your grocer. The ghee does the cooking, the butter does the finishing, and they are not interchangeable at high heat.
- For the deep red colour stalls get, use a mild Kashmiri-type chilli generously. Our stone ground red chilli powder brings colour and real heat together, so 1.5 tsp is about right for four people. Add half a teaspoon more only if your family likes it sharp.
- Mash on the tawa, not in the cooker. Mashing while it cooks lets the vegetables take in the masala. A mixer gives you a smooth orange paste with no texture at all.
- Bhaji tastes better the next day. Cool it, refrigerate, then reheat with a splash of water and a fresh knob of butter. The masala settles in overnight.
- No pav? Toast thick slices of bread the same way in buttered tawa, cut side down. Not the same, but close enough on a weeknight.
