Traditional Punjabi cooking includes many vegetarian dishes, thanks to the high proportion of the population who do not eat meat, many for religious reasons. Punjabi cuisine incorporates a bouquet of spice flavors, from piquant to sweet, along with novel ways to cook vegetables, breads and grains. Learning to cook classic Punjabi dishes will add depth and flavor to your vegetarian recipe repertoire.
Geography
The Punjab region is located in the northwestern corner of India, though most historians include contiguous areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan in their definition. In their book "Classic Cooking of Punjab," Jiggs Kaira and Pushpesh Pant describe how the 1947 Partition, which created Pakistan, led to the spread of Punjabi regional cuisine throughout India as refugees from the western areas opened restaurants and placed their stamp on other traditional Indian cooking.
Ingredients
Many Punjabi vegetarian dishes use dal--lentils and legumes--as their base. Red, yellow and brown lentils, dried peas, chickpeas and beans provide protein. Many dishes incorporate bulgur, also known as cracked or broken wheat, either as a grain or a porridge. Most meals include chapati, an unleavened bread made with whole wheat and cooked on a griddle. Common vegetable ingredients include carrots, potatoes, peas, cabbage and eggplant. Punjabi cooks may use rose water, ginger, cinnamon and honey to sweeten drinks and desserts made of rice, rice milk or yogurt. Punjabi meals may also include fresh or pickled vegetables and fruits in chutney or raita, a yogurt-based condiment often made with cucumber and mint.
Spices
Indian cooks closely guard their recipes of spice combinations, called masala, which can include as many as 30 ingredients. Punjabi masala commonly include cumin, fenugreek, coriander, turmeric, ginger, fennel, cardamom, cinnamon and mustard. Some spices feature more heavily in Punjabi cooking than others; in "5 Spices, 50 Dishes," authors Ruta Kahate and Susie Cushner offer several authentic Punjabi vegetarian dishes that use only coriander, turmeric, cumin, mustard and ground cayenne.
Punjabi masala may be dry, consisting of dried spices roasted together over a fire until they are aromatic, or wet, consisting of ingredients including fresh spices, onion, garlic and ginger, chopped together to make a sauce. In either case, the spices become an integral part of the dish, with no single flavor overwhelming the others.
Techniques and Tools
You can cook most Punjabi recipes with tools you already own. A heavy frying pan is ideal for pan-roasting vegetables, for instance, and a Dutch oven or saucepan works well for cooking lentils, legumes and rice. If you're going to attempt homemade chapati, invest in a cast-iron skillet or high-quality griddle. A barbecue grill, particularly a smoker grill, can approximate the style of cooking in a tandoor, a traditional Indian clay oven.
Punjabi Menus
If you're planning a traditional Punjabi meal, choose dishes that balance each other nutritionally and flavor-wise. Mix sweet, savory, salty and pungent spices to create your own balanced masala for main dishes, or buy a prepared masala in your grocer's international foods aisle. Serve spiced or curried vegetable dishes with chapati or plain rice to offset the bite of the spices, and include raita or pickled chutney to cool the palate. Complement the meal with lassi or khefir, cooling yogurt-based drinks. If you avoid animal products entirely, make them with rice, soy or almond milk.
References
- "5 Spices, 50 Dishes: Simple Indian Recipes Using Five Common Spices"; Ruta Kahate and Susie Cushner; 2007
- A Pinch of: All About Curry Powder
- "Classic cooking of Punjab"; Jiggs Kalra and, Pushpesh Pant; 2004
- "Indian Grill: The Art of Tandoori Cooking at Home"; Smita Chandra; 1999
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