‘Your voice will always be my favorite sound…’
I lived with my grandma (Bigmama) for part of my childhood and she influenced so many parts of my personality in those former years, including my love of food. For my grandma food was a tool. A means to show love, a way of bringing her family together, a way of connecting to the community and a way of retaining the parts of her heritage she had left so far behind.
One of the first memories I can recall from living with Bigmama was the incense she used to use with prayers at 4am in the morning. Scents of earthy sandalwood would enter my dreams, taking me to enchanted places as the sun started to rear its head over the horizon.
At 6am, the smell of poppy seeds being tempered in oil would start making it’s way up the stairs and into my dreams coaxing me awake; signalling the start of a new day. By the time I got down the stairs the table would be set with chutneys, all different types, spicy carrot, sweet mango and sour tamarind, as well as different types of poppadum’s, fried, baked, flat, round, all giving a different texture when mixed in with the Khichuri. As we sat and mixed up our porridge my grandma would talk about her life before coming to the UK, bringing up her children and the shop she had run in Zambia, Africa, where she would import food from all over the world, creating a liturgy of foodie children.
Khichuri was a dish my grandma and I ate a lot. It was simple, filling and yet easy to digest. It was strangely comforting in the way a good home made chicken soup is to many people, almost medicinal in nature, both for the body and spirit.
Khichuri is a universal dish, with similar versions across the world including congee in China, risotto in Italy and Kedgeree a derivative of the dish, served in Scotland today. Khichuri is widely eaten in various forms across India as a warm dish when it is cold and damp after the monsoon rains. As Rhitu Chatterjee[1]puts it so beautifully, ‘my memories of eating Khichuri go back to the monsoon seasons of my childhood, when billowy thunder clouds rolled in and soaked us and the parched earth with relentless rains. The monsoons are beloved across India – they are a much-awaited reprieve from several months of unbearable heat. But it can get chilly and damp sometimes – the kind of weather when you crave something warm and filing, like Khichuri.’
My grandma was originally from Northern India, and whilst it was eaten with a lot of additions of toppings in other areas, even with sugar and milk in the west, in the north it was typically associated with sickness or when you had an upset stomach, which is how my grandma served this to us as children. It was so comforting to me that I would request it every Friday and Sunday night for that matter.
According to Colleen Taylor Sen, author of a liturgy of books on Indian food history and culture, ‘archaeological records suggest people on the subcontinent were eating rice and legumes as far back at 1200 B.C.’. The reason she notes is due to the power of kichuri and its adaptability to different tastes and needs. ‘It’s probably the most adaptable dish (on the subcontinent)’ says Sen, ‘it can be a very simple dish that poor people eat…or it can be very elaborate’, as seen through a recipe from the court of Akbar, the 16thcentury Mughal emperor, which calls for equal parts lentils, rice and ghee, making for a very rich dish indeed.
This food really sums up my grandma’s food philosophy, using her food to warm you, cure you, bringing people to the table regardless of whether they were poor of rich, regardless of where they came from.
Ingredients
Porridge
- 1 cup basmati rice
- ¼ cup split green moong dal (Mung Bean, Moong is the Sanskrit word)
- Salt to taste
- 2 tbsp. Ghee or oil
- 2 tsps. Mustard seeds
Method
- Soak the rice and dal together for an hour
- Bring to the boil with 4 cups of water, skim the white foam off the top
- Add salt and leave to simmer, c. 30 minutes
- Cook till you get a soft texture and taste to add more salt if needed
- Mash with a potato masher, manual whisk or the back of a spoon
- Heat oil/ghee in a separate pan and add the mustard seeds, when they crackle add them to the cooked porridge
- Mix it and serve hot
- My grandma served the porridge with chutney’s like spicy mango pickle, baked or fried papadum and homemade yogurt. Each person would then add according to their own constitution. I liked it plane – soothing, my mother liked it with chili – adding more fire, my father liked it with yogurt- cooling and my grandma liked it with everything – balanced.
[1]Khichuri: An Ancient Indian Comfort Dish With A Global Influence (npr.org)
