Communication and faster means of transportation
have brought in a revolution in the choice
of vegetables and fruits that are now available
throughout the state, but this was not always
so. Which is why, for the village, his diet
still remains sparse, and consists of dairy
produce, bread of millets and accompaniment
of gram flour and sour buttermilk which,
say dieticians across the world, is a high-protein,
low-fat cuisine. Perhaps that is what gives
the people of the desert their erect gait
and slender build.
Though the Rajasthani kitchen was able to
create much from little, it had also to
cater to different communities with their
own ritual observances. The Rajput warrior,
for example, was not averse to shikar, killing
game to put in his pot at night. The Vaishnavs,
followers of Krishna, wer vegetarian, and
strictly so, as were the Bishnois, a community
known for their passion to conserve both
animal and plant life. Even among the Rajputs,
there were enough royal kitchens where nothing
other than vegetarian meals were cooked.
The Marwaris, of course, were vegetarian
too, but their cuisine, though not too different
from the Rajputs, was richer in its method
of preparation. And then there were the
Jains too, who were not only vegetarians,
but who would not eat after sundown, and
whose food had to be devoid of garlic and
onions which were, otherwise, important
ingredients in the Rajasthani pot.
To begin with the Rajput,
then: as a hunter-warrior, he often bagged
his game, which is why the Rajasthani repertoire
has everything form venison and hare to
wild boar on its menu. However, since these
are banned by the government for fear of
endangering these wild species, the Rajasthani
meal has almost come to in imply mutton.
The Rajput is a recent, reluctant convert
to chicken, and even though to lakes abound
in fish, it rarely finds its way into his
kitchen.
An important feature of non-vegetarian cooking
in the Rajput kitchen was that it was-rarely
cooked on the main stove in the kitchen,
and usually employed the male head of the
family as its chef. Essential ingredients
included, besides onions kachri, which is
part of the cucumber family, as a marinade.
The meat, first basted in the spices and
then roasted in a pot over a wood fire,
was turned into gravy and eaten with millet
rotis.
Colonel James Tod's treatise, Annals and
Antiquities of Rajputana, notes that 'the
Rajput hunts and eats the boar and deer,
and shoots duchks and wild fowl'. But though
the Rajput is a meat-eater, he is by no
means a passionate one who has to have mutton
on his table for every meal. Vegetarian
food too forms a large part of his diet,
Game, in fact, has been a part of the creed
of the warrior: when out camping in the
desert it is what is available that forms
the basis of the next meal. And so too,
when the rest of the country follows strictly
rigid vegetarian protocol as during the
celebration of Navratri, the festival of
nine nights, the Rajput offers his Devi
a goat as sacrifice, beheading the beast
with one blow of his sword. On all nine
days, a similar offering is made, and the
cooked meat eaten as consecrated food. In
Rajasthan, most families will arrange for
at least one such sacrifice during the festival,
and sometimes goats are specially reared
in family backyards for the ritual offering.
Shikar provided a meal for the family, or
for the village, or else expediton members
shared the spoils to take their individual
portions home. However, if there was more
meat than could be consumed, it was pickled
for later consumption. Venison and pork,
especially, were cooked in rich masalas
before being preserved in oil and vinegar.
Pork fat, called sauth, was kept for winter
days, when it would be chewed as prevention
against colds.
Since men often did the
cooking themselves, and since expeditions
away from home for reasons of war rarely
allowed the luxury of well-equipped kitchens,
a more rudimentary method of barbecuing
created its distinctive style of desert
cooking. When small animals were bagged,
such as desert hare, the animal was cleaned,
stuffed and allowed to cook in a sand pit
with a bed of live coals covering it, often
overnight. with large animals, this was
not possible, so the meat was marinated
using kachri to impart its distinctive tang,
and then this was barbecued over a bed of
live coals. This, called sula, is still
considered a delicacy, and has a tangy flavour
on account of the sour marinade.
The women, whether the family was vegetarian
or meat eating, has their task cut out for
them. They would dry the meagre sangri and
gwarphali beans that are eatable, and store
them for future use. They would also make
papads and endless other variations and
dry them, also for storage, later to be
turned into curries for the family. Once
again, using onions and garlic, and with
mustard, red chilli powder and a handful
of other spices, these would be put on the
family pot in the kitchen, with yoghurt
for flavouring. Accompaniments rarely changed
over the region. Karhi, more popularly known
as khatta, formed- as it continues today-
a part of the staple diet. Made with buttermilk
(thin form of yogurt), it is mixed with
chickpea flour and allowed to cook with
mustard seeds and crushed garlic clover.
The longer it stays of the fire, the better
its taste. Usual vegetables are sangri and
gwarphali, beans stonred for the length
of the year after drying, and cooked in
yogurt and masalas. Papads, eaten roasted
elsewhere in Indian, are also gravied in
Rajasthan, as is bhujiya, a popular moth-lentil
snack. Chickpea flour can be freshly rolled
out as dumling to make gatte-ka-saag, while
sundried moth-lentil dumplings are also
cooked as badi-ka-saag.
These are all eaten with either bread consisting
millet bread, cooked over wood fires, or
a porridge made using millet gains and moth
lentils cooked together with water, a little
spice and some ghee, to make khichra, a
more filling, more potent version of what
elsewhere in India is called khichri (though
this uses rice as its base). Khichra, the
night mainstay of the state's farming communities,
is eaten with ghee, and accompanied by either
jaggery or karhi. The day's meal for the
working class consists of bajra rotis eaten
with moth-daal, or with a fiery red-chilli-and-garlic
chutney and washed down with raabori, millet
flour cooked in buttermilk, believed to
be extremely cooling in the summer heat
of the state. Desserts were, by and large,
rare, though exotic concoctions from vegetables
were sometimes served. For most, for festive
occsions, these would consist of seera,
a halwa made of cooked wheat flour in ghee,
or laapsi, a porridge made with dessiccated
grains of wheat. Rice, a delicacy in Rajasthan,
was served as a sweet with the addition
of sugar, saffron and dried nuts and raisins.
Many more vegetables are now available in
Rajasthan, with even little towns made colourful
with the produce of vegetable vendors. Most
of these vegetables are cooked in the same
way as its chichkpea and lentil-based corries,
and there are usually no distinctive recipes
that allow the taste of one vegetable to
differ from another.
The Marwaris, however, were considerably
more lavish with the inputs in their kitchen.
A typical meal for them could consist of
pishta-lonj served with a glass of milk
laced with cream. Them, puris fried in hot
oil, made with both wheat flour as well
as with matter added to turn them a lovely
green. With it, tamatar-ki-sabji, a tomato
curry, at once sweet and sour and hot, gatte-ka-saag
with shvings of cashew added, and sangri-ker-ka-saag
with the oil oozing out, and dahi-bhallas,
of course. This would be followed by sooji-ka-halwa,
a pudding that's easy to make but still
a daily favourite, and perhaps a glass of
lassi at the end of the meal.
Marwari food uses the same basic ingredients
of the state's Rajputs, but is a richer
verion, with more spices and herbs being
added to the masala, and cooked in more
fat. The Marwaris eat two meals, in the
morning and at sundown. Both consist of
a great variety of rotis and puris puffed
in piping hot oil. There are a large number
of accompaniments by way of chutneys, some
sweet, others sour. Gatta, sangri and a
tomato vegetable curry are favourites, all
of them cooked in a good deal of clearified
butter, the sour taste of the flavouring
ingredients cutting through the fat to create
its own distinctive taste. Ker, a hard desert
berry, is often added to pickles, or sangri,
or cooked on its own. The amount of chillies
used is somewhat more curtailed, and mango
powder (amchur) and rai (mustard seeds)
dominate. The Marwaris also prefer heeng
or asafoetida over the Rajput preference
for garlic.
The Marwari sweet tooth is legendary, and
since they were traders, they had greater
access to the markets not only of India
but also South-east Asia. They were, therefore,
able to store dry fruits such as almonds,
pistachios, cashews, and together with poppy
seeds (khus) were able to use them in their
puddings. Halwas, barfis and ladoor are
part of the Marwari repertoire, along with
til, sesame, which was used for both sweets
as well as main courses. Dairy has played
an important role in the economy of the
desert, especially since agriculture could
never be taken for granted. The consumption
of milk, and of buttermilk and yoghurt formed
a part of the main diet, but with the exception
of those regions with access to rice-growing
areas, the rice-rice, milk, sugar, clarified
butter, nuts, spices, dry fruits are blended
and cooked, attendants at the shrine jump
into its scalding centre, to serve it as
a holy offering to the pilgrims, the contents
dramatically diminishing as the waiting
crowds consume it as prasad. This, of course,
is an occasional offering. Most days, the
large tureens serve a mixture of rice, meat
and lentils- a meal in one go.