Punjab and the North

Punjab is the land of five rivers, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, tributaries of the Indus, and its alluvial plain has long been the granary of the subcontinent. Wheat is the staple of the field and the table, and the region was divided in 1947, so that the cooking of Punjab now belongs to both India and Pakistan, with Delhi, Haryana and the hill country of Himachal and Jammu on its eastern and northern edges.

The cooking of the north rests on wheat, milk and the fire. Flatbreads, rotis, parathas and the leavened naan, are the centre of the meal, and the dishes that accompany them are made to be scooped up with bread: dal, vegetables, and meat cooked in a thick sauce built on onion, ginger, garlic and tomato. Ghee and white butter are the fats of the region, and yoghurt and paneer carry the dairy tradition of a farming people who kept cattle and buffalo. Two methods define the Punjabi kitchen. The first is the tandoor, the clay oven sunk or set in the ground and fired with charcoal or wood, in which bread is slapped against the wall and marinated meats are cooked on skewers at a heat far beyond that of a domestic oven. The village oven was a shared one, where a household brought its dough to be baked; the restaurant tandoor, and the marinated chicken and kebabs now identified with the north, grew from it in the towns, and above all in Delhi after Partition. The second method is the slow simmering of dal and of the bhuna, in which spices are fried in fat with onion until the masala releases its oil, a point the cook judges by eye and ear rather than by the clock. Partition in 1947 moved people and their kitchens across the new border, and Kalra in Prashad writes from within that inheritance, as a chef of the north who set down the dishes of the masters he had learned from. Refugees from the western Punjab settled in Delhi and opened the eating houses that carried the tandoor and the rich, buttery gravies into the capital, and the dishes now called Punjabi in restaurants across the world are largely the product of that migration. Dal makhani, in which whole black lentils and kidney beans are cooked slowly and finished with butter and cream, and butter chicken, a tomato and butter sauce for tandoor-cooked chicken, belong to this restaurant tradition of the mid twentieth century. The home table is plainer than the restaurant's. Sarson da saag, a dish of mustard greens Brassica juncea cooked down with a little spinach and greens and eaten with makki di roti, flatbread of maize flour, is the dish of the Punjabi winter, served with white butter and jaggery. Rajma, chole and kadhi, with rice or bread, are everyday food, and lassi, churned yoghurt drunk sweet or salted, is the drink of the fields. The Sikh langar, the free kitchen of the gurdwara, feeds all comers a simple meal of dal, roti and vegetables, and keeps the region's habit of hospitality as a matter of faith.

The taste of the north is of butter, cream, toasted whole spices and the smoke of charcoal, with heat that is moderate and rounded rather than sharp. Garam masala, a blend of warm spices such as green cardamom Elettaria cardamomum, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper Piper nigrum, is added at the close of cooking for its aroma, and the meal is finished with raw onion, lemon and a cooling raita of yoghurt.