BackThe Farmana quest
In the first of a six-part series, the world's first known proto-curry, recreated with a dash of imagination
Premium
What would you rather not be caught dead eating today? Your neighbour’s kadhi? Mexican pizza from Taco Bell? Er… Maggi?
No one asked the woman (or man), who stirred the pot of the world’s first known proto-curry in Farmana—an archaeological site in Haryana with relics from as far back as around 5,000 BC—what she would have liked not to be caught dead cooking. Not brinjal, surely? Or turmeric. Or ginger for that matter, none too becoming in a kitchen in one of the most evolved urban civilizations of the day. Some might even say archaeologists Arunima Kashyap and Steve Weber, who used starch analysis to identify the “curry" more than 4,000 years later, in 2010, at Vancouver’s Washington State University, were scraping the bottom of the terracotta barrel. Couldn’t they find a “Harappan" with finer tastes?
In the hope of restoring some of her injured pride, I thought I would try and recreate her dish in a modern kitchen, adding what she might have added, had she been in a better mood. In the process, perhaps I’d learn something new about the food we eat today. About the lost techniques and utensils. About ingredients I have only ever seen in a packet. All of which sounds quite earnest, of course. But as is the case with so many other key decisions in life, I fear, this too was mostly dictated by the prehistoric urge to defy mothers (“don’t play with food, I said!").
*****
We enjoy reading cookbooks like we do novels. Cooking up a storm in the kitchens of our minds. Savouring the taste of imagined successes, never failure. Besides, a three-page recipe of murgh musallam is an epic anyway.
It should follow that if one wants to enjoy recipes from millennia past, one can do so with or without cooking them. So what if you can’t stomach a roasted rat from the Chalukyan king Someshvara III’s treatise on courtly life in the 12th century, Manasollasa? Or “take all the bones out of a fowl through the neck, the fowl remaining whole" to make musamman from Ain-i-Akbari? What if you tweaked them a little? Would you be offending someone whose dental enamel is his or her only remaining asset?
I started by recreating and adapting a basic recipe that archaeologist Kashyap used in one of her experiments. She cooked vegetables in ceramic vessels in her lab to compare the structures of starch granules and the effect of heat, salt and sugar on them. These granules were pried off 50 surfaces from the Farmana dig—from earthenware, stone tools, teeth of humans and domestic animals, often fed leftovers and kitchen waste.
Naturally, the scientist’s recipe was somewhat spartan: brinjal, ginger, turmeric, salt and sugar. But in an age when throwing in a couple of peppercorns need not necessitate crossing swords or the seven seas, making a dish with just three ingredients, plus seasoning, seems ungenerous. I sought to build on it with a little help from recent history and home cooks.
*****
Given the spread of the Harappan civilization—1.3 million sq. km at one point—it is safe to assume there were regional variations. For cultural continuity, however, Haryana seems to be the best bet, going by recent authors on the subject, such as Michel Danino and Sanjeev Sanyal.
What I don’t anticipate, however, is the first and crucial googly. Brinjal is nosh non grata in present-day Haryana. At least two Haryanvi home cooks independently denied having anything to do with the fruit we like to call a vegetable. Baingan bharta? Well, that’s Indo-Punjabi (you know, like Bollywood). The only concession home-cook Ameeta Dahiya is willing to make in her Gurgaon kitchen is a rustic aloo-baingan with jeera. Why? I don’t know. The few books and online resources I found on traditional Haryanvi cuisine don’t touch brinjal with a bargepole either.
Yet what is a recipe without a secret ingredient? I went foraging for mine, first in the wet markets of a Jat village in Delhi and then on my neighbour’s overgrown terrace. Known to a few in urban Haryana as pabri, it’s a herb usually blitzed beyond recognition in chutneys. In The Penguin Food Guide To India, Charmaine O’Brien likens it to marjoram. But I think it’s closer to sweet basil, with its aniseed flavour and addictive, lingering pepperiness.
Given the insistent simplicity of Haryanvi food, and its reliance on grains and dairy, herbs such as pabri are rarely celebrated, except for their health benefits. But I can see how this sweet-smelling leaf might have appealed to our lady in Farmana. Who knows, it may have even cured her migraine that fateful evening.
Farmana-e-Baingan
Serves 2-3
Cooking time: 30-35 minutes
Ingredients
15 small brinjals
2-inch piece of ginger
1 fresh turmeric or quarter tsp turmeric powder
Half tsp jeera (cumin seeds)
2 tbsp raw mango, cubed
Dehydrated sugar-cane juice or sugar, to taste
A few leaves of pabri or sweet basil
Salt, to taste
2 tbsp sesame oil
Method
Slit the brinjals without cutting all the way through to the stem. Soak in salted water. Coarsely grind the ginger, fresh turmeric (if using) and jeera in a mortar and pestle. Heat sesame oil in a shallow earthen pot, add the ground paste and stir for a couple of minutes. Add the brinjals and cook for 10 minutes before tipping in the mango cubes as well. Add a cup of water, salt and the dehydrated sugar-cane juice. Cook until softened. Throw in the pabri leaves and take it off the flame. Serve with bajre ki roti.
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
