My experiments with diversity in food: Day 2: Uttar Pradesh

This is day 2 of my journey of Indian cuisine from different states of India. Online name selector today chose the state I was born and lived in before I came to the US. Today's pick was Uttar Pradesh (UP). it is the northern state of India and is the most populous state of India. It is the 4th largest state areawise, only because in November 2020, a part of this state was declared as a new state of Uttarakhand.

As like any other state, archaeological evidence suggests the history of UP is dated back to 6000BC. UP has been the house for Indus valley civilisation, Harappa culture, Vedic period, and eventually to Guptas, Mauryas, Delhi Sultanate, Mughals, and finally Britishers. 

UP is the birth land of Rama and Krishna, Mahabharat and Ramayan, Ayodhya and Hastinapura. It is a land of banks of river Ganga and Yamuna, the land of holy cities of Mathura, Vrindavan, Banaras, and Kashi, the land of Sangam and Kumbh meal. It is also the land of Tajmahal and the land of Buddhist stupas, Sarnath and Kushinagar.

UP is the state of all faith and religion and its culture is a harmonious stockpile of different customs, traditions, language dialects, music, art, and most importantly its rich cuisine. Cuisine in UP is as varied as the cuisine in India. India's different states have different cuisines, similarly, UP's different areas have distinctly different cuisines. From the kachoris and sweets of Western UP to Mughlai and creamy food of eastern UP, the cuisine of UP has a prominent footprint on the food culture of India.

Food in UP is a long topic with a lot of sub-topics. The range in cuisine starts from street food like chaat to rich and creamy food of Mughlai cooking, the influence of Central Asia, Kashmir, Punjab, and Hyderabad. The vegetarian dishes and meat dishes are equally famous. The staple grain of UP is wheat, therefore there is a huge variety of bread (roti, paranthas, naan, and puris), but rice is not left behind either, there is equally a huge variety of pulaos and biryani. Pickles, papads, daals, kawabs, desserts, lassi and chaach. The use of dry fruits and dairy in cooking is huge in UP cuisine. 

My choice to cook something from UP was not entirely hatke, first because I am a vegetarian, and second, because I have cooked and ate a lot of variety of food from UP, provided I was born and raised there ;).

Still, in order to be little different, I improvised the recipe a little.

The dish for the day was Moong Daal kachori with rasedaar aloo-matar ki sabzi.

The kachoris recipe I used was based loosely on https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-kachori-recipe/

Aloo sabzi is my family's staple, comfort weekend brunch recipe.

I sauteed onions, ginger, green chillies in little oil with cumin seeds. Once everything looked cooked to death, I added cut potatoes (Idaho), frozen green peas, and cut tomato. I added turmeric, red chilli powder, garam masala, salt to taste, and few pinches of kasuri methi. I let it cooked until potatoes were done and were easily breakable by spatula, and towards the end, I mashed potatoes a bit using potato masher directly in the pot.

Verdict: Normally this kachori is made using urad daal (black gram) for stuffing, I made today using moong daal (green gram). The kachoris were spot on the taste but were not as crispy as they generally are. Frying at a low flame and little thinner rolling was required perhaps.

Will I make it again: Hell, yaa!!