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Recipe: Zelda's North-South Vangibath

February 20, 2024 12:39 IST

Eggplant stuffed with a masala of ground peanuts and spices has always been a delicacy in my Madhya Pradesh family for generations.

I decided to marry it with mustard oil and the ingredients of a South Indian rice and put all of India, gastronomically, on my plate. The experiment worked rather well, because combining different rich regional accents of Indian food is always a successful fusion gambit, because who says sambar powder and garam masala or imli and aamchoor cannot live together in one recipe.

The North-South Vangibath that resulted was one more dish, packed with multiple flavours, many textures and several spices, to add to my collection of comfort food that includes khichdi, dahi rice or thayir sadam, dal-chawal, rasam-rice, dalia upma, sambar-appalam-pickle-rice, pongal, egg macaroni, dahi kadhi-papad-rice.

What is comfort food? It's a term which is often overused these days and by definition it is a meal or food that evokes nostalgia and memories of what was cooked for us in our childhood. To my mind a sandwich or a pakora or a kachori does not make that category since it is not exactly a meal, but if it has sentimental value, it then should.

I also feel we in India have a plethora of comfort foods because we have a plethora of mothers, dadis, nanis, chachis, mausis, chittis, ammas, aunts, mothers in law and even chachas and dadas cooking special unique stuff for us from when we were born that brings on special sepia khaana recollections.

But as people cook less and less, across the world, will there be less Irish stews (David, my daughter's Irish partner's comfort food), steak and kidney pies, chicken soups, roosamanna (my Estonian mother's comfort food of cranberry-flavoured cream of wheat) to comfort us. I wonder: Is our comfort food shrinking?

 

North-South Vangibath

Photograph: Zelda Pande
 
North-South Vangibath

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients

Masala stuffing

For serving and garnish

Method

For the masala

For the vangi

For the bhath

Zelda's Note: This rice freezes well and will keep for several weeks in the freezer.

The extra masala paste can be used for making a dry stuffed eggplant or bhindi (okra or lady’s finger) dish or a masala rice.

ZELDA PANDE