Batch, Please

Turn cooking from a chore into a joyful, creative exercise

PRATIKA YASHASWI

No matter how much you love cooking, creating a healthy meal from scratch on a daily basis can be taxing for the best of us.

If you’re a working woman and you’ve been cooking for your family every day, chances are you’ve gone one of two ways: meal-prepping or batch-cooking.

Meal prep is where you cook meals an entire week or a couple of days in advance, refrigerate and then reheat them when it’s mealtime. It’s a great way to avoid waste, eat nutritiously and ensure that you spend zero time cooking during the work week. But this also means that if you’re craving biryani on Thursday and haven’t planned for it, you will be forced to eat what you’d decided on Sunday or order in (which would defeat the purpose of meal-planning in the first place).

Batch-cooking, on the other hand, offers you a little more flexibility. Instead of cooking entire meals ahead of time, you clean, peel, chop or cook meal components, mixing and matching during the week. Sure, you’ll have to spend time cooking every day, but you can go with your mood, plus the food you eat is fresher.

Meal prep is rigid, batch-cooking is

modular.

South Asian cooking is notorious for being time- and labor-intensive. But it does lend itself beautifully to batch-cooking.

Think about it. Whether you’re from the north or the south, east or west, a South Asian meal typically has the same components: tempering (or vaghar, tadka or popu, depending on where you’re from), a gravy base, lentils, and legumes; spices, vegetables and/ or meat. Then you have rice and/ or roti. Of course, a great variety of South Asian food goes beyond these ingredients, but stay with us a moment.

Suppose you eat Indian meals throughout the week. A meal plan for a week could roughly look like this: for each day, you have one or two sabzis (curries), one dal (cooked lentils), and rice or rotis to go with for lunches and dinners. You might have dosas and idlis for breakfast a couple of days and a chicken dinner twice a week. What would batch-cooking look like for you, then?

You can cook a large batch of lentils like moong (split mung beans) in bulk on Sunday and have it as part of dal tadka on Monday and moong ka cheela (a kind of crêpe) on Tuesday. You can then mix leftover dal dishes with your advance-prepped roti dough and have dal roti.

If you soak enough garbanzo beans, you can have Amritsari chole on Wednesday and chickpea salad for dinner on Friday. Like many North Indian dishes, chole consists of a gravy base of tomatoes, onions, ginger, and garlic. Make this gravy base in bulk, and you can turn it into aloo mattar, chicken curry, and kadhai paneer in a jiffy.

BATCH-COOKING RECIPE: MULTIPURPOSE CURRY BASE

Make this curry base in large batches to use with a variety of South Asian dishes. The recipe has two components: Onion-tomato puree and cashew paste. Since it is a batch-cooking recipe, its ingredients’ quantities are large and require large utensils. This recipe freezes well in airtight containers for up to a month. It is adapted from hebbarskitchen.com.

INGREDIENTS For onion-tomato puree

• ½ cup oil • 1-inch cinnamon • 1 tbsp cardamom • 1 tsp cloves • 2 bay leaves • 1 tbsp cumin • 1.1 lb onion (sliced) • 1 oz garlic • 1 oz ginger • Salt to taste • 2.2 lb tomato (sliced)

For cashew melon paste:

• ¼ cup cashew • ¼ cup melon seeds • ½ cup hot water

Onion-tomato paste preparation: 1. In a large wok, heat ½ cup oil and s auté the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, bay leaves and cumin on a low flame until it turns aromatic. 2. Add the onions, garlic, ginger and salt and saute well. 3. Once the onions begin to leave water, add the sliced tomatoes, cover and cook until the paste turns soft and mushy. It can take up to 15 minutes. 4. Once the onions and tomatoes are cooked to satisfaction, let the paste cool completely. 5. Once cooled, transfer the mixture to the blender and blend until it becomes smooth. Do not add any water.

Cashew-melon paste preparation:

1. Soak the cashew and melon seeds in ½ cup of hot water for 15 minutes. 2. Blend into a smooth paste and keep aside.

Preparing the Curry Base

1. In a large wok, heat ¼ cup oil and add 1 tsp turmeric, 3 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder, 3 tbsp coriander powder, 1 tsp cumin powder and 1 tsp garam masala. 2. Saute on a low flame until the spices turn aromatic. 3. Then, add in the onion-tomato puree and mix well. 4. Cover and cook for 20 minutes until the oil separates. Keep stirring. 5. Then add in the prepared cashew melon paste and cook until the mixture separates the oil. 6. Your curry base is ready. Cool completely and refrigerate.