Badam Pasanda - it's a dish that my dad makes on every festive occasion and these days, for most of his entertaining at home as well. Long revered as the centrepiece of Mathur-Kayasth cooking, especially from old Delhi, the Badam Pasanda is one of those disappearing heritage dishes that you may have only heard of but never quite tasted. Which is why when it is served up in traditional homes like my parent's, it always elicits reactions that are over the top to say the least.
The way my dad cooks the pasanda is simpler than how his aunt cooked it. The meat is marinated and then lowered into a rich gravy full of almonds, without any of that intricate rolling/stuffing business. It does not take very long to cook this dish. And yet, the pasanda is a deceptively simple dish. Why it is almost dying out as an art form is because not too many butchers now know how to make a proper pasanda. What really is one? Before we come to that, here's a little bit of food history and sociology.Kayasth Cuisine - A Brief IntroMost traditional dishes reveal far more than just their taste, if we have the patience to examine them in deeper ways than mere consumption allows us to. A bite of the pasanda can be fairly revealing too. It tells you all about the history of the Kayasths-a unique community in the Subcontinent, whose culture and food reflects India's upper class composite culture-in almost a single bite.Courtly cultures have traditionally played around with culinary ingredients that were rich, exclusive and hard to come by. Thus dishes created for the elite are easily discernible from those of the more rustic/agrarian or poorer communities both in the kind of ingredients that they use and in the way these ingredients are cooked. Any courtly cuisine thus has more "finesse" than in the rough and hardy ways in which bolder dishes may have been concocted by other communities.
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Pasanda - The Choicest Cut of MeatThe Kayasths, as courtiers to the Mughal kings, were obviously a privileged community-not quite royal but close enough. The use of pasanda, one of the choicest cuts of meats, reflects that sense of upper class privilege. In fact, even the name of the cut borrows from the Urdu word "pasand". The Ganga-Jamuni culture of the community is equally referenced in this name as in the choice of meat: red meat dishes are traditional to the Kayasth repertoire and came about obviously because of a mingling of cultural influences.However, while the community was urbane and elite, especially in Shahjahanabad - the splendid capital Shah Jahan built on the banks of the Yamuna and to which he invited several high-ranking families from different castes/communities to settle in and be a part of his court, the Kayasths were not quite royalty.
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Pasanda - The DishYou can taste all of this history and cultural nuances in a single dish. But what exactly is the pasanda? And why is it so exclusive? In the Kayasth universe, a pasanda is always made from goat meat. There are only a few butchers who now know how to fashion it out in the correct way. Meat is taken from the thigh and then flattened with heavy wooden mallets. Criss-cross scores are then carefully made on the thin slices to aid cooking."Escalopes" does not quite define the pasanda. And even though we now have quite a few copycat dishes tom-toming Chicken Pasanda/Parchey (made from flattened breast of the bird), to my mind, that is not quite the "with it" thing either. That's just a flat, dry strip of fowl meat in a random sauce. If you haven't slaved over the pasanda, you haven't got them right!
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About the Author:Anoothi Vishal is a columnist and writes on food for The Economic Times and NDTV Food, and runs the blog amoveablefeast.in. She tracks the business of restaurants and cuisine trends and also researches and writes on food history and the cultural links between cuisines. Anoothi's work with community-based cuisines led her to set up The Great Delhi Pop-Up three years ago, under which she promotes heritage, regional and community-based cuisines as well as researched and non-restaurantised food concepts. She has also been instrumental in reviving her own community's Kayastha cuisine, a blend of Indo-Islamic traditions, which she cooks with her family and has taken across India to a diverse audience.Disclaimer:The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
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