Why the humble besan can be the pantry staple in this lockdown

A part from being a Sufi and a poet, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, was quite a gourmet. Despite his feeble constitution and an enfeebled treasury, he apparently took pride in his table and was so fond of eating that he once fell ill after consuming a dozen mangoes all at once.

His daily bread, however, as Persian scholar Salma Husain records in her book The Emperor’s Table, was the besani — an unleavened, flat roti made with besan and milk, on a hot iron tawa. Besan or chickpea flour is an ingredient whose versatility lends itself to hundreds of dishes for kings and paupers alike.

During the lockdown, it can be the pantry staple, the ingredient of choice for everyone — from those zealously trying to follow gluten-free diets to those merely looking for cheaper protein; from those looking for foods with lower glycemic index to those craving oily pakodas or sugary desserts.

It is astonishing that despite having been on the emperor’s table and being so pervasive, we talk so little about it. Despite its Central Asian origins, chickpeas have been in India for a very long time and “chanaka” finds mention in early Buddhist texts, of around 400 BC, according to food historian KT Achaya.

We don’t know when exactly the flour of sundried (or, later, roasted) chana gained currency. But we do know that the kadhi, where besan is mixed with yoghurt and tempered with asafoetida, came about in its present form only in the late medieval period in western India.

Besan laddoo
Besan laddoo

Besan Laddoo

The kadhi today is a dish that unites the Indian subcontinent, with almost every region having its own version, including not just the best-known Sindhi, Gujarati, Punjabi or UP versions or even the mor kuzhambu from Tamil Nadu, but also lesser known dishes like the Hazara kadhi cooked with chicken and kaddu, or Haryanvi kadhi cooked with kachri, a wild berry, or bathua greens in winters.

The kadhi may have originated from besan’s use as a thickener of watery gravies. Early Mughal meat gravies were thickened with almond paste. Chickpea flour may have been a latter-day, cheaper substitute, and this idea of thickening with besan may have eventually found uses in dishes such as the kadhi. (The ancient “kadha” dishes, as mentioned by Charaka, Achaya notes, were merely sour, soupy dishes using ingredients like wood apples and sorrel leaves, mixed with curd).

Farinata
Farinata

The farinata is much like our own chilla, but baked. The story goes that Roman soldiers roasted chickpeas on their swords for the flour


We see the use of besan as a thickener even in a dish like the mohinga, the Burmese rice noodle and fish sauce soup, a popular breakfast in Myanmar. By the early 19th century, the mohinga became a working class dish, nutritious and filling, available throughout the day in that region as street food.

When immigrants from Burma moved into eastern India during World War II, they seem to have brought with them the ideas of both besan-thickened mohinga soup and khao suey, originally just dry coconut- and cloves flavoured noodles (you still get them like this in Myanmar), and combined these to give us the besan-soup version of the khao suey that all of us in India recognise.

Besan, in fact, is also the ingredient for the shan tofu from southern Burma, which is made not from soybean at all. Instead, chickpea flour, turmeric, stock and water are cooked together, thickened, set in trays and cut into cubes. If this reminds you of Gujarati snacks like the khandvi, well, the west and the east of the Indian subcontinent have been connected by trade for centuries.

If healthy snacks are not what you seek, the pakoda, coated in besan, is a quick way to satiate your craving for something salty and deepfried.

Kadhi
Kadhi

In the days before ecommerce and easy availability of ready-to-eat foods on retail shelves, besan was on many grocery lists as an all-purpose flour. Should sudden guests arrive, onion or potato pakodas could always be made.

Home cooks also made fried namkeens such as besan ke sev and papdi and stored these for long periods of time. Similarly, besan laddoo or besan barfi were easy-to make, easy-to-store sweets, whose richer version is the Mysore pak, said to have been invented in the 1930s in the kitchen of Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the maharaja of Mysore, by a chef who was taken by surprise by visitors.

Besan ke sev
Besan ke sev

Besan ke sev

He quickly added the readily available besan to ghee and sugar, shaped it like a fudge and presented it to the guests as “Mysore pak”, or pakwan, delicacy, from Mysore.

Despite its overwhelming popularity in India, besan is not an ingredient confined to the subcontinent. It is sporadically used in the south of France, Italy and even in South America. All these regions have a crepelike baked dish made with chickpea flour, water and olive oil (in Italy).

Mysore pak
Mysore pak

Mysore pak

The farinata, as it is called in Liguria, is much like our own chilla, but baked. The story goes that Roman soldiers roasted chickpeas on their swords for the flour! The farinata can be seasoned with rosemary or just sea salt, and eaten on its own. Once in Turin, when I tried it, it was served with basil pesto.

It brought back memories of besan ka chilla served with mint chutney on hot summer mornings as a filling breakfast when the household had run out of sliced maida bread. It had seemed a heavier breakfast then, but it was certainly healthy. Many types of flour are better than refined wheat. Besan tops my list.

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