"My family’s cooking techniques and food philosophy were clear, and perhaps ahead of their time: source your own produce, follow seasonality, preserve and ferment skilfully, consume a balanced diet and make everything from scratch."
Growing up in Mhmedabad, India, with these guiding principles fuelled Raichura’s curiosity and passion for cooking.
"My mummy would also experiment with cooking dishes from other regions of India for dinners. South Indian food was always our favourite as we were strictly vegetarian."
While Raichura had always wanted to study culinary arts and work in kitchens, office jobs were considered more reputable so she pursued a business degree in Australia and spent the next 10 years working in the corporate world.
"I had been working in corporations for too long. I wanted to do something driven not by profit but for the love of the process, passion and my values. I was drawn to the kitchen and I wanted to be surrounded by its secrecy and familiarity."
Raichura started opening her home for supper clubs, calling it Enter Via Laundry, as guests had to do exactly that. She fed 10 guests a night while discovering her own style of cooking as she experimented with all different cuisines.
"One day I made my favourite dish, Khadavi, and by the end of service I knew regional Indian cooking was going to be my focus."
She wanted to cook food she was brought up eating and also cook food she had yet to discover using the native produce of her adoptive home.
"I wanted to know what was in season here just as my fiya [aunt] had known what was in season in our hometown in India."
Her supper clubs became hugely popular, with waiting lists of a year. When she could, Raichura began to research regional Indian cuisine.
In 2020 she started cooking at pop-ups in Melbourne, then her first restaurant Enter Via Laundry opened in Carlton in 2022
She felt an acute need to understand the evolution in Indian civilisation and how the food had grown and evolved alongside it. Raichura also wanted to restore and build on people’s understanding of Indian cuisine, eliminate long-standing stereotypes and ignite a sense of pride in her children for their heritage.
Her book The Food of Bharat (the oldest known name of the subcontinent known as India) is divided into five chapters beginning with the earliest known civilisation’s food and continuing through different stages of the country’s growth including the Mughal invasion which introduced exotic new techniques and ingredients and the British and European colonial era and finally modern Indian cuisine and recipes from her own kitchen.
The book
This is an edited extract from The Food of Bharat by Helly Raichura, published by Hardie Grant Books. Available in stores nationally. Photography by Jana Langhorst and Brett Cole.
Bhatura (deep-fried leavened bread)
Bhatura is a popular deep-fried sourdough bread from the Punjab region, which is eaten with savoury gravy dishes. While the traditional recipes use yoghurt as a starter, I like making bhatura with leftover whey from making shrikhand. The whey acts as a natural yeast and brings subtle acidity and moisture to the bread. When fried, bhatura is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Serve this with chutneys, Alooposto, dum aloo, or even with mango chutney with cinnamon myrtle, and it’s sure to be a hit!
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
600g (4 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for dusting
500ml (2 cups) whey or 250g (1 cup) yoghurt mixed with 250ml (1 cup) cold water
100g fine semolina
100g Ghee
1 litre (4 cups) vegetable oil, for deep-frying
Method
Add 250ml (1 cup) of the whey and bring the mixture together into a dough.
Start kneading, gradually adding the remaining whey to form a smooth dough. Knead for 10 minutes.
Place the dough in a deep bowl, cover with a tea towel (dish towel) and leave in a warm place for 4-5 hours.
Now add the semolina and ghee to the dough and knead until fully incorporated.
Return to the bowl and leave to prove for two hours.
Heat the oil for deep-frying until it reaches 200°C.
Remove dough and divide into 50 g balls. Roll into 1 cm thick discs with a rolling pin, dusting with flour as needed.
Drop the rolled bhatura into the hot oil and, with a slotted spoon, gently hold the bhatura under the oil as it starts floating up. This will help the bhatura to puff up. Fry on one side for 30 seconds, or until light golden, then flip and cook for another 45 seconds.
Take the bhatura and drain the excess oil on a paper towel. Eat while warm.
Heirloom radish pickle
Pickles are a quintessential Indian condiment. I love the fermented sourness that a pickle brings to the plate, acting almost like a palate cleanser. Whether it is roti, vegetables, dal, rice or meat, eating a mouthful of pickle halfway through always adds a boost of flavour. Growing up in my mother’s home, asking for more pickles during a meal was considered rude, as it implied the items on the thali (a large plate containing a variety of foods) were not delicious enough on their own! For me, at times, this pickle does become a main instead of a condiment.
Makes 1kg
Ingredients
1kg heirloom rainbow radishes, greens removed
40g fine sea salt
10g sugar
40ml apple cider vinegar
150ml sunflower oil (see Note)
25g spice mix (see below)
20g garlic cloves, peeled
6 whole fresh green birds eye chillies
Spice mix
25g red mustard seeds
25g coriander seeds
25g nigella seeds
12g fennel seeds
10g fenugreek seeds
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp red chilli powder
Method
To make the spice mix, toast the whole spices in a dry frying pan over a low heat for 5 minutes, then cool to room temperature. Blitz to an almost-fine powder in a spice grinder. Mix in the turmeric and chilli powder.
Wash the radishes and pat dry with paper towel. Leave to air-dry on a clean tea towel (dish towel) for 2 hours. Slice any large radishes in half lengthways and leave the smaller ones whole.
Place the radishes in a large, heatproof mixing bowl and add the salt, sugar and vinegar. Mix well.
Heat the oil in a small saucepan over a low heat and add the spice mix, garlic cloves and green chillies. Heat for about 2 minutes, or until the oil is hot but not smoking, then tip the hot oil over the radishes and mix well.
Transfer the radishes and oil to a sterilised glass jar. Secure a piece of cloth over the mouth of the jar and tie with kitchen string. Place the lid loosely on top. Leave for 4-5 days at room temperature to ferment the radish. Give it a good stir every day to mix the liquids and spices. Taste the pickle every day to check the flavour, too you want a pickle that’s a little sour but still crunchy.
Once ready, transfer it to the fridge and store for up to three weeks.
I like to eat this pickle with fluffy rice and ghee with some pickle juice, radish and a green chilli.
Note
Generally, back home, we use cottonseed oil when we need an odourless oil, but it isn’t widely available — not even in Indian grocers — so I tend to use sunflower or vegetable oil in its place.
Ghee Clarified fermented butter
Ghee is essential to Indian cooking technically, culturally, religiously, even emotionally! It is fatty on the tongue and has a nutty flavour.
Often you will find ghee poured over a dish in excess to express love and generosity. We are obsessed with it, and for good reason. Besides being utterly delicious, ghee holds a sacred status in Ayurveda. Ayur means alive, and ved means knowledge. The ancient scripts of India make reference to Ayurveda, prescribing practices to balance the body to enable it to perform at its best. Ghee was and still is consumed as part of an Ayurvedic practice, as well as being used in religious ceremonies by offering it to fire.
Many grandmothers will suggest ghee as a single solution to multiple ailments, from dry skin to sleeplessness. Back in the day, most households had cows to look after, so cream to make ghee was plentiful. They followed strict guidelines about what to feed the cows, how to milk them and how much of that milk should be fed to the calf first. Cows were sacred, and their mistreatment was prevented by religious rules designed to pay respect to the mammals who nourished us with their milk.
Makes 150-200g
Ingredients
500ml (2 cups) thick cream (double/heavy), or full-cream (whole) milk skin from unhomogenised milk
Method
This recipe is very practical for a household that uses fresh milk on a daily basis. Back home to this day, fresh milk isn’t stored for more than a day, even in the fridge. Milk is boiled every morning and left to cool to be used for different applications. Once cool, a layer of cream forms on top of the milk, and this is collected every day and stored in the fridge.
After a couple of weeks, you would accumulate, ideally, about 500ml of fermented cream to make ghee.
Place the cream in a heavy-based pot over a medium heat. Warm gently for 30-40 minutes until the milk solids and fat separate. Try not to stir too much; just often enough to prevent the cream catching on the base of the pot. The ghee will float to the surface and the milk solids will turn from white to dark brown.
Take the pot off the heat. Once the ghee has cooled to room temperature, carefully strain the ghee through a muslin (cheesecloth) or a fine-mesh sieve.
Store the ghee at room temperature in a sealed container or sterilised glass jar for up to 1 month. (You can sterilise a jar by placing it in a saucepan of boiling water for 30 seconds, then leaving it to air-dry.) The milk solids that caramelise in the process of making ghee can be eaten with a little sugar sprinkled on top as a dessert.
Baingan sabji Braised eggplant with spices and ginger
In 2010, archaeologists Arunima Kashyap and Steve Weber used starch analysis to trace a handi (cooking vessel) made of earthenware which was excavated from Farmana in the Ghaggar-Hakra valley near modern-day Delhi. Through this analysis, they claimed they discovered the proto, or original curry, which I would really call a sabji, or braised vegetable.
Braised eggplant (aubergine) is prepared in most Indian regions and each has its own unique take on the dish. The eggplants in this recipe are silky, and the spices are mild but flavourful. When I had just given birth to my son, I was given a special diet by my mother. It is believed that new mothers should eat certain foods when breastfeeding to aid a newborn’s digestion. What appeared most frequently on the menu was eggplant sabji with ginger, turmeric and black pepper cooked in ghee.
Serves 2-3
Ingredients
20g piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
10g garlic cloves, peeled
30ml sesame oil, or Ghee
800g eggplant (aubergine), destemmed and cut into bite-sized cubes
1 tsp ground turmeric
finely chopped coriander (cilantro) and freshly ground black pepper, to garnish (optional)
Method
Crush the ginger and garlic to a smooth paste with a mortar and pestle.
Heat the sesame oil in a kadhai or heavy-based wok over a medium heat.
Fry the crushed ginger and garlic till slightly brown, then add the eggplant.
Increase the heat to high, stir to coat the eggplant in the oil, then add the turmeric and salt to taste, and mix well.
Cook for one minute.
Mix the eggplant one more time, scraping the bottom of the pot.
Lower the heat to medium, cover the kadhai and cook for seven minutes, stirring periodically, or until the eggplant is soft.
For a modern-day take, add some finely chopped coriander and some freshly ground black pepper to garnish.
Serve with Bajra rotla or rice.
Note
Always use fresh eggplant, as older eggplant doesn't cook as well and out-of-season eggplant creates an unpleasant tingling sensation on the tip of the tongue.
