Shape defines taste: How we chop veggies matters

Three little words — ‘chop the vegetables’ — can stir up quite a storm, as I learnt some days ago. During a discussion, a friend raised an icy eyebrow when someone, while holding forth on a mixed-veggie recipe, said the first step was to chop all the veggies. “Chop them?” she asked. “What are the shapes, and how do they differ from vegetable to vegetable?”

It led to a heated discussion about cutting vegetables. Vegetables, food purists tell us, have to be cut in a certain way for a certain dish. For the Bengali shukto, for instance, the pieces should be somewhat oblong, so that each vegetable retains its characteristic flavour. The shape is all-important when it comes to cooking and retaining the texture of a vegetable. And there we were, thinking that just chopping the vegetables would do!

Clearly, the shape of vegetables plays a stellar role in all kinds of dishes. The potato in most dum aloo recipes, for instance, is halved or quartered for the right look and taste. Since the spuds are fried, the large surface area helps them retain their shape and texture. Other potato curries and sabzis — often cooked with cauliflower, spinach, fenugreek, or peas — can use small, cubed tubers, as the potato nestles with other ingredients. For potato fries, on the other hand, you have to make sure that your slices are thin. A grater helps you get a uniform heap of potato sticks. And this dimension gives the fried potatoes the required crispiness.

There is science behind adhering to shapes. Uniform shapes ensure the ingredients cook evenly. The somewhat larger shapes are essential when you have multiple vegetables in a particular dish, so that they don’t get mushy. Some vegetables — such as pointed gourds — taste better when cut vertically or lengthwise. Most important of all is the vegetable’s texture. Square or oblong shapes help retain the texture.

In a dish which calls for a lot of veggies, cooks are careful about the different shapes that they need for the preparation. In chorchori (a Bengali mixed veggie dish), for instance, the radish is kept long, the eggplant is cut into cubes, the pointed gourd is halved, small broad beans have just their sides snipped off, and the green banana is sliced oblong.

Or take annakut, a mixed vegetable dish prepared especially for Govardhan Puja on the day after Diwali. Various kinds of vegetables and greens — including saag, cauliflower, kohlrabi, sweet potato, water chestnut, all types of beans, broad beans, and turnip — are cooked together for this. The vegetables have to be cut uniformly, neither too small nor too large, so that they all retain their distinctive tastes, and no one vegetable dominates.

Salads have their own rule. Raw veggies served with a dip have to be cut into slivers or thick sticks. Decorative salads are in a class by themselves, with tomatoes appearing as roses and carrots as festoons.

With winter vegetables now beckoning us from carts and stores, let’s banish the banal statement: chop the vegetables. We must know how and why.

Shukto

Ingredients

Eggplant (medium) 1

Potato (medium) 1

Drumsticks 4

Bitter gourd (medium) 1

Green papaya (small) 1

Green banana (small) 1

Sweet potato (small) 1

Broad beans 4

Urad dal bori (vadi) 10

Ginger paste 1 tbsp

Mustard powder 1tsp

Panch phoron ½ tsp

Wild celery seeds 1/4 tsp

Milk 1/2 cup

Flour 1 tsp

Ghee 1tsp

Mustard oil As required

Water For boiling

Salt and sugar To taste

Method

Peel or scrape the vegetables. Cut the potato, green papaya and sweet potatoes lengthwise into 1-inch oblong pieces. Cut the eggplant into large cubes, and the bitter gourd into small diced pieces. Lop off the ends of the broad beans and, after removing the thread, cut each into two horizontal pieces. Peel the fibres from the drumsticks and cut each drumstick into four pieces.

Parboil the potatoes, sweet potatoes, broad beans, green papaya and drumsticks.

In a kadahi, heat the oil. Fry the vadis. Remove. In the same pan, fry bitter gourd, green banana and eggplant separately. Keep aside.

Add panch phoron (mix of fenugreek, fennel, onion seeds, cumin and mustard seeds). Add ginger paste. Fry until the raw smell dissipates, then add mustard powder.

Add the vegetables: first the potatoes (cook for 3-4 min), then the rest of the parboiled veggies, and finally the fried vegetables.

Add the vadi. Mix flour into milk, then add it to the pot, stirring gently.

Season with salt and a pinch of sugar. Cover and cook till the veggies are done.

Drizzle with ghee and add crushed wild celery seeds. Serve with rice.

— The writer is a food critic