व्यंजन

Sarson da saag and makki di rotiशाकाहारीMain

Mustard greens, usually with some bathua and spinach, boiled long, mashed with a wooden churner, thickened with a little maize flour and finished with a tadka of ghee, onion, ginger and green chilli. Eaten with hand-patted maize bread and a lump of white butter. It is a winter dish because mustard is a winter crop and maize was a rain-fed cereal stored for the cold months — served in June it is a performance rather than a meal.

कहाँ चखें: Village dhabas across Malwa and Doaba between December and February.

Mah di dalशाकाहारीMain

Whole black urad, sometimes with a handful of rajma or chana, cooked on residual heat overnight until it turns creamy on its own, finished with ginger and a spoon of ghee. The restaurant dish that descends from it adds butter and cream and shortens the cooking, which is a substitution of fat for time.

Kadhi pakoraशाकाहारीMain

Soured buttermilk thickened with gram flour and simmered until it loses its raw taste, with gram-flour fritters dropped in. The Punjabi version is thinner and tarter than the Gujarati one and is eaten with rice rather than bread — one of the few occasions rice appears on a Punjabi table.

Amritsari chole with kulchaशाकाहारीMain

Chickpeas darkened by cooking with tea leaves or dried amla and soured with ground anardana, served with a kulcha — a leavened bread stuffed with spiced potato or paneer, slapped onto the tandoor wall and brought out dripping with butter. The colour is not from spice, and this is the single dish that says Amritsar fastest.

कहाँ चखें: The kulcha shops around Amritsar's old city, from mid-morning.

Amritsari fried fishमांसाहारीStarter

Freshwater fish, traditionally river catfish, marinated with ginger, garlic and a heavy hand of ajwain, then coated in a gram-flour batter and fried. Ajwain is the identifying flavour and also the practical one — it cuts the oil and the muddiness of a river fish. Eaten with onion, lemon and a mint chutney.

कहाँ चखें: The old fish shops of Amritsar, particularly in winter.

Tandoori murgh and the seekh repertoireमांसाहारीStarter

Yoghurt-and-spice marinated chicken cooked upright in the clay oven so the fat drips away and the surface chars. It is the dish through which the Punjabi tandoor entered restaurant cooking across India after partition, and its worldwide career is entirely post-1947.

Tari wala meatमांसाहारीMain

Goat cooked with a great deal of browned onion, ginger, garlic and whole spice until the fat separates and rises as a red tari. No cream, no cashew, no tomato in the older village version — the gravy's body comes from the onion and the meat itself.

Wadi alooशाकाहारीMain

Sun-dried spiced urad dumplings fried and simmered with potato. It is a preserved-protein dish for the months with no fresh vegetables, and the wadi is made in bulk on rooftops in summer for use in winter.

Langar dal and parshadaशाकाहारीEveryday

The standard langar meal — a thin, mild dal, a seasonal vegetable, a hand-rolled wheat bread, a spoon of kheer or a sweet, served to everyone seated in a row. Its plainness is a design requirement, not a limitation, because it has to be acceptable to every diet, every community and every budget at once.

Chana masala and bhaturaशाकाहारीMain

Chickpeas with a fried leavened bread. Very much a twentieth-century urban dish, developed and popularised by Punjabi refugee cooks in Delhi and the cities after 1947, and now claimed everywhere.

Meethe chawal and gur wale chawalशाकाहारीDessert

Rice cooked with jaggery, ghee and a little cardamom and fennel, made at Lohri, Basant and after harvests. Jaggery, not sugar, is the point; the dish is a way of eating the cane crop.

PinniशाकाहारीSweet

Wholewheat flour roasted long in ghee, mixed with jaggery, almonds, dried ginger and edible gum, and rolled into a dense ball. It is winter food — high fat, high energy, keeps for weeks, and is made in a large batch once a year.

PanjiriशाकाहारीSweet

The same roasted-flour principle in loose form, with gum, melon seed and dried ginger, made for new mothers in particular and eaten through the cold months by everyone else.

Karah parshadशाकाहारीSweet

Wholewheat flour, ghee and sugar in equal measure, cooked to a dense halwa and distributed in the gurdwara to everyone present in the order they are seated. The equal proportions and the equal distribution are both part of the point.

Phirni and kheerशाकाहारीDessert

Ground rice set in milk in a shallow earthen bowl, or whole-rice milk pudding cooked down slowly. Both are langar and festival sweets before they are restaurant ones.