An Ode To A City Called Bombay

About a 15-minute walk from my childhood home in Bombay sits a fast food restaurant called Shiv Sagar. Some weekends, when we’d be returning from an evening movie, we’d pull up outside the restaurant and order from the car. Then, we’d step outside as steaming plates of food arrived and we’d eat perched on the hood of our boxy, dark green 118NE. Usually, I got the Pav Bhaji.

The thing about Pav Bhaji is that in description, it sounds fairly mundane. A spicy, stew-y mash-up of potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers and cauliflower served with buttered and roasted bread. But its secrets lie in the right combination of ground-up spices and in copious quantities of butter.

There are two competing narratives about the origins of the dish.

One attributes its existence to the textile mill workers that populated Mumbai’s cloth industry in the 1850s. The story is that the mill workers were looking for a light lunch that would allow them to quickly return to work in a non-soporific state, and created a simple dish of bread and vegetables. I take exception to this version of events because Pav Bhaji is many things — delicious and packed with umami to name a couple, but light it is not. It’s EXACTLY the kind of thing you’d want to avoid if you plan on working after lunch.

The other narrative is that the dish owes its existence to a group of canny traders who took advantage of the global cotton shortage during the American civil war. They began selling Indian cotton to the western world at a large profit during American and British trading hours. The upside of this, of course, was that they all made small fortunes. The downside was that they’d stumble out late into the night — when the city had already fallen asleep. They were tired and hungry, and importantly, because they were vegetarian, they used leftover vegetables cooked together in generous quantities of fat to make Pav Bhaji.

I like this story because it aligns with all the things I love about my city. It features the characteristics that were germane to Mumbai becoming the powerhouse it is today.

To wit — the cotton traders were Gujarati immigrants who’d moved to Mumbai in search of economic opportunity. In the 19th century, many communities from across India were migrating to the city by the sea. Together, they brought to Bombay a variety of talents and quirks, creating a unique cultural amalgam that became the city’s most celebrated virtue.

The crusty pav, or bread in Pav Bhaji is not native to India. Instead, it comes from the Portuguese, who colonized Bombay for several centuries before handing it over to the British.

And so, Pav Bhaji is a dish that belongs unequivocally to Bombay. I have romantic notions that its mutt-like mix of ingredients speaks the same cosmopolitan patois as the city of its creation. Sometimes, I feel like we’re about to lose this specific Bombay-ness — when I read about meat bans in parts of the city, when the state government insists that the city’s mulitplexes be forced to screen Marathi movies every evening, or when we rename it Mumbai to erase all traces of its colonial past.

Perhaps this is why this recipe feels so urgent and personal. In cooking it for my friends and family thousands of miles away from Bombay, I’m trying to save the best parts of my city.

Recipe adapted from One Hot Stove.

Ingredients:
1 small head of cauliflower, cut into florets (about 3–4 cups)
3 medium potatoes
2 tbsp. oil
1 green bell pepper, minced
1/2 tsp. turmeric powder
1 tsp. chili powder or red chili paste
2 tablespoons of garlic paste
1 tablespoon of ginger paste
Salt to taste
1 can of tomato puree + 1 small can of tomato paste
1/2 cup peas (fresh or frozen)
1 tbsp. Everest-brand pav bhaji masala (or more to taste)
1/2 a stick of butter
For the bread, use halved crusty dinner rolls

Method

1. Boil the cauliflower and potatoes till tender and set aside. I usually do this in a pressure cooker.
2. Once you’ve boiled the potatoes, rinse them in cold water. Peel and cut into rough chunks.
3. Heat oil in a deep saucepan and saute the pepper. Add ginger-garlic paste and saute some more.
4. Add turmeric powder, chili powder to taste and salt to taste. Saute for a few seconds.
5. Add tomato puree, tomato paste, peas, boiled potatoes and cauliflower, pav bhaji masala and about 2–3 tablespoons of butter.
6. Keep sauteeing and mashing it together till it is a smooth mixture, adding water as required (you can use a potato masher to help you along). Be aware that the mixture can spurt up as it boils, so keep a lid on it while you are not actively stirring it. Simmer for 20–25 minutes to really get the flavors to meld together.
7. On a flat bottomed pan, melt a couple of tablespoons of butter. Lightly saute the dinner rolls on either side until they form a light crust.
8. To serve, top the bhaji with lime juice and chopped onions. Serve with the bread.