There are certain delicacies that I have never quite appreciated. The durian, hailed by so many as the king of fruits makes me want to throw up. It smells like rotten eggs and has the texture of phlegm I just gurgled up. Anchovies, supposedly a perfect blend of smoky, salty and fishy, are just plain old nasty, slimy slivers of goop. And what’s with Blue Cheese? Why would someone intentionally want to bite into something that has so obviously gone bad. Which brings me to Paaya.
Tomorrow, Muslims celebrate Eid Al-Adah, also known more popularly in the subcontinent as Bakri Eid, very liberally and probably incorrectly translated as the Eid of the Goat. For people unfamiliar with this festival, this is not a celebration of the goat as the name might imply. It’s actually not a very happy day for the goat. It is on the other hand a delightful day for people who enjoy eating mutton. And as is the custom with any whole animal that is personally butchered, every part of it will be consumed, as a sign of respect for the animal, but also, to ensure that every pennies worth of value is extracted from it. A third of the meat should be donated to the poor, a third distributed amongst relatives and friends and a third you get to keep. So the ribs get fried as chops, the meat from the neck and shoulder go into a pulao or biryani, the liver gets roasted in garam masala and the shanks into a korma, the innards mixed with chopped vegetables into katakat and the hooves? What the hell can you do with bone and cartilage? Paaya!
First you need to boil the hooves, and they take a long time to boil. On a stove this could be about eight to ten hours. In my pressure cooker it took about an hour and even then my mom said they weren’t quite done: no, no, the skin needs to come out of the bone. Mothers. Anyway, in a separate pan roast sliced onion with just a hint of oil. Also separately brown some dried coconut slices. Grind the onions and coconut into a paste. Heat some oil and add ginger garlic paste to it and when the oil starts to separate, add the onion, coconut paste and fry it till it lets out an aroma. Add some garam masala, fennel seed, coriander and cumin powder and salt to taste and then dump in the boiled hooves. After a few minutes of stir frying, add some water and let it simmer on low heat for an hour or so. What you should end up is a wonderfully aromatic and taste soup like curry which goes really well with naan or rice. The gelatinous cartilage, the mushy marrow and the bones I’ve never really been fond of, but for connoisseurs of this kind of exotic mess, it’s heaven in a bowl.
Eid Mubarak everyone.