Kadhi Muthiya
Kadhi Muthiya feels a little like someone looked at a perfectly respectable bowl of kadhi and decided it needed considerably more architecture.
The muthiya start with cooked rice and grated lauki, bound with besan and wheat flour, seasoned, shaped into little logs and steamed. But apparently being cooked once isn't enough. They are cooled, sliced, then fried with sesame, green chillies and curry leaves until the edges turn golden and slightly crisp.
Alongside is a thin, tangy curd and besan kadhi, slowly cooked and finished with a hot ghee tadka. Put the two together and you get that particularly satisfying combination of soft centres, toasted edges and sharp, soothing kadhi.
Steamed, sliced, fried, drowned. A perfectly reasonable amount of effort for leftover rice and a bottle gourd.
Laal Maas
Ask five people for an authentic Laal Maas recipe and there is a good chance you will come away with six answers. This version came out of that particular rabbit hole. I compared recipes associated with royal kitchens in Mewar and Jodhpur, watched how the dish is still cooked within those traditions, and eventually stumbled upon Digvijaya Singh Sailana’s Do Peeaza Lal Mirch, a different Rajasthani mutton dish with some striking similarities.
So this isn’t an attempt to declare one definitive Laal Maas. It takes the ideas that kept making sense to me: bone-in goat, an unreasonable amount of red chilli and garlic, sour curd, kachri, mustard oil and a little smoke. Mathania chillies go in both ground and torn, while golden onions and whole shallots borrow from Sailana’s recipe. The marinated meat even gets a dhungar before cooking, letting the smoke quietly survive the long braise.
Sometimes researching authenticity gives you an answer. Sometimes it gives you a much better recipe.