Onions, ghee, and many aunts

Sadia Nowshin learns a family recipe through unconventional means

When I was young, there was one thing I resented every Ramadan. It wasn’t the 12 hours of fasting, but the dish that formed the centrepiece of our evening meals for 30 days.

Kisuri, as it’s called in Bengali, is a rice dish where the grains are cooked with onions and ghee until they break down and take on a porridge-like consistency. It’s usually paired, or it was in my family anyway, with curried chickpeas and potatoes. It’ll be rolled out throughout Bangladeshi households in the coming weeks, as the month of Ramadan comes around again.

Once I was old enough to start fasting, as the sky darkened and sunset approached I’d eye up the more enticing fried foods that awaited, things full of coriander and glistening with oil, my little stomach hungry for ketchup and calories. We all broke our fasts with water and started with a bowl of kisuri to try and keep the inevitable heartburn caused by samosas and spice on empty stomachs at bay, and I’d wolf it down, purely because I was keen to get to the good stuff. But as I grew older, I grew to appreciate this simple dish. And it wasn’t until last year that I made it myself, feeling a little under the weather, not because it was Ramadan but just because of the nostalgic comfort it now brings me.

My memories of kisuri are linked to the maternal figures in my family. Hovering over steaming pans passed down from their mothers, tasting teaspoons before invariably adding more salt or butter (fasting cooks are allowed to taste the food being prepared for the evening meal in Ramadan without breaking their fast — how much you taste is down to your own conscience). When I could be trusted with the responsibility of the serving spoon, I had the job of dishing out plates exactly six minutes before sunset so it would be just cool enough to be eaten as the call to prayer rang out over our tinny mosque radio; I abused this privilege by giving myself most of the potatoes.

I’ve associated this dish so closely with the roots of my family, to a specific tradition shared by Bangladeshi communities from the relatively tiny city of Sylhet — but in truth several cultures have claim to a version of it. In India and Pakistan, it’s called khichdi, and was first referenced in the epic Mahabharata written sometime in the 8th or 9th Century. There’s even the English version of kedgeree, typically mixed with smoked fish and boiled eggs. (I think I prefer the sound of the version I’m used to.)

Sylhet, in eastern Bangladesh, where Sadia’s family originates from

Perhaps it’s just the heartiness of what is essentially a bowl of rice cooked in butter, but across variations of the same recipe it’s comfort that people seek when they make this dish. Memories of family gatherings, hands crisscrossing in search of bowls and spoons across tables, of women standing over pans they hope to pass down once again and tasting teaspoons.

But while others have family recipe books to dig out and blow the dust off when they want to recreate nostalgic meals, I have no such written record; many of the dishes that formed staples of my childhood are recipes of an oral tradition, passed down as children watch parents stir and chop. Part of the reason why it’s difficult to exactly recreate the dish as made by generations before is because the recipe doesn’t just vary across regions, but also across and even within families; in the many iftar invites I’ve attended over the years, I’ve had it with onions mixed in, caramelised onions on top, with lentils, without lentils, and an endless variation of side dish pairings.

It might sound romantic, this cooking a dish from memory and passing it down through word of mouth. But in practice, it’s actually a little annoying: I couldn’t really recall the quantity of ingredients or the order of them in the pan, or even which spices had gone in from my grandma’s bumper-sized unlabelled pots of auburn aromatics.

So I opted for the next best thing: vague instructions that my mother sent over WhatsApp. I say vague: ‘some chopped onions,’ ‘a bit of cumin and turmeric,’ ‘leave it to simmer until the rice looks right’ is just some of the guidance I was offered — not because she was being wilfully unhelpful, but because that is how we cook. A bit of this and a spoon of that, two spoons next time if we fancy it, leave it be until it looks about right.

And so with that vagueness to hand, I experimented with my own measurements and joined the chain of customised recipes passed down and adapted. I’ve popped it below, and included actual quantities this time — but feel free to do as we do and switch it up as you go.

Kisuri with curried chickpeas and potatoes

130g of white rice (ideally basmati)

1 tsp ginger, minced or chopped very fine

2 – 3 bay leaves

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp ghee, or unsalted butter

1 medium onion, chopped

A pinch of fenugreek seeds (also called methi)

Some springs of coriander for garnishing, chopped

For the chickpeas

1 tin of canned chickpeas, drained

1 large potato, cut into cubes

1tsp of Cumin

1tsp of Turmeric

1tsp of Chilli powder

1tsp of Garam masala

½ tsp of Salt

½ tsp of pepper

½ an onion, thinly sliced

1. Wash the rice in a big saucepan, and then cover in 250ml of water. Bring to the boil.

2. Once boiling, add in the chopped onion, ginger, bay leaves, fenugreek seeds and salt, and stir.

3. Leave to simmer over a low to medium flame. Check in on the pot 15 minutes in and top up with water – you don’t have to watch the pot, but do check in every 10 minutes or so to make sure the water is topped up.

4. Make the chickpeas: pop the potato cubes in a saucepan of boiling water to part-cook. While they’re boiling, fry the onions and the spices in a tbsp of oil until fragrant. Add in the chickpeas and mix through. Drain the potatoes and add them to the mix, stirring through. Have a taste and add any spices to taste, if needed.

5. When the rice has begun to break down, stir in your ghee/butter. Have a taste and add butter/salt to taste

6. Simmer until the rice has broken down and looks more like porridge. Serve in a bowl/deep plate with chickpeas piled on top, and chopped coriander to garnish.

Sadia Nowshin is the junior editor at Boundless. She is currently reading Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe