Batani Usli
Green peas boiled just short of soft and tossed in a mustard-and-coconut tempering — about half an hour, most of it cooling.
Drafted — not yet cooked in our kitchen
- Hands on
- 8 min
- Total
- 16 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- easy
The whole dish is a crush test and a tempering. Take the peas off the heat while they still hold their shape, cool them fast, and keep the coconut and lemon off the flame.
Step by step, with timers and flame levels. Your screen stays awake.
Ingredients
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Method
Bring a saucepan of water to the boil with a teaspoon of salt, drop the peas in and keep the flame high. Frozen peas go straight in from the packet without thawing. Start the timer from when the water comes back to the boil, not when the peas go in — a packet of frozen peas knocks a pan off the boil for a good minute.
Look for: A pea crushes easily between finger and thumb but still holds its round shape. Cooked past that they go grey and mealy and no tempering brings them back.
3–5 min · high heat · saucepan
Drain the peas straight away and run cold water over them for a few seconds. Left in their own heat they carry on cooking, and the colour goes with the texture.
Look for: Peas are bright green and no longer steaming.
1–2 min
Heat the oil in a kadai on medium. Mustard seeds first and let them finish popping, then urad dal, which needs a moment on its own to colour, then the chillies, curry leaves and asafoetida with the pan pulled off the flame for a few seconds — asafoetida scorches at this heat.
Look for: Mustard has stopped jumping, the urad dal is pale gold, and the curry leaves have gone stiff and translucent.
2–3 min · medium heat · kadai
Peas in, with the turmeric and salt. Drop the flame to medium-low and toss rather than stir — this is about coating them in the tempering, and every extra minute here undoes the care taken in step 1.
Look for: Every pea carries a little colour from the turmeric and the pan is dry, with no water pooling at the base.
1–2 min · medium-low heat · kadai
Heat off. Fold in the coconut, the lemon juice and the coriander. Both go in off the flame — coconut dries out and toughens on heat, and boiled lemon juice turns flat and slightly bitter.
Look for: Coconut is evenly distributed and still white.
1–2 min · kadai
Cool it uncovered before boxing. Warm peas in a closed box sweat, and fresh coconut sitting in that water is the first thing in here that will turn.
Look for: No condensation on a plate held over the bowl.
8–12 min
About this dish
Usli is the everyday form of a whole family of tempered legume dishes — the same treatment given to soaked chana, moth beans, cowpeas or field beans, with the cooking method changing to suit the legume and the tempering staying more or less fixed. This version is written for fresh or frozen peas, which need minutes rather than a soak; dried peas are also cooked as usli, and would need soaking overnight and pressure cooking before the tempering.