Food!: Soyabean Kowsha with Meat Masala

This is something that I have cooked over and over for quite a while I was studying in Pune. However, I like that fact that now-a-days the soya chunks are coming in inventive forms like various sizes of nuggets and even granules.

I wanted to make something that visually resembled कीमा/কিমা (keema) but used the soya granules instead of mince meat that keema is.

I have always wanted to neutralize the typical taste and smell of the soya granules since that helps absorb the flavours better to do do this, I roughly soaked a cup and a half of granules in some warm water and then squeezed out the excess water. I repeated the process with some salt water since that would help the tongue identify the tastes better.

Soaking the soya granules

The hydrated granules

কষানো (Kowshano) is the Bengali way of expressing the process of slow cooking a mix of wet and dry spices (usually in a fair bit of oil). In devanagari the process would be called भुन्नोing (bhunno). The process itself if quite integral in almost all schools of Indian cooking traditions.

To prepare for this I got the standard garlic, onions, and tomato combination ready.

A couple of tomatoes, a medium onion, and three clove of garlic

I roughly chopped the onions...

Chopped onion

And the tomatoes...

Chopped tomatoes

The garlic I first gently squished with the flat of a knife blade to release the aromatic oils and then chopped...

Squished and chopped garlic

All this went into my trusty mortar and pestle for a quick grind...

A quick grind

To this I added the meat masala, a little হিং/हिंग/hing (asafoetida), a little হলুদ/हल्दी/turmeric powder and a content from a sachet of ketchup...

Adding the masala...

Once this was neatly mixed, I splashed in some oil in the pan and slow কব্ষা/कस्सा/भुन्नो (kowshaoed/bhunnoed) the mix till it looked like this and the oil separated...