Word Attack!!

On shaami…and why I took it for granted all these years!

June 8, 2008 on 11:46 pm | In Food |

I must say, I’ve always been thankful that Ammi is a great cook. When I was in school, our maid Rambha would bring hot lunch for me and drop it off at the school gate and I would take it back to my corner somewhere and eat it. I just took everything for granted. Even on days when I got shaami in my lunch box, I would nibble it, share with my friends and wish Ammi had put cheese in the middle like she sometime does.

In case you don’t know what shaami is, here’s a quick byte on it: Shaami is made by cooking boneless meat pieces(some use kheema) with channa dal(not kabuli channa), coriander, chopped onions, a little bit of ground coconut, some adrak-lehsun, garam masala powder, dry red chillies, salt and a little haldi with some water. This mixture is cooked until the water dries and then, when its still warm, its ground into a dough like texture in the mixie. (In my grandmother’s house, I remember seeing her grinding the shaami dough on a traditional ’sill-batta’. I used to watch her roll the heavy oblong stone across the mixture on the flat stone surface, bring it forward, then back and then the whole process repeated until the shaami mixture was ready. All this was eons ago of course. Now, no one uses the sill batta for anything anymore I think.) And then the dough is shaped into round balls, flattened into circles or oblong shapes and then deep fried. The result is crisp, golden brown and because of the perfect marriage of the meat with the chana dal, the shaami’s come out a little firm, a little crisp and very, very tasty.

So everyone does know what shaami is right? Yes, after school, I’ve always assumed that everyone makes shaami as beautifully as my mother and it was a surprise for me when I got married and saw that my MIL’s shaami was not the same. It wasn’t bad, but the dough was not firm enough and hence when it was fried, sometimes they would become too crisp and the taste was different.

Many times I’ve done some part of the shaami work for my MIL. I might have watched over the mixture as it dried on the stove, or I might have ground it for my MIL…or shaped it and fried it, but I had never done all the work for it by myself. Today I wanted to make it and Ammi had come home to drop me off, as I had stayed there last night. She suggested I make kofta but I wanted to make shaami.

Today also, I didn’t do the initial, most important part of putting the ingredients together. Ammi did that, and she put it on the stove to dry. She also painstakingly removed every little bit of fat from the meat, because unless we do that, the shaamis sputter a lot in the hot oil and tend to break.

After the mixture got dried, I wasn’t able to grind it when it was still warm because I had to put Az to sleep. I came back, and got to work, and the mixture was slightly cold. Anyway, I ground it, and realized that there were a lot of the chana dal bits that were not getting ground. Ammi always told me not to use too much water while grinding and although I followed her edict, somehow, the dough was not too firm.

At 2 pm, both kids were hungry and I went to the kitchen to fry the shaamis. I shaped four of them, and dropped two in quick succession in hot oil. Disaster. The shaamis first got stuck at the bottom of the kadai, then when I tried to pry them out, they disintegrated completely. There was nothing left to flip over and I had to drain the oil of all the small shaami bits in it.

SOS call to mom and she said that not everyone can get shaami right. ‘It takes practice’ was all she said.

‘Ok! But what do I do NOW?’ I asked.

Her tip was that I either mix egg white in it, or powdered ‘putane’(Fried gram dal). I did the latter and then took new balls of dough, and fried it. Luckily this time, nothing untoward happened. Believe me…it is one of the most distressing sights you can ever see… of shaami disintegrating in hot oil. Making the perfect shaami is like a test for making good pickle in some cultures I think. I probably failed miserably, but then, I’m not going to give up. Right now however, the shaami I made today will last one more day. The next time I make it, i’m going to be a little more careful. And I won’t take good shaami for granted ever again!!