First, a word on this dish
Misal is not one pot of food. It is two, brought together at the last second. One holds usal, a plain curry of sprouted moth beans that gives the bowl body. The other holds kat, also called rassa, a far hotter, thinner gravy that is poured over the beans along with a fistful of crunchy farsan. The two are never cooked together, and the reason is practical. Usal gives substance, kat gives heat and depth, and the farsan provides a crunch that lasts only a few minutes before it softens. That is why vendors build each bowl when you order, and why you should eat yours straight away.
Styles change around Maharashtra. Kolhapuri misal is darker, oilier and a lot hotter, cooked on a goda or kala masala base with a layer of red oil floating on top. Puneri misal is normally milder and sweeter, often with a heavy topping of sev. Nashik and other places have their own house versions. This recipe leans toward Kolhapur, since that is where the dish earned its fearsome reputation, and it shows you how to cool things down for a gentler table.
The story behind the dish
Nobody invented misal pav. It grew out of Maharashtrian home kitchens and neighbourhood eateries, as cooks used sprouted beans, an inexpensive, nourishing and easy-to-find pantry item, to make a quick, filling breakfast. Colleen Taylor Sen and other historians of India's regional food point out that sprouting and fermenting pulses has long been part of cooking in Maharashtra and across the Deccan, which suited a place where dried legumes were more dependable through the year than fresh vegetables. The pav is the clue to its rise in popularity. Bread rolls, brought by the Portuguese, had become a cheap, fast staple across western India by the colonial period, and misal belongs to the same Mumbai and Pune urban food culture that produced vada pav and pav bhaji. Kolhapur and Pune each hold a firm, separate pride in their own misal, and food writers do not regard either city's claim to the original as settled.
The method, in order
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Prep
Soak, drain and sprout
Cover the moth beans with plenty of water and soak for 8 hours or overnight. Drain them, then wrap them loosely in damp muslin or leave them in a colander under a wet towel, somewhere warm, for 12 to 24 hours. You are waiting for tiny white sprouts. Cool weather slows this down. Stop once the sprout is visible but still short, before it stretches into a tail.
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Cook
Roast and grind the kat masala
In a dry pan, toast the dried chillies and coriander seeds for about 2 minutes, until they smell good. Add the coconut and toast one more minute, until it goes pale gold, and watch it carefully, since coconut scorches quickly. Let it cool for a moment, then blend with the onion, garlic and a splash of water into a thick, smooth paste.
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Cook
Fry the paste patiently, then add water
Warm the oil in a pan and fry the paste over medium-low heat, stirring often, for 10 to 12 minutes. It is done when it has darkened, smells rich and shows no trace of raw onion. Skipping this is what leaves kat harsh. Pour in the water, bring it to a simmer and cook another 10 minutes. Set it aside. This is the fiery rassa that goes on top.
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Cook
Build the usal base
Use a fresh pan for this part. Heat the oil, drop in mustard seeds and curry leaves, and wait for the crackle. Onion goes in next, cooked to a golden colour, followed by ginger-garlic paste, which needs only a minute before its raw edge disappears. Tomato comes after that, simmered until it is pulpy. Last, turmeric, goda masala and chilli powder, with one more minute of stirring.
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Cook
Simmer the sprouts
Add the sprouted beans and stir until they are coated in masala. Add the water and salt, bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. The sprouts should be tender but still hold their shape, so check them early. Keep the curry loose, not thick like mash, since the kat will be poured over it.
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Serve
Assemble each bowl just before eating
Ladle hot usal into a bowl and pour a generous amount of hot kat on top, letting it pool at the edges. Scatter over the farsan, raw onion and coriander and serve immediately, with a lime wedge and buttered pav. Misal is meant to be eaten while the farsan is still crisp, so build the bowl at the last moment, never beforehand.
Ingredient stand-ins
No matki at the shop? Sprouted moong stands in well and tastes a touch sweeter, and in a pinch whole moong from a can, or boiled in advance, saves you the sprouting days. You will not find goda masala everywhere, and no other blend copies it exactly, but garam masala plus a little more cinnamon and a few grinds of pepper lands nearby. As for farsan, sev or any bagged Bombay mix from the store does the job.
Making it milder or fiercer
Nearly all of misal's heat lives in the kat, so that is the lever to pull. For a gentler bowl, use mostly Kashmiri chillies, which are bright red but mild, with only one or two hot ones. For a properly fierce Kolhapuri version, use more of the hot chillies and wait until a thin layer of red oil rises to the top of the simmering kat, a sign that it has reached full strength. If your table has mixed tastes, serve the kat on the side and let each person decide how much to pour.
The slip most cooks make
Letting the moth beans sprout too long is a frequent slip. The tail gets long, the bean turns bitter, and it loses its bite, so stop when the tail has barely shown. Rushing the kat paste is another one. When the onion, garlic and coconut have not been fried for long enough, the kat tastes sharp and raw instead of round and deep, so give it all 10 to 12 minutes on gentle heat. Finally, adding farsan too early makes it soggy before the bowl arrives. It goes on at the last second, over hot usal and kat.
Storing what is left
Fridge or counter: Usal and kat both keep well in separate airtight tubs in the fridge for up to three days, and the flavour often improves overnight. Do not keep them mixed together or topped with farsan. Build fresh bowls from the cold components each time. Sprouted but uncooked moth beans last about two days in the fridge before they need to be cooked.
Bringing it back to life: Give each component its own pan and a medium flame. Both tend to stiffen in the cold, so loosen them with a little water as they warm, stirring until they steam. Bring them together only at the end, and add new farsan, onion and coriander then, so the crunch survives the walk to the table.
Handle with care
Sprouting raw legumes at room temperature carries a genuine risk of bacterial growth if the beans are too warm or left too long. Keep sprouting to 12 to 24 hours, rinse the beans at least once along the way, and throw away any batch that smells sour or off instead of fresh and slightly nutty. Once cooked, usal and kat behave like any bean and spice dish: chill them within about two hours of cooking, and reheat until steaming before serving.
Sources worth opening
- Colleen Taylor Sen, "Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India" (Reaktion Books) — on sprouted and fermented pulses as a staple of Maharashtrian and Deccan home cooking.
- K.T. Achaya, "Indian Food: A Historical Companion" (Oxford University Press) — on regional spice blends including goda masala and their role in Maharashtrian cuisine.