First, a word on this dish
Pav bhaji started out, in the middle of the nineteenth century, as a quick lunch for textile mill workers in Mumbai. Vendors made it from whatever vegetables they could get and stretched it to feed many people fast, and the logic has not changed since. You boil everything, mash it into one thick curry, and eat it with bread because bread is quicker than rice. The bhaji is less a fixed recipe than a method. Potatoes give it body, a pile of other vegetables adds flavour and food value, tomatoes and butter make it rich, and a few spoonfuls of pav bhaji masala do most of the seasoning. In your own kitchen, be firm with the masher and patient with the pan. You are aiming for a rough, spreadable thickness, not a chunky stew.
If you wonder why yours tastes like a home curry while the stall version tastes like Mumbai, the answer is mostly technique. The stall cook mashes the vegetables while they are hot, right on the same flat griddle where the masala was fried. The butter goes in at several points and not all at once. And just before serving there is a last sizzle of butter and masala stirred in, so the top layer tastes sharper and richer than what lies beneath.
The story behind the dish
The history of pav bhaji is better documented than that of most street foods. Writers on Indian food, K.T. Achaya among them, place it in the mill districts of Mumbai around the middle of the 1800s. Vendors there fed workers who could not stop for a proper meal with a thick vegetable curry and bread. The bread is a clue to the city's colonial history: the soft, mildly sweet yeasted pav comes from Portuguese pão, and leavened rolls reached western India by way of Goa and the Portuguese trading towns on the Konkan coast long before they were common in the rest of the country. A branded pav bhaji masala is a twentieth-century addition. The way of making it, boil, mash, cook with tomato and butter, serve with toasted bread, was fixed on Mumbai's streets well before a packet existed. It has travelled far since, but stalls in Mumbai still cook it to order on enormous flat tavas, and that is the place people associate it with.
The method, in order
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Prep
Roast and grind the pav bhaji masala
In a dry pan over low heat, toast the coriander seeds, cumin, fennel, dried chillies, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon and black cardamom for 2 to 3 minutes. They should smell warm and look slightly darker. After cooling completely, grind them with the amchur and chilli powder to a fine powder. You will have extra, so seal it in a jar for up to two months. A fresh blend gives you a livelier bhaji than a packet that has sat in the cupboard.
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Prep
Cook the vegetables until very soft
Put the potatoes, cauliflower, carrot and peas into a pressure cooker with a cup of water and a pinch of salt, and cook for 3 to 4 whistles. Overcook them on purpose, since softer vegetables mash better. Drain off the water but keep it to thin the bhaji later. While everything is still warm, mash it coarsely.
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Cook
Start the base with onion
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a wide pan, then cook the onions over medium heat, about 5 minutes, until they are soft with a little gold on them. Stir in the ginger-garlic paste and the green chillies for a minute, until the raw smell has gone, and add the capsicum for 2 more.
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Cook
Cook the tomatoes all the way down
Next come the tomatoes, turmeric, chilli powder and 2 tablespoons of the masala. Keep the heat at medium and press the tomatoes with your spoon as they break down. You are finished when the mixture is thick and deep red and oil collects around the edge, usually after 8 to 10 minutes. Home cooks hurry this part most often, and raw-tasting tomatoes are what make a bhaji taste thin.
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Cook
Fold in the mashed vegetables and simmer
Add the mashed vegetables, plus enough of the saved cooking water, or fresh water, to make a thick mixture you can scoop. It should be looser than mashed potato, closer to a runny curry, since it will tighten as it cooks. Season with salt, bring to a simmer, and cook 12 to 15 minutes. Every so often, mash it again with the potato masher right in the pan so the texture stays rough and does not turn into a puree.
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Cook
Finish with more butter and masala
Stir the rest of the masala and 2 tablespoons of butter into the pot and let it bubble for 3 to 4 minutes. Taste for salt, chilli and masala. What you want is boldly spiced, a little sharp from the tomato, and rich, never watery. Stir in the lemon juice after taking the pan off the heat.
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Cook
Toast the pav on the griddle
Split each pav horizontally, leaving one edge attached. Melt a knob of butter on a hot griddle with a pinch of the masala, lay the pav cut side down, and press lightly with the spatula until golden and a little crisp at the edge. Toast a few at a time so the pan stays hot and the butter does not scorch.
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Serve
Plate it hot
Spoon the bhaji into a bowl, top it with a cube of butter to melt, and scatter raw chopped onion and coriander over it. Put lemon wedges and the hot buttered pav on the side. Eat it right away, tearing off the pav to scoop up the bhaji. It does not keep its texture or heat for long after it reaches the plate.
Ingredient stand-ins
You can bring in other firm vegetables beyond the usual potato, cauliflower, peas and carrot. Cabbage, beetroot (mainly for colour) and French beans appear in regional home cooking more than at stalls. Packaged pav bhaji masala is acceptable if you do not want to grind your own, with the trade-off that it tastes flatter. Soft, lightly sweet dinner rolls, toasted in butter, are the next best thing to pav. Crusty bread has the wrong texture.
Making it milder or fiercer
Three things control the heat: green chillies, chilli powder, and the dried chillies in the masala. If you want it milder, use fewer green chillies, or none, and swap part of the chilli powder for mild paprika. If you want it hotter, chop a green chilli and drop it in with the last butter. A chilli added late stays sharp and fresh, while one cooked from the start mellows.
The slip most cooks make
Underdone tomatoes lead the list. The bhaji tastes sour and thin until the tomato and masala have darkened and the oil has separated, so wait for that before adding the vegetables. Boiling the vegetables in too little water is a quieter problem, because you are then left with nothing to loosen the bhaji, so keep the cooking liquid. Finally, cutting back on butter changes the whole dish. Richness is the point of it, and both texture and flavour balance depend on it.
Storing what is left
Fridge or counter: Keep the bhaji in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. It often tastes a little better the next day, once the spices have mellowed together. It also freezes well in a sealed container for up to a month; defrost it in the refrigerator before warming it. Toasted pav is best made fresh and does not store well once buttered and browned, while untoasted rolls stay good at room temperature for a day or two, like any soft bread.
Bringing it back to life: Warm the bhaji gently in a pan over medium-low heat with a little water, stirring often, until it is hot all the way through. A small knob of butter stirred in at the end restores the richness that storage takes away. If you use the microwave, heat in short bursts and stir between them. Always toast fresh pav, as pav toasted twice turns tough.
Handle with care
Cooked bhaji behaves like any vegetable curry. Get it cooled within about two hours and store it in a shallow, covered container so it chills evenly. With so much potato in it, avoid leaving it on the counter for long, notably in hot weather, and warm it to steaming, not just tepid, before serving. Dairy butter used for toasting belongs in the refrigerator too, unless it is a shelf-stable spread.
Sources worth opening
- K.T. Achaya, "Indian Food: A Historical Companion" (Oxford University Press) — on the mid-19th century origins of pav bhaji among Mumbai's mill workers.
- Lizzie Collingham, "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) — on the Portuguese-Goan origins of pav bread in western India.