Name: Pav Bhaji (Mumbai Mashed Vegetable Curry with Buttered Rolls)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 55 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: 500 g floury potatoes; 200 g cauliflower; 100 g peas; 100 g carrot; 1 green pepper; 2 onions; 4 tomatoes; 3 tbsp pav bhaji masala; 1 tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder; 0.5 tsp turmeric; 2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste; 100 g butter; 1 tbsp salt; 8 pav (soft white rolls); 1 lemon; 1 raw onion; 1 handful coriander

Ingredients

4servings

The bhaji
floury potatoes · boiled and peeled500 g
cauliflower · finely chopped200 g
peas · frozen is fine100 g
carrot · in small dice100 g
green pepper · finely chopped1
onions · large, chopped very fine2
tomatoes · ripe, chopped4
Seasoning
pav bhaji masala · or 2 tbsp garam masala + 1 tbsp amchur + black pepper3 tbsp
Kashmiri chilli powder · this is what makes it red1 tbsp
turmeric0.5 tsp
ginger-garlic paste2 tbsp
butter · half into the bhaji, half for the bread100 g
salt · to taste1 tbsp
To serve
pav (soft white rolls) · brioche or soft dinner rolls work8
lemon · in wedges1
raw onion · finely chopped, alongside1
coriander · chopped1 handful

Steps

Boil the potatoes whole and peel them. Use them hot — cooled, the starch retrogrades and they resist being crushed, and being crushed is the point here.
⏲ 25 min
Boil the cauliflower, carrot and peas in salted water for 4-5 minutes and drain. They do not need to be soft; the griddle finishes them.
⏲ 5 min
Use the widest pan you own — a cast-iron skillet or a flat griddle. Mumbai stalls use enormous tavas not for show but because a wide surface loses water fast.
Melt 50g of butter and cook the onions until they take colour, about 8 minutes. Add the ginger-garlic paste and give it another minute to lose its raw edge.
⏲ 9 min
Add the chilli, turmeric and pav bhaji masala and fry them in the fat for 30 seconds. Waking ground spices in fat is in Blooming Spices.
⏲ 30 sec
Add the tomatoes and cook until oil seeps out at the edges. Rush this and a raw tomato taste stays in the dish to the end.
⏲ 10 min
Add all the boiled vegetables, the green pepper and the potato, and start pressing with a masher. Press, do not stir. Every press brings interior moisture out against a hot plate, where it evaporates.
Keep pressing and cooking for 10-15 minutes. If it gets too dry, add hot water a little at a time. Do not take it all the way to a purée — pieces of cauliflower and whole peas are what make it bhaji.
⏲ 15 min
Salt it and melt in another 25g of butter. It is ready when it mounds on a spoon instead of running off it.
Split the pav. Melt butter on one side of the same griddle, smear a spoonful of the bhaji into it, and press the cut faces down for a minute or two. The bread gets the same seasoning that way.
⏲ 2 min
Top the bhaji with a knob of butter and serve with raw chopped onion, coriander and lemon wedges. The lemon is not a garnish — acid is what cuts the point where butter and masala turn heavy (Balancing Flavour).

Variations

Cheese pav bhaji. The commonest variation in Mumbai: a heap of grated cheese over the top at the end. Jain, kadai and paneer versions sit on the same stall boards.
Less butter. The stall flavour is largely the butter, and halving it makes a different dish. If you do cut it, add more lemon to keep the balance.
The vegetables. Only potato, tomato and onion are fixed; the rest is whatever is around. It began as a mill workers' lunch, so that is close to the original.

More detail and the reasons why (1)

Making the masala yourself. Pav bhaji masala is garam masala plus amchur (dried mango powder), asafoetida and extra black pepper. The sourness built into the blend is the distinctive part, so a substitute without amchur tastes flat.

Tips

Do not blend it. A blender gives you a smooth soup and it stops being bhaji. Whole peas and recognisable bits of cauliflower are the marker.

More detail and the reasons why (6)

This dish does the thing the site twice tells you not to. Samosa says "cool the filling; crush the potato by hand — a masher bursts the starch into glue", and Mashed Potato says "don't overmix — working the starch too much makes it pasty". Both are right — and bhaji is the dish that wants that glue. The body that mounds on a spoon and spreads on bread is exactly that burst starch. Which is why the potato goes in hot and why you use a masher.
Pressing is how it reduces. Water trapped inside a vegetable does not leave until there is surface for it to leave from. Every press puts a new face against a hot plate, so the movement that makes it finer is the same movement that drives the water off. That is why the same recipe stays watery in a narrow deep pot however hard you mash.
Press, do not stir. Stirring only mixes; pressing crushes and puts the crushed thing against the metal at the same time. It is the same hand movement as Cassoulet, which also presses instead of stirring — for the exactly opposite reason. There you press so the beans do not break; here you press to break them.
It is the exception to Knife Skills. That guide says uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one — but that is about dishes where the pieces still exist at the end. Here everything is crushed, so what has to match is not size but boiling time. The one thing to chop fine is the onion, which does keep its shape all the way through.
Season the bread too. Toasting the pav in plain butter and toasting it in butter with a spoonful of bhaji smeared into it are different things. The stalls do the second, and it makes the bread part of the dish rather than something served with it.
Not the same as Dal. There the pulse falls apart into its own thickener and hot fat is poured over at the end. Here the body is potato starch, and the butter is not poured over — it is in from the start.

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