Mushroom Besara Recipe

Well, today, let me begin with a Buddhist story. A grieving mother once went to Buddha, asking for the wellness of her child. Buddha instead asked her to go around and bring him a seed of mustard, untouched by sorrow. She looked around of course, but found none. And since then, mustard is a symbol of shared humanity. Wonderful, isn't it? Well, today's recipe glorifies mustard in more than many ways. Well, I'm going to use mustard oil, mustard seeds which I'm going to ground into a paste. And then take it from there. It's a very typical Odia recipe called Chattu Besara. Literally, mushrooms in mustard curry. Let's begin. Like I said, it's a Odia recipe called Besara which is a very typical mustard gravy. Extremely wonderful home style, not at all pungent. For the ones who've never tried mustard before, you can begin with this recipe. Let's begin with lighting the flame of course. And pan searing mushrooms. Now these mushrooms are also different, but let me come to that. For this recipe, I'm using Shimeji mushrooms, which closest come to the paddy straw. Snipping the bottoms off and washing the rest, ready to use. Well, I've used Shimeji in this recipe, the original recipe calls for paddy straw. Paddy straw is the third most consumed mushroom in the world. However, in India, in parts of India, it's generally cultivated in the wild. So it's wildly available, not widely available. Once the pan heats up, first thing that goes in of course is the mustard oil. And this one is to literally pan fry the mushrooms in this case. Let's give this a couple of stirs. We keep this aside and then move on to making the gravy base for the Besara. Let's transfer these in a bowl and move on to making the masala base. In a mixer jar, let's first begin with black mustard seeds. You can also soak these if you have that kind of time at hand. To this, I'm going to add in yellow mustard, a knob of ginger, garlic cloves and coriander seeds. Let's add in onions, now in this case, sautéed onions or boiled onions, the choice is completely yours. Well, I personally prefer sautéed onions because that way, it's really quick. Let's add in turmeric powder, cumin seeds and along with this, one dried red chilli or you can replace this with red chilli powder directly. Let's grind this now into an absolute fine paste, water only required. Like I said about mustard seeds and mustard oil, let me illustrate a little more. Mustard seeds available in three different colours, yellow, brown and black in two different sizes, extremely tiny and the big plump ones. Now, a combination of these three seeds could be used to make mustard oil, which is literally known as Kachchi Ghani Tel because it has that little pungency. Now, apart from these two, mustard could be used in two different ways more, one is the mustard saag, the mustard leaves, from which you make the saag and makkedi roti, very typical of winter. And then, there's also Kuriya, mustard Kuriya or Raina Kuriya, very typically used in the making of pickles. For you, it's important to know that mustard literally grows like a little shrub. And the best part is, the twines are very, very, very soft, but they have the absolute potency to handle these bushy flowers. And these flowers lead to these beans that house different seeds of mustards. Now, these could be yellow, these could be brown, these could be black. Eventually, when these beans dry out, you literally sickle cut the crop. And that's when you get mustard seeds. Let's again begin the recipe with mustard oil. Once this heats up, we'll temper this with Kalonji. Or Onion seeds. Let's add in a couple of Green Chillies, some chopped Tomatoes. Time to add in the Mustard paste. Let's add in this Water. Of course, we'll add in some more Water. Time to add in Salt as required. And along with this, to balance the flavour, some Jaggery. Finally, the Shimaji Mushrooms that we had sauteed in mustard oil and kept aside. A quick couple of stirs, a quick couple of boils. And with this, your Besara is done and ready. With this, ladies and gentlemen, Chotchu Besara which is Mushroom Besara is done and ready. But this can be made in another very interesting way called the Saag Besara. Which is Amaranth, cooked very similarly. I'll leave that recipe to some other day, I do not want to leave it to your imagination. But this goes wonderfully well with Rice. This also ladies and gentlemen, is part of the Chappan Bhog which is made for Lord Jagannath. This is me Varun Inamdar, signing off on that note, bye for now.