The Indian subcontinent · Volume 19, The Ash Pot, the Bamboo Basket and a Border the Map Draws Wrong
Omita khar
Assam
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 30 minutes · Waiting 8 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 121 sources in the brief
Khar is a whole class of Assamese dishes built on kolakhar, the alkaline banana ash filtrate, most commonly made with raw papaya and black gram and traditionally the first course of a meal, opening rather than closing it.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Soak overnight, then about 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 250 g black gram, soaked overnight and rinsed
- 100 g raw papaya, cut into cubes
- 1 tsp grated ginger
- 2 tbsp mustard oil
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1 green chilli, slit
- 2 tbsp kolakhar, diluted in a splash of water, or 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda as an honest if inexact substitute
- 400 ml water
- to serve plain rice, to serve
Method
- Soak the black gram overnight, then rinse.
- Pressure cook it with the raw papaya and grated ginger until soft.
- Heat the mustard oil to smoking point, add the crushed garlic and slit green chilli, then pour in the kolakhar diluted in a splash of water, or the bicarbonate of soda as a substitute.
- Add the cooked gram and papaya with the water and simmer 10 minutes until the mixture loosens and the papaya begins to break down at the edges; the alkali continues softening both ingredients even after cooking.
- Serve first, before any other dish reaches the table, with plain rice.
What a modern chef changes
A genuine kolakhar, a sous vide gram and a raw finish of the same liquor
Rung 1
Method
- First, make a genuine kolakhar rather than substituting bicarbonate: char dried banana peel in a low oven or over open flame until fully ash, cool, and steep in water overnight before filtering through a fine cloth, giving a real potassium carbonate liquor with a mineral depth bicarbonate cannot match.
- Second, cook the black gram and papaya separately, the gram sous vide at 90°C for two hours to extract body from the skins without breaking them, the papaya blanched briefly to control its own softening independently, then combine only at the final simmer.
- Third, dehydrate a portion of the papaya into thin crisps, seasoned lightly with the kolakhar liquor itself, for a textural counterpoint on the plate.
- Fourth, finish with a few drops of the kolakhar liquor added raw at the table rather than only cooked in, so the diner meets its distinctive alkaline mineral note twice, once softened by heat and once direct.