Three Ingenious and Lawless Indian Toasties
Kerala Tuna Melt by Aysha Tanya, Green Chutney and Potato Toastie by Apoorva Sripathi, and Smashed Baghare Matar (Cumin-spiced Peas) on Toast by Taiyaba Ali
Welcome to Vittles Cooking! This week, we have Apoorva Sripathi, Taiyaba Ali, and Aysha Tanya (co-authoring with her mum, Kathija Hashim) with three quick, easy, and delicious Indian toasties, a small selection of the home-cooking favourite eaten in distinct and different ways throughout the subcontinent.
A Vittles subscription costs £7/month or £59/year. If you’ve been enjoying the writing, then please consider subscribing to keep it running. It will give you access to the whole Vittles back catalogue, including Vittles Restaurants, Vittles Columns, and Seasons 1–7 of our themed essays.
Three Ingenious and Lawless Indian Toasties
Kerala tuna melt by Aysha Tanya, green chutney and potato toastie by Apoorva Sripathi, and smashed baghare matar (cumin-spiced peas) on toast by Taiyaba Ali.
Just like all genre-defining South Asian dishes – dal, pulao, biryani – there are millions of individual Indian toastie recipes, perhaps billions if you consider how often the toastie changes from home to home. The toastie is defined by ease and frugality, using what someone has at hand to create a delicious snack, and so varies wildly in fillings and condiments. As Vidya Balachander wrote last year, ‘With no history to revere or formula to adhere to, you could use whatever emerged out of the kitchen, put it between two slices of bread (buttered, ideally), and call it a toastie.’
Here are three recipes from the family of millions: a Kerala-style tuna melt; a recipe that uses baghare matar, or tender, spiced green peas smashed up and slathered on toast; and a boiled potatoes and tangy green chutney toastie. Even if the high priests of Indian cuisine still bafflingly avow tradition and puritanism when it comes to recipes, the toastie continues to prove them wrong. It stands for so much of what is pleasurable about eating in South Asia – foods that derive from whim, and, as Apoorva Sripathi writes below, from delicious ‘lawlessness and ingenuity’.
Kerala Tuna Melt by Aysha Tanya (co-authored with Kathija Hashim)
This Kerala twist on a tuna sandwich was my favourite lunch to take to school. We had three-quarters of an hour for lunch, but it would take me all of three minutes to shove the four perfectly made triangles of soft, white bread with a thin lick of butter and fragrant, spiced fish filling with curry leaves into my mouth.
These days, this sandwich remains my go-to snack because it’s quick to make and there’s always a stash of tinned tuna in my kitchen. But now I take things up a notch and fry it in ghee, with a slice of cheddar added to the filling, which rounds out the spice perfectly.