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Heartland Masala: An Indian Cookbook from an American Kitchen isn't just a cookbook, it's a multinational family affair. It was written by mother-and-son duo Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji. Jyoti, a cooking teacher with several thousand students, took care of the recipes, which mostly feature Punjabi and Bengali food. Auyon, a writer and musician who plays in the band Darlingside , included essays providing cultural context, shedding light on how colonialism, the American immigrant experience, and more have shaped the book's 99 recipes.
Evan Kleiman: I have to tell you, when I opened the book, my first impression was how joyful it is. Jyoti, in the introduction of the book, you write about how you didn't start learning to cook seriously until you moved to the US. So your cooking essentially is inseparable from your experience with immigration.
Jyoti Mukharji: Correct.
Jyoti Mukharji strongly recommends grinding many of your own spices because otherwise, they lose their punch. Illustration by Olivier Kugler.
Could you talk about your recipe for Masala Brussels Sprouts, which were a vegetable you hadn't encountered in India? I feel like that recipe in particular, sort of shows how these two parts of you came together.
Jyoti Mukharji: It really does. I wanted the children to be able to consume Brussels sprouts. Also, I know a lot of people don't like Brussels sprouts when it's fixed the Western way. These days, of course, we have those crisp Brussels sprouts, which are always very pleasing. With that in mind, I wanted to create something that I could make a believer out of people and say that, you know, Brussels sprouts is so good. It is so tasty. I had literally just added a few powders together, and the whole dish came alive so beautifully that it was such a hit.
What were the powders that you used? What was the masala that you used?
Jyoti Mukharji: Cumin powder, coriander powder, and mango powder. But I have to say, there is a trick to those, and the trick is you want to make your own ground spices, especially cumin and coriander, because they are very fragrant, and they lose their fragrance very quickly. The seeds can be kept in your drawer for many, many years, but the powders, their shelf life is, maybe depending on how fresh you pick it up from the Indian market or wherever, could be anywhere from three to five months. Then, they are just fiber with very, very little fragrance. So the trick to making the dish is grinding your own spice. Mango powder is something that doesn't have a lot of taste, but doesn't have a lot of flavor, so that doesn't matter, but it's the cumin and coriander that bring the flavors alive in that dish. The mango powder adds to the tartness.
So Heartland Masala has recipes from many different regions of India but there is a special focus on Punjabi and Bengali food. Jyoti, could you describe what makes these cuisines distinctive?
Jyoti Mukharji: My husband is from Bengal. I am from Punjab. We met in medical school and studied medicine together, and then when we got married, I learned Bengali cuisine. I had no idea of Bengali cuisine when I was growing up, no exposure to it at all. The cuisines in India are so vastly different depending on which region of India one comes from. I'm from the north, and a lot of the restaurants all over the world, Indian restaurants do serve cuisine from the northern part of India, because it is very rich in curries, and that is what is very pleasing to a lot of palates.
Cuisine from the eastern part of India, which is where my husband comes from, which is Calcutta, I call it Mother Teresa land, because that's where Mother Teresa was, is a totally different cuisine. Most of the restaurants all over the world do not serve Bengali cuisine because it's not that it's not good. It is absolutely wonderful but it is a little bit of an acquired taste. They do a lot of cooking with poppy seeds, with fish, because fish and rice is the staple there. I learned Bengali cooking, like I said, when I met him and got married. My mother-in-law was my teacher.
Sweets round out a delicious Indian meal. Photo by Kevin Miyazaki.
Auyon, can you tell me about the great curry debate? Is it really a debate at this point?
Auyon Mukharji: Yeah, I would love to. So the great curry debate is, in the past like decade or so, there have been a number of mostly Indian American food writers who have said that we should not be using the word curry because it flattens the breadth of culinary offerings that exist on the subcontinent. It is a word that was introduced by British colonialists. A lot of that is true. It is a word that certainly was not used within India in the same way until the Portuguese, first, and then the British used the word to describe a variety of dishes.
The debate part of it is that as a pushback against that sort of flattening, there are some writers who have said, "We should never use the word curry. You should refer to the dishes by what they are. And no one in India uses the word curry." I'm on board with almost all of that except for the last bit, which is not true. There are plenty of people in India who use the word curry. It means a dish with a gravy component. It's not a flavor. Curry powder is a thing of Western manufacture. There are many different curry powders that exist in India that reflect the enormous diversity of Indian cooking.
So the debate is simply whether or not the word curry is a legitimate one to use. It's more frequently now, some of the folks who used to say we should never use the word curry, a couple of them, have come out with cookbooks where they're starting to pivot a little bit and say, you know what, actually it's okay to use this word, we just need to be careful with it. But it was important to me, while we were writing this, to dig into it a bit about how the word is used, and it's very specific to Indian cooking. Curry means a different thing in Japanese cooking.
Jyoti, give me a dish with a gravy, AKA a curry that you would like us to make. Recommend one that maybe we haven't heard of before. Maybe the combinations of spices are something that might be less familiar to most people.
Jyoti Mukharji: Sure, chicken rezala is one that I would recommend. It is made with lotus seeds and nuts, poppy seeds. It has its roots from the eastern part of India, which is where my husband comes from, but with a Muslim influence. It is very delicious. It goes so well with rice, with flat bread, with naan, with anything, and even tortillas can be used. It's so good, though I have to say that in my classes, what is most popular is butter chicken.
Yeah, we're not going to go there.
Jyoti Mukharji: No, we're not going to go there. No, no.
Mother and son Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji collaborated on the cookbook "Heartland Masala." Illustration by Olivier Kugler.
I have to ask you, I loved the question about the daal bubble monster.
Auyon Mukharji: Oh, I'm so glad. That was fun to explain.
You have to explain what the deal is with the daal bubble monster.
Auyon Mukharji: Sure, the daal bubble monster is an unfortunate phenomenon that occurs if you prepare lentils or small beans or pulses of some sort, and cover the pot before letting the foam boil off. The foam will build up in pressure and eventually erupt out of the lid. Because we use turmeric very often in daals, a turmeric yellow monster that erupts out of your vessel and makes a mess of your stovetop. This was immortalized in illustration by Olivier, where I told him I wanted something that looked like a bubbly Godzilla erupting out of the dish. And he delivered in fine form.
How do we avoid the bubble monster?
Auyon Mukharji: We have to crack the lid. You can't fully cover until you know that your foam is no longer a danger. The way you do that is by boiling for a while with it fully uncovered then partially covered. And once you are certain that the foam is done doing its thing, then you fully cover. We give rough times for each of these within the book. But also it is a learn by feel process as well.
Jyoti Mukharji: It takes a few minutes. We don't know what exactly happens with the froth but boiling it for a few minutes, and you have to lower the heat, because if your heat is on high, even if you're standing there, it is beyond control. Even if you're stirring it constantly, it will just come out of your pot, and it's very, very hard to control. So you have to be sure when the frothing just starts and you can see it, it's not difficult to visualize, once you put a pot of daal on what exactly the froth looks like. You have to lower the heat so that while it's frothing, you are stirring constantly to make sure that it doesn't boil over.
I love daal. It is a staple for me. I'm always interested to see how daals differ from one another. If you could give us an idea for a daal that you particularly love.
Jyoti Mukharji: I will give you a few lentils and very quickly. The easiest and the quickest lentil to cook, and the one that is loaded with the most protein is the orange lentil. It's called masoor daal, and it is in our book, and we garnish it with garlic.
The other thing I want to add is that no lentil is complete unless there is a garnish at the end of the cooking process. So all lentils must be garnished. Unfortunately, the same garnish doesn't always apply to every lentil.
Having said that, the next lentil that is easy to cook and is very healthy is the small yellow lentil, which is called moong daal. It is the yellow moong. You can add tomatoes to it and a very simple garnish of cumin and ghee is delightful in that lentil.
Then, there is another yellow lentil called toor daal or arhar daal, and that is very versatile, because it is cooked in every part of India in so many different ways. In the north, I learned this from my mother and the recipe is in the book, cooking it with green mango, which is tart mango, raw mango, it's a cooking mango, then garnishing it with several spices. It is so delicious and you can keep all these lentils when they're left over in the fridge, and they do not spoil. So for four or five days, it's never a problem to keep a lentil.
Beware of the Daal Bubble Monster which appears when not letting foam steam off before covering your lentil pot with a lid. Illustration by Olivier Kugler.
I wanted to ask you, because you've talked about the sour punch of mango a couple times. What do green mangoes bring to a dish?
Jyoti Mukharji: Tartness. The green mango, these are cooking mangoes. They are not meant to be eaten as is. They are meant to be cooked with. Even when they become ripe, they are extremely tart. We get a powder of these dehydrated mangoes in the Indian grocery stores, which is called amchur, "am" in our language, is mango. "chur" is powder. It gives a beautiful tartness to any dish you add it to.
Auyon Mukharji: One of my favorite things that one can do with amchur is unlike most of the acids that we use in Western cooking are liquids, so citrus juices, vinegars, et cetera, so when you want to add acid to something, you're often forced to add liquid as well, which maybe isn't always the thing you want. One of the beautiful things about amchur is that it is a dry powder, so it just makes it a more flexible thing. You can add vinegar to popcorn, of course, but you've got to be careful, because you don't want it to get soggy. Whereas amchur, you can add as much as you want, and you might get an over sour popcorn but it's not going to get soggy, which is a wonderful thing.
Jyoti Mukharji: Also, it has a long shelf life.
I love the buta chaat, for that reason. It's such a simple corn recipe that I think we in LA would love to have in our repertoire, but that addition of the amchur just sounds so delicious to me.
Jyoti Mukharji: It is delicious.
"Heartland Masala" by Jyoti Mukharji and Auyon Mukharji, The Collective Book Studio, September 2025. Photo courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
Okay, now I want to talk to you, Jyoti, about the Bengali use of mustard oil. Famously, the FDA has decreed that mustard oil is for external use only. But can you talk about some of your favorite Bengali dishes that use mustard, and tell us how it changes the flavor profile of the dish?
Jyoti Mukharji: One of the major differences between the food that is cooked in the north and the food that is cooked in the east, which is where Bengali food is cooked, is that they use mustard oil in a lot of their cooking. In the north, where I come from, mustard oil is used only for very specific dishes, mostly it is vegetable oil or ghee. But in Calcutta, they use mustard oil and any vegetable that is cooked, it's always made in mustard oil. The fish is made in mustard oil. The only thing that is not done is garnishing lentils. That is never done in mustard oil. Even in Calcutta, they do use ghee or oil for garnishing their lentils. But a lot of the basic cooking is done in mustard oil, and it does change the flavor completely because of its smell. They even use, in a lot of the Bengali dishes after the cooking is done, a tablespoon of raw mustard oil is put on top of the prepared dish to exaggerate the flavor of mustard oil.
I love that. In addition to having a variety of recipes of all kinds. You also include drinks in the book. Leave us with one, one drink you want us to make.
Jyoti Mukharji: Oh, mango. The ampana. It is roasted mango. It can be roasted or it can be boiled, whichever way anybody would like to do it. I think it is easy to make, and it is so delicious. It is so refreshing. It is a summer drink. And especially when it is hot outside, it is sweet and sour. It is absolutely delightful, and you garnish it with roasted, crushed cumin.
Yeah, it sounds wonderful. Well, thank you both so much. It's really a lovely book.
Auyon Mukharji: Thank you very much. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.
Green mangoes, which are cooking mangoes and aren't meant to be eaten raw, add tartness to a dish, like this Arhar Daal (center). Photo by Kevin Miyazaki.
Arhar Daal with Green Mango
Serves 4
Prep Time: 3 hours • Cooking Time: 1 ¾ hours
Jyoti: My mother cooked this daal so often that it grew to be emblematic of her hospitality among her circle of friends. She passed the recipe down to me as her mother did to her. It is, I think, a perfect daal — it retains the cozy, warming qualities of simpler preparations, but its balance of sweet, sour, and spice lends it a beguiling complexity.
Don't let the long spice list intimidate you. Most all of them are added in one fell swoop at the end as a garnish, and the bulk of the cooking time involves the daal bubbling away happily on the stovetop, unattended. Don't cover the pot too early, though.
Auyon: The unripe mango necessary for this recipe is not something you'll find in most supermarkets. You're looking for a hard, unyielding fruit, picked well before ripening, with a sour, nutty taste. This fruit is meant for cooking and pickling, not for fresh eating. You should be able to find it at most Indian markets, either fresh or frozen (if using frozen, no need to peel).
Ingredients
For the daal
1 cup (200 g) yellow arhar daal, rinsed
1/4 large, peeled, unripe green mango (2 ounces// 60 g), cubed (1/2-inch // 12-mm, about 1/2 cup)
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
Boiling water (optional), as needed
For the tadka
4 1/2 teaspoons unsalted ghee (store-bought or homemade)
1/8 teaspoon heeng (ground asafoetida)
1/2 teaspoon black or brown mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds, coarsely crushed
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 small sprigs fresh curry leaves, stripped from the stems (see page xy)
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne (optional)
For the garnish
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh cilantro, stems and leaves
Instructions
Combine the daal with 6 cups (5.7 L) water in a large bowl. Soak for 3 to 4 hours.
Transfer the daal and soaking liquid to a large, lidded (but uncovered for now) pot. Add the green mango, sugar, salt, and turmeric. Stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat.
As soon as the mixture comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low. Half-cover the pot and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring once or twice to keep the daal from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Any foam or scum that develops over the first few minutes of cooking should be removed (but no need to get surgical).
Cover the pot completely and cook, stirring a few times, until the daal has completely softened and begun to break down, about 1 hour. (The actual cooking time depends on the freshness of the beans and can vary a lot. Tenderness, rather than time, is the true gauge of doneness. Check the pot often, don't hesitate to add water if the level gets low, and trust your senses.) Test the daal by gently mashing it with the back of a spoon or ladle. If the liquid thickens and turns opaque, the daal is done. (If the daal is totally tender but the liquid is still thin and clear, use a potato masher to mash about a quarter of the daal to thicken the mixture.)
The daal should be about the same consistency as a pureed vegetable soup. If it's too thick, slowly add boiling water (or bring the daal to a boil after adding tap water) until it reaches the desired texture. Taste for salt.
To prepare the tadka (see page xy), heat the ghee in a small pan over medium heat. Once the ghee is good and hot, add the heeng and sizzle for 10 seconds.
Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and coriander seeds. Cook, undisturbed, until the mustard seeds are popping vigorously, about 30 seconds (watch out for oil splatter—use a splatter screen if you have one).
Add the garlic and stir until the garlic barely starts to take on color, 30 to 45 seconds.
Add the curry leaves and watch out for oil splatter — use a splatter screen if you have one. Cook, giving the pan a shake to distribute them evenly, until the leaves crisp up, an additional 15 seconds. If it's hard to tell visually, you should be able to feel the texture change while stirring them around in the pan.
Immediately remove from the heat and add the cayenne (if using). Swirl the pan to combine. Pour the tadka over the daal.
To clean out any ghee and spices that are still sticking to the pan, add a bit of daal from the pot and swirl the pan around a few times before stirring it back into the pot.
Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.
Reprinted with permission from Heartland Masala by Jyoti Mukharji and Auyon Mukharji, The Collective Book Studio, September 2025.
Made with lotus seeds and nuts, Murgh Rezala (top right) has its roots from the eastern part of India. Photo by Kevin Miyazaki.
Murgh Rezala (Chicken Curry with Water Lily Seeds and Cashews)
Serves 4
Prep Time: 2 ½ hours • Cooking Time: 1 ¾ hours
Auyon: The roots of this dish trace back to the elaborate Indo-Persian cuisine of the Mughal empire, which began in 1526 with the arrival of the Central Asian ruler Babur and persisted until 1858, when the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj. Today, Murgh Rezala is a Kolkata Muslim specialty, said to have arrived in Bengal in the mid-nineteenth century along with one of the nawabs, or local rulers, deposed by the British. Wajid Ali Shah, the eleventh and final king of Awadh, landed in Bengal along with a large retinue of musicians, dancers, cooks, advisors, and of course, recipes.
The opulence here is apparent. A garnish of two different hydrosols (rose water and kewra, or screwpine, water) lend it a beguiling, perfumed quality. The poppy-thickened curry (a suspected Bengali modification) and the delightful chew of phool makhana, or puffed water lily seeds, are also hallmarks.
Ingredients
For the marinade
1/2 cup (120 ml) warm water
14 raw unsalted cashews
2 teaspoons white poppy seeds
2 pounds (910 g) skinless, fat-trimmed chicken thighs, cut into 1 1/2-inch (4-cm) chunks
1 large yellow onion (14 1/2 ounces // 410 g), cut into rough chunks
8 cloves garlic
1 fresh Indian green chili (optional; jalapeño may be substituted), finely chopped
1/2 cup (120 g) whole, unflavored yogurt (store-bought or homemade), stirred
2 teaspoons black peppercorns, coarsely crushed
1 teaspoon salt
For the masala
2 cups (30 g) phool makhana
5 cloves
8 black peppercorns
3 green cardamom pods
1 black cardamom pod
3 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons unsalted ghee (store-bought or homemade)
3 Indian bay leaves
2 dried red chilies, broken into thirds
One 3-inch (7.5-cm) cinnamon stick
3 blades mace
1/2 teaspoon salt
Boiling water (optional), as needed
For the garnish
1 teaspoon rose water
1 teaspoon kewra water
1/2 teaspoon garam masala (store-bought or homemade)
Salt, to taste
Instructions
Combine the warm water, cashews, and poppy seeds in a small bowl. Set aside to soak at room temperature while the meat marinates.
Place the chicken in a large container or bowl. Grind the onion, garlic, and fresh chili (if using) to a smooth paste using a blender, food processor, or mortar and pestle.
Pour the puree over the chicken, then add the yogurt, crushed black pepper, and salt—do not blend the yogurt, as doing so could compromise the texture. Mix well by hand, and make sure to massage the marinade into each piece of meat. Cover the mixture and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours (and up to 4).
Heat a medium pan over medium heat. Once good and hot, add the phool makhana and cook, stirring constantly, until they take on a light brown, toasted marshmallow color, about 5 minutes. The coloring will be uneven, but be sure to keep the seeds moving to avoid blackened hot spots. Remove from the heat and immediately transfer to a plate to cool.
Use a mortar and pestle to coarsely crush the cloves and black peppercorns. Add both the green and black cardamom pods to the mortar and crack them open so that the seeds are exposed. Set aside.
Heat the oil and ghee in a large, lidded (but uncovered for now) pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil starts to shimmer, add the bay leaves, dried chilies, and cinnamon. Cook, giving the pan a shake or two, until the spices darken a couple of shades and become fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add the crushed spices (cloves, black peppercorns, green cardamom, and black cardamom) and mace, and cook, giving the pan another shake, until the second round of spices darken a bit and become fragrant, another 45 seconds.
Moving quickly, transfer half of the chicken to the pan, but try to remove and reserve as much of the onion marinade as possible from each piece before adding. All of the chicken pieces should fit in a single layer, but if the pan looks crowded, work in smaller batches. Keep the heat at medium-high and cook, undisturbed, until the chicken is beginning to brown at the edges on the bottom, 3 to 5 minutes. Flip and cook the other side to the same point, another 5 minutes or so.
Using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the chicken pieces from the pan once the edges are lightly browned on both sides. Some of the pieces may need an extra minute or two if they were put in later, and it is okay if a few of the spices come out with the chicken.
Repeat with the remaining chicken pieces. Since the chicken releases water as it cooks, the second batch may not brown as evenly as the first (and some pieces might not brown much at all, which is fine).
Once the last batch of the chicken has been cooked, add all of the meat back into the pan along with the reserved onion marinade and the salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the masala darkens to a golden beige and the smell of raw onion is no longer perceptible, 15 to 20 minutes.
Reduce the heat to medium and cover the pan. Cook, undisturbed, for about 6 minutes. The chicken should release a bit more liquid and the masala should darken a shade or two. In the meantime, grind the poppy seeds and cashews into their soaking liquid using a blender.
Add the toasted phool makhana, cashew-poppy puree, and 3 tablespoons water. Stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and cook for a final 5 minutes to allow the flavors to meld.
Turn the heat off. The final consistency of the masala should be thick but still fluid, and it should cling to the chicken pieces and water lily seeds. Add a bit of boiling water (or bring the mixture to a boil after adding tap water) to correct the consistency, or if you want the dish to be saucier.
Garnish with rose water, kewra water, and garam masala. Stir to incorporate.
Cover the pan. Let rest, undisturbed, for at least 15 minutes before serving. Taste for salt and serve hot.
Reprinted with permission from Heartland Masala by Jyoti Mukharji and Auyon Mukharji, The Collective Book Studio, September 2025. |
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