Recipe: Bohri style paya masala (Trotters)

Hey friends. I am going to share with you my own take on making PAYA. What is paya? As you might have probably guessed, paya is a derivation from paay or pav - which are crude Hindi versions of leg. As opposed to "Raan" which is the fleshy thigh muscle and bone from a sheep or a goat, paya refers to the non-fleshy portion of a goat or sheep's lower limb from the knee joint downwards to the hooves. This is what payas look like when you purchase them from a butcher.

Before paya (or trotters as they are called in English) can be made to look like this, they are actually part of the lower limb of these animals, and hence covered with skin, muscles, etc. The butcher needs to remove all these outer stuff and boil the legs to get to the bone and cartilage structures that you see alongside. The hooves may still be covered with dirt, so you must clean the hooves completely, often with a sharp knife before you can start using them.

Now that you have obtained the trotters, let us go ahead and cook them. But before that, let me add that many Middle Eastern cultures cook trotters from larger animals such as oxen or bull, or even from a camel. The preparation of these is beyond the scope of this post. I will describe only how paya from goats or sheep is prepared.

Ingredients: 

1. Paya, 6 in number - cleaned and cut into 4 pieces each, such that there is a knee joint piece, a shin piece with a long bone and a sliver thin long bone attached to it, and two halves of a hoof - 4 pieces per paya.
2. Chick peas, about 50 grams
3. Chick pea flour - about 2 tablespoonsful
4. Fresh yoghurt -100 grams
5. Whole spices - cinnamon sticks, cloves, black pepper, cumin and black elaichi (1-2).
6. Ground spices - Ginger garlic paste - 5 grams
7. Ground powdered spices - red chilli, turmeric and garam masala
8. Julienned ginger - a few, for garnishing
9. Coriander leaves - chopped, for garnishing
10. Onion 1 large or 2 medium - cut long and thin
11. Cooking oil - 2 tablespoons
12. Salt, to taste

Preparation:

1. Put the clean paya into a pressure cooker with water enough to get a stock solution at the end of the boil. Add salt, a few green chilli (optional) and a few ml of cooking oil into the mix and then close off the cooker and cook the paya for at least 10 minutes at high flame. The cooker should start whistling at around 6-7 minutes. Continue to cook as paya takes a  little longer to cook. When the lid cools down sufficiently, open it, and then check if the paya is well-cooked. If yes, the outer tissues should be soft and easy to remove off the bone. If not, they aren't ready as yet, and you need to close back the lid and cook some more.  Your paya and the stock will probably look like this:
   
2. Separate the paya from the stock which will be all needed.
3. Wash the whole chickpeas and boil them in a pan till they are soft. Drain the water and keep the chickpeas aside. Add the boiled chick peas to the paya stock.

       4. Blend the yoghurt and the chickpea flour together so that no lumps are visible or felt.

Method:

In an open kadhai, heat some cooking oil. Drop in the whole spices one by one, allowing each to splutter. Once they are all done, remove them carefully into a saucer. (Well, you can't get the cumin out). Next, add the onions and fry them till they are brown. Reduce the flame, add ginger garlic paste, powdered spices and salt, and cook for a bit longer, say about 3-4 minutes. Next, add the yoghurt-chickpea flour paste and continue stirring and cooking the entire mix for the next 7-8 minutes, turning the flame on to about 80% of maximum. Once you start smelling the roasting of the flour, reduce the flame again, adding the paya stock to the mix.

By now, you should have a broth-like liquid that looks a bit like this:

As this mixture keeps cooking, add the whole spices back in. Now you are almost done. Just before you add the paya to this mixture, you will be at the penultimate step of your preparation.

At this stage, the paya soup is almost ready. The oil has started to separate and the whole concoction is looking very tempting. Add the paya now, keep stirring, then close the cooker again for about 10 minutes to finish off the cook. When the cooker has cooled, open the lid, garnish the paya with coriander and julienned garlic and serve hot with nan or tandoori roti.

And that, my dear friends, was how my paya turned out.

Post-note: I have come across other forms of the paya preparation. The variations include the following:

• Yoghurt is mixed with the onions and ground into a paste instead of the chickpea flour
• Normal flour is used instead of chickpea flour
• Chickpeas are not added at all.
• The stock and the paya are the end-product and served as a soup instead of a masala
• Paya is eaten with khichri instead of roti

What other variations have you seen? Thank you for reading. Do add your comments.