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Recipe: Lajjaya's Kullu Soybean Kachoris

October 16, 2024 13:06 IST

Lajjaya and Raghubir Singh

IMAGE: Lajjaya Singh at the Taj with her husband Raghubir Singh. Photograph: Kind courtesy Sneh Thadani and Prem Bhandari

Lajjaya Singh, a social worker, representing leading social welfare organisations in the 1950s in Himachal Pradesh, published a book of Himachali recipes, in Hindi, in 1981, the title of which translated to The Art of Himachal Cooking.

She hailed from Sirmaur district and was married to Raghubir Singh, who was with the IAS and was posted all over the mountainous state as a deputy commissioner during his career. Lajjaya collected recipes from different districts of Himachal and compiled them into a valuable cookbook that is sadly not in print any more.

Newspaper cutting

IMAGE: A biographical sketch on Lajjaya Singh that appeared in the newspapers many years ago. Photograph: Kind courtesy Sneh Thadani and Prem Bhandari

Her daughters, New Delhi-based Sneh Thadani and Baltimore-based Prem Bhandari picked out a few recipes for Rediff.com and translated them and shared two yesteryear images.

Here is Lajjaya's recipe for Soybean Kachoris, a savoury dish from Kullu, that contains a stuffing of the ground nutty legume in the centre and has a kastha or crispy, crumbly covering.

Soybean Kachoris

IMAGE: Kindly note the image has been posted only for representational purposes Photograph: Kind courtesy: Puneet vivid/Wikimedia Commons

Soybean Kachoris

Serves: 3-4

Method

 

LAJJAYA RAGHUBIR SINGH