Volume 5 of the Friday cooking column arrives with a menu built around the principle that the best weeknight food often comes from the pantry rather than the produce aisle — dishes where the deep work has been done by someone else (the person who grew the lentils, processed the tomatoes, made the ghee) and your job is simply to combine with care.

The centerpiece is a rajma — red kidney beans in a rich tomato-onion gravy — that takes maybe thirty minutes of actual cooking if you're using canned beans, or an afternoon if you're doing it properly from dried. The dried version is better. Not dramatically better, but better enough to justify the planning. Soak overnight, pressure cook with a whole onion and a piece of ginger, then proceed. The beans are creamier, the texture more yielding, and the final dish has a depth that canned beans rarely achieve.

The tomato-onion base follows the standard protocol: onions cooked long and slowly until they're genuinely golden, not just translucent. This is the step most home cooks rush and the reason restaurant food tastes different from home food. Patience here is the secret ingredient. Then ginger-garlic paste, then powdered spices — coriander, cumin, turmeric, chili — then the tomatoes. Cook it down until the oil separates.

Rice, obviously. Jeera rice if you want to make an effort; plain basmati if you don't.

A raita — yogurt with grated cucumber, roasted cumin, salt — provides the freshness and cool that every rich curry benefits from.

Friday cooking should feel like a reward for the week, not an additional obligation. This menu is that.