Blackcurrant and Pepper Chatni

I am finally back home in Melbourne!

Being back in this southern city is of course incredibly exciting even if I had to come from beautiful 38 degree Perth and step out of the airport into temperatures in their low 20’s. One of my first orders of business (after a quick reunion with the beautiful boyfriend and a perfunctory shower) was to head to the Queen Victoria Markets to check out what looked irresistible.

Note – It takes a lot of work to artfully disorganise a handful of berries.

The morning I got there the markets were at full swing and at their atmospheric best. I like dressing up to go the markets, there is a sense of excitement and occasion for me which I think deserves a bit of effort. So with a kilo of jewellery clanking on my fingers and earlobes I stomped the crowded paths trying to aggressively assert how local and hip and familiar I was.

Somehow in the midst of my preening and posturing I managed to actually do a bit of shopping and stumbled across a surprising gem. One stall had a big gleaming pile of wickedly purple blackcurrants looking for all the world like Morticia’s jewellery box.

Perhaps it was the possibility that I could turn these blackcurrants into a fabulous pair of earrings that drew me in and regardless of the fact that I had never cooked with or tasted these delights I bought half a kilo.

By the time I got home it was 300g and I was already fantasising about how I could turn these tart berries closely associated with Western Europe into a South Asian treat. Originally I was thinking dessert, but the more berries I ate the more I grew to love the savoury notes in their sourness. I finally decided to make them into a sweet and spicy chatni which I would serve alongside some fried delights like a samosa or my roast broccoli and date pakoras (recipe coming soon!).

This recipe is basically a glorified blackcurrant jam which has been cooked to a stage just before the gelling stage so it remains a little runny. If you like you can make the blackcurrant jam with all the spices except the chaat masala and amchur and add more sugar and have a delicately spiced preserve for breakfast treats!

I had to really use my instincts for this one and I would suggest you use these measurements and timings as guides and that you use your better judgement if you are not convinced something is doing what it should.

The key to this is a good chaat masala whose tartness and complexity really makes the blackcurrants transform.

Blackcurrant and Pepper Chatni – Makes around 1 1/2 cups

2 cups fresh blackcurrants (stemmed and cleaned) – 3/4 cup water – 7 cardomom pods bruised – 7 cloves – 12 black peppercorns –  1 cup sugar – 2 tsp lemon juice – 1 1/2 tsp chaat masala* – 1/2 tsp amchur

1. Tie up cardomom, cloves and pepper in a muslin cloth or clean chux to make a glorified teabag.
2. Bring blackcurrants, water and muslin spicebag to a boil, reduce heat to medium/low. Cook for 10 minutes or until blackcurrants are soft but still holding their shape.
3. Add sugar and 1tsp lemon juice, raise heat slightly to medium and cook until just before gelling point (this should be around 104 degrees Celsius if you have a sugar thermometer) which will be just as the mixture starts to rapidly thicken. This happened for me after about 8 minutes although I am told by my cheffing friend that it should normally happen sooner.
4. Once at the appropriate consistency stir in the remaining lemon juice along with the remaining spices. Pour into a clean and sterilised jar.
5. Once cool, store in refrigerator. Serve with samosas and a cup of peppery chai.

* Chaat Masala – A tangy spice blend that is usually sprinkled over fried snacks, unripe fruit and used to finish some meals. Can be bought from Indian groceries but is very satisfying to make. Will be posting the recipe shortly.

Kerbside Cuisine: Bhelpuri and Andhra Mango Mackerel

I was recently in India for a number of weeks (thus the posting hiatus) with my little brother, eating my way around the southern states of Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra. I ate some incredible food, from Mangalorean chicken ghee roast in a dive bar with mugs of ice cold Kingfisher, to Hyderabadi biryani at the imperious Paradise Biryani on fine pressed linen. The next few posts are lifted straight from my travel diary and I’m excited to share some of my belly-filling treasures.

Indian street food is famous the world over and rightfully so. Samosas, jalebis and pakode (pakoras) have earned their place on the greasy paper plate of the kerbside cuisine glitterati. But -and it’s a big but (like mine)- Indian street food is so much more than greasy deep fried batter. This kind of eating can be, and often is, light, tangy, sweet, sour and refreshing. In Australia no one I know associates South Asian food with any of those adjectives and it’s a shame because there’s a whole kaleidoscope of flavours beyond your local curry joint’s samosas.

So here then, is my first instalment of an Indian street food manual. Most of these things are quite easy to prepare and I look forward to posting my interpretations once I have a kitchen again!

All of the food below is best enjoyed with the beeping of trucks, petrol fumes and the lingering scent of stale piss.

Bhelpuri

This is probably one of the most ubiquitous street snacks around and one which I doubt many Indians would consider unusual, exciting or interesting. But in Australia I have yet to see a decent incarnation.

I find it helpful to think of Bhelpuri as desi* popcorn. Like popcorn it is based around a puffed grain, in this case rice. Also like popcorn it is jazzed up to the nines with flavourings and accoutrements. Any number of things can be mixed in with the spiced puffed rice; date chatni, chilly, fresh chickpeas, peanuts, lime, mango, tomato, onion or chaat masala*. The combined effect of this cacophony of flavours is a delight of contrasts which (if made well) somehow maintains some semblance of balance and harmony. Sour lime scuffles against sticky date chatni. Crunchy chickpeas challenge juicy tomato and the aggressively complex chaat masala finds temperance against delicate chewy puffed rice. All your chosen ingredients are rattled around in a little tin by the vendor who in a well rehearsed and efficient theatricality then deftly pours your morsels into a newspaper cone.

Bhelpuri is as varied as it is common and has slightly different versions all across the subcontinent. It is most often sold on promenades, outside tourist attractions or anywhere that you might go for some twilight frolicking. Bhelpuri is traditionally associated with Mumbai beaches like Chowpatty (although I tried to find some there with no luck) and there is something paticularly scrummy about eating the delicious spiced puffed rice out of a newspaper cone watching the sun set over the ocean, even if that ocean is the filthy Mumbai coastline.

 Andhra mango mackerel

 The area I was staying in Hyderabad was quite industrial and walking down the street felt a bit like intruding in a giant open air mechanic. The music of hammers on metal and the workshop vibe made me think of the winkies from The Wiz and I half expected the men and women to erupt into a 70’s soul afro-funk tune.

The environment didn’t lend itself to a proliferation of eateries and I was a bit desperate so when I saw a nondescript tin cart deep frying something I made a beeline straight towards it.

Without even asking what it was I ordered two and only after unwrapping my string tied newspaper parcel did I realise that I’d been given two thick slabs of fish. My usual rule in the Subcontinent is to not eat fish too far away from the sea for health reasons, but I was starving and lazy so I took the plunge.

The bright red masala that the fish had been coated in was chewy and sweet and spicy, tasted like it had cinnamon and tamarind and fenugreek and ginger powder. On top the vendor had sprinkled amchur which is a sour dried mango powder. The sourness of the amchur with the sweet chewiness of the masala and the oiliness of the fish was amazing. A little squeeze of lime and a fresh green chilli and I was in heaven!

I’m not sure exactly what fish it was or how it was prepared as my Telugu is pretty basic/non-existent. If I had to hazard a guess I would say it was a mackerel like fish, or at least something as oily. I will try and recreate this one as soon as I’m home!

* Desi – Referring to the people, cultures, foods etc of South Asia (usually considered from Pakistan to Bangladesh and from Nepal to Sri Lanka). Comes from the Sanskrit and Hindi desh or homeland.

*Chaat Masala – A tangy, sulphuric and complex spice mix which varies from vendor to vendor, home to home but will always contain healthy amounts of the the sulphuric Kala Namak (Black Salt) and sour Amchur (powdered green mango). Incredibly moorish. Chaat comes from the term to taste and encompasses a whole variety of tangy, complex street foods.

Burnt Garlic and Capsicum Chatni

When someone says the word chutney, my mind instantly jumps to the thick, oversweet, cloying relishes that my Dad used to eat which bore more resemblance to jam than to anything else. This style of chutney is a result of the Anglo reinterpretations (misinterpretations?) of the Indian chatni (chatni is a truer transliteration and I will use it to differentiate my South Asian recipes from their Anglo cousins).

Meals in many parts of South Asia are almost invariably accompanied with a chatni or two. A subcontinental chatni can be any sort of relish made of ingredients as diverse as mint, insects, seeds, fruit, vegetables or even marijuana. This incredible variety means that often the chatni is more exciting than the dish it is served next to. There is a whole world of chatnis to explore and this recipe is a good place to start. 

This is the chatni I make most often and I usually make a big batch that will last me all week. Not only is it amazing next to a rich curry that can support its domineering flavours, it is also great on toast, or stirred through a soup.

Don’t go making out with anyone after eating this because it is really full on in the garlic department. Cooking this much garlic at once feels a tad extravagant but I promise that your house will smell like heaven. If you are not a fan of capiscum, this chatni is just as good without it!

Delicious hot or room temperature.

Burnt Garlic and Capsicum Chatni – Makes between 1 and 1 1/2 cups

1 capsicum – 3-4 tbs of ghee or vegetable oil – 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds – 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds – 6 bulbs of garlic, cloves peeled and minced –  2 tbs kashmiri chilli powder

1. Roast capsicum on gas hob for 8 minutes occasionally rotating so the skin becomes blackened. Alternatively roast in a 180ºC oven for 40 ish minutes until similarly blackened.
2. If you like you can peel the capsicum, however I really like the smoky flavour the charred skin adds. Either way very finely dice the capsicum.
3. Heat the ghee or oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add mustard and fenugreek seeds. Fry for 1 minute. Add garlic and cook for 6-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Pay close attention to it because you do not want to the garlic to blacken but instead you want a heavy caramelisation where the garlic pieces begin to get very slightly crispy and dark brown around the edges.
4. Add capsicum and chilli powder and cook on low heat for a further 2 minutes.
5. Serve hot or room temperature.
6. If storing for later, put it in an airtight container with a thin layer of oil in the fridge.

Himachali Fenugreek and Fennel Chicken

This is one of my all time favourite recipes! I cooked this last night for my loved ones listening to Kishore Kumar’s O Mere Dil Ke Chain, his perfect voice mixing with swirling incense and the smell of freshly ground fennel, mustard and fenugreek. All I needed was blaring horns of garishly painted trucks, naked neon lights and a rope charpoy and I could have been at any roadside dhaba on the Grand Trunk Road which historically runs from Kabul in Afghanistan to Kolkata in West Bengal.

The masala in this dish is rich and fragrant. The fenugreek in it gives it that umami ‘curry’ flavour which is so delicious  and deep when properly cooked, the mustard seeds give it kick while the fennel (my favourite spice) makes sure the whole masala is beautifully perfumed and floral. I think this is one of the best masalas around.

There is a fair whack of vinegar in this recipe which means it will keep a bit longer than most curries, and in fact this is a variation on a dish that people would take on long train trips in the Punjab and Himachal Pradesh (Northwest India) because it wouldn’t spoil as quickly during their travels with vinegar acting as a preservative.

I struggle with naming the recipes in this blog. Some are quite straightforward but others sort of fall into the ‘miscellaneous curry’ trap. I’ve named this one after the flavours in the masala that really sing.

I served this dish with my Burnt Garlic and Roast Capsicum Chatni, a Pomegranate Raita and some piping hot chapatis!

Himachali Fenugreek and Fennel Chicken

Ikg skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite sized pieces – 2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder – 1 tsp turmeric – 3 tsp salt – 3 tbs minced garlic (out of a jar is ok if you can’t be arsed mincing a bulb of garlic) – 4cm ginger finely grated – 2 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds – 1 tsp fenugreek seeds – 2 1/2 tsp fennel seeds – 1 1/2 tsp garam masala – 4 tbs vegetable oil – 2 onions finely chopped – pinch of asafoetida* – 3 tbs minced garlic – 4cm ginger finely grated – 150ml white vinegar

1. Marinade chicken pieces in chilli powder, turmeric, salt, garlic, ginger for one hour. Add a squeeze of lime juice if you don’t have that long as the acid will help the spices penetrate the chicken more.
2. Heat the oil over a low-medium heat in a kadhai, heavy wok or a large heavy bottomed pan. Gently fry onions for 10-15 minutes until the onions are deep brown and have begun to break down. It should almost look like an onion mash. This stage is important in most South Asian dishes, as it is the heavy caramelisation (without burning) of the onions that gives the dish depth. Be patient and keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn. Add a splash of water if they are catching on the bottom of the pan.
3. While the onions are cooking toast the mustard seeds, fennel and fenugreek seeds in a dry pan on medium heat. I like to take my toasting of spices to the limit. If you aren’t familiar with how to toast spices, use a low heat and keep an eye on them! Take the spices off the heat when the fenugreek gets quite dark. Grind spices in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder, add garam masala.
4. Add asafoetida then spice mix, ginger and garlic to the onions and cook on low-medium heat for 4 minutes.
5. Add marinaded chicken to the onions and stir fry on medium heat for 4 minutes. Add 100ml of water, cook for 15 minutes until reduced and sauce is quite thick. Don’t worry too much if the chicken or sauce starts to catch on the bottom of the pan as the vinegar will deglaze and that almost burnt flavour works really well against the vinegar’s astringency.
6. Add vinegar and reduce again till chicken is heavily coated in thick vinegary gravy.
7. Serve with fresh chapatis.

* Asafoetida (Hing) – A powdered plant gum which when cooked has a smell and flavour resembling cooked onions and garlic. Incredibly pungent when raw, it is often nicknamed ‘devil’s dung’. Traditionally used by the ultra-vegan Jains and orthodox Hindus who believed onions and garlic to be ‘polluting’ food as it was said to arouse carnal passions.

Cinnamon Seafood Stock

I recently finished working at a fine dining establishment in East Melbourne as a waiter. What I got out of the job was not how to fold napkins properly, or how to hang a fur coat or polish a crystal glass, but rather it was peering over the pass that taught me the most.

I am a self taught cook and as such didn’t know how to perform some of the more basic kitchen tasks such as making sauces and roasting meats. Hovering around the pass at the restaurant and bombarding the chefs with irritating questions however, taught me so much about classic western cooking techniques some of which I think can be translated with great success into a South Asian kitchen.

For me the most obvious example is stock. In the Subcontinent, the use of stock (called yakhni in many North Indian languages) is relegated to a few mostly Mughlai dishes such as yakhni pulao* and some biryanis*. Outside of these specific dishes, stock is rarely used in an Indian kitchen.

I think this is a significant oversight as a stock adds richness and complexity to dishes which covers up mistakes and flat flavours. The wealth of spices in South Asian food means that a stock used in these dishes has to potential to be incredibly complex and exciting. If the flavour base -the masala- of a dish is undercooked and weak, a stock will pep it up and add a depth which will disguise any previous errors.

This stock is a beautiful, cinnamon scented broth which contains my holy trinity of seafood flavours; shellfish, curry leaves and tamarind. I used whole prawns here and just picked the flesh out after cooking to snack on. If you think this is too wasteful, feel free to use just the shells and heads but double the amount of prawns used then.

Cinnamon Seafood Stock – Makes 1.5 Litres

6 or 7 unpeeled raw prawns – 2 tbs vegetable oil – 15 curry leaves – 1 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds – 4 cm ginger sliced – 3 shallots cut half lengthways (skin on) – 1 tsp coriander – 1 tsp black peppercorns – 1 cinnamon stick – 1/2 tsp fenugreek – 1 tsp white poppyseeds – 1/2 tbs jaggery* – 1/2 tbs tamarind extract or juice of 2 limes – 3-4 tbs salt

1. Roughly chop prawns with shells on.

2. Heat oil over medium heat in stock pot or large heavy bottomed pot. Pop mustard seeds and curry leaves for 30 seconds.

3. Add chopped prawns, ginger and shallots. Reduce heat and slowly caramelise for 4-5 minutes, making sure it doesn’t burn.

4. Add remaining ingredients except for jaggery and tamarind and salt. Stir fry for 3-4 minutes on low heat.

5. Pour in 2L of hot water. Add jaggery, salt and tamarind, give pot a good stir.

6. Simmer on low to medium heat for 30-40 minutes.

7. Strain, cool and refrigerate ready for use.

*Yakhni Pulao/Biryani – Spiced rice dishes, usually cooked with goat or chicken. Rice (either with or separately from meat) cooked in meat stock.

Jaggery – Indian palm sugar. Also known as gur, can be either light brown/golden and crystallised(most processed), or dark brown almost black and fudgy (least processed)

West Coast Masala Snapper

This is a dish I have had in a hundred incarnations all up the west coast ofIndia. I made my version first as breakfast in bed for my boyfriend and he absolutely loved it. Even though we were in windy Fremantle, the smell of curry leaves cooking in coconut oil, and the sharp tastes of fenugreek with ginger was transportative and we could easily have been anywhere from Ratnagiri to Udupi.

Cooking fish in Fremantle is deceptively difficult. For a city whose bread and butter(fish and chips?) was the fishing industry, it defies belief that half a kilo of snapper costs $21- an hour’s work for me back home in Melbourne. The extravagance of fish here in Fremantle means that seafood is a special meal, but I look forward to making it regularly back in Melbourne where it is a regular feature on my weekly dinner menu.

West Coast Masala Snapper – Feeds 4

500g Rainbow-Lipped Snapper or another oily, firm-fleshed white fish – Generous pinch of sea salt – 1 1/2 Tbs Turmeric – 3 tbs coconut oil or a neutral vegetable oil – 1/2 tbs black mustard seeds – 15-20 curry leaves – 4 cloves of garlic minced –  1 medium onion*  finely chopped –  4 cm piece of ginger finely grated – 1 green chilli finely chopped –  2 small red chillies finely chopped  – 1 tbs coriander seeds –  1 tbs black peppercorns –  1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds –  1 tbs kashmiri chilli powder –  1 tbs white poppy seeds –  1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds  –  1tsp turmeric – 3 tomatoes finely chopped (the finer they are chopped the smoother the sauce) –  1L Fish Stock (See here for  a recipe or use store bought) – 3cm ginger cut into matchsticks

1. Coat snapper in turmeric and salt, set aside in fridge. In India raw fish is traditionally considered to be an offensive smell. Cooks traditionally coat raw seafood in turmeric and salt which not only neutralises the odour but also marinates the fish as well as adding the substantial antiseptic health properties of turmeric to the dish.
2. Grind all the dry spices together in a mortar and pestle or a spice/coffee grinder
3. Heat oil over medium heat in a kadhai* or a heavy bottomed pan, add mustard seeds and curry leaves. Fry for two minutes until seeds pop. Add onion, reduce heat to low and cook for fifteen minutes so the onion turns a deep brown and starts to break down. Make sure it doesn’t burn or become crispy.
4. Add garlic, ginger, chillies and ground spices. Cook on low heat for four minutes until spices are a deep reddish brown and richly aromatic. You will be able to smell if your spices are burning. Don’t be too cautious here because proper cooking of the spices is essential to depth of flavour in any South Asian dish.
5. Increase heat to medium, add tomatoes and cookfor three to four minutes. Add fish stock and reduce for half an hour to forty five minutes, to about one third.
6. Cut fish into large chunks, reduce heat and add fish to sauce. Reduce heat and slowly simmer for twenty minutes until the fish is slightly breaking apart.
7. Use the back of a spoon to slightly crush the fish chunks so that they flake apart.
8. Top with ginger matchsticks and serve with rice and a coconut chatni*

*Onion – All onions referred to in this blog are red unless otherwise stated. Shallots also work very well. For one medium sized red onion use 2-3 shallots.

   Kadhai – Heavy Indian wok

   Chatni – Chutney. Spelt in this way to differentiate from the Anglo understanding of a chutney as a sweet fruit condiment. A chatni is a relish made from anything from coconut to fire ants and is used to offer a textural and taste juxtaposition to the food.

I’m really bad at making rice

I’m really bad at making rice.

Not just a little bit. I genuinely struggle making rice do what I want and for someone who styles themselves as a self-declared Subcontinental gastronomic aficionado (sort of), this presents a serious problem. How can I possibly talk about and construct the intricacies and the simplicities of the diversity of Subcontinental food if I can’t even boil a pot of small white grains?

A couple of months ago I was cooking a Konkani* coconut, kokum* and kingfish concoction for a loved one. I was having one of those rare days in the kitchen where everything was going right for me. My fish was beautiful and fresh, my coconut came out of its shell with a minimum of elbow grease and a celebratory glass of champagne and my masala was better than it had ever been. The whole house was rolling with whiffs of roasting coconut, sputtering mustard seeds and curry leaves and Asha Bhosle was pumping out the soundtrack to Teesri Manzil. 

Everything was swimming along swimmingly until I pulled out my pantry drawer to find my rice. In the bag was only about a cup of a short grain white rice which would have been just enough to soak up the juices for two people. I knew that if I buggered this rice up then we would have to eat dinner with a straw, and sure enough I got lost in champagne and burnt my rice black.

Panicking I scoured my cupboards for some form of carbohydrate, something to soak up my tangy, oily, light and sweet sauce that I had laboured all afternoon over. No rice. No flour. No semolina. No potatoes. All of my usual avenues of South Asian starch had been exhausted. Desparate, I found a lonely packet of mograbieh* in the back of the pantry collecting dust.

Fifteen minutes later I had my Konkani coconut kingfish couscous and the flavours and textures of both Haifa and Harihareshwar met for what was a very happy union. The mograbieh was texturally exciting with the oiliness of the sauce and the crunchiness of the cashew chatni I had also prepared and the whole meal was a triumph.

This rambling story about how I can’t cook rice and have only a periodically stocked pantry does have a point.

For me this meal -one of the yummiest I’ve ever made- represents how Subcontinetal food can flourish when explored outside of its own orthodoxies. People often descibe Italian and ‘Indian’ (a reductive title for all South Asian food) gastronomy as being ‘nonna’ cuisine, food whose secrets are kept in the apron strings of simple salt of the earth recipes and legacies. While this is indisputable, it represents a traditionalism which ensures that on every ‘Indian’ restaurant menu in Australia you will find butter chicken, samosas, tikka masala, gulab jamun and not a whole lot else.

For me South Asian food is unbearably exciting. I get excited by learning how to make things the traditional way like when I learnt how to make my own mawa/khoya* by boiling it for six hours in my cast iron kadhai*. I get excited by combining western and Indian cooking techniques like the time I made a Romesco sauce with curry leaves, tamarind and black cardamom. And I get excited by making up things that I love to eat like my Nimbu Pani* granita with mukhwaas*

I’m excited to show you what excites me and I hope that this blog – which will be dedicated to exciting Subcontinetal food – how to make it, where to find it and how to eat it- gets you a little bit excited about what there is to find beyond butter chicken.

* Konkani – The Konkan coast runs between Mumbai and Goa

Kokum – A fruit from the Mangosteen family used as a souring agent in cuisines all down the west coast of India.

Mograbieh – Pearl Couscous

Mawa/Khoya – Milk Solids

Kadhai – Indian Wok

Nimbu Pani – Spiced citrus drink

Mukhwaas – Spiced candied fennel traditionally eaten as an after dinner palate cleanser