About six months ago I posted a recipe for the iconic Hyderabadi dish, baghare baingan. That dish features small baingans/brinjals/eggplants that are slit cross-wise and “stuffed” with a thick paste and then braised. The Hyderabadi classic is in fact part of a larger family of similar stuffed bainan dishes that can be found all over the south and southwest of India. The recipe I have for you today for bharli vangi—or filled/stuffed baingan—is Marathi in origin and bears a number of similarities to its Hyderabadi cousin, though there are some key differences. One of these key differences is the use of the classic Marathi spice mix, goda masala. If you live in an area with a well-stocked Indian store you should be able to find it there; otherwise, look to Amazon [affiliate link]. I should also note that while this is a Marathi recipe there is by no means only one way of making bharli vangi in Maharashtra and its border zones. Ingredients and steps can vary in important ways between communities and,) of course, from home to home. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Indian Food
Chicken Curry Noodle
One of the missus and my absolute favourite dishes is the Malay/Singaporean classic, Nyonya laksa. Truth be told, we love the entire genre of curry noodle soups that arc up from southeast Asia through Hong Kong and China to Japan; but it’s Nyonya/curry laksa, with the richness of coconut milk that is our favourite. This recipe here is my homage to curry laksa, which is not to say that it seeks to replicate it or in any way improve upon it. It merely adapts the form to use a vaguely Kerala-style chicken curry as the base for a bowl of nourishing noodle soup. That is to say, at one (not insignificant) level this is merely a rich chicken curry served as a soup with noodles rather than over rice or with appams. Okay, that’s really the only level but it really comes out very well. I first made it for a dinner party in the Before Times—it was improvised then but was so popular among the guests that I kept tinkering with it till I had a version I didn’t feel like tinkering with any more. I do encourage you, however, to tinker with it further. You can change the spices, add less tomato if you like etc. etc. But maybe try it this way first to set a baseline to iterate on. If you enjoy noodle soups I can all but guarantee you will like it. Continue reading
Alu Sabzi
This is the kind of dish you will never find served at a fancy Indian restaurant or for that matter at a dinner party in an Indian home. It also gives the lie to the kind of overheated food writing you sometimes see in the US in which an Indian/Indian-origin chef or writer tells you that every single component of every Indian dish, every spice is intentionally selected to create a very particular set of layered flavours. That kind of thing has its time and place but this here is a recipe whose most crucial component may be a blender. It is quick and easy and it is very tasty. I’m sorry if that disappoints but this is—more often than not—the kind of quick and easy cooking that happens in a lot of Indian homes on a daily basis. It comes together in a hurry and all but cooks itself. Which is not to say that it’s not tasty because it is. And you can adapt it in all kinds of ways to make it your own. Think of it as an approach not a strict recipe. Who knows, you might even like it enough to serve it at a dinner party. Continue reading
Green Masala Fish
The story of this dish is as good an allegory as any of how recipes travel and mutate over time and space. It was one of my sister and my absolute favourite dishes made by our mother when we were children. It was not made very often but was always looked forward to as a treat. This was only partly because she made it with white pomfret which we loved—both for its sweet taste and for the fact that it wasn’t as fiddly as the usual riverine Bengali fish. I think we knew it was not a Bengali dish—our mother was the only one in the extended family who made it—but we weren’t really very interested in food provenance in those days. Many years later when I was in grad school in Los Angeles and finally a confident cook I asked my mother to send me the recipe. I too began to make it on special occasions. By now I had learned of the Parsi dish patra ni machhi and assumed this was basically the same dish except instead of steamed in banana leaves it was braised on the stove-top. But a few months ago I randomly described the dish to the Parsi food writer Meher Mirza and she—after consultation with her mother—declared it too different from the iconic patra ni macchi for her to use the same name for it. And so finally after more than 50 years on this planet—more than 40 of those eating this dish—I got around to asking my mother what was up with it. Continue reading
Golden Beet Pickle
I usually post only one recipe a week but my backlog of recipes is getting a bit long and so I’ll be putting up the occasional bonus recipe post on the weekends for the next couple of months—not every weekend, mind, but 1-2 weekends a month. First up is this recipe for a simple achaar made with golden beets, the milder, sweeter cousin of the more familiar red, the one that is less likely to make you panic the morning after. It has its origins in a carrot-garlic pickle I posted the recipe for back in August. That recipe eventually morphed into one for a combination carrot-red beet achaar that I never got around to posting a recipe for. This is a simpler prep than both of those and may be even tastier. It comes together very quickly and goes well with almost anything. In addition to eating it with dal and rice since making it earlier in the week I’ve been drizzling the “syrup” over pan-seared fish as well. No matter how you eat it I think you’ll enjoy it. And, oh, this is not tested for ph etc. and I wouldn’t suggest that you keep it around forever. This recipe makes one jar that you should store in the fridge and finish within a month. Continue reading
Braised Lamb Belly, Curry Reduction
Back in December I started purchasing lamb and beef from a small farm in southern Minnesota. I’ve previously posted recipes for an oxtail curry made with one of the tails we got from them and also for two curries with lamb shanks (here and here). At my most recent pick-up from them—in a gas station parking lot off Highway 35—I also got a 2 lb pack of lamb bellies. I had not previously known that lamb bellies were a thing. Well, I knew lambs have bellies but I had not encountered this cut before. Still I couldn’t resist it when I knew they carried it. Looking it up when I finally got around to defrosting it to cook I learned that this is probably not a belly cut at all. What part of the lamb it is actually from I’m not sure. What I can tell you though is that it is very good in a braise, which is to say, it is very good given the curry treatment. The broad contours of the recipe are inspired by this one; the flavours etc. here are, of course, squarely North Indian in nature. It makes for a dramatic presentation—the kind of dish you might trot out for a dinner party—but we also enjoyed it for lunch on a weekday. It might seem like a complicated preparation but it actually comes together very easily (you can see most of the steps in the thread I posted on Twitter when I made it). Continue reading
Pork and Squash with Roasted Cumin
Many years ago the top Sichuan restaurant in Los Angeles—which is to say in the San Gabriel Valley, which is to say in the US—was Chung King in Monterey Park. In the early 2000s we ate there almost as often as we now do at Grand Szechuan here in the Twin Cities metro. Indeed, when we left Los Angeles for Boulder in 2003 there was a period when if one of us had to go back to L.A for a few days they were tasked with picking up an order of our favourite dishes the evening before their return, freezing it and bringing it back in their suitcase. We’re not as insane anymore—and, of course, Chung King’s heyday faded long ago, as they moved, lost their chef and closed; and as newer and, let’s face it, even better Sichuan restaurants opened in the SGV (your Chengdu Tastes and your Szechuan Impressions). Why am I going on about Chung King? Well, because on one occasion we saw a special come out of the kitchen and head to another table: it looked like a kabocha squash stuffed with meat. We managed to order one too and it did indeed turn out to be kabocha stuffed with highly spiced ground pork and cooked together. The only other thing I remember clearly is that it was dynamite and that we never had any luck finding it again. Continue reading
Sour Fish Curry with Coconut Milk and Kokum
I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that pompano is one of our very favourite fish in the US. Perhaps because it’s not a fish that lends itself to being sold in fillet form, it’s not available in mainstream grocery stores—not that I’ve seen anyway. But if you have Vietnamese or other stores catering to Southeast Asian customers in your area chances are good that you will find frozen or thawed pompano there. Frozen is, of course, better as that way you won’t need to cook it up right away—unless you live right by where pompano is brought to shore it’s coming to your store frozen so if you buy it thawed and bung it in your freezer when you get home you’ll be freezing and then thawing it a second time. So if it’s not frozen when you buy it I recommend cooking it up the same day or the next. And I highly recommend this recipe when you do. Don’t have pompano? Fillets of a mild white fish such as mahi mahi or even orange roughy will do. In a pinch, so will salmon. If you have access to pomfret that would work just as well in place of the pompano. Continue reading
Dum Alu with Sesame and Peanut
Is there a term in India now for home cooking that wanders over the map and isn’t strictly regional? Whatever that term might be, it would describe this recipe (and also most of my cooking these days). I’m calling this dum alu but it looks and tastes nothing like the Bengali alur dom or broadly North Indian dum alu I am most familiar with. It looks like it could be Kashmiri dum alu but really the flavours are borrowed from a range of South Indian preparations. Its most immediate relative or inspiration is probably the Hyderabadi baghare baingan. That’s where the sesame seeds and peanuts probably come from, but there’s no coconut here and also no onions or garlic. If there is indeed a regional version of dum alu or some other potato curry that is made like this, please let me know. It is almost impossible to come up with anything new in the Indian context, given the vastness of the country’s foodways. What I can tell you for sure is that this is a very tasty dish, one that works very well as a side or a main. Give it a go. Continue reading
Spice-Crusted Pork Roast
Here is a recipe for a spiced pork roast which raises the question of what exactly the difference—if any—is between Indian cooking and cooking with Indian ingredients. I mean to say that this is not any sort of traditional Indian pork roast recipe. (Though, for all I know, it ends up approximating one made by a pork eating community somewhere in the country.) The ingredients aren’t all Indian either: there’s Sichuan peppercorn in the masala and the vinegars I recommend for making the paste that’s rubbed on the roast are either balsamic or Chinkiang black vinegar (affiliate link). Nonetheless, this falls squarely within an Indian flavour profile for me and we eat it happily alongside dal and other Indian vegetable sides—and also pulled apart and placed atop chapatis a la tacos. I’m not sure what to call it generically but it’s good. I make it in the slow cooker which adds the extra virtue of making it even easier. Continue reading
Lamb Curry with Tomato
Two weeks ago I posted the recipe for the first of two lamb curries made at the same time with 4 lbs of lamb shanks. That first one used tamarind as the souring agent; this one uses tomatoes. Those are not the only differences, of course. The blend of spices is different and, on the whole, while the first is in a generic “South Indian” style this one is in a more North Indian style. These are, of course, generalities but the truth is neither is from a specific South Indian or North Indian regional tradition. Rather, the first is made using ingredients/flavours more common in various South Indian preps and the second using ingredients/flavours more common in various North Indian preps—both broadly speaking. Like a good Bengali I add potatoes to this one and I have to say that if you have good potatoes and time their cooking just right, they will be the star of the dish every time. Continue reading
Lamb Curry with Tamarind
Back in December I purchased a large number of lamb shanks from a small farm in southern Minnesota—the same place from which I’d got the excellent oxtail that went into this New Year’s Day curry. A few weeks ago I finally got around to cooking some of them. Not paying close attention, I thawed almost exactly 4 lbs worth of shanks. I then decided to divide them into two lots and make two different preparations of them—this so that we wouldn’t be eating one curry forever. Of course, what I hadn’t thought through is that because so much of the weight is in the bones, 4 lbs of lamb shanks is pretty close to 2 lbs of meat from the point of view of portions. Still, I’m glad I made the two curries as both came out rather well and it was nice to alternate them till both were gone. You could make either recipe just as easily with beer or with mutton/goat. Indeed, if you look closely you’ll see that this recipe is a close relative of an earlier one I’d posted for mutton curry with star anise and vinegar—there are some differences in spices and ratios but those differences do make, well, a real difference, as does the fact that the souring agent here is tamarind. If you do make it with lamb shanks I’d advise not bothering with hacking the shanks up yourself inexpertly with a cleaver as I did. You can always just pull the meat off the bones before serving if the shanks are too large. Continue reading
Sabut/Whole Masoor Dal
On Tuesday I had a recipe for sabut or whole, unpeeled moong dal and today I have a recipe for sabut or whole, unpeeled masoor dal—is this what Americans call brown lentils? I’m not sure. Like moong/moog dal, masoor/mushoor dal is a staple Bengali dal but is made predominantly with the peeled and split versions. Or at least that’s the case in my slice of Bengal which may or may not be representative. As I noted on Tuesday, whole moong and masoor dal were never cooked in our home growing up. I’ve learned to enjoy their more robust textures and flavours relatively recently but I do very much enjoy them now. They do take longer to cook than their peeled and split versions but what is time during the pandemic? And once the pandemic is done I’ll just make them in the pressure cooker. As with Tuesday’s dal, this is a very simple affair: you boil the dal with haldi and then add a tadka to amp up the flavour. If you make a similar dal I’d be interested to know what tadka variations you use but this one is very tasty. Give it a go. Continue reading
Sabut/Whole Moong Dal
This week’s recipe comes a couple of days earlier than usual. Please excuse this segue but it’s also for a dal that until recently was not a usual part of my repertoire. As I mentioned on Twitter some weeks ago, sabut or whole versions of moong and masoor dal were not made in our home when I was growing up. My family’s dals are/were split and peeled masoor/mushoor, moong/moog and chholar/chana dal. My mother occasionally made whole kali urad dal (a very conscious Punjabi prep) but never whole masoor or whole moong (or for that matter chhilka moong dal). I hesitate to say that this is a Bengali thing more broadly because even at my advanced age I realize more and more how much my sense of “Bengali” is sliced by sub-region, community/caste, class and then just family preferences. Cooking outside the “tastes” we inherit from our homes/families is one of the marks of middle-class Indian modernity, I think, brought on by greater movement within India (and for those of us outside India by stores that sell to non-regional customer bases). I have grown to like these more robust dals quite a lot, especially in the broadly Punjabi style represented here. Continue reading
Indo-nesian Beef Curry
I’ve mentioned before that in the pre-pandemic times (you may or may not remember them) I had been hosting bi-monthly dinners for eight in our town that I call India’s Gandhi Tandoori Bollywood Mahal. I was getting ready for the 15th iteration when the first lockdown hit. These were 5-7 course meals, a mix of dishes traditional and less traditional. The fourth of these dinners featured an improvized beef curry that I called Indo-nesian beef curry. I’d started out making a slow-braised curry with South Indian accents and then decided to hit it with some Southeast Asian touches. The results were excellent—an intersection between Indonesian rendang and beef curry from some place between Kerala and Chettinad. There was only one problem—the dish had been improvized from beginning to end and in the rush of dinner prep I hadn’t taken any notes whatsoever. I’ve long planned to try and recreate it but until a few weeks ago I never got around to it. Well, it’s hard to say for sure after almost three years but I think this comes pretty close. It’s very tasty at any rate. I’ve made it with beef on both occasions but it would probably be just as good with goat or lamb and probably also very easily adapted with chicken. Give it a go and see what you think. Continue reading
Salmon, Two Ways
I have for you two recipes for salmon or rather two recipes in one. The second is the first plus one ingredient and a couple of very minor time adjustments. Both are centered on flavours from southwestern coastal Indian fish preparations, sometimes involving rawas or Indian salmon. These kinds of preps are pretty much the only Indian fish dishes in which I think American salmon works very well—but that may just be me.
This is not, however, a traditional preparation. It does not follow any particular regional recipe but instead seeks to approximate vague taste memories of dishes eaten in friends’ homes and in restaurants. There are two ingredients that are certainly not traditionally Indian in any way: balsamic vinegar and Sichuan peppercorn. But both work well here, the balsamic playing a role similar to tamarind and the Sichuan peppercorn doing the work that its South Indian relative tirphal might otherwise do. Despite the ersatz nature of these recipes and two unorthodox ingredients the results are excellent and I recommend both dishes to you highly. Continue reading
Oxtail Curry
Oxtails are at a premium in our home. Korean-style oxtail soup as made by the missus is one of the boys’ absolute favourite foods and so any oxtail we purchase almost always goes into making that. Alas, good oxtail is not always easy to find. In December, however, I connected with a small farm in the far south of Minnesota that sells their beef and lamb both directly from their website and from a trailer they bring up north once a month and park in a lot, usually in Burnsville. As it happens their route takes them right past the exit on Highway 35 to our town and so I made a date to meet them in the parking lot of the Flying J gas station (aka The Big Steer). The tryst was originally going to be for the purpose of purchasing lamb shanks. I asked if they had oxtails as well and they said they did. I took their entire inventory (less dramatic than it sounds: they had five left). With that many in the freezer at once, and the promise of a re-supply when done, I was able to claim two for my own uses. Continue reading