Recipe : Manglorean Burmese Khow Suey / Ohn No Khao Swe (Vegan Option)

Many many years ago, I posted an alternative recipe for Khow Suey and I promised to share my regular recipe too. It's only taken me 10 years to post this! 🤦

Khow Suey is a Burmese noodle soup with coconut milk which I have accompanied with Burmese split pea crackers (channa dhal) among other toppings.

I’m not sure how “authentic” my recipe is, given that I broadly follow one from the Manglorean Ladies Club Cookery Book that is over 25 years old. (My copy is the 5th edition in 1988, but the first edition was in 1978) So I suspect that this may be heavily modified - Russian Salad anyone?

But we love the flavours, so I continue to make it this way. The curry is very yum and can also be eaten with Rice or rotis, especially if you have leftovers.

While I make this curry with chicken, you can use boiled eggs, potatoes, veggies of your choice, tofu, or rehydrated beans, thus making this dish vegetarian or vegan as per your choice.

Ingredients :

750 gms boneless chicken - clean & cut into tikka size cubes

1/2 kg onions

2" ginger cleaned

1 pod garlic cleaned

20 long dry red chillies destemmed

1 tbsp fresh ground turmeric or 1/2 tsp turmeric powder

1 can coconut milk (or milk of 1 coconut)

1 tbsp oil

salt to taste

4 - 6 nests Egg noodles - cooked as per instructions on packet

Method:

Grind together half the onions (250 gms), ginger, garlic, red chillies.

In a pan, heat some oil.

Add the other half of the onions and fry till opaque.

Add turmeric and fry for a minute or so, until the raw smell goes away.

Now, add the ground masala and fry on a medium flame till cooked and the oil seperates. You can add masala water (water got from rinsing your grinder jar) or thin coconut milk to maintain moisture as you are cooking.

When the masala is cooked, add chicken (or veggies / tofu) and cook till tender.

Now add the coconut milk (medium flame) and cook till it boils. If you want to add any veggies that just need a bit of a steam, add them now.

I added 200 gms sugar snap peas and 200 gms mangetout.

Turn off the flame.

Serve noodles and curry separately with an array of toppings, so everyone can assemble their own.

Toppings Ideas:

Fried noodles

Lime wedges,

Fried onion

Chilli flakes

Fresh coriander

Fried garlic

Boiled eggs

Green chillies

Fresh onion

Pe kyaw

Roasted peanuts

Recipe : Wak Serjak - Pork Stew from Tripura - North East India

My red meat of choice is pork. I grew up eating pork on Sundays. My grandmother was an amazing cook and made the most delicious pork dishes. Manglorean style pork is heavy though and very conducive to Sunday afternoon naps. So not really dishes for mid-week. and we keep our dinners light as far as possible.

So it was a fantastic revelation for me, when we lived in Guwahati in 2011, to discover a multitude of pork dishes that were super tasty and yet very easy to prepare (no heavy grinding of masalas) and super light on the tummy. As light as eating chicken.

A lot of pork dishes in Assam, are cooked with local herbs which are difficult to find outside of the state. My friend Sanjukta is a great resource for local recipes and her blog is an excellent starting point.

When I lived in Guwahati, there weren't too many local food bloggers, so the first book that I bought for help with local cuisine was Hoihnu Hazel's collaboration with Penguin. This recipe is from that book.

I'm happy to say that in the decade since then, North East Indian food is slowly working itself into public consciousness due to the enterprising passion and commitment of a few foodies like Gitika Saikia in Mumbai and  Sneha Saikia in Delhi.

Wak Serjak in its thinnest form is like a soup, you can however let it simmer for awhile so it gets thicker. And in the Manglorean/Goan fashion of maturing pork, keep reheating leftovers (if you have any) daily, until it becomes a nice thick mass. Its super-delicious at every stage.

Ingredients:
2 kg pork (I like a good balance of meat and fat and bones - here I buy pork belly and ribs seperately to add to the mix)
2 tsp oil
4 tbsp ginger paste
6-8 green chillies chopped
4 medium onions chopped
6 medium tomatoes chopped
salt to taste

Method:
Wash and drain pork. Cut into bite sized pieces.

Heat oil in a deep pot and add ginger, green chillies, onions and tomatoes, fry till golden brown.

Add pork and stir-fry for awhile until pork is cooked. I tend to cook the fat and bones first so the fat breaks down, before adding the meat.

Add salt and 4 cups water. Then cover and leave to simmer for awhile (use less water if you want a thicker gravy.

Adjust salt and fresh chillies to taste.

Serve hot with cooked rice.

Optional garnish - freshly shopped corriander leaves for a fresh herby taste.


Note:
Optional - since the tomatoes here in the UK, don't have any tartness, I added the juice of one lemon - to taste.

I found Bergamot lemons in the market last week and as an Earl Grey aficionado, I had to bring them home. In the North East of India, the tomatoes are tart enough that you don’t need to add any thing citric. But here I added the juice of a whole bergamot to 2 kilos of meat.

The essential fragrance of the bergamot was lost in the cooking, so it tasted like any other lemon in the mix.

Recipe : Cambodian Chicken Samla Curry

I got this recipe from Gousto Cooking as part of a box that I had ordered.

Whenever I know I don’t have the time to plan menus and do a proper shop of fresh groceries (meat/fish/veggies), I order a box from them and it works out quite well. I opt for the quick to cook ones and a meal is normally ready in about 30 minutes. Fresh, healthy, balanced, tasty. Although, I wish they gave the option to change all rice to brown rice.

This Cambodian Chicken Samla Curry is definitely one for the recipe books. The Gousto recipe can be viewed here. I have made a few minor changes and this recipe includes my changes.

Their quantities are just enough for a meal for two without second helpings, I have adjusted the recipe below for a little more. You can make the gousto quantities, but then I would recommend adding on an extra salad or dessert or something else to your meal.

Ingredients :
150 gms basmati rice (about 2 katori)
500 gms boneless chicken (I prefer thighs, but for this recipe, breast will also work) cut in strips
1 tin 400ml coconut milk
2-3 cloves of garlic or 1.5 tsp garlic paste
20 gms ginger or 2 tbsp ginger paste
4-5 green chillies (you can skip this or adjust heat to taste)
1.5 tsp turmeric powder
1 fresh lemon grass stalk
1.5 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
3-4 dried kaffir lime leaves
1 tsp vegetable or olive oil
30 gms roasted peanuts
1 romano pepper (or red capsicum / bell pepper)
100 gms mangetout or snow peas or beans
salt to taste


Method :
Boil a kettle or a pot of water.

Gently bash the lemongrass with a rolling pin, cut it down the middle lengthways (you won't be able to cut through the hard end near the root, so just chop that off)
Remove the tough outer layers and root end, but keep them for later. Try to keep these parts as whole as possible.

Chop the softer inner stem[s] finely
Peel and finely chop (or grate) the ginger.
Peel and finely chop (or grate) the garlic
Finely chop the green chilli.
If you have a mortar and pestle or food processor, just quickly grind them all together, its faster and results in a much smoother curry.

Rinse out the rice, but don't soak it.
Choose a pan with a lid.
Put the rice in this pan.
Put the tough lemon grass leaves and root on top (don't put them at the bottom, they become more difficult to discard before serving)
Add 300 ml hot water.
Add a pinch of salt.
Bring to the boil (without covering the pan) over a high heat
Once boiling, reduce the heat to very low and cook, covered, for 10-15 min or until all the water has absorbed and the rice is cooked
Once cooked, remove from the heat and keep covered until serving

Open the tin of coconut milk, if it isn't full to the brim, you can add the following ingredients to the tin, else mix them in a large bowl.
Add the kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce and sugar – this is your coconut stock.

Heat a large, wide-based pan (preferably non-stick) with a drizzle of vegetable oil over a medium-high heat
Once hot, add the chicken strips and cook for 3-4 min
Add the turmeric powder and cook for 1 min further or until fragrant

Slice the Romano pepper into rings or julienne the bell pepper, discarding the stalk and any seeds
Once chicken is fragrant, add the sliced pepper, ground/chopped chilli, garlic, ginger and lemongrass and cook for 2-3 min further

Add the coconut stock and mange tout/snow peas/beans and cook for 6-8 min or until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened to a curry-like consistency.

Chop the coriander leaves, Add the stem ends to the curry in the finals stage, but reserve the leaves for garnish.

Crush the roasted peanuts with a rolling pin (keep them in a bag so you don't lose them) or a quick whir in a food processor. You want it crushed, not ground.

Discard the lemon grass stems from the rice.

Serve the Cambodian Chicken Samla Curry with the lemongrass rice to the side

Tip: for fancy presentation, press the rice into small bowls and turn out

Garnish with the crushed peanuts and coriander leaves

Recipe : Chicken Mole, Coriander Rice & Onion Raita.

I was always curious as to what a Mole (stew cooked with chocolate) would taste like, so when Gousto had this on the weekly menu, I quickly added it to my list.

Ingredients:

1 red onion
2 chicken breast fillets
a knob of butter (1-2 tbsp)
2/3 cup fragrant basmati rice (150gms)
1 chicken stock cube
15g 70% dark chocolate coarsely chopped
3 tsp creamy peanut butter
1 tsp jeera / cumin powder
1 tbsp rich tomato paste (tomato sauce is a passable substitute)
2 tbsp smokey chipotle paste
1 tomato diced
1 lime
150g yoghurt/curd
10g fresh coriander finely chopped
Salt
Sugar
Vegetable oil

Method :

Peel the onion and slice a few rings off it (as finely as you can)

Separate the onion rings, place them in a bowl of cold water and set aside for garnish

Gousto Tip: the cold water removes some of the harsh flavour from the raw onion

Dice the remaining onion

Kim's tip : If you do not like the taste of raw onion, make onion raita. Dice the whole onion. Mix half the onion into the yoghurt with a pinch of salt and set aside for serving

Boil a kettle of water

Rice :
Add the rice, 350ml hot water to a pot with a lid over a high heat and bring to the boil

Once boiling, reduce the heat to very low and cook, covered, for 10-15 min or until all the water has absorbed and the rice is cooked

Once cooked, remove from the heat and keep covered until serving.


Chicken :
Heat a large, wide-based pan (preferably non-stick with a matching lid) with 1 tbsp vegetable oil, add the chicken with a pinch of salt and cook for 3 min on each side until golden and slightly undercooked.

Remove chicken from pan and set aside.


Mole Sauce :
Return the pan to a low heat, add a knob of butter and the diced onion with a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar and cook until soft.

Dissolve the stock cube in 300ml hot water, add the chopped chocolate and peanut butter and whisk to combine - this is your chocolate stock.

Add the cumin and tomato paste to the softened onion and cook for 1 min

Add the chipotle paste, diced tomato and chocolate stock

Whisk to combine and bring to the boil over a medium-high heat - this is your mole sauce

 
Assembly :
Transfer the chicken into the mole sauce and cook, covered, for 5 min or until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened

Shred the cooked chicken while in the pan (use a knife and fork or 2 forks)

Fluff the cooked rice and squeeze the juice of half the lime into it and mix in the coriander

Cut the remaining lime into wedges

Serve the chicken mole over the rice

Garnish with the drained onion rings, a big dollop of Greek yoghurt (or onion raita) and the lime wedges

Recipe : Goan Feijoada - Pork and Beans Stew - (Vegan option possible)

The Last batch of Joao's sausages that I bought and turned into a Choriz Fry, weren't very good (Joao's buys their sausages from various suppliers and then brand it with their name, so you can't be sure what you are going to get). The flavour was really strong, but the masala wasn't spicy or sour enough. The sausages really needed something to tone down the flavours that it did have and I needed to be able to add more spice and tartness without the salt going completely out of whack.

That's when I remembered the Goan dish of Feijoada. This is a dish that you won't normally find served in restaurants, but on the dining tables at family homes. Feijoada is a pork and bean stew that finds its origins in Portuguese cuisine, but it has been adapted to Goan sensibilities by using the Goan sausages (choriz), some Goan recipes also use the Portuguese traditional salted pork. This dish is renowned in Brazil, where it is cooked with a milder variety of sausage, and a lot of pork offal.

There are Goans who turn this into a Vegan stew, by substituting the pork sausages with soya sausages. But given that the choriz have their own strong spices, you will need to adjust the seasonings quite a bit from my recipe.

I looked at a couple of different recipes on and offline. Maria Teresa Menezes, in her excellent Essential Goan Cookbook advocates cooking together soaked rajma (kidney beans) or lobia (black eyed peas) with onions, tomatoes and choriz. Just all added to one pan and cooked till done.

Antoine Lewis has a slightly fancier recipe involving bacon, which I would have loved to try, but for the fact that I had run out of bacon at home.

So, I followed my friend Gia's general instructions (I had been very successful with her Goan Choriz Pulao recipe, so I trust her implicitly when it comes to Goan food).

She said "cook the beans separately first and discard the water. Fry the onions and tomatoes, add whatever spices you are using, then the sausage meat. Finally, add the cooked beans and mix it all together. At this stage you can add as much water as you need and cook further until done"
I had already cooked up the sausages with the potatoes, so I followed the rest of the recipe with inspirations from other recipes that I had read.

Kim's Tips :
I think it would be best to boil the sausages in 50 ml water before adding to the stew, but you can also let it cook in the stew. Unless you are using the home made rosary sausages. Those need to have all the string cut off and are definitely better off being pre-boiled and unstrung before adding to the stew.

Once you have boiled the choriz/sausages, you can get a better idea of the spices and seasoning that you need to add to the stew to get a better flavour. We love tartness, garlic and spicy, so my recipe reflects this.

Ingredients:
500 gms rajma or lobia (red kidney beans or black eyed peas)
pinch of heeng (asafoetida)
250 gms Goan Choriz sausage (or Vegan sausage)
2 large onions
3 large tomatoes
1 pod garlic chopped (pod not clove)
4-15 green chillies chopped (depending on your spice tolerance, I used 15 since my choriz weren't spicy enough)
1 tsp coconut oil (you can use regular oil)
vinegar to taste (preferably Goan Toddy vinegar or apple cider)
salt to taste (remember the sausages are heavily salted so keep tasting)
Fresh coriander to garnish (optional)


Method:
Soak the rajma or lobia for at least 6-8 hours or overnight.
Pressure cook with enough water to cover and a pinch of heeng, until done.
When done, strain & discard the water.

Lightly boil the sausages in 50-100 ml water
Remove the skin (I like the sausage skin, so I just leave large pieces of sausage skin in the pot for myself) and break up the meat and masala.

Take a really large pan (1.5 to 2 times the size of a pan you would really need work best with stews)
Heat the oil.
Add the garlic, onions and tomatoes and cook till onions are light brown and the tomatoes begin to disintegrate.
Add the chillies and fry for a minute.
Add the drained rajma and a little fresh water and stir well.
If you like, you can semi mash some of the beans in the pan, for a thicker consistency.

Now add the sausages and the water that they were cooked in.
Add a little water and let it stew for a couple of minutes, so the masala from the sausages disperses into the stew.
Taste and adjust vinegar and salt.
Let the stew simmer for awhile on a low flame, so that all the flavours can blend together.

Garnish with fresh coriander if using and serve hot with rice or pao bread buns.

Like most stews, this one too tastes better the next day.

Recipe : Maharashtrian Chawli Usal / Lobia / Black Eyed Peas Curry - Vegan

I was bored of eating lobia / chawli / black eyed peas, the normal way that I make it (like a Punjabi channa masala style), I'd also been craving coconut for awhile (growing up, all 3 meals had coconut in some form or the other), so a Maharahtrian Konkani recipe seemed like the perfect fit. Spicy and coco-nutty.

This recipe is an amalgamation of remembered flavours (from my days living in Bombay & Pune) and some online help. I made the usal much thicker than is normally served in Marathi restaurants and ideally, I would have liked to cook the tomatoes much more, which I shall do the next time I repeat this dish (this recipe is corrected to add the tomatoes earlier, if you prefer your tomatoes slightly raw, add the tomatoes to the mix when adding the cooked beans).

It does take a little time to prepare and has multiple steps, but the final product is worth it.

Ingredients :
250gms lobia / chawli / black eyed peas (soaked overnight with a pinch of asafoetida)
2 tsp oil (Sesame/til or sunflower, don't use mustard)
3 medium onions

1.5- 2 inch ginger
6 - 10 garlic cloves
2 tbsp saunf / fennel seeds
1.5 tbsp corriander (dhania seeds) or  1 tbsp corriander powder
half a grated coconut - fresh or frozen (roughly about 1 cup)
2 tbsp dessicated coconut (this adds a second texture, but it is optional)

1 tomato chopped1 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tsps red chilli powder
1 tsp Maharashtrian masala (goda or malvani) or any garam/vegetable masala (if you can't get your hands on the Maharashtrian masalas)
1 handful chopped corriander for garnishing

Method :
Pressure cook the soaked lobia / chawli / black eyed peas in enough water to cover + a little more.
You can either drain and discard the water or use the liquid when making the usal. I prefer to use it.

To make the masala, take the pan that you plan to cook the usal in (large enough)
Heat 1 tsp oil
Add 2 chopped onions and fry till translucent.
Add ginger and garlic and fry till they start releasing their aroma.
Add fennel seeds and coriander seeds (if using powders add them at the end in the blender, not now) and fry till they crisp up.
Add the fresh and dessicated coconut and roast on a low flame (coconut burns quickly, so keep an eye on it)

Turn off the heat when the coconut turns golden brown
Cool the mixture and then grind it fine (some restaurants serve it slightly grainy).

In the empty pan, heat the other tsp of oil.
Add the remaining chopped onion and tomato and fry till cooked.
Now add the ground masala and fry for a couple of minutes before adding the spice powders.

Stir well and add the pressure cooked lobia / chawli / black eyed peas.
If you are using the water that you cooked the chawli in (it may be black in colour, don't worry about it), be careful how much water you add to the pan.
Add salt to taste and bring it to a low simmer.
Keep cooking on a low flame until the ingredients are all cooked and the chawli has absorbed the flavours.
Garnish with chopped fresh corriander.

Serve hot with steamed rice or phulkas / rotis

Recipe : Maffe Tiga / Tiga Degae / African Chicken Peanut Butter Soup

I'd seen the recipe for African Chicken Peanut Butter Soup on Kadi's African Recipes, a couple of months ago and thought that it would be fun to make, so I'd bookmarked it.

Today, I was looking to make something "different" and remembered this recipe and since I had an open jar of peanut butter in my cupboard, our meal tonight had an African twist, which we quite enjoyed.

In her introduction, Kadi says "African peanut soup is enjoyed in many West African countries including Senegal, Guinea and Mali. The soup is also known as Maffe Tiga or Tiga Degae, there are a lot of varieties of peanut butter soup, it can be made with beef, fish, chicken or completely vegetarian."

While Kadi calls it a soup, it has the consistency of a curry / gravy and goes well with rotis and rice. Kadi also has a step by step video to make this dish uploaded on youtube. If African food interests you, do follow Kadi's Channel on youtube.

I have tweaked Kadi's recipe to adjust for our own tastes and to accommodate the ingredients that I had on hand.

Ingredients :
1kg chicken legs
2 tsp oil (and some leftover pork fat from some chops I fried the other day)

3 fresh tomatoes chopped
2 tbsp tomato sauce
2 onions chopped
6 garlic cloves chopped
8 green chillies - 4 chopped & 4 split
1 tbsp black pepper coarsely pounded
1 bouillon/soup cube
4 tbsp creamy peanut butter (not chunky)
3 cups (750ml) water
salt to taste

Method : 
Warm a wide mouthed pan and heat the oil in it.

Brown the chicken on all sides in this oil (fry in batches if necessary, but don't overcrowd the pan) Be careful, the oil will splatter, when the chicken releases its juices.

Remove the browned chicken and in the same pan and oil, add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, garlic, the 4 chopped green chillies, black pepper and soup cube.

Fry it for about 10 minutes until the mixture becomes mushy.

Now, add the water and peanut butter and simmer on a low flame, stirring well until all the peanut butter is dissolved. Let it cook for about 15-20 minutes on a low flame, keep stirring to prevent the peanut butter from sticking and burning.

Add the 4 slit green chillies and salt to taste and simmer for another 5-10 minutes till it smells cooked.

Now add the fried chicken and simmer the mixture until the chicken is completely cooked, stirring frequently.

Serve hot with rice or rotis.

I loved the curry with plain rice, but my husband found it a little sweet with the rice, he preferred it with phulkas.

Recipe: Mqualli - Moroccan Chicken Tajine with Preserved Lemon & Olives

This dish is called a tajine, because it is traditionally cooked in a vessel called a tajine (similar concept as paella). The tajine is an earthenware (mitti) dish comprised of 2 parts. The bottom is circular and flattish with slightly raised edges and it has a conical cover that sits on this base.

The concept of cooking in a tajine is that the earthenware adds some amount of flavour to the dish (like mud pots used in Indian cooking) and the conical top, captures the condensation and returns the moisture to the dish cooking below.

The dish is typically cooked on low heat and ends up being really moist and tender. The advantage of cooking in a tagine is that you can always lift the lid to adjust spices or add vegetables in installments. However, you can still cook this dish, even if you don't have a tajine.

Ingredients:
1kg chicken - curry cut (preferably with bones, they add flavour to the stew)
2 cups (500 ml) water / stock
2 tsps olive oil
1 large onion sliced
6 cloves garlic chopped
2 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp cumin powder
2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
pinch of saffron
2 preserved lemons
1/2 cup green olives (canned)
2 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp chopped corriander
salt to taste

Method:
In the tajine/heavy bottomed dish, heat the olive oil
Add the onions and garlic and saute lightly until they start to soften.
Add ginger paste, cumin powder, salt and pepper powder and sir till well mixed.
Add chicken pieces and brown on both sides.
If using dried lemon - wash well, pierce a couple of times with a fork/knife and add at this stage.
Add 1 cup stock/water, bring to a boil, then cover, lower the heat and cook for 15-20 minutes.
If you are using preserved lemons - rinse, discard the flesh, slice the skin and add it at this stage.
If you used dehdrated lemons, then add the juice of 1 fresh lemon at this stage.
If you don't have preserved or dehydrated lemons, add the juice of 2-3 lemons at this stage with some lemon rind.
Mix well
Add the olives, saffron and the remaining water / stock and give it a swirl.
Sprinkle the chopped parsley and corriander on top.
Cover and cook on low heat for another 20 minutes until done.

If you are serving this tajine with bread or rice, then you will want a slightly thicker curry.
If you are serving it with couscous, you will want a slightly thinner curry.

Serve hot with rice, couscous or bread.

Kim's Tips:
1. All you need is a heavy bottomed pan with a tight fitting lid that won't let the steam escape, if you don't have access to a tajine.

2. This particular recipe calls for preserved lemons (typical in Moroccan cuisine), but I didn't have them in stock, I only had dried lemons (used in Middle Eastern cooking), so I substituted the preserved lemons with dehydrated lemons and the juice of 1 fresh lemon. If you can't find preserved/dehydrated lemons, you can make the dish with juice from 2-3 lemons and some lemon rind. It won't taste as good as the original, but it will still be tasty.

3. Preserved lemons and bottled olives have some salt in them, remember to adjust for this when salting the dish.

Recipe : Manglorean Style Pepper Pork

My friend May, over at The Chef is a great cook and a wonderful friend. We studied together for 5 years of college and we have now been friends for 20, yes TWENTY years! Wow, how the time flies!

Last month when I wanted to make Pork Indad, May's blog was one of the first ones that I visited to check on her version. Unfortunately, she has not yet uploaded her version of Pork Indad, but she did have a recipe for Pepper Pork, that I instantly bookmarked. Pepper Pork is not a dish that was cooked in our house while we were growing up, but it is cooked in a lot of Manglorean households.

May's recipe is more authentic, but I had my sister visiting and she hates seeing large pieces of onions in her pork (and to be honest, neither do I - large pieces of anything other than meat, in a meat curry tend to be pushed to the side on our plates), so I modified the recipe a bit and made it spicier for our taste. You can check May's Pepper Pork recipe on her blog My version takes a little longer to cook as I cook the cuttings (chopped ingredients) almost to a paste, so this also gives a thicker curry.

And if you don't eat pork, this recipe would be suitable to make a lovely pepper chicken too, you just need to cut down on the cooking time.

Ingredients:
1 kg pork with fat and skin
4 large onions chopped
1 pod garlic chopped
2" ginger chopped
6 green chillies chopped
5 tbsp pepper powder
pinch of turmeric powder
salt to taste
vinegar to taste 2-4 tbsp (I like my pork dishes on the sourer side and it also depends which vinegar you are using)
1 tbsp soya sauce
2 tbsp tomato sauce
1-2 tbsp oil

Method:
Wash the pork, mix with salt (little less as we add soya and tomato sauce in the end which have their own salt), pepper powder, vinegar and turmeric powder and keep aside.
In 1-2 tbsp oil, fry the finely chopped onion, ginger, garlic and 4 of the green chillies. (You can even just grind all these ingredients into a paste to avoid the chopping if you prefer)
Fry till the ingredients are completely cooked and mash together into a thickish paste.
Add the marinated pork and cook till done, stirring frequently (if not cooking in a pressure cooker) and adding a little water whenever necessary.
Once fully cooked, add the soya sauce and tomato sauce and adjust liquid content, salt and vinegar to taste.
Give it a final boil and serve hot with rice or poli.

I was so busy chatting away with my sister, that I forgot to take pictures, I just have this one that was clicked on the phone. But I'll definitely be cooking this again, so I'll upload more pictures when I do.

Recipe: Pork Indad - Manglorean Sweet and Spicy Pork

Pork Indad is a traditional Manglorean dish and used to be served at any celebration - weddings, Christenings, Christmas. Among the Pork dishes cooked and served by the Manglorean Catholics, Indad is perhaps second only to Laithaun.

Preparation of this dish requires a lot of patience because the masala needs to be cooked slowly and steadily. Unlike a Pork Bafat where everything is popped into the dish and cooked together, the Indad has multiple steps to be followed, but the end result is well worth it.

For those who don't eat pork, this recipe, works well with chicken (please use chicken with skin for Chicken indad, you can discard the skin later if you like, although I personally believe its the tastiest part) and eggs. The only reason I don't make it with chicken or eggs, is ecause I feel that if I'm putting in this much effort, I might as well make it with pork.

Nana used to make the most fantastic Pork Indad and it was famous in her entire extended family. If anyone had the good fortune of eating Nana's pork indad even once, they would most certainly request it the next time they were due to come over.

When I lived in Bangalore, I used to take little frozen dabbas of nanas pork indad when I came to Mangalore for the weekend, and savour it slowly over the week. Before my husband first visited Mangalore, he would just about taste the gravy of pork if I cooked it. One weekend with Nana's Pork Indad changed his attitude towards Pork forever. If I remember right, he ate Pork Indad for all 6 of his meals on that trip.

On the Feast of Mother Mary - Monthisaibinechi festh - on September 8th, traditionally we are supposed to eat a completely vegetarian meal in honour of the harvest. But nana also used to make us a nice big pot of pork indad which she would serve us AFTER we had eaten up all our vegetables.

Sadly none of her daughters or grand-daughters have perfected the same halt (balance of flavours and textures) as nana. After Nana passed away 3.5yrs ago, I hadn't even attempted to make Pork Indad, because this dish is so intricately linked with her and my memories of her. And even thinking of her food, reminds me how much I still miss her.

However on this years Monthisaibinechi festh, the urge to cook Pork Indad got very strong and I finally succumbed to the temptation by the end of the month :)

My version is not as good as nana's, but with a few tweaks, I think I can get it there. First on the list of changes would be to buy a table top mixer grinder to grind this masala, rather than in a mixi.

Each Manglorean family has a different recipe for Pork Indad, some use mint leaves, some use dates, some use raisins, some use jaggery some use green chillies. To see what I'm talking about, you can check out Shireen at Ruchik Randhap's recipe and Michelle's recipe on The Tiffin Box.

Ingredients:
2 kg pork (use pork that has fat and skin for the authentic flavour, curry cuts work well) cut into 1" cubes
15 long red chillies (kumti/beary chillies) - these give colour
10 short gaunchi chillies - these give heat
15 black peppercorns
1 tsp jeera
2 tsp haldi powder

10 cloves
6" cinnamon
6 medium onions
2 pods of garlic (not cloves, pods)
2" ginger
table tennis ball size of tamarind - extract pulp for use 
4 green chillies
1 handful of corriander leaves
1-2 large potatoes skinned and cut into 1cm slices (soak in mildly salted cold water)
1 small onion sliced

1-2 tbsps ghee
sugar, salt & vinegar to taste (I like to use Goan toddy vinegar)
dark rum - preferably Old Monk for punch (optional)


Method:
Dry roast all the dry ingredients individually.(red chillies, pepper, jeera, cloves, cinnamon)
Grind these together with the 6 medium onions, ginger, garlic,tamarind, green chillies and corriander leaves and a little vinegar when grinding for moisture
In a large pan, cook the pork with just a pinch of salt. The meat will release water.
When the water dries up, add 2 tbsps ghee and fry the pork untill the fat of the pork breaks down and starts melting . (If you are cooking with 2 kgs, its better to fry it in 2-3 batches, so the meat gets evenly fried)

Remove the pork from the pan and keep aside, there should be a lot of melted fat + ghee leftover.

Fry the potato slices in this fat (dry the potatoes on a kitchen towel before frying to prevent splattering)
Remove the fried potato slices and keep aside.
Fry the sliced onion in the fat until caramelised.
Then add the ground masala to the fried onions.
Fry on a low flame, adding a tsp or 2 of water as required until the masala is completely cooked and no raw taste remains.
Add the masala water (water got when washing the grinder) and a little more liquid to the masala and cook until it bubbles (this is a thick curry, so you need a semi-gravy consisitency)
Add the fried meat to the masala and cook until the fat breaks down some more and the meat turns soft.
Adjust salt, sugar and vinegar to taste. The dish should be slightly sweet, with a hint of sourness.
Garnish with fried potatoes

The potatoes taste good either crisp or when they have soaked up the masala, so you can mix some fried slices into the curry and reserve the rest for garnish.

Serve hot with appams, sannas, panpole (neer dosa), pau bread or white rice. I've served it with appams in the pictuire below.

As with most other Manglorean pork curries, indad tastes better with age. So you can make it 2-3 days before you plan to serve it and reheat it daily. Adjust salt, vinegar, sugar on the last day and add potatoes only before serving.

Recipe: Mangshor Jhol - Bengali Mutton Curry

Jhol is a thin Bengali curry. Mangshor is mutton (goat meat, lamb can be used as a substitute if goat isn't available).

In my singleton days in 1999-2000, I had a group of 8-10 Bengali & Oriya friends who rented the first floor of a house in Bangalore. My apartment had a very basic kitchen, but these guys had a slightly larger kitchen. If I was in Bangalore for the weekend, then most Sunday afternoons were spent with this group of friends, because they would make awesome mutton curry with hot rice that was so welcoming after a week of slogging away at office and eating fast cooked meals. (normally pulaos of every kind where meat and veggies were tossed into a pressure cooker with herbs and spices & cooked for 3 whistles) Plus after Saturday night out on the town, this mutton curry really hit the right spot at 3pm after waking up at 2pm.

I normally don't cook a lot with mutton. The quality of mutton that you get in Mangalore is not very good. It is stringy, fatty and sometimes a bit smelly, so mum n grandma also rarely cooked mutton unless it was a traditional polov (Mutton & ash gourd curry) needed for some ceremony or the occasional stew, butI remember grandma used to add beef to that dish just to get some better quality meat into it.

Personally, I mostly cook mutton only in Biriyanis or the occasional chops. I did cook more with mutton wheil I was in Bombay & I do believe that the best quality mutton in India is found only in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. So I was quite suprised to recently learn that a lot of Rajasthan's mutton is imported from Gujarat under the so-called "Pink Revolution" akin the "White Revolution" where Gujarat exports milk & milk products to other Indian states

As I was hosting a dinner party for 20, I thought I should do something other than the regular biryani with mutton (as cooking biryani for 20 needs much bigger pots than I have) or a stew (since I was already making the chicken curry with coconut milk) and I remembered the simple homestyle mutton curry that my Bengali friends used to make on the weekends. I looked up a couple of my recipe books and some online recipes, then decided on the following. I cooked with 2 kilos of mutton. 1kg boneless + 1 kg with bone so you can halve the quantities for 1 kg.


Ingredients:
2kg mutton (use at least some large bones) - chop into curry size pieces, wash and drain

Marinade:
2 tsp turmeric powder
2 tbsp red chilli powder (adjust to your spice tolerance)
6 tbsp mustard oil
8 tbsp thick curd (yoghurt) - drain it in a cheesecloth if your curd is too watery
6-8" fresh ginger
25-30 cloves of peeled garlic
8 green chillies (adjust to your spice tolerance)
salt to taste

In a mortar & pestle coarsely crush the ginger, garlic and green chillies (you can use a chopper or mixi if you prefer, but the mortar&pestle give the best flavour) You can also use ginger paste & garlic paste and just smash the chillies with back of your knife.
Mix all the marinade ingredients together, adjusting salt for taste and marinate the meat in it for a couple of hours. Overnight in the fridge works best and even longer will work as well.

Ingredients:
2kgs marinated mutton (as above)
6 medium onions sliced finely
1/4 cup mustard oil (since this adds flavour, don't decrease oil at this stage, you can strain it off the top, once the dish is ready)
4-5 bay leaves
3-4 dried red chillies
6 medium potatoes peeled and chopped into 8 each (if you like larger sized potatoes, just quarter them)
2 tbsp turmeric

3 tbsp corriander powder
2 tbsp red chilli powder
2 tbsp jeera powder
salt to taste
fresh lime segments
corriander leaves to garnish - optional

Method:
Bring the marinated meat to room temperature if refrigerated.
Add a little salt & 1 tbsp turmeric to the chopped potatoes and mix well.

In a large pan/ pressure cooker, fry the potatoes in 2-3 tbsp mustard oil, until they start to brown/crisp up on the outside.Stir frequently to prevent potatoes sticking to the pan.
Remove the potatoes from the pan, leaving the excess oil behind.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan.
When hot, season with the bay leaves and dried red chillies.

Before the chillies can burn, add the sliced onion and fry well until they start to brown.
Stir frequently to fry evenly and prevent them from sticking to the bottom

Add the marinated meat (but reserve the excess liquid marinade) to the pan with the remaining turmeric, chilli, corriander & jeera powders and some salt
Stir frequently to prevent meat sticking to the pan and cook till all the liquid dries up and the meat is well coated with the marinade and powders and slightly browned..

Add the reserved marinade, fried potatoes and 6-8 cups of water (depending on how thin you want the stew).
Cover and cook till done (3 whistles in a Hawkins pressure cooker)
Adjust salt to taste.
Cook uncovered if you want to thicken the gravy

Just before serving, squeeze lemon juice or serve lemon wedges on the side.
Add corriander leaves if you like as garnish

Serve hot with rice or lucchis (maida puris)

This jhol/curry can also be made with lamb or chicken

Kim's tips:
1. Choose a good quality mustard oil, as that will make a huge difference in the taste. There is no substitute for mustard oil in this particular recipe.
2. Mutton curries need some amount of large bones in the mix which really flavour the stew
3. If you are refrigerating meat during marination, always remember to bring it back to room temperature before cooking it.
4. Onions fry a little faster if you add a little salt to them while frying.

Recipe: Kori Rotti - Chicken Curry - Manglorean Style

Kori Rotti are thin sheets of ground rice rolled out and sun dried.

This is a traditional dish of the Bunts (Tulu Speaking) Community that originate from Mangalore. This dish is available in most Manglorean Restaurants in Bombay (majority of non-vegetarian Manglorean restaurants around India are owned by the Bunts)

This particular curry is poured over the Kori Rotti and the Rotti is eaten half crisp, half soggy. As far as I know the Rotti is no longer made in homes, it will be available in any Manglorean store in Bombay/Bangalore. I carry 4-5 packets of Rotti with me from Mangalore whenever I visit.

This dish can also be made with boiled eggs, for egg eating vegetarians and for strict vegetarians you can substitute chicken or eggs with potatoes.

The curry also goes well with plain rice or dosas, if you don't have access to Rotti.

Ingredients:
1 kg chicken
3 onions
1+1/2 coconut (or 1/2 coconut + 3-4 200ml packets of Dabur coconut milk)
1/2 lime sized tamarind
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
12 short red chillies
10 long red chillies
1 tbsp corriander seeds
1 tsp peppercorns
1/2 tsp methi seeds
1 tsp jeera
1 pod garlic
little oil
salt to taste
a few curry leaves

Method:
In 1 tbsp oil/ghee fry one sliced onion. Add half a scraped coconut, tamarind, haldi and dry roast for a while.
Dry fry chillies seperately.
Dry fry corriander, pepper, methi
Lastly add jeera and garlic.
Grind all these ingredients to a fine paste

Extract coconut milk from 1 coconut or use Dabur coconut milk.
Mix the ground paste into the thin coconut milk and put on a low fire When the masala begins to bubble, add chicken pieces and 1 sliced onion.

Add salt to taste and cook till done.
Put the fire on sim and add the thick coconut milk and give it a very slow single boil.
Temper with 1 deep fried onion
Serve with kori rotti or rice.

 Add more coconut milk if the curry is too spicy for you. If you run out of coconut milk, you can use regular milk to balance the spice quotient.

Recipe: Paneer Makhani - Cottage Cheese

I made Paneer Makhani the other day at a dinner for friends. As usual when cooking for dinners, I keep forgetting to take pictures. Hubsnad took this picture after people had finished eating, so its not the best of pics, but it does give you an idea of consistency which is why I'm including it here.

Puree 1 kilo tomatoes.

In a pan give seasoning with 1-2 cardamom, 3-4 cloves, 2 slit green chillies, 1"inch ginger chopped fine. Add the tomato puree and keep sauteeing till cooked.

Powder 1 handful of cashewnuts and add it to the cooked tomatoes. Stir well.

Add 1/2 kilo of chopped paneer and give it a quick steam. (Don't overcook it, the paneer will turn rubbery)

Add 2 tsp cream (you can use more) and stir into the curry.

Sprinkle 2 pinches of Kasuri Methi on top (optional)

Serve hot with rotis.

Recipe: Kashmiri Ghushtaba - Meat Ball Curry - Short cut method

Ghushtaba and Rista are 2 extremely famous Kashmiri dishes. The process of making these dishes that take the most time is the pounding of the mutton to mince it up and turn it into soft meat balls.

I had ordered a home delivery of chicken meat balls along with my regular order from the "chicken butcher" expecting tiny meat balls that could be sauteed as a starter. What arrived home was much larger. Too large to be an appetiser and slightly oversalted. Hence I had to pop them into a curry to neutralise the salt and flavour the meatballs.

Taking into consideration the size of the meatballs, I thought a Ghushtaba sauce would be the best option for today. and I found a traditional recipe in Wazwaan: Traditional Kashmiri Cuisine

If you don't have meatballs, the traditional way is to pound half a kilo of boneless fatless mutton cubes until it is fine paste. Remove any tough white fibers that may appear. Add 4tbsp white butter, pinch of cardamom powder and about 3/4 tsp salt. Pound some more and then with wet hands make balls around 100gms in weight

Ingredients:
1/2 kilo meatballs - chicken or mutton (mutton is traditional)
400gm Curd/Yoghurt well blended with equal volume water and gently simmered together until it reaches half the volume - 400gms

 400gm volume - plain meat stock (just boil meat/chicken for 45 minutes - I used stock cubes)

2 tsp ghee (an indulgence - since it is still winter, you can skip the ghee if you prefer)
4 small green cardamoms
4 cloves
1 tbsp fennel seeds (saunf) powdered
1 tbsp dry ginger powder
8 cloves garlic
1 large onion
salt to taste (if you use stock cubes or ready made meat balls, these will already have salt in them)
2 pinches of dry mint leaves - optional

The traditional method of making ghushtaba is a slow process of adding ingredients. I skipped a few steps and combined some of them together. The end result was quite good. So the method below is the shortened method.

Method:
Grind together the onion, garlic and fennel seeds (if you don't have it in powdered form).
Gently fry this paste in 1 tsp ghee until light brown, but cooked (not raw)

Mix the reduced yoghurt, stock, meat balls and 1 tsp ghee and bring to a quick boil. (The consistency when you start out should be a thin stock.)

Then add all the other ingredients except the onion paste and cook covered for 10 minutes.
Now add the onion paste and cook covered on a low flame until the curry is thicker and has reached your desired consistency. Make sure your meatballs are cooked.

 Notice how much the liquid is reduced and the change in consistency

Sprinkle dry mint leaves as garnish if you like (I didn't have any at home, but the dish still tasted very good)

Serve hot with Rice.

This is an excellent "Indian" dish to serve your friends who are apprehensive of heavy "Indian" spices


The Original and Traditional recipe can be found on page 37 of