Recipe : Gujarati Style Fresh Turmeric Pickle - Kaccha Haldi / Amba Haldi Achaar (Vegan)

Come end November - December and the laaris (local hand carts) in the markets of Gujarat have a corner dedicated to Rhizomes -  kaccha haldi (tender turmeric) and amba haldi (literally- green mango turmeric - it looks white like ginger, but has the sour taste of green mango and a mild flavour of fresh turmeric).

Locals regularly buy these items through winter and serve it up as a pickle with every meal as these 2 spices are supposed to help keep the cold of winter from affecting your body, and builds immunity and resistance against winter infections.

In its simplest form, a small piece of tender turmeric or amba haldi is chopped/julienned and sprinkled with salt and lemon juice just before serving on the table, with chilli powder being optional.

In its fancier form, it involves drying, tempering etc.

I personally prefer the flavour of the simple one, but for 2 people it doesn't make sense to keep chopping up a tiny piece daily, so after looking online and speaking to a few Gujarati friends I created a recipe that I liked.

Please Note :
While my photos will show that I used some of the lovely fresh red winter carrots in the pickle, from experience, I would now say that don't use carrots if you plan to store the pickle for more than a couple of days, as it turns soft.

Also, we preferred the flavour of amba haldi to the regular fresh turmeric, so I've upped the quantity in the recipe below.

The recipe that follows is what I've fine tuned based on experience and taste, but my pictures will show what I actually used, so don't let it confuse you. Follow the recipe words and don't worry about the quantities in the pictures, they are for illustrative purposes only. Also feel free to play around with the quantities to evolve something that suits your families taste buds.

Ingredients :

100 gms kaccha haldi / tender turmeric
100 gms amba haldi
5-30 green chillies (depending on spiciness and your families spice tolerance. I like mine spicy, so I used 30 spicy green chillies, if you want a mild flavour 5 green chillies is fine. But use the thin crispy style chillies - Indian chillies and Thai Birds eye chillies work well)
20-30 limes (you need the juice to completely cover the turmeric, so quantity will differ based on juiciness of limes, don't use limes that are very sour or bitter)
salt to taste - at least a tablespoon

Method:
Wash clean any mud on the surface, then scrape clean the kaccha and amba haldi and julienne it to around matchstick length.
Slit the green chillies lengthwise into 2 or 4 slices depending on thickness.
In a clean, dry glass / ceramic jar layer the turmeric and chillies, sprinkling a little salt at intervals.
Once the jar is full, squeeze the juice of the limes into the jar (taking care not to get any seeds in)
Cover with a thin cloth or tissue with a string or rubber band holding the mouth closed.
Keep it in the sun for 2 days, then give a nice stir or shake and refrigerate.

Take out as required and serve as a side with meals (2-6 sticks per person per meal is normal consumption)

Tips:
1. Make sure the bottle that you use has a plastic / glass or ceramic cover (not metal)
2. Make sure the bottle is completely dry before you use it and use a dry spoon each time you take anything out of the jar.
3. If a thin white film forms on top, it hasn't gone bad - its a normal phenomenon for pickling in brine (salt water), just bob the solid pieces below liquid level and give a stir and continue to use as normal.
4. Don't return pickle pieces back into the bottle once they have been exposed to air (if you serve it up for dinner in a plate and it doesn't get completely consumed), store it in a seperate box/bottle and use up before opening your main bottle again.

5. The fresh turmeric stains very very badly. My hands remained yellow and the nails looked jaundiced for at least 4-6 days. Watch out for your clothes. You may want to use gloves. I personally don't like to use gloves when prepping food, because my style of cooking enjoys the tactile sensations of the cooking process, If you do use gloves, use the thin ones that give you control and grip over the tiny turmeric pieces.

6. Choose the straightest and longest pieces of turmeric that you can find, it helps ease and hasten the skinning step.
7. I chopped off the tiny bumps and washed them and kept them in a little bowl in the fridge. I substitute one bump (smash before use) for powdered turmeric in my recipes, especially dhal.

Recipe: Chaap ne Bataka Roast - Gujarati Roasted Lamb Chops with Potatoes

This recipe is from Banu Hajratwala's - Gujarati Kitchen, a book I cannot recommend heavily enough. Instructions are clear, precise and detailed. In case you haven't read my review yet and are wondering how lamb chops could be a Gujarati dish - its because this is Gujarati Kshatriya cuisine.

This recipe is reproduced here as part of my review of Banu Hajratwala's - Gujarati Kitchen for the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com.

My details here are not half as detailed as the way Ms Hajratwala's instructions are. While I do occassionaly say that a book is worth picking up, this book is a must have for anyone interested in a wider spectrum of Gujarati food or wants a simple introduction to Indian food. Gujarati Kshatriya cuisine is just one of the many cuisines cooked/available in India. What makes this a great introduction to someone new to Indian food is the detailed descriptions, substitutions possible and the coverage of Indian staples like rotis, dhal, curries, pickles in this book.

I've used olive oil instead of regular oil and apple cider vinegar instead of  lemon juice. I also cooked just half a kilo of chops, since I was cooking for just the 2 of us. Since I was using a microwave oven to bake, I used plastic wrap instead of aluminium foil to trap the moisture inside. Other than this, I stayed true to the recipe even down to the 1/4 cup oil.

For my friends from Guwahati wondering how I could procure mutton chops  here? - I used Al Kabeer's frozen chops.

Prepping the Meat:
Clean, rinse and dry 1/2kg mutton chops, removing extra fat.
Marinate in a mixture of 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and 1.5 tbsp salt for at least half an hour.
This reduces the smelll in the meat and also tenderises it.

After half an hour, drain the juices (they would have turned a bit cloudy - thats just a reaction of acid with protein), rinse and dry the chops.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp Gujarati fresh masala
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup oil
1/2 kg potatoes washed, peeled and cut into 1/2" wedges

Method:
Make a marinade with all the ingredients except the potatoes.

Apply 2/3rds of the marinade onto the prepped lamb chops and leave for at least 1-2 hours or overnight. Reserve the remaining marinade.

When ready to cook, prep the potatoes and mix them with the remaining 1/3 marinade and lay them flat in a single layer in a baking dish

Then layer the mutton chops on top of the potatoes.

Preheat the oven to 190C.
Cover the pan with aluminium foil (in regular ovens) or 3 layers of plastic wrap for microwave ovens)
Roast for 20 minutes.
Remove from oven, turn chops over and baste with dripping. (don't turn the potatoes, only the chops)
Cover & roast for another 20 minutes.

Remove from oven, turn chops over and baste with dripping. (don't turn the potatoes, only the chops)
Roast uncovered for 10 minutes.
Remove from oven, turn chops over and baste with dripping. (don't turn the potatoes, only the chops)
Roast uncovered for 10 minutes.
Thus total roasting time is 1 hour with 30 minutes on each side.
I also grilled the chops for 5 minutes to give a light golden tinge to the meat.

I served the chops with Rotis and Raita. It will go very well with garlic bread too.

Kitchen Essentials: Gujarati Fresh Masala

When reviewing Banu Hajratwala's - Gujarati Kitchen, I decided to cook Chaap Ne Bataka Roast - Roasted Lamb Chops with Potatoes. To make this, I needed 3 tbsp of Gujarati Fresh Masala. This recipe was also included in the book.

While the original recipe (page 45) makes 6 cups of masala that can be refrigerated for 6-8 weeks or frozen for longer, I wasn't sure whether I would be cooking that much Gujarati food to justify grinding such a large quantity.

However Ms Hajratwala had also conveniently included the quantities to make 3 tbsp of masala. Most of her recipes that require fresh masala, need 3 tbsp for a 2 person portion and 6 tbsp for 4 people.

Since I was making such a small quantity, I did not want to bring down my mixi (I have a really tiny kitchen here in Guwahati and there is no space to keep the rotimaker, mixi and other essentials on the kitchen work surface, so these are all stored in high up ladder accessed cupboards to be used only if absolutely essential) So I used my Thai mortar and pestle and it worked perfectly. The Thai Mortar and Pestle somehow manages to grind pastes much finer than any Indian mortar and pestle that I have used.

I substituted the oil in the fresh masala with olive oil and the lemon juice with  apple cider vinegar and it tasted wonderful, I see myself grinding this in larger quantities to use in other recipes too. It tastes lovely and is wonderful as a marinade for any kind of meat. I can use this as frequently as I use my Manglorean staple of meet mirsang.

For 3tbsp fresh masala, I ground together
5 garlic cloves (since my cloves were small)
2" ginger
8 fresh green chillies
1.5 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

While I've added the oil and lemon juice in the picture above, before pounding, I always recommend adding wet ingredients last, after the masala is pounded, when pounding by hand - otherwise you will have to deal with a lot of splashing.

Book Review: Gujarati Kitchen

When I first received Bhanu Hajratwala's "Gujarati Kitchen", I was expecting a Vegetarian Recipe book. I  had, had a recent twitter exchange with a friend who wanted to know where she could find a Gujarati Restaurant in Mumbai, but it had to only serve Vegetarian food. I jokingly asked if there was any other kind. The only response that came up on twitter to this exchange was "perhaps Bohri Muslim Food" "Does Gujarati Parsi Cuisine count?"

So it was a wonderfully pleasant suprise to find that Bhanu Hajratwala's cookbook, covered Non Vegetarian food too. Reading the book, revealed that this was Gujarati Kshatriya cuisine. This is not to say that the book only covers non-vegetarian food. There are plenty of recipes for Gujarati staples like dhokla, rotli, daal dhokali, khandvi and theplas. The non-vegetarian dishes are made from goat, lamb, chicken and seafood.

Bhanu Hajratwala is a Gujarati who was born and brought up in the Fiji Islands (The first wave of Gujaratis migrated to the British Colony of Fiji Islands in the early 1900's) As often happens with early immigrants, the families held on to the sanctity of their original Gujarati recipes with minimal adaptation, other than forgetting recipes for which ingredients weren't available.

Ms. Hajratwala moved to the US when she got married and moved with her husband across New Zealand, Australia and the United States. Through all these moves, she enjoyed cooking for and feeding her family and friends while pursuing her own career as a physical therapist. Her friends soon started asking her to teach them how to cook Gujarati food and she readily agreed. This later expanded to conducting cooking classes and demonstrations and contributing recipes for community cook books.

The book begins with a list of ingredients commonly used in Gujarati cooking and other than ganthoda kokum, batrissu (a Gujarati spice mix), charoli and vaal they are easily available across India and in Indian stores abroad. A list of measurements follows which clearly gives liquid and weight substitutes for terms like 1 cup, 1tsp etc. Since the book uses US/Imperial measures throughout, Metric conversions are also provided in this section.


Gujarati cooking has a few spice blends specific to their cuisine like fresh masala & seafood masala and some commonly used ones like chai masala and garam masala. Understanding that many of the readers of this book may not be Gujarati or cook Gujarati food daily, Banu has also given exact directions to make smaller quantities (3 tbsp) of the fresh masalas that have shelf lives of 6-8 weeks in the fridge and this kind of thoughtfullness carries on through the book.

The recipes that follow are categorised in the standard format: starters, mains, breads, rice, kadhis & dals, sweets, chutneys & relishes, pickles, snacks for teatime, drinks and a special section for mukhwaas.

The recipes are very clear and easy to follow. Substitutes are detailed. For eg: in the preface, Banu explains that fresh or whole turmeric is much better and healthier than turmeric powder and then in all the recipes she gives quantities for both whole turmeric and powder for the convenience of those who have no access to, or the time to powder and grind whole turmeric. The recipe for Khandvi includes both the stove top cooking method and a microwave oven method.

Her husband, Bhupendra's support extends beyond the standard spousal variety. He has provided line drawings for this book.While in some cases they are purely decorative, in a lot of places they are illustrative. Like how to roll patra, fold a samosa and crimp a ghughara (gujiya).

Given that this was my first insight into non-vegetarian Gujarati cuisine, the first dish I decided to try from this book was the "Chaap ne Bataka Roast - Roasted Lamb Chops with Potatoes" Its difficult for me to follow recipes from a book to the letter, since I love to improvise, but since I was reviewing the book, I tried to stay true to the recipe. So I only substituted the oil with olive oil and lemon juice with apple cider vinegar, since I did not have enough limes/lemons on hand. The chops turned out very well, even though I served them with rotlis/phulkas rather than the recommended garlic bread and the recipe was very easy to follow.

Banu's instructions are precise and detailed, substitutes are very clear, notes on which food can be stored for how long and the ideal way to store them are also included. Her thoughtfullness towards the home cook  show through every recipe. Banu says she originally started measuring quantities and writing recipes to share them with her children who were leaving home for further education. This concern and detailed attention shows in every instruction.

The only thing you need to watch out for, when cooking from this book is that the cooking time specified, is purely cooking time. It does not include pre-prep time or marinating time. It assumes that you have the spice powders & blends ready and soaking and sprouting time isn't included either.


"Gujarati Kitchen - Family Recipes for the Global Palate" is thus an excellent pick for anyone who is a new cook or a comfortable cook, someone who wants to learn Gujarati cooking or even someone looking for a simple introduction to Indian cooking.

Rating: 4.5/5

Recipe: Methi Nu Thepla (Indian Vegan Bread with fenugreek greens)

Methi Theplas are of Gujarathi origin and keep well for a couple of days and hence are highly favoured on rail and road journeys. Regular phulkas don't taste as good when cold and bhasi puris aren't the healthiest of options.

When I lived in Hyderabad and Bombay, a lot of bakeries and groceries carried these theplas in packets of 5 with some green chilli pickle and it was an excellent option to keep in my fridge for breakfast or as roti substitutes for lunch and dinner, especially since I hated the washing up that came with making rotis for one or 2 people and hated the effort involved in making rotis for a whole load of friends. As is clearly evident, I come from a rice eating family :)

My mum gifted my husband a roti maker for his last birthday with admonishments to ME to use it and make the poor deprived North Indian guy rotis, with every meal. Well this gadget really has helped, as I just make the dough and the little dough balls for 2-3 days, then I put the dough ball into the roti maker. A litle pressing and flipping and the roti is ready. Nice and evenly circular. Rotis I can put pictures of here on my blog without praying for at least one tocome out perfectly shaped. No chakla, belan, tongs, tawa and a mess of flour to clean up after each meal. Its a real blessing and now that I've got the hang of it, I'm experimenting with varieties of rotis.

Remembering the theplas I enjoyed,  I decided to try to make them myself using a friends recipe I had written down ages back, but never got round to trying..

Ingredients:
2 cups wheat flour
1 cup methi leaves ( I used half a cup of kasuri methi and rehydrated it) - coarsely chopped

1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp jeera powder
1/2 tsp corriander powder
1 tsp chilli powder (you can adjust this for taste if you like)
salt to taste
2 tsps oil for the dough (you can use olive if you prefer)
oil for frying - optional

Method:
Mix all the ingredients including the oil for the dough.
Add enough water to make the dough - same consistency as rotis (I also used the water in which I rehydrated the methi)

Make dough balls, roll into rotis and fry on both sides till golden brown spots appear.
You can use oil when frying to make it more authentic :)
I prefer to fry without oil in a non stick pan and our roti maker is also non stick, so I don't use any additional oil.
Theplas can be served hot or at room temperature with pickles.
They can be packed in foil for picnics or journeys and enjoyed later.

 

I served the theplas with pickle and aloo bhartha (Indian mashed potatoes) 

I'm submitting this recipe for the Roti-Bhakhri-Poli-Thepla-Puri-Rotla leg of Joy of Cooking's Complete My Thali - Event

Khatta Moong - Green Gram Curry

Having grown up eating Dhal (lentils) everyday, my husband does have particular likes and dislikes for the way these are cooked. He is a completely non-fussy eater and will eat and enjoy anything. Except where familiar childhood foods are concerned, he likes them to taste the way he is used to. Fo eg, the kadhi eaten in his home is a much thinner version and made with potatoes rather than pakodas which he likes. So if kadhi is cooked at home, this is what he expects, not the Punjabi style kadhi pakoda or the slightly sweeter Gujarathi version.

Given this background, I was slightly apprehensive to try out a completely new dhal on him, that too one that included curd (yoghurt), but the recipe Rushina posted about 2 weeks ago for Khatta Moong was really calling out to me.

So after 15 days of dithering, I braved it and made it in a small quantity (albeit with double the portions mentioned in her recipe). It was an absolute hit!

I can't tell you how good it tastes with hot rice. Suffice to say that even after doubling the quantity in her recipe, it was all finished between 2 of us in one meal.

You can get the recipe for Rushina's moms Khatta Moong here.

The only adjustment I made (other than doubling quantities) is that I had ginger paste ground in my fridge and didn't feel like grinding up 2-3 chillies. So I just chopped them fine and added it at the same stage as the ginger paste.

This is one recipe that is definitely going to be cooked more frequently in our house.

While Rushina has recommended some other Gujarathi dishes with this dhal, I served it with Aloo Methi (Potatoes and fenugreek greens).