Recipe : Pork Jalfrezi - Indian Pulled Pork

This is not the jalfrezi curry made “famous” in the “Indian” restaurants of London. Think of it as an Indian version of pulled pork.

Chef Atul Kocchar in his book Atul's Curries of the World writes that, "in the UK, the word 'jalfrezi' is commonly misunderstood to represent the heat level of a curry...it's thought of as a 'medium heat' curry...in fact, the word derives from the Bengali word 'jhal' meaning 'spicy' and 'jalfrezi' is the term for the original dish in which cooked meats are stir-fried over a high heat with vegetables such as pepper and onion.

Jalfrezi can be made with any meat of your choice including chicken, but red meat works better in texture for this dish.

This was a dish my nana cooked when there were leftover bits of meat (mostly beef) from a roast or if she felt the meat was “kisparla” - i.e. meat falling apart like pulled meat.

I had stewed pork in ginger, lemon and red chillies and was using the stock in other dishes, while the meat just kept getting more and more kisparla lending beautiful flavour, but too flimsy/fiddly to eat.

So I fried it up with onions, tomatoes, chillies, potatoes and spices - such a taste of eating at my grandparents home.

The recipe below is the way I made I made it this time, scroll to the end to see the way my nana would make it.

Ingredients:

250 gms leftover boneless cooked roast or stewed meat or meat leftover when making stock (see option at end of post)

3 tbsp mustard oil (can use regular oil, but mustard oil gives a nice bite)

2" cinnamon

1 star anise

1 large onion halved and sliced thin

2 tbsp chopped ginger

100 gms boiled potato skinned and chopped large (I used halved skin on baby potatoes this time)

2 large fully ripe tomatoes sliced thin

2-8 green chillies chopped (as per taste)

salt to taste

handful fresh corriander chopped

Method:

Pull the meat apart - so it forms threads / reshis.

Pork fat and skin or chicken skin can also be added chopped in small chunks.

Take a large frying pan on high heat.

When it is hot, add the oil.

When the oil is almost smoking, add the cinnamon and star anise.

As soon as the spices start releasing their aroma, add the sliced onions and fry until they start to caramelise.

From here on, the recipe needs constant monitoring and gentle stirring.

Now add the ginger and boiled potatoes and fry, till the edges of the potato start to crisp up.

Now add the tomatoes and turn the heat to medium.

Cook until the tomatoes release all their pulp and the tomato skins start to curl up on themselves. This will take a little time, but this caramelisation of the onion and tomatoes is where all the taste in this dish comes from.

Now add the chopped green chillies , give a quick stir, then add the shredded meat. You can increase the heat now, but keep an eye and keep stirring.

Adjust salt to taste (you would have most likely added salt when initially cooking the meat, so be cautious.)

Fry until the meat starts crisping up.

Garnish with corriander and serve hot with rice and dhal or rotis and dhal.

I served it with rice, leftover rajma madra and cabbage stir fried with crisped up garlic, topped with chilli oil.

Kim's Tip 1 : If you don't have leftover meat, slow cook 300 - 400 gms meat (bones extra if you want) with chopped onions, ginger, garlic, red chillies or spices and veggies of your choice in lots of water. Use the liquid as stock in any dish and use the meat for this recipe.

Kim's Tip 2 : If your tomatoes have no tartness at all, you may like to add a squeeze of lime and stir, once the meat is fried.

Kim's Tip 3 : Do not stint on the oil in this recipe. I rarely use a lot of oil, but this recipe needs the oil to fry the onions, the tomatoes, the potatoes and the meat. It will seperate at the end and you can remove it before serving.

Kim's Tip 4 : Do not make this in very large quantities, the meat needs space in the pan to cook properly.

Kim's Tip 5 : Garnish with sliced fresh onion rings for a stunning presentation

Nana's Version Ingredients:

250 gms leftover boneless cooked roast or stewed meat or meat leftover when making stock.

3 tbsp sunflower oil

2" cinnamon

3-4 cloves

1 large onion halved and sliced thin

2 tbsp chopped ginger

2 large fully ripe tomatoes sliced thin

2-8 green chillies chopped (as per taste)

salt to taste

100 gms boiled potato cut in slices and deep fried

handful fresh corriander chopped

Method :

Same as above, except the deep fried potatoes are added at the end just before serving.

Recipe : Chattambade / Dalwada/ Parippu Vadai/ Masala Vada - Vegan

Chattambade/ Dalwada/ Parippu Vadai/ Masala Vada with Green Coconut Chutney.

This vegan fried snack made with split channa dhal / split Bengal gram / split chickpea lentils is made across India and is called different names across the country. Each household uses their own spicing and ratios. Some add a mix of different lentils to their wadas.

This one is my method and suits our tastebuds best.

Ingredients:

2 cups channa dhal / split chickpea lentils

1 chopped onion
2-10 chopped green chillies depending on spice tolerance
1 handful chopped coriander
2 tbsp chopped ginger
2 tbsp chopped curry leaves (optional)
Salt to taste

Oil to fry

Method:

Soak 2 cups channa dhal / split chickpea lentils overnight (8 hours at least)

Drain to remove as much of the water as possible.

Some people coarsely grind the entire lot. We like the crunch from the whole bits, so I coarsely grind 80% of the dhal and use 20% whole.

Mix the ground and whole lentils together.

Add all other ingredients except oil

The mix should be dry enough to form vadas/cutlets.

If it’s too wet, you can add besan/chickpea flour.

My batter was just a bit wet (I didn’t have time to leave the soaked dhal to dry), so I formed the wadas (slightly flattened balls) and left them on a sheet of kitchen roll to get rid of the slight excess.

Deep fry in hot oil on medium flame until golden.

Don't be tempted to increase the heat, you will get burnt outsides and raw insides.

Serve hot with chutney / ketchup.

Nana occasionally made these as a tea time snack, but we had these for brunch on a cold winter day.

Kim’s tip : If grinding fresh chutney, do that first and then grind the dhal in the same jar without rinsing/washing. The leftover chutney imparts good flavour to the dhal. 

Recipe : Kala Channa Chaat - Black Chickpea Salad - Vegan

Ever since last Wednesday when the husband sent me photos of pani puri and other chaat that he had at Southampton at the match, I’ve been craving those flavours. Today’s salad was an attempt to capture the balance of sour, spicy, salty, crunchy without the sweetness.

I used kala channa - legumes like channa are not allowed on the keto diet because they do contain carbs - but we are on a slightly more flexible diet - for us no carb means avoiding grains, flour and high starch veggies.

Kala channa / Black chickpeas have a low glycemic index, and high fibre and protein so I will occasionally slip it in.

If you are following strict keto, avoid the black chickpeas. If you avoid the black chickpeas, this dish works for the raw food diet too.

The black chickpeas are more nutritious, but white chickpeas will also work in this recipe.

So, the salad is

1 bowl drained black chickpeas (you can use canned or soak overnight and cook the next day)

1 bowl chopped cucumber

1/2 bowl chopped tomato

1/2 bowl chopped onion,

2-3 sprigs coriander chopped

1-5 chopped green chillies (as per spice tolerance)

The dressing is

2 tbsp lemon juice,

1 tbsp chaat masala

1 tsp black salt (use regular salt if you don't have black salt)

Feel free to adjust the quantities to suit your taste.

I let the salad and dressing sit for awhile.

Just before serving, I tossed in a handful of groundnuts.

Kim's Tip : If the taste of raw onion is not a flavour you like, drop the onion completely or let the onion sit in the lemon juice / vinegar for 10-15 minutes which helps take the edge off.

The lamb kebabs were from @meatn16 that I picked up after a session of the @stokenewingtonliteraryfestival at their location.

The meat was fantastic. I just seared it on all sides and served it medium rare.

Recipe : Tandoori Salmon with Indian Spiced Salad & Almonds

Tandoori Salmon with Indian Spiced Salad & Almonds is not a dish you would find on a restaurant menu per se, its something I've been fiddling with for awhile and I'm finally really happy with the results, so I'm sharing it with you.

You can make this in small portions as an appetiser (with or without the salad) or turn it into a main course. It does not need any carb on the side, so this works well for anyone on a no-carb / low-carb / keto diet too

Salmon or trout works best for this recipe, the masalas are too strong for delicate fish.

Tandoori Salmon

4 boneless slices of salmon (see picture for reference)

1-2 pinch of salt

2 tbsp lemon juice

2-3 tbsp tandoori masala

red chilli powder to taste (optional, if your tandoori masala isn't spicy enough)

2 tbsp ginger garlic paste

4 tbsp yoghurt/thick curd

Method:

Clean fish well and descale.

Coat in lemon juice and salt for at least 15 minutes and throw away all the water that comes out.

Marinate in a mix of tandoori masala, red chilli powder, ginger garlic paste and yoghurt/curd.

Keep in fridge as long as you need. I left it marinating for 3 days I think.

Preheat oven to 220C (200C for fan)

I like to line the pan with foil when making fish, so the fishy smell doesn't remain in the pan - I use the same pan for baking biscuits and scones.

Lightly coat the pan or foil with oil and place the fish skin side down.

You need 4-6 minutes of baking time per half inch thickness of your fish slice on the middle rack.

Keep an eye on it. You don't want it overcooked.

If you keep it on the top rack and turn the grill on for the last few minutes, you will get a nice brownish crust.

Kim's Tip:

If you can't be bothered with turning on the oven, or you don't have an oven, just pan fry it in a little oil.

Salad:

The salad here is a simple mix of rocket, watercress and baby spinach leaves with very thinly sliced onions.

250 gms salad leaves

1/2 medium onion sliced and marinated in a tsp of lemon juice. (while you are getting the other ingredients ready)

Dressing:

The dressing is hazelnut (you can use olive) oil, lemon juice, salt, freshly crushed black pepper and 1-2 drops of balsamic vinegar - because I like the sweetness it gives.

1 tbsp oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp freshly crushed black pepper

1-2 drops of balsamic vinegar

You can add chaat masala or black salt to the dressing if you want a stronger Indian flavour in the dressing, but remember to adjust for salt.

Assembly :

Mix the salad leaves and onions in a bowl.

Shake or whip the dressing till it emulsifies and mix into the leaves.

Portion out into individual plates.

Lay the hot salmon on top.

Sprinkle with sliced almonds

This is another version of the same dish, plated in a large bowl rather than individually. the dressing here was an onion raita and I used roasted pine nuts in the garnish

Recipe: Instant Apas / Appams / Hoppers

Manglorean Apas are called Appams in Kerala and Hoppers in Sri Lanka.

Normally the process to prepare the batter takes a fair amount of time and patience. This is an easy way to make instant appams.

This doesn't taste as yum as appams that are made with love and care, soaking, grinding, fermented with toddy etc etc. But if you want appams in a hurry and don't have a Manglorean/Kerala restaurant nearby who can deliver, this is a quick fix.

Ingredients:
1/2kg slightly grainy rice flour (not superfine)
4 tbsps sugar (adjust to taste)
1 tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1 200ml packet of Dabur coconut milk
water
eno (non flavoured) fruit salt

Special Equipment: appam chatti

Method:
Mix the rice flour, sugar, salt until well blended
Add coconut milk and mix together.
Add room temperature water until the batter reaches desired consistency - thinner than dosa batter, but thicker than neerdosa batter)
Mix well so that there are no lumps.
Let is stand for 10-15 minutes so sugar can dissolve and flavours even out.
Adjust salt and sugar to taste.

Heat the appam chatti and season the pan with a few drops of oil.
Add a little eno to the batter, so that it starts to froth up (aerate - this is a short cut to the fermenting process)

Mix well.
Pour half a ladle of batter into the center of the appam chatti.
Give the pan a quick swirl to leave behind a thin layer of batter around the thicker center.

Cover the pan and fry till done.

Do not turn over
The appam will start moving away from the sides of the pan when done.

The trick to making appams is the swirling of the pan so that you have a nice thin even circle around the thicker center and managing the heat, so that the sides crisp up and the center is cooked.

Serve hot with curry of your choice.

Kim's Note:
An appam chatti is similar in shape to a kadai, but much smaller.
It has handles on both ends that you need, to be able to swirl the pan.
The lid is also essential for proper cooking of an appam. (since it is only fried on one side and the center needs to steam cook)

Like any other dosa pan, do not use your appam chatti for frying anything other than appams.
Prestige has a good non stick appam chatti that does not even require greasing between appams


In the first picture, appams are served with Pork Indad and in the second, they have been served with mutton stew.

Book Review: JB Lobo's Home Encyclopaedia

JB Lobo's Home Encyclopedia is the only recipe book my grandmother ever referred to when cooking, so almost every woman in my family has a copy.

The book is plain text, there are no glossy pictures and an average of 3-4 recipes on each page. A bare bones recipe book, it expects the reader to have a good grasp of cooking.

It does have some rare recipes like that for suckling pig Manglorean style that are difficult to find elsewhere. While it claims to have recipes from other parts of the world, remember that this book was written over 25 years ago, so those recipes aren't completely authentic. But the Manglorean recipes are really good.

More than half the book is taken by the home encyclopedia which has home remedies for everything from sore eyes to snake bites and scorpion stings. There is a section on how to guard against burglars, how to clean ivory articles and how to buy a cow by checking her udders. There is even a section on sex education.

While the book at 900+ pages is quite heavy, only 250 pages or so are dedicated to recipes. I do wish they would come out with a version that has just the recipes. It would be so much easier to manage while trying to cook from it.

The book is also published in Kannada as Gruha Sangaathi & I think it has both a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian version.

Rating : 4 / 5

A quick primer on the use and prepping of a Banana Leaf

Historically banana leaves were commonly used as plates at meal times in parts of Southern India.

While the advent of stainless steel and melamine plates, the banana leaf is no longer used as a plate in households where it was commonly used, until a couple of decades ago.

In Southern India, most temples still serve meals on banana leaves. You will also get to see the banana leaf being used as a plate at traditional South Indian brahmin weddings. In some cases, you no longer will be seated cross legged on the floor, you may be seated at canteen style tables, but will still be served on a leaf.

Eating off a banana leaf involves a practiced technique to keep all the liquid items like sambhar, rasam, dhali tove (lentils), vegetable curries and payasams (kheer) from running (flowing) off the leaf and onto the floor. This normally involves forming a sturdy well in the center of your rice and instructing the servers to pour your curry of choice into the center. The technique also extends into how you mix your rice and curry in little portions without destroying the structural stability of that well.


For people who are not familiar or comfortable with this technique, most South Indian restaurants that strive to be authentic(in the North of India and abroad)  have come up with 2 innovations. The first is to provide a set of katoris (small bowls) placed on the leaf, for the gravy items. The second is to cut the banana leaf to fit inside a plate with high rims. Both techniques serve to save the unaccustomed diner the embarassment of having curry flow off their leaves and onto their laps.

Etiquette pointers when eating off a Banana Leaf:
A meal eaten on a banana leaf is traditionally eaten with ones right hand without implements while the left hand rests on your lap.
Before you are served any food, you will be provided with some water in a glass, sprinkle a few drops of water with your right hand onto the leaf and brush it off with the lower edge of your palm away from your body. (the leaves would be clean, this is more symbolic than an actual cleansing process)
When you are finished eating, fold the leaf along the spine away from you, never towards you.

Prepping the Banana Leaf
If you are planning to serve food on a banana leaf or cook in it. Wash the leaf with plain water and wipe dry with a clean cloth.
Sometimes, you may find a white fluff on the underside of the leaf. This too can be wiped off with a damp cloth.

Banana leaves are an excellent material to wrap fish and chicken in - for steaming. It traps all the moisture inside without destroying the taste of the dish.

If you want to cook/steam in the leaf:
Fold the leaf in half along its spine.
Using a sharp knife, cut off the spine in one smooth motion.
Make sure none of the tough spine remains, it will make folding the leaf difficult  and the leaves will tear.
Then cut the halves into whatever size and shape you require.
A kitchen scissors will work as well as a knife

Substitutes for fresh coconuts/ coconut milk

Manglorean cooking is very heavy in its use of coconuts. This can be a problem for Mangloreans who are posted abroad in countries that do not have regular supply of coconuts or where coconuts are very expensive, as was the case for me in Egypt and my friend May who is currently in Germany

Dessicated coconut however is more easily available in foreign countries and also easier to carry along on trips from back home.

These are a few substitutes that I have found have worked for me while cooking.

If you need coconut oil, use regular oil for phon/baghar/chaunk/tempering and once it is warm, add a tsp of dessicated coconut to the warm oil, then continue with rest of the phon.

If your recipe calls for coconut milk:
1. packaged coconut milk - Dabur, Thai Chef is first choice. (I have found that the Thai brands are in general better than other brands available in the market for coconut milk. There are some good Sri Lankan brands too)
2. Coconut milk powder dissolved in water is next - Maggi/Nestle is the best I have used so far.
3. Third option is combine regular milk and a bit of dessicated coconut .
Depending on where you are using it in the recipe, either boil the milk and dessicated coconut together and cool before using.
If it is to be added to a curry to make rosachi kadi, you can add the dessicated coconut and the regular milk at the same time.

If you need fresh coconut for foogath (vegetables with fresh coconut), soak half the required volume (of freshly grated coconut) of dessicated coconut in a few teaspoons of regular milk for at least an hour, then use like fresh coconut.

These substitutes work wuite well in most dishes where the coconut is not the starring taste. But for a recipe like Batega, where the taste and consistency of fresh coconut is essential, it may not work as well.

I haven't tried to substitute coconut is such recipes, if you do, please let me know how it goes.

Kitchen Essentials: Tamarind (Imli/Puli/Amsan) Paste

There are some items, I just HAVE to have in my kitchen. Tamarind Paste/Pulp is one of them. Mum extracts fresh paste (from a tsp or so of tamarind) each time she cooks. But for me it makes more sense to pulp an entire ball (2-3kilos) and store it in the fridge.

My tamarind has always come from grandma's kitchen garden. At the right time of the year, tamarind pods are taken off the trees, the flesh is seperated from the pods and seeds and the flesh is then rolled into tight balls which dehydrate and become tighter as the days pass.

Grandma rolled some of the tamarind in salt, so it would keep longer. These balls were then distributed to her children and grandchildren when requested.

I prefer making my tamarind pulp from this to using store bought paste for the obvious reasons - purity & avoiding preservatives.

Its better to do this on a day when you have a few hours free to keep going back to your tamarind.
 
I prefer to pulp the whole ball at once, because it speeds up my cooking process.(I forgot to take a picture of the ball before starting. But its normally the size of  a cantaloupe.)

Place the ball of tamarind in a bowl (preferably non-metal), heat water in another bowl (if using tap water, boil thoroughly to kill as many micro organisms as possible and then cool)

Pour the hot water over the ball of tamarind to half its height. Let it soak for awhile. Then with a spoon try to disintegrate the ball. The more surface that is touched by water, the faster the process will go.

You may have to check on it multiple times to get the ball to completely split up. Add more water if you feel that it is getting too thick. When you have a reasonably thick pulp, strain the mixture through a seive. Bottle the strained pulp.

There will still be a lot of flesh attached to fibres. Put all this back in the original vessel and pour some more hot water on it. Repeat seive and water process till you feel you have extracted as much as you can from the tamarind.

The pulp should be the consistency of chocolate sauce or thicker as you can see above. If it is too thin, it could ruin the consistency of the dishes you add it to (ok, for curries, but not stir fries) And what is to be discarded will be completely dry.

If your last extract is very thin, then use that to make rasam or keep aside to use in a curry. Don't dilute the whole batch.

Bottle in a glass jar with a glass or plastic top (tamarind will react with anything metallic) preferably vaccum packed, especially if you have more than one bottle.

I keep this paste for 6months to 1 year in the fridge without any trouble and use as needed. If your tamarind ball doesn't have any added salt, you can add some to help lengthen the life of the Paste/Pulp.

The dry roughage/ waste of the tamarind is extremely good for polishing brass and copper items.

This is why I normally keep aside a whole day for making tamarind paste as I normally follow it up with a polishing session. Its as good or better than any store bought polish (+its natural +gentle on your skin +no breathing in harmful chemicals.)

Here is a Before after Picture :)

It needs just a little elbow grease.

Recipe : Nepali Style Chicken Biryani

This is another recipe from my friend who gave me the recipe for the Nepali Potato Kebabs

Its one of the easier Biryani recipes that I have come across and is pretty quick to prepare and cook as we will be using small pieces of boneless chicken and there is no masala to be ground.

Ingredients:
2 cups basmati/biryani/long grained rice
1.5 cups boneless chunks of chicken (preferably breast meat)
3 tbsp ghee (You can use a little less if you prefer but don't substitute with oil, it will affect the flavor) / semna/clarified butter
1 cardamom pod
2 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 medium onion chopped
salt to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric/haldi
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 tsp ginger paste or freshly chopped ginger
1 tsp garam masala
2 cups water

Preparation:
Wash rice, soak in water for 10-20 minutes (while preparing the rest of the ingredients)
On medium flame, Heat the ghee, fry the cardamom, cloves and bay leaves until light brown.
Add chopped onion and cook until golden brown.
Add chicken, increase the heat and fry until the chicken is golden brown.
Add salt, turmeric, garlic, ginger and garam masala.
Cook for 15 minutes or till chicken is almost done.
Drain the water from the rice and add it to the chicken.
Fry until the rice is slightly browned.
Add the 2 cups water.

Tip:Always add hot water rather than water at room temperature to prevent the cold water from abruptly stopping the cooking process and to give your rice the right consistency in the end result.

Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.
Serve hot with Raita or pickles.

Variations:
This preparation doesn't have any chillies added to it, if you would like to spice it up a bit, add a few chopped chillies when adding the turmeric powder.
This recipe can also be converted into a Vegetarian Biryani by substituting potatoes for the chicken.

Make Your Burgers Taste Even Better

We all know how to make a hamburger, but some burgers are better than others.

When the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine were working on 'The Best Recipe' (Boston Common Press, $29.95), they wanted to know the secret to making not just a better burger but the best burger.

Here are some tips, from them and from others:

o Use ground chuck, preferably a chuck roast you've cajoled the butcher into grinding for you. Or you can grind it yourself at home in a food processor.

Make sure the meat is cold, cut into small (roughly 3/4 inch) chunks and process in small batches.

It also helps to chill the bowl and the blade in the freezer for 30 minutes.

~ Eighty percent lean meat is best; more fat and the burger will be greasy; less and it won't be as tender and juicy.

~ Season meat before shaping it into patties.

~ If you're planning cheeseburgers, an alternative to a slice of cheese on top is to grate the cheese directly into the raw beef.

~ Divide the meat into (6-ounce) portions, toss it from hand to hand to form a ball and press it into a patty with your fingertips to avoid overworking the meat.

~ The perfect burger has a crisp, flavorful crust and a moist, tender interior.

Grilling and pan-searing, especially in a cast-iron skillet, can produce these qualities as long as the grill rack or pan is hot when you start.

~ Don't press down while the burgers cook. It squeezes out the juice and makes them dry.

~ Don't flip constantly. Once on each side should do it.

~ To avoid burgers with that puffy domed shape that allows condiments to slide off, form a slight depression in the center of each patty.

On the grill, the center will puff up on its own and the burger will be more uniform.

from the "Meat Cookbook," by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly;

article courtesy Mercury News wire services.