Friday 22 January: India 🇮🇳 : North Indian Lamb Curry with Basmati Pilaf with Dill and Cardamom
Two recipes from two great cookery writers: Anjum Anand and the legendary Madhur Jaffrey. As ever on a Friday evening, I start rather late after my evening walk and pay the price.
Fry some cardamom and bay leaf before adding chopped onion and browning it (which always takes 2-3 times as long as the recipe says it will. Add chopped lamb, fry, followed by a ginger-garlic paste and mix of turmeric, coriander powder and garam masala. Then add chopped tomatoes, bring to a boil and simmer until the masala is cooked through and the harsh taste has gone (which again takes forever). Add water, bring to a boil and cook for 35-45 minutes until the lamb is tender, before adding some fresh coriander.
For the rice, again fry some cardamom and bay leaf but this time with cinnamon. Again fry chopped onions until brown. Then add basmati rice and chopped dill, stir and then add chicken stock, bringing to a boil. Cover and cook on very low heat for 25 minutes.
By the time I serve up, it is well past 11 o’clock at night.
The result? A gentle, soft lamb in a mild sauce, giving that delicious flavour that can only be cooked lamb. The freshness of the coriander. Again, those joyous moments where you feel a moist cardamom pod in your mouth. The rice is great, but in truth the dill is a bit dominant.
Still, it is quietly fabulous and I want more, even if it did take an eternity.
Saturday 23 January: Bangladesh 🇧🇩 : Chingri Malai – Bengali Prawn Curry
For Bangladesh, again a bit of Googling and several recommendations that Chingri Malai is the most representative national dish, albeit one initially associated with Malay fishermen. I find a number of recipes but settle for one from www.gastronomicbong.com
I marinate some unpeeled large prawns in salt and turmeric before frying very briefly until the shells change colour. I remove and replace with bay leaves, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves, sauté very briefly in oil and then throw in some chopped garlic and chopped onions until translucent. I then add a little crushed ginger and garlic, chopped tomato and salt and cook until ‘soft and muchy’ (sic) before adding chilli, more turmeric and some water and cook the resulting masala. So far, so very similar to the lamb curry.
Then the twist: coconut milk and sugar, briefly cooked before adding the prawns for about 5 minutes. I am supposed to add a small bit of ghee, but overlook. I serve the whole lot with simple basmati rice.
The result? Delicious… The juicy softness of the prawns. The lovely sweet coconut sauce. The masala is quiet but rich, with the odd delicious hint of the cardamom and the lingering kick of the chilli powder.
The whole thing is such a quiet and comforting symphony of flavours, each having their moment without overpowering the others. Again, I want more. More! MORE!
With no one to tell me what a pig I am, I take the prawns, shell and all, crunching the body and legs as if I were eating soft shell crabs and sucking the heads with their taste of rock pools.
Utterly fabulous.
Sunday 24 January: Myanmar 🇲🇲 : See-Pyan – Burmese chicken curry
This is a beautifully simple Asian curry stew that I had already tried once before, taken from Madhur Jaffrey’s classic “Ultimate Curry Bible”.
Marinate a skinned and chopped whole chicken in curry powder, garam masala, and salt. Make a paste of garlic, ginger, onions, cayenne pepper and paprika. Fry the paste in oil until dark and reduced. Add the chicken until lightly browned and then add chopped tomatoes, a stick of lemongrass, and some fish sauce. Then cover with water, cover and cook gently for 25 minutes before boiling off the sauce.
I serve this with another lovely and simple dish: Meera Sodha’s cinnamon and clove pilau from her book “Made in India”.
The result? Despite boiling off the sauce for considerably longer than in the book, the sauce is still rather watery, not so much a sauce as a stew. But it is marvellous nonetheless: wonderfully subtle and delicate, with that lovely salty kick from the fish sauce, and the freshness of the infused lemongrass. The chicken is beautifully soft and chewy and again, without anyone to reprove me, I can shamelessly lick and chew around the bones.
It is a glorious Asian experience: chicken pieces in a subtle and slightly oily sauce and all coupled with the equally subtle pleasure of the clove and cinnamon-infused basmati rice. And the knowledge that it would be even better reheated over the next days – and was, the sauce firmer, the chicken softer and having absorbed more of the sauce, splendid with the rice.
It makes me dream of temples and hot Asian nights.
Monday 25 January: Thailand 🇹🇭 : Tord mun pla and paad thai: fish cakes and Pad Thai
As with France, Italy and India, this was a hard choice: how to represent a country that has added so much to the global cooking repertoire? The dish that made me fall in love with Thai cooking was a bowl of tom yam served on the overnight train from Bangkok to Chang Mai in Easter 1996: it was a revelation: the lemongrass, the prawns, the spices, all slurped out of a metal bowl on an old train.
I also think of smashing Thai green chicken and aubergine curries, of red peanut curries or yellow massaman.
But sometimes you just have to go for a cooking experience that makes you nervous. I have often eaten Thai fish cakes as a starter and loved their strange spongy, spicy texture: the flecks of chilli.
But to cook them?
And to cook Pad Thai, that seemingly super-simple Thai concoction of noodles, peanuts, coriander and prawns? Tempting fate.
So I have a go, Googling the fish cakes and taking a recipe for Pad Thai from Ken Hom’s “Ken Hom cooks Thai”.
And indeed the paste for the fish cakes is tricky: whirring together white fish fillets with red curry paste, coriander fish sauce, lime juice and egg until my food processor almost breaks, and then stiffening them up with some cornflour (in the absence of rice flour) before scooping them up and forming them into patties for frying.
The Pad Thai is simpler in theory but involves a lot of prep, shelling and deveining prawns, cooking thick noodles, chopping garlic and Thai chillies, slicing shallots, beating eggs and then preparing a mix of soy sauce, lime juice and fish sauce with sugar and freshly ground pepper. And then there is the garnish of lime, coriander, spring onions, chopped roast peanuts and chilli flakes. All a lot of things to come together at once.
So with the cooking of noodles, the frying of prawns, followed by the garlic, chillies and shallots, and then the frying of the noodles with beansprouts, the egg and the mix of sauces, it is all a bit chaotic, and then I have to fry the splodges of fish cake mix.
The effect? The noodles a bit dry and garlicky from sitting too long after cooking. No sense of the fried shallots, chilli, and garlic, lost somewhere in the eggy noodles, the whole thing helped only by the prawn, peanuts, coriander and lime juice. But when I reheat for lunch the next day, the whole thing comes together: the noodles improve, the prawns perk up and the citrusy-peanuty-coriandery covering gives it that glorious Thai freshness.
And my ugly fish cakes? Quite delicious. Perhaps not as spongey as the professional version but still very nice, lingering on the mouth with a slight spiciness and working well with my dipping sauce.
Wednesday 27 January: Laos 🇱🇦 : Pork Larb
Larb is a dish cooked in a number of countries, but my research tells me that it holds a special place in the hearts of Laotians. I find an extremely simple recipe: toast then grind some rice grains. Stir fry some minced pork then add the rice powder, some lime juice, fish sauce and sugar. Fry for another minute before adding chopped shallots, spring onion, red chilli, mint and coriander. Then serve with – ideally sticky – rice and lettuce.
That’s it. Super easy to prepare and yet delicious.The smell of fried pork and the fresh veg with a kick of lime and chilli. Utterly simple. Utterly delicious. The salty pork in its juices. The fresh green vitality from the mint, coriander, lime and lettuce. The soft sliced shallots. The quiet balance of the rice. The delicate hints of the red chilli without being overpowering. My lips tingle delightfully without knowing quite why. Yum, yum, yum.
It is the delicate taste of Asia: fresh ingredients all well prepared and quickly heated. It takes me back to a wonderful trip through Laos in 1996 in the days when there were few tourists and we were exotic creatures enchanting the local children. It takes me back to a great stay in Luang Prabang, the former capital, and the wonderful smell of burning charcoal.
Oh to be travelling once again…
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