Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Raw garlic: Too strong to handle?

Over the past few months, I have been exploring Mediterranean cuisine. One difference I find between it and Indian cuisine is the way garlic is used. Often in Mediterranean dishes, garlic is used raw. For instance, in gazpacho, garlic is blended into a soup that is itself uncooked. Also, in a classic cucumber dip, finely chopped raw garlic, along with mint, gives the dish its distinctive flavor.

In Indian cuisine, on the other hand, garlic is generally not used uncooked except perhaps in pickles. Raw garlic can smell pungent to many Indian diners. Bengali cooks, for instance, think that even quickly sautéing helps to temper the sharp flavor. Frying or roasting, of course, imparts a nutty fragrance to the condiment.

How do you like your garlic, dear reader? Cooked or uncooked?

Monday, November 03, 2008

Cooking in Calcutta covered in newspaper

This post is a moment of pride. I am glad to report that Cooking in Calcutta was featured last month in an article on food blogs in The Telegraph. Thanks to all of you who read the blog and post messages. Read the article, “Hungry kya?

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Fish with tamarind paste, a homey pleasure

Recently, a recipe in The New York Times reminded me of macher tok, or sour fish, because the recipe listed tamarind as an ingredient. The dish, curried striped bass, brought to mind rui and katla, which are similar to bass. So, I decided to try it. It had basically the same ingredients – mustard seeds, turmeric, sugar, tamarind – but differed in a couple of respects: the Bengali version, at least the one in our home, doesn’t use onion and coriander leaves.

The New York Times version turned out to be good enough to eat, although I prefer my mother’s simpler version, which calls for lightly frying the fish before dropping it into the simmering sauce, rather than using straight. But, the point is that the recipe, written by a non-Indian for an American newspaper, had connected me to home and my mother’s cooking.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Cream of mushroom soup, flavored with garam masala

Last week, I talked about the simplicity of the Bengali garam masala; this week's post is a continuation of the same thread. This week, I present a cream of mushroom soup flavored with garam masala rather than with garlic and onion.

This is a strictly vegetarian version (unless you consider fungus as non-vegetarian; I think biologically fungus is a plant) of the cream of mushroom soup, which I became intimately familiar with when I lived in the United States, a decade ago. During those shoestring-budget days (as a graduate student), I often fell back upon a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (and bread) for dinner.

Here is a low-fat recipe (without cream, thickened with flour instead) for the soup with a Bengali touch:

Ingredients
1 lb. mushroom (almost any kind would do; I used white button)
2 oz. (or four tablespoons) butter, preferably unsalted
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 litre (or 4 cups) milk
1 teaspoon Bengali garam masala (whole, dry-roasted, and ground)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth or paper towel, trim the bases of stems, and chop the mushrooms.
  2. Heat butter in pan and suate the mushrooms for a 2-3 minutes, until just softened.
  3. Add milk and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring once in a while.
  4. Stir in flour into a cup of cold water and add to the soup.
  5. Simmer for 5 more minutes and season with salt, pepper, and the garam masala.
  6. Serve hot with bread.

Serves 4-5

Cream of mushroom soup, a "classic" with a new flavor

Last week, I talked about the simplicity of the Bengali garam masala; this week's post is a continuation of the same thread. This week, I present a cream of mushroom soup flavored with garam masala rather than with garlic and onion.

This is a strictly vegetarian version (unless you consider fungus non-vegetarian; I think biologically fungus is a plant) of the cream of mushroom soup, which I became intimately familiar with when I lived in the United States, a decade ago. During those shoestring-budget days (as a graduate student), I often fell back upon a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (and bread) for dinner.

Anyway, here is a low-fat recipe (without cream, thickened with flour instead) for the soup with a Bengali touch:

Ingredients

1 lb. mushroom (almost any kind would do; I used white button)
2 oz. (or four tablespoons) butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 litre (or four cups) milk
1 teaspoon Bengali garam masala (whole, dry-roasted, and ground)
salt and pepper to taste

Method
  1. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth or paper towel and chop them.
  2. Heat butter in pan and suate the mushrooms for a 2-3 minutes, until just softened.
  3. Add milk and simmer for 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in flour into a cup of cold water and add to the soup.
  5. Simmer for 5 more minutes and season with salt, pepper, and the garam masala.

Serves 4-5

Monday, August 11, 2008

The Bengali garam masala: Simple, yet elegant

Garam masala is perhaps as common in Indian cuisine as curry. But, there are several blends available in the market; even home-made ones vary from region to region or from home to home. The Bengali garam masala is a simple mixture or blend (often whole ingredients are used rather than ground) of three spices: cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon. Other garam masala blends usually contain at least two of these in addition to several spices, like cumin, coriander, and black pepper.

The Bengali garam masala has a sweet and nutty flavor because of the presence of cinnamon and cardamom and because of the absence of any minty or fennel-like flavors. A common way to add the garam masala to a dish is to sauté a mixture of the whole spices in oil or ghee at the beginning or to dry-roast the mixture, grind it, and sprinkle it on the dish as a finishing touch. Dry-roasting (on stovetop or oven) brings out the flavor, adding a nutty touch to it, and makes it easier to powder the mixture.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Mustard seed oil: Gaining wider acceptance?

In an earlier post I wrote about mustard oil, especially in regard to how it compares with olive oil. Mustard oil, I thought, hails from India – it’s a quintessentially Indian oil, as olive oil is essentially Mediterranean in origin.

Recently, though, I came across a mustard oil brand from Australia. And I am happy to note – from a brief New York Times article – that mustard oil is now being used as a specially flavored oil in the United States and other countries.

The brand mentioned in the article is Naturally from Nature (www.naturallyfromnature.com). Does any reader, in Australia or elsewhere, have any idea about this brand of mustard oil? How does this compare with Indian mustard oil?

Monday, July 21, 2008

Striking a relationship with your grocer – II

Over the past few months, I got a call twice from my old sabziwala, Ashok, in Kolkata. He called long distance to say hello to me in Mumbai, filling me with delight. For I was connecting again with my man in Kolkata, my grocer – no, the word doesn’t just do justice – my vegetable vendor, who brought his produce from rural Bengal.

Ashok sold the most tender and the best breed of cauliflower and okra and drumsticks and, in the summer, mangoes. He sold “ol” and yam and some obscure, quintessentially Bengali vegetables.

When I needed something special, like white onion or country tomatoes – not the hybrid variety – he would procure it for me from his farm or elsewhere. And often he would give away something free.

So, when he calls me, I feel happy and nostalgic. In Mumbai, I haven’t been able to forge such a relationship with any sabziwala.

Monday, July 14, 2008

The two faces of cardamom: One subtle, the other bold

Small cardarmom
In an earlier post I wrote about home-made herbal tea. This post is about the nuances of cardamom – how two kinds of cardamom have two distinct flavors.

The two kinds are small and green, and large and black. A while ago, my mother and I tested the flavors of the two kinds in tea. We made the tea with identical leaves and the same method, but the tea sample with green cardamom had an aromatic, subtle flavor, while the one made with the large variety had a bold, smoky flavor. Our conclusion: they aren’t interchangeable.

Large cardamomThe large cardamom is used extensively in many Indian dishes, including fried rice and biryani. But, I wouldn’t use it in herbal tea; the green small ones are better for that use.

Yet, in the end, cardamom remains a mystery to me. When I went to Sikkim, a mountainous state in India’s Northeast, I drank flavorful black (without creamer/milk) tea from porcelain cups with heavy lids that looked like small pots. In the quaint eateries on the mountains overlooking the imposing Himalayan peaks, I found the aroma of cardamom tea unspeakably satisfying. I have no idea which cardamom the tea was infused with; all I know is the tea tasted unlike anything I had drunk before. Maybe it was the locale where the secret lay, where cardamom plants grew in the wild and where the mountains added their charm to anything we imbibed.

Dear reader, which cardamom do you prefer? Do you use both?

Monday, March 31, 2008

Where a rice pudding is ceremony and blessing

Few other Bengali desserts are more homey and ceremonial than payesh, or rice pudding. Payesh is something Bengali mothers cook on their sons’ birthdays; the son eats it as an offering from his mother or a food blessed by her.

Payesh, when perfectly made, is wonderfully creamy, smooth and custard-like, yet eggless. Today, my mother made a batch, complete with a sprinkling of chopped cashew nuts and plump raisins and flavored with bay leaves and cardamom.

I had asked her to teach me how to make it, but she made it when I was sleeping on a Sunday morning. Obviously, she didn’t have the heart to wake me up from my weekend slumber. Today was not my birthday, but I wanted to learn how to make it and eat it, too. I couldn’t watch her make it; here is the recipe as I heard it later. So, this is untested in a lab kitchen, but if you trust my mother, as I do, then go ahead and make it. Remember that the secret to great payesh is constant stirring and adding the sugar after the rice is tender.

Ingredients
1 quart (about 1 liter) whole milk
1 cup water
1/3rd cup sugar
3 bay leaves
1/4th cup flavorful (e.g., basmati) rice
1/4th cup cashew nut roughly chopped
1/4th cup raisins
6 small cardamoms, crushed

Method
  1. Put half of the milk, bay leaves, rice, water, cashew nut, and raisins in a pot and bring to boil.
  2. Cook stirring until the rice is cooked, about 15 minutes, on low heat.
  3. Put the rest of the milk and sugar, and continue stirring until the milk thickens, about 15 minutes, on low heat.
  4. Add the cardamom, stir, and turn off the heat. Serve warm or chilled, garnished with a spring of mint or a swirl of thick honey.

Note: Grate nutmeg on top for a more complex flavor.

Monday, February 11, 2008

In Bengal, a pancake syrup as mellifluous as maple

In an earlier post, I wrote about pancakes – how I came to love and make pancakes. I wrote about eating pancakes with honey drizzled on top. Actually, one reason I use honey is it’s less expensive than maple syrup in India but the flavor equally good.

Another syrup-like natural product I eat with pancakes is “gur.” Gur is a form of jaggery that comes from the sap of palm trees, including the date palm. Jaggery is a common term for dark, unrefined sugar that does little justice to the glorious syrup called nalen gur or taler gur in Bengal (More about that in a later post). Such gur can be in two forms: either a solid cake or a honey butter texture. It’s the liquid form that I love to drizzle upon my pancake.

In many ways, gur is similar to maple syrup: Both are processed from the sap of trees. Yet, pure maple syrup is more expensive – the cheaper varieties are mixed with other syrups, like corn syrup, to keep costs affordable for the supermarket customer.

In India, I have found a cheaper, but equally flavorful alternative. How’s that? Have you tried anything other than maple syrup on your pancakes?