To mark the final day of my vacation in the city, the rains are falling. I am just returned from a soggy trip to Cortelyou Road with my Lefferts Gardens neighbor and CSW colleague, let’s call him JMW since we all go by our initials at the shop. This particular Sunday farmer’s market is surprisingly sizable. Knoll Krest Farm eggs, the ubiquitous Di Paolo’s (the “spoofulated” farm stand as JMW put it), Bardwell’s cheeses, and a couple of enticing seafood, grass-fed beef and usual Mexican specialty all-veg stands were there. It is not far from the breakfast serving Farm on Adderley – a restaurant I intend to hit in the next four weeks.

On a grander scale, I took my first journey north through Prospect Park to visit the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza yesterday. It is the second biggest greenmarket after Union Square but considerably more chill with a great many good stands for seasonal produce. I could have spent a bomb, had I had a bomb in my pocket, instead I made out with garlic scapes (so fucking earthy), and a small honeydew melon (that’s currently stinking out my apartment), along with sweet heirloom tomatoes, among other goodies.

Perhaps my favorite market journey of all was Borough Hall on Tuesday. It was simply sweet, sweet, sweet and heaving with peaches. The major score for me is that it’s situated a short walk away from Sahadi. Oh how I love Sahadi.

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Departing from my greenmarket vacation forays, I also visited the new DeKalb Market with my good mate Chantal. It was hot and the sun was intense; it had that gritty urban feel that reminded me of a swap meet (the first time I heard this term I thought everyone was saying “swamp mead”) in a city like L.A.

DeKalb Market is sheltered in an abandoned lot surrounded by food stands (our choice that afternoon was unfortunately disappointing) and filled with tables and benches to nosh at while listening to the slightly too-loud music, spun live by one of the resident DJs. Being a Wednesday afternoon it wasn’t busy but the cross section of Brooklyn-ites was eclectic to say the least, consisting of the lunching local elderly, stroller mummies, cool afro-punk chicks and the occasional skinny hipster. Customized shipping containers house small boutiques. My favorites were the Pratt pop-up shop and Harriet’s By Hekima. The latter caused me to fish for my credit card to procure a playful navy tank top dress, flared at the bottom with a crazy ruffle of West African cotton print in loud yellow and red. I’ll be wearing it until Labor Day.

Lefferts Gardens isn’t a food destination. Manhattanites (or other Brooklyn kin) aren’t trekking here for off-the-beaten-path grub featured in influential publications, but for anyone that lives here, De Hot Pot is a sweet Trinidadian curry and roti café .

Vee cooks the food. She’s a moody lady and she’ll give you the cold shoulder if she feels like it, for no apparent reason. I like her despite the hot and cold temperature, or perhaps I like her for it. The first time I introduced myself as a newcomer to the neighborhood I was met with frosty skepticism. Until, that is, I told her Fritz (my neighbor and a long time Lefferts resident and Trini ex-pat) sent me. The ice melted. My intimate knowledge of achar (spicy Indian pickle) didn’t hurt either.

The third encounter had us bonding over curry recipes. I bemoaned the distance I had to travel for curry leaves. She looked at me oddly, tilted her head, and questioned, “girl, ya mean kari poulay?” The common language for curry leaves got me way excited. Vee gets her ingredients from Queens, where there is a large desi community. She travels to work everyday, from one borough to another.

On this visit I felt bold enough to approach the subject of roti.  I told her I’d never seen roti so big  – “it’s the size of a table cloth” exclaimed my friend Chantal — to which Vee explained that in Guyana the rotis are small like India but Trinidadians make them big for the practical purpose of feeding guests at large weddings and celebrations. It’s easier to roll out one big roti instead of three small ones when you’re feeding hundreds.

We’ve shared our love of bones with each other too. Here’s an excerpt (as much as I can recall) of another recent visit.

Me: Hi Vee, I’m here for goat curry. I like the bones, will you give me plenty of bones?

Vee: Ya like bone? Ya like me. I don need meat, jus bone.

And did she pile it on. I came home with a container overflowing with curry sauce and a roti the size of a tablecloth.

Here’s a picture, portioned out of course.

It is no secret that I have a taste for innards. Long before guts became trendy, I grew up munching on bone marrow (my favorite), fish eyes, tripe and I once ate some delectable sheep’s balls at the age of seven but my aunty didn’t tell me because I was scoffing them with such glee. My brother had to later reveal to me the true essence of what I was eating simply to gross me out.

There has been an offal renaissance in the UK and chef Fergus Henderson, has led the way for pure, simple, whole animal eating ever since opening his restaurant, St. John Smithfield, in the nineties. After traipsing around Shoreditch for the day, Jim and I sat in the glorious garden at the Geffrye Museum (a gem of an old Almshouse converted into a museum showcasing English interiors of the “middling” class from the 1600s onwards) and called St. John on a whim. A table happed to be open at seven. We walked through the maze to Clerkenwell, taking a trip through Smithfield Meat Market, a spot that perpetually smells like iodine and raw meat.

In the stark white dining room that is St. John we eyed the wine list, spotting wines from Eric Texier and Pierre Breton. We honed in on the Robinot Cuvee Bistrologie 2005 (a VdT Chenin Blanc), an amazing, weird, textured, cloudy and truly delicious wine and it faired well with our repast of cured beef and celeriac, butter beans and cauliflower (big meaty beans tossed in aromatic olive oil with leeks and capers) and heart (like a cross between liver and flank steak) with green beans.

We had to order Ferguson’s signature dish, bone marrow and parsley salad, which I’ve had a couple of times before and attempted to cook myself from his Nose to Tail Eating cookbook.

This particular dish brings back memories of the buttery, gelatinous goodness my parents would extract from their own plates of lamb or mutton bones and proffer to me with love when I was a wee thing.

More innards came my way at Hereford Road.

Jim and I arranged to stay in Notting Hill at Miller’s Residence for one night, courtesy of Martin Miller (owner of Martin Miller gin). Dinner reservations were a no-brainer once I’d read up on London-based food blogs and media reviews, which all raved about Hereford Road restaurant, a mere block away from our accommodations.

Upon entering Hereford Road, I noted that the décor was hideous but the menu sounded fantastic. Chef Tom Pemberton is a St. John alumni and the menu reads so faithfully from the St. John school of cooking. We ordered a plate of salty, crispy sand eels and a headcheese terrine for starters,

followed with pigeon and kidneys for mains. Now, I am not the faint-at-heart type when it comes to food but the kidneys…man those kidneys…they were FUNKY.

I had to take a deep breath before I dared stick a forkful in my mouth because the dish reeked of pee you see. I have fairly decent knowledge of biology and I’m fully aware of the kidneys functions but to have it so brazenly displayed on the plate turned my stomach a tad. Jim reckons it was my mood. He says that typically, a dish such as this would be right up my alley and he, of course, LOVED it. Admittedly, my belly wasn’t happy that day and Hereford Road may well have been bad timing on my part. I did, however, respect its unadulterated meat parts. Who else serves kidneys medium rare, unhindered by sauces and not stuffed into a pie?

I would go to Hereford Road again. And as Martin Miller remarked (he admitted he isn’t a fan of the restaurant) at least I can say I’ve been there – all I need is a t-shirt: “Been to Hereford Road: Ate kidneys.”

My mother used to shop at Brixton market a couple of times a week for Indian and Caribbean food supplies that she wasn’t able to find in Balham. Years later the same neighborhood became my nightlife outlet (The Dogstar and The Fridge for after-hours), now I visit Brixton whenever I’m in London and the memories come flooding.

I recall this cute little restaurant (if you can call it that – it had about 3 tables on premises) housed in Market Row, one of the many shopping arcades in the neighborhood that made decent pizza. The owner vacated the premises and an Italian from Naples moved in and set up shop. His name is not Franco – Franco Manca means Franco is gone…a reference to the previous owner.

Now, nestled among African fabric shops and stalls selling plantains and yucca, there is a line of Guardian-reading Brixtonites and gastronomes from all over London (and further) salivating for a bite of sourdough pizza with the most minimal of toppings. Some say it’s the best pizza in Britain.

Jim and I shared a basic mozzarella, tomato and house-cured ham pie.

I’m no pizza expert but I can say that I really enjoyed the weight and texture (not too thin and nowhere near thick) and tang of the dough. The menu consists of about six different bare-bones pizzas and you can either drink water, lemonade, a choice of one organic beer or house red or house white.

I opted for the house white, served at room temperature in a small glass tumbler. All I could muster is that it was a Cortese (probably from around Piedmont) and is sourced and bottled by Wild Caper, a cute little deli across the way in Market Row, also owned by Franco Manca proprietor and pizza man, Giuseppe Mascoli. The label indicated the lemony-tasting vino was low in sulphites and at something like £1.75 a glass it was one of the most palatable bargains I’ve had. The bottle sells at Wild Caper for about five quid and it blows the supermarket shit (at the same price) that most Britons drink out of the water.

Mr. Mascoli must have a good sense humour too. Check out the wall art. Another memory I have of growing up the the UK are the Thatcher years…but let’s not go there, shall we?

The spirited dinners at Tales take place on the same night at various restaurants in New Orleans. For the most part a guest mixologist creates a menu of drinks to work with the chef’s 3-course dinner. It costs 100 bucks per person and it’s a major deal. Jim joined me this year and we attended the Calcasieu dinner, which is the private space above Cochon. The menu was delicious and the drinks were stellar because Eben [Klemm] and Eben [Freeman] were our bartenders for the night. The first concoction [created by Freeman] was a sumptuous drink called the Cornbread Old Fashion’, which offered a distinct sweet corn taste within a body of warming bourbon. It was weird and brilliant. Freeman’s next potion was the, faintly celery-tasting Lovage Sour, a mix of Beefeater Gin, dry vermouth and the lovage herb. The drink was paired with baked stuffed gulf oyster with bacon.

Klemm gave us a lighter, aromatic cocktail in the form of Bay Brees, a blend of St. Germain and bay leaf syrup. It was as delicate as it was pretty and was served with seared jumbo shrimp with port risotto and lemon salsa verde. Klemm’s next drink, Earth, was a twist on a dark n’ stormy, made from dark rum, averna and beet juice, garnished with ginger [dehydrated] jerky. It was intensely hued and had a lovely earthy savoriness about it. Earth’s edible partner was a plate of roasted duck breast with duck boudin and figs.

To top it all off, both mixologists created nutty, postprandial cognac drinks. Klemm’s was a creamy poppy seed tipple named The Karzai (an interesting reference to Afghanistan’s poppy seed cultivation) and Freeman’s was an amaretto-like drink of cognac infused with walnuts.

TOC’s parties are mostly fabulous though some are getting cheesy now big (and not necessarily good) brands are getting involved. The best shindigs had to be Hendrick’s Burlesque party, alas I got there too late and missed the action but the drinks were good and the crowd was fun. Later that night the party moved onto Donald Link’s Herbsaint, where we sat outside with a bunch of industry folk and sipped whatever was going around.

On the last night we partook in a funeral procession from Hurrah’s into the French Quarter. The Red Headed Slut [cocktail] had kicked the bucket, or rather Simon Ford, brand ambassador for Plymouth Gin, shoved her into a coffin, declared her dead and a bunch of other bartenders rejoiced. She was a drink that shall not be missed.

The jazzed-up funeral was led by an excellent second line band, Plymouth Gin drinks were handed out along the way and our shuffle through the streets of New Orleans ended at Latrobe’s for the Bartender’s Breakfast. An event I took to literally mean a sit down affair involving a plate of eggs benedict. It turned out to be the best party I’ve been to in years. Milk and Honey,
Employees Only, Contemporary Cocktails were among the stands making cocktails. We boogied the night away and then rounded up TOC 2009 at the Old Absinthe House…

Tales of the Cocktail makes you wish you could be at two, nay make that three, places at once. With too many cool and relevant seminars, fabulous dinners, lunches, offers to meet with master distillers, brand owners, mixologists and, throw in meetings with an editor or two – it’s a dizzying affair of too much going on at the same time.

The How’s and Why’s of Cocktails was a good basic seminar led by Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club and Tony Conigliaro. Conigliaro is a bartender based in London who just opened a new cocktail bar in Islington, that I’ll be checking out when I go to London in a few weeks, called 69 Colebrook Row. Audrey and Tony made a good team, encouraging bartenders to think outside the box. Turns out Audrey is friends with Harold McGee and sometime consults with him on food science and lore when trying to create a new drink. Apparently it can take her two years of trial and error before she feels a cocktail is ready for the menu. Such was the case (though not sure if it took at long as 2 years) for her infamous Earl Grey MarTEAni, a drink she originally created for the Ritz Carlton in London.

It was particularly interesting when they talked about Europe VS US trends. Tony described the Brits as liking tall, refreshing, lighter-style drinks, while Audrey emphasized New York’s love for boozy classics and bitters. You can make that same comparison when it comes to the West Coast and the East Coast. SF drinks tend to utilize moor fruit. A visit to Death & Co, Mayahuel or PDT proves that we love our gin, whisk(e)y and tequila with bitters, herbal liqueurs, sherry and amaro, lemon or lime juice tends to be the only fruit present.

I had to make the Cognac from Vine to Shaker seminar because I have a soft spot for grape distillates and several of my favorite industry people were there, Jack Robertiello (my once editor turned friend), Jean Louis Carbonnier (he represents a number of great wine and spirits regions) and Jim Meehan from PDT. Guillame Lamy from Pierre Ferrand cognac was also on the panel. There was a lot of talk about trying to get cognac out of its bling image and into a more accessible role. Meehan talked about classic cocktails using cognac. He acknowledged that selling a cognac cocktail isn’t easy but there are a few tricks up his sleeve: list the cocktail high up on the menu, cucumbers in a mixed drink always seem to sell well, case in point is the French Maid served at PDT (muddled cucumber, mint, lime and cognac).

Angus Winchester and Simon Ford ran The World’s Best Bar Crawl seminar. It was a case of two industry Brits sharing their list of the best bars in the world. Clearly, I have a lot of traveling and drinking to do. I’ve been to the bars marked with an asterisk. Here’s the rundown.

NORTH AMERICA

PX, Vancouver
Westin, Calgary
Flatiron Lounge, NYC *
Milk & Honey, NYC *
PJ Clarkes, NYC
Old Town Bar, NYC
PDT, NYC *
Pegu Club, NYC *
King Cole Bar and Lounge, NYC
The Rainbow Room, NYC
Death & Company, NYC*
The Florida Room, Miami
Bourbon, Washington D.C.
The Gibson, Washington D.C.
Drink, Boston
Vessel, Seattle
Zig-Zag Café, Seattle
Bix, San Francisco
Bourbon and Branch, San Francisco
Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, San Francisco
The Doheny, L.A.
The Edison, L.A. *
The Carousel Bar, New Orleans *
The Old Absinthe House, New Orleans*
Alibi, New Orleans
Bel Ami Restaurant and Lounge, Oregon
Churchill Downs, Kentucky

SOUTH AMERICA
Café Tortoni, Buenos Aires

UK
Merchant’s Hotel, Belfast
Quatch Bar, Speyside
Bramble, Edinburgh
Salvatore at Fifty, London
The Dukes Hotel, London
Quo Vadis, London
Milk & Honey, London
The Lab, London *
The Savoy Hotel, London *

EUROPE
Apoteke, Norway
Ruby, Copenhagen
Door 74, Amsterdam
Barfly’s Club, Vienna
Widder Bar, Zurich
Paparazzi Bar, Bratislava
UFO, Bratislava
Widder Bar, Zurich
Le Lion de Paris, Hamburg
Schumanns, Munich
Becketskoff, Berlin
Hemmingway Bar, Paris *
Hotel Costes, Paris
Harry’s New York Bar, Paris
Dry martini, Barcelona
Boadas, Barcelona
Nottingham Forrest, Milan

MIDDLE EAST
Burj Al Aran, Dubai

MIDDLE EAST
Burj Al Aran, Dubai

EASTERN EUROPE
Sky Bar, Moscow

ASIA
High Five, Tokyo
Tender Bar, Tokyo
Captain’s Bar, Hong Kong
China Club, Hong Kong
Raffles, Singapore
Tippling Club, Singapore
Constellation, Shanghai
Olives, Mumbai
Rick’s, Delhi

DOWN UNDER (According to Simon Ford, the Aussies have the most fantastic cocktail culture than anyone else on the planet)
Der Raum, Melbourne
Tiki Lounge & Bar, Melbourne
Bayswater Brasserie, Sydney
Matterhorn, Wellington, NZ

EURASIA
Sky Bar, Moscow

ASIA
High Five, Tokyo
Tender Bar, Tokyo
Captain’s Bar, Hong Kong
China Club, Hong Kong
Raffles, Singapore
Tippling Club, Singapore
Constellation, Shanghai
Olives, Mumbai
Rick’s, Delhi

DOWN UNDER (According to Simon Ford, the Aussies have the most fantastic cocktail culture than anyone else on the planet)
Der Raum, Melbourne
Tiki Lounge & Bar, Melbourne
Bayswater Brasserie, Sydney
Matterhorn, Wellington, NZ

Nevia, arguably one of the best of farmer’s market stands (we like Rick Bishop too) in NY is currently offering pementos de padron. I rejoiced and I purchased. About twenty peppers into a plate of freshly sautéed goodness I got a hot one. Bingo!

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A few months back, my shellfish allergy meant copious amounts of padron peppers in lieu of crustaceans during a trip to Rias Baixas. I couldn’t get enough of the piquant, vitamin c-charged capsicums at the time. And now I can get them from my local farmer’s market. This makes me exceedingly happy. I experienced a rush when I made my transaction.

It’s summer time in New York. Summer is when my personal chef (and husband) shines. Today’s menu is a locavore’s feast. We procured a slab of flank steak from a new butcher’s shop in the Chelsea Market. Not yet fully opened, Dickson’s Farmstand Meats was offering a peek preview of beef from two different farms. One raises strictly grass-fed cows, while the other feeds his cattle with a mix of grass and grain. We opted for the former. Jim marinated and grilled the meat with garlic scapes, made his summer specialty succotash (corn with some bloody expensive fava beans) and a light cucumber and tomato salad. The steak was as lean as grass fed beef usually is but filled with immense flavor.

The wine to top it all off was a Thierry Puzelat KO rosé. Get a load of the mouth-watering condensation on the bottle.

In the natural wine world, Puzelat is what Kurt Cobain was to grunge. He defines low-interventionist wine and I’m a groupie, along with about half of Tokyo from what I hear. The KO rosé is juicy and fruit-forward with a peppery finish and has that just-fermented, from-the-tank kind of quality. It’s $13.99 and you should get a case of it. C’est l’été enfin.

Chicken fat is caramelizing in the bottom of the pot, while I write this. Yep, I’m cooking my second biryani, per my mother’s recipe. Jim and I will be schlepping the pot with side salad accoutrements [tomato with onion, cilantro, and chili salad, a plain cucumber salad and some Patak’s lime pickle!) to our dear friend’s, May and Duane’s, apartment for dinner. And I am going to offer the dish with an oxidized, sous voile, Tissot Savagnin and the Lemasson Poivre et Sel [gamay and pineau d’aunis].

In Mauritius, biryani is cooked in massive quantities for weddings, birthdays and any sort of special occasion. It is a Muslim specialty but any Mauritian housewife worth her weight in cloves and cardamoms, can cook the dish. I’ve long been intimidated by the process (marinate chicken, precook onions, potatoes, wash and chop a dozen different ingredients) until I had my mother demonstrate the drill step-by-step. And guess what? It’s easy peasy. Here’s the recipe – for four hungry mouths.

Ingredients

4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon of chopped ginger
2Ibs chicken (drumsticks and thighs preferably)
½ cup of plain yoghurt
1 ¼ tablespoon of cumin powder
3 tablespoons of Biryani Mix (I will soon master my own blend)
3 medium sized onions, sliced
5 medium sized potatoes, quartered
1 small bunch of mint
1 small bunch of cilantro
1 cup of peas
2 cups of Tilda Basmati rice
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp of cumin seeds
3 cardamoms
¼ tsp of saffron threads
Ghee
Canola Oil

Mix yoghurt, garlic, ginger, biryani mix and 1 tsp of salt to a paste. Coat chicken pieces and leave in the fridge for 1-2 hours.

In the meanwhile deep fry onions with a pinch of salt in canola oil until they are brown and crispy, but not burned. Remove with a slotted spoon. Add potatoes to same oil, with the addition of ½ tablespoon of ghee, a pinch of salt and a pinch of turmeric powder (to give the potatoes a yellow-golden color). Fry until potatoes are halfway cooked. Put to the side.

If you are using fresh peas, half cook them. If frozen, no need to cook.

Fill a large pan with about six cups of water. Bring to a boil. Salt the water and tip in cinnamon stick, cumin seeds and cardamoms. Add rice. Once water comes back to a boil, give the pot a stir. Let the rice cook only until halfway. Drain and leave to the side with spices still mixed in.

Put the marinated chicken and paste into the bottom of a thick, large pot. Tip in most of the coriander and mint (leave a little of both though). Add potatoes, Add ½ a cup of peas. Sprinkle in a little salt. Tip in all the rice with spices. Season with salt and pepper. Add remaining peas and remaining cilantro and mint. Add saffron threads to a little warm water and sprinkle into the pot. Add three knobs of ghee. Finish with a blanket of the crispy onions. Do NOT mix everything up; this should be built in layers.

Put a tight lid on the pot and leave it on a high heat, on the stove, for 5 mins. Then turn heat to low and let cook for half an hour, or until chicken fat is caramelized and rice is cooked.

Fluff it up, and serve with tomato and cucumber salad. The bottom of the pot is the BEST part.

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More to come tomorrow on how wine and chow make out together tonight.

Aunty Laila’s Fish and Aubergine Curry

My mother’s brother (my Uncle Hassan) owns a food cart, which he sets up at the Rose-Hill bus station on weekdays and sells freshly fried poori (a tortilla-like flatbread) with vegetable curry. His wife (my Aunty Laila) gets up at the crack of dawn and cooks up the curries that are ladled into the poori. They make a good team, in a yin-and-yang kind of way. If they were in New York I’d enter them into the Vendy Awards.

Aunty Laila is a dab hand in the kitchen. Getting her and my mother together is a bit like an episode of Iron Chef. While I was in Mauritius Laila came over to my mum’s and cooked a feast of fish curry with aubergines and roti. Here’s a picture of her rolling out roti.

Before whipping up dinner, Aunty Laila prepared a Mauritian specialty for tea time: boiled bread fruit with a tomato and cilantro salsa-like chutney. The breadfruit tasted quite like cassava and it was pure starchy deliciousness.

For the curry she used a local fish called capitan, a rather meaty white fish, which she had fried before getting to our place. The meal was fantastic. Here is her recipe.

2Ibs of firm fish fillets such as tuna or swordfish
Canola Oil
6 Japanese aubergines (cut into lengthways into two)
1 tablespoon of curry powder
3-4 chopped cloves garlic
1 tsp of chopped ginger
Fenugreek powder
4-5 small plum tomatoes, chopped or ¼ can of chopped tomatoes
Fresh coriander (cilantro)

Fry fish in canola oil. Remove with a slotted spoon and put aside. Make a paste with curry powder, garlic, ginger and fenugreek powder by adding a bit of water. In a saucepan add curry paste to aubergines. Let it simmer away on a low heat for about five minutes. Add tomatoes and continue cooking for 2-3 mins until you have a thick gravy. Add about ½ to ¾ cup of water. Salt. Add fish and let simmer together for about ten minutes. Throw in a handful of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) towards the end.

Serve with white rice or roti and watercress salad.

During my last visit to Mauritius I tapped into the foodie elite but, at the end of the day, it’s home cooking that reaches into my gullet and takes a hold of my heart. From the simple everyday household staple of la daube (a tomato-based stew of chicken or meat with hot peppers and thyme) to a festive biriyani (a rich, spiced rice dish), the food here is a melting pot of African, French and Indian influences. It is a no frills way of eating and it is addictively tasty.

Sophia Govinda, my jolly, generous mother is a fierce home cook. Ma (as I call her) is a barely five-foot fire-plug that can pull a feast off in a snap. Her specialty is biriyani, vegetable samosas and she makes some incredible Mauritian-Tamil dishes. Here is her recipe for meat curry with split chick peas and rasau (a fiery hot spicy soup) — two dishes devoured at Tamil festivities.

Ma’s Dal Gram with Meat Curry

½ Ib Channa Dal (Found in Indian food supply shops)
2Ibs of lamb or mutton shoulder, cut on the bone in stew sized pieces.
3 cloves of chopped garlic
Small piece of chopped ginger
One medium onion, chopped
5 plum tomatoes chopped or ½ small can of chopped tomatoes
1 Tablespoon curry powder (good quality Madras curry powder is essential)
Garam masala
Cilantro
Fresh curry leaves
3 medium sized potatoes, cubed

Soak ½ Ib of dal for two hours, drain and keep the water (you’ll see why in the next recipe). Bring the dal to boil with plenty of water. Skim the froth and let simmer on a low-medium heat until it is almost cooked. Strain and put aside.

Saute lamb or mutton for 2-3 mins, then add chopped garlic, ginger, onions and curry leaves. When the meat is halfway cooked add potatoes and curry powder and chopped tomatoes. Stir. Let the juices dry up. Stir in dal and add half a cup of water. Cover and let simmer for 20 mins or so then add a large pinch of garam masala. Throw in a handful of chopped cilantro during the last five minutes of cooking. You should have a think, rich, almost dried up gravy. Make sure the potatoes are cooked by tasting or testing with a fork.

Serve with freshly cooked white basmati rice and a cucumber salad.

Raseau

1 ½ tsp of mustard seeds
Fresh curry leaves
2 small shallots, chopped
2 garlic cloves chopped
1 teaspoon of chopped ginger
2 fresh thai peppers or 2 dried, chopped
1 tsp of whole black peppercorns
2 chopped plum tomatoes
¼ tsp of turmeric powder
2 heaped tsp of cumin powder,
1 tsp tamarind paste

Crafty lady that my mother is, she keeps the water that the dal had soaked in and used it as the soup base.

Heat oil in a pan, add mustard seeds and curry leaves until that crackle. Then add shallots, garlic, ginger, chili, black peppercorns, plum tomatoes, turmeric, cumin powder and hot peppers. Pour in dal water, bring to a boil, add tamarind paste and salt. Continue to let the mix boil for about 5 mins. Add a handful of chopped cilantro just before serving.

This soup is typically served hot, in cups, and sipped throughout the meal.

Next up will be my Aunty Laila’s fish and aubergine curry. I’m homesick already…