in praise of sardines

In praise of Kashmir: Rogan Josh

In my lifetime, I have made many versions of what is commonly referred to as lamb "curry." Of them all, this Kashmiri Rogan Josh is the new undisputed champion.

To me, the genius of Indian cuisine is the way it highlights the role aroma plays in whetting our appetites. While other cuisines, notably French and Japanese, have taught us that we eat with our eyes, Indian cuisine reminds us that we also eat with our noses. In fact, compared to our schnoz, the tongue is deaf and mute as a taster. Something like 90% of our ability to taste comes from our olfactory senses, which is why we can't taste much when we have a cold.

This version of Rogan Josh is probably the most aromatic dish I have ever placed under the old sniffer.

Each inhalation of its heady aroma reminds me of all that we have learned about the Kashmiris these past 2 weeks. I cannot avoid thinking about Kashmir's central position on the ancient Spice Route that flowed between China, India, and the Middle East. The combination of fennel and ginger brings to mind Chinese star anise, while cinnamon and smoky black cardamom brings me squarely back into the Malabar coast of southern India.

I do not exaggerate when I say that no dish is more emblematic of Kashmiri cuisine than this recipe for Rogan Josh. It features the favorite meat of the Kashmiris, mutton and lamb, and it is braised in yogurt, in the fashion typical of the region. In addition to the spices I already mentioned, the dish includes ample amounts of Kashmiri chili powder, which contribute its scarlet color, gentle heat, and the name of the dish, as rogan literally means "red."

This recipe for Rogan Josh comes from the Hindu Brahmin community, or pandits, of Kashmir. It is a dish that undoubtedly often found its way onto the tables of the family of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was of Kashmiri lineage, as well as that of his daughter, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. True to what we learned in my post on the Kashmiri kitchen, this Hindu version of Rogan Josh uses asafetida, a pungent tree resin, instead of garlic and onions.

In fact, you won't find any of the members of the "Indian mirepoix" of onions, garlic and fresh ginger in this recipe. Neither will you find any of the spices and herbs commonly used in "Indian cooking," like cumin, coriander, black mustard seeds, turmeric or cilantro.

If you are accustomed to the heavy, cream laden dish that goes by the name "rogan josh" in almost every Indian restaurant, you will be as surprised as I was by the complexity and subtleness of the version presented here. I hope you enjoy it as much as N and I did.

This is my last post on Kashmir, her people, and their cuisine. I hope you have enjoyed reading this series as much as I have enjoyed writing it! I had fun becoming acquainted with the people of Kashmir through learning about some of the tasty treats that bring them joy.

All of you who have supported Pim's Menu for Hope II campaign with your donations to UNICEF should be proud of yourselves. You have made a difference in the lives of the survivors of the earthquake that struck the Kashmir region of Pakistan and India. I just learned that we have raised over $15,000!

There are still a few hours left to buy a raffle ticket for a chance to win the Kashmiri Cooking Kit (pictured below) or any of the brilliant gifts that my fellow food bloggers have donated to the Menu for Hope II campaign. To help you decide which gift tickles your fancy, check out Pim's visual menu with pictures of all the prizes and links to their full descriptions.

I wish you all the best of luck. Cheers!

Edited on Dec. 30th: I forgot to mention when I posted this that my recipe for Rogan Josh is my contribution to Meenakshi's (of Hooked on Heat) inaugural edition of "From My Rasoi." The theme this month is appropriately "winter" and I cannot think of a better dish to take the chill off.

In praise of Kashmir: chai, Kashmiri style

Every morning at the crack of dawn, the first order of the Kashmiri day is to light the coals which will heat water for the samovar, the ornate spouted vessel which holds the family tea. What kind of tea, or chai, the family makes seems to divide along sectarian lines, Muslim or Hindu. The two teas couldn't be any more different from one another. Their uniqueness also beautifully illustrates the regional nature of Indian cuisine. Today, I will share recipes for both types of Kashmiri chai.

But first, I have to get something off my chest. As my favorite local slam poet, Shailja Patel, is fond of pointing out, chai is not "a beverage invented in California." The Hindi/Urdu word chai simply means "tea."  "Chai tea" is a redundancy. Uttering the phrase "chai tea latte," the drink sold by Starbucks/Tazo®, should be a criminal offense. The three word phrase, strung together from the languages of three countries with unique culinary traditions, is a symbol of all that is wrong with globalization. Starbucks describes its drink as a blend of "exotic spices and comforting vanilla." The flavor bears more resemblance to a pumpkin pie than to the bracing cuppa sold by every chaiwallah at railroad stations throughout India. (Don't get me started on the "chai eggnog soy latte" I spotted on the Starbucks website).

Kahva

If you were to peer into the samovar in a Hindu pandit's kitchen, you may be surprised to discover green, not black, tea leaves. There is also no milk in this tea, which goes by the name kahva (also spelled kahwa). Kahva is usually served sweet and is infused with crushed almonds, green cardamom and sometimes cinnamon. On rare, very special occasions, a few strands of saffron may be added as well.

As a green tea drinker and a fan of anything with cardamom in it, I was extremely excited to learn about this lighter alternative to masala chai. I talked to a Pakistani halal butcher/grocer in town to find out what variety of green tea is used to make kahva. Kashmiris call it "Bombay tea," but in the tea trade here it is known as "gunpowder," named after the way the more mature tea leaves curl up into pellets when dried. The tea, grown in Sri Lanka or China, is available in any store that specializes in Middle Eastern groceries, where it is simply labeled "green tea."

I enjoyed the uplifting combination of flavors and plan to make kahva often, especially during the winter months. It makes an excellent post dinner digestif as well. I have not yet tried the kahva with saffron, as my wife doesn't care for saffron.

Sheer chai

Judged on appearance alone, it would be difficult to tell apart the milky tea favored by the majority Muslim population of Kashmir from the iconic railroad station masala chai. Both are made with black tea, milk and, sometimes, spices. One taste, however, and you'll know you're not in Delhi. Sheer chai or noon chai (noon is Kashmiri and sheer is Persian for milk) is salty, containing no sugar. For this milky brew, Kashmiris use a type of tea similar to Darjeeling called pahari (literally "of the mountain"). When Hindu pandits make sheer chai, they typically add a masala of some combination of green cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, black peppercorns, poppy seeds, and crushed almonds. Traditionally, tea makers also add a pinch of baking soda, which turns the tea a pinkish color.

Although I admittedly disliked the saltiness and the chemical flavor imparted by the baking soda, I may feel differently if I were sipping this after a trek through the Himalayas. The Tibetan peoples who dwell in neighboring Ladakh (technically a region within Kashmir) favor a similarly salty brew. They infamously include a dollop of rancid yak butter in their tea.

All of these teas and spices are included in the Kashmiri Cooking Kit (more than $60 worth of spices, food and recipes ), my donation to Menu for Hope II.

As a bonus, the winner of my prize will also receive the ingredients and the recipe to make masala chai, as taught to me by N's Bollywood socialite aunt. Aunt Geeta renowned throughout Mumbai (Bombay) for her masala chai.

Click the button below to be taken to the donation page where you can buy a raffle ticket for yourself or, as Sam of Becks & Posh suggested, as a gift to others on your holiday shopping list. Remember, whether you win or lose, all of the money raised will be donated to UNICEF to aid the victims of the massive earthquake that struck Kashmir in October. Thank you.

The complete recipes for the two Kashmiri-style chais are found below the jump!

PBT#1: Masala Chai Poached Prunes

The average tourist travels to Granada for one reason, to see the famed Alhambra, the fourteenth century Moorish palace. Unfortunately for the gastro-tourist, the food in Granada is definitely not, as the British like to say, more-ish.

For that reason alone, N and I planned to make our stay in Granada in the summer of 2004 brief. Most of our dining experiences met our abysmally low expectations. Happily however, we experienced two memorable exceptions. The first was lunch at a rollicking working class tapas bar called Los Diamantes (Calle Navas, 28), where we tucked into some of the most perfectly fried baby cuttlefish, anchovies and eggplants of our trip.

The second exception was breakfast at our hotel, a fabulously romantic, exquisitely renovated fifteenth century Moorish house, by far the best hotel of our trip. N, in particular, is a breakfast lover. She had grown weary with the traditional Spanish breakfast of a croissant or a suizo (sugar topped roll) and a cup of coffee. She craved a more substantial breakfast, one that includes a bit of protein, some warm bread and perhaps a bowl of fruit.

The first morning at our hotel, we trundled down the stairwell from our room, bleary-eyed, into the cozy, barrel-vaulted former wine cellar (pictured left) where the breakfast buffet was served. We blinked several times when we saw the breakfast buffet spread out before us: jamón ibérico, manchego cheese, hard-boiled eggs, tortilla, the fixins to make our own pan con tomate (including freshly grated tomato pulp in a bowl mixed with excellent local olive oil), a do-it-yourself toaster, marmalade, fresh fruit, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and the usual rolls, suizos, and croissants. We were having such a good time, we nearly missed our scheduled entrance time to view the Alhambra!

There was one other item on the breakfast buffet: prunes. And, though it sounds ridiculous to say, they were a revelation. They were double the size of their emaciated cousins in California, although they are both the same variety as the French pruneaux d'Agen. Nearly as soft as a ripe fig, these prunes even managed to be moist and succulent, an unexpected trait for a dried fruit. My guess is that these prunes were picked when they were riper and sweeter, and then dried to a lesser degree than their Californian counterparts.

Our last stop on our gastronomic tour of Spain was Barcelona. We visited Casa Gispert, a wonderfully aromatic spice shop founded in 1851 where the owners still roast almonds and hazelnuts over a wood fire every morning. Tucked away in one of the bins, we noticed our prized plump prunes (pictured right, from the Casa Gispert website), which the shopkeeper told me were grown in northern Catalonia across the border from where the famous French prunes are grown. Although we bought several pounds of roasted Marcona almonds, we decided against buying the prunes, figuring we could find respectable ones in San Francisco.

After a year of fruitless* searching, one of the few things N requested (or more aptly, demanded) from my return visit to Barcelona this past July was, yes, a bagful of those humble, yet succulent prunes.

Since California prunes aren't as juicy as those I had in Spain or the pruneaux d'Agen, I riffed off of one of Judy Rodgers' recipes from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook to create "Masala Chai Poached Prunes" to have with our breakfast tomorrow, perhaps with a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal (pictured below).

Why tomorrow? Because pastry chef/blogger extraordinaire David Lebovitz has declared tomorrow the first (and only) Prune Blogging Thursday! (I personally think this should be a more regular occurrence myself).

If you'd like to see what other delicacies you can make with the lowly prune, David has linked to all the recipes from other prune lovers here.

* Excuse the fruitless pun. The closest resemblance to the Spanish prunes we have found are the prunes sold by Bella Viva Orchards at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco and online.

The tiny seed that packs a big punch

If I had to pick one favorite spice, mustard seeds would win hands down. Black (or brown) mustard seeds, to be more precise. Not only are they the main ingredient in the best condiment on the planet, Dijon mustard (especially the version made in Beaune by Edmond Fallot), but they are indispensable to Indian cuisine.

Although there was a dusty old bottle of yellow mustard seeds that sat untouched for decades on my mother's spice shelf, I had never known the alluring power that lay within those tiny seeds until I met the woman who would become my wife.

After we were engaged, N and I traveled across the country from Washington, D.C., to California in an old station wagon. We saw the country from the slow lane at 45 mph, as we foolishly dragged the Ikea furniture accumulated in college behind us in a rented U-Haul trailer. Our car never fully recovered from that trip and I think we've since sold all the furniture.

A couple of days of driving brought us to Dayton, Ohio, to the home of some of my future relatives. N's aunt, the best cook in the family, offered to give us a crash course in Indian cooking, particularly the vegetarian specialties of Gujarat, the region of northwestern India where N's family comes from.

Masi (which means mother's sister in Gujarati) proved herself to be a masterful teacher. Our little blue notebook of carefully transcribed recipes is probably the most valued cookbook in my collection of over 200 cookbooks!

It was there in Masi's kitchen in small town Dayton (actually a suburb of Dayton) that I first encountered the incomparable aroma of toasting black mustard seeds, called rai in Gujarati and Hindi.

Many of Masi's recipes begin with frying rai in hot oil until the seeds turn gray and start to pop. When the seeds pop, they release this intoxicating scent that combines elements of toasted peanuts, brown butter and popcorn. I can never get enough of that smell!

This morning (for our thirteenth anniversary) I prepared a traditional savory Gujarati breakfast dish called batata poha (pictured left) from one of Masi's recipes that features the taste of rai. If you've never cooked with this spice before, this would be a good place to start.

The only unusual ingredient in the dish, aside from black mustard seeds themselves, is poha (sometimes spelled powa). Poha is flat pounded rice (see picture next page). There are two varieties of poha, thick and thin. You'll need the thick one for this recipe. It can be purchased at any Indian store or on line at Kalustyan's. It's also a flavorful and spicy alternative to the standard American breakfast options, like cold cereal or toast.

Memories of Aunt Geeta's Chutney Sandwiches in Ba's kitchen

Whenever N and I visit her ancestral home in Bombay (now Mumbai), the first meal we eat after our interminably long flight is invariably one of her aunt Geeta's chutney sandwiches.

I remember the first time I visited the house in a posh neighborhood of Bombay, where N had spent the first five years of her life. We arrived well after midnight and her grandparents, Ba (pictured below, talking on the phone at her kitchen table) and Dada as they were known to all the family, woke up briefly to welcome us. Although I had heard many tales of her grandparents and felt like I had already known them, this was the first time I was meeting them and the first N had seen them in several years. Emotions ran high and we both felt exhilarated.

After her grandparents went back to bed, N and I were too excited to sleep.

My senses struggled to absorb every detail of my new surroundings. We sat at the absurdly long kitchen table that N had lovingly described to me so many times. It could seat 18 guests comfortably and at its center were a at least a dozen shiny steel and plastic containers, each holding a different crispy snack, tart pickle or sweet delicacy.

The room seemed at first quite plain, with stone floors and drab peeling paint on the cement walls. But, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that we were surrounded by shelf after shelf of countless glass jars that contained yet more treats and seasonings. There wasn't a square inch of space, not even a window sill, that remained bare. And when I closed my eyes, my nose knew it would be years before I'd be able to sort out all the various aromas contained in that one room.

Aunt Geeta is by nature a night owl, so she happily stayed up with us. Knowing we must be peckish after our long flight, she offered to make us a sandwich.

For each sandwich, she spread a generous amount of sweet Indian butter, far more than any doctor would recommend, on two slices of white sandwich bread. Then she slathered a layer of spicy coriander (cilantro) chutney over the butter. Next she peeled and thinly sliced a cucumber, fanned the slices onto the bread, and showered it with salt. After putting the two slices of bread together and cutting the sandwich in half, she handed each of us our snack.

From that point on, whenever I taste one of our chutney sandwiches, I'm instantly transported to Ba's kitchen. We've adapted it to our tastes by reducing the butter and salt slightly and, during the summer, by adding a few slices of juicy tomato.

It's best accompanied by a sweet and spicy cup of masala chai (which I trust you'll never again call a "chai tea latte," right?) made with black tea, milk, turbinado sugar, ginger, cardamom and a touch of black pepper.

Click "continue" for the simple recipe for coriander chutney, which can be prepared in just minutes in a blender, food processor, or ideally, a Sumeet Multi-Grind.

The dark side of the eggplant and a recipe for baingan bharta

Although I love eggplants to this day, a decade ago when I was a vegetarian, I craved eggplants almost all the time.

Italian eggplant parmigiana, Middle Eastern baba ghanouj, Chinese "yu-xiang qie-zi" (literally "fish-fragrant eggplant," but usually translated as "eggplant in garlic sauce") and Indian baingan bharta were my favorite restaurant dishes. I was impressed by the versatility of this purple (or green or white) relative of the tomato, of how it soaked up the flavors of everything around it. It seemed almost magical.

Looking back on my aubergine obsession, I now believe what I really craved was not the flavor of eggplant, which after all is quite bland, but the mouth feel.

[vegetarians continue reading at your own risk...I advise skipping ahead to the recipe on the next page]

Mushrooms, it has often been said, are the closest that the plant kingdom comes to replicating the taste and feel of a piece of meat. In the mouth, the fungi are juicy, chewy, somewhat funky, not unlike a hunk of well-aged beef. Look at the portobello. Is it a surprise that in America this overgrown brown mushroom has become the vegetarian alternative to the hamburger on practically every lunch menu?

I'd like to posit, then, that eggplants are the vegetal version of animal fat. The feel of a piece of cooked eggplant in your mouth is reminiscent of that luscious piece of fat on your pork chop or rib-eye, the one you know you should really cut away, but, oh, it's just a small piece, just this once, nobody's really looking anyway, and you'll make sure you exercise tomorrow. Eggplant is the pork belly, the foie gras, the marrow, the toro of the plant kingdom.

When I was a vegetarian, perhaps my aubergine urges were my unconscious attempt to fulfill some ancient, deep-seated, primeval, buried-in-the-shadows-of-the-genetic-code lust for that velvety, gelatinous, mushy feel of fat rolling around on my tongue?

Something to pursue with my therapist.

Until then, here's my favorite recipe for the Punjabi eggplant delicacy baingan bharta, which was part of N's and my vegetarian Indian party and cooking lesson over the weekend.