The Mogul-Tamil Dinner

Okay, folks, I think it’s time to come out of my closet here. You were gonna find out sooner or later anyway. I am an Oriental cooking nut.

Now “Oriental” in my lexicon does not mean exclusively Chinese. That’s in there, particularly the northern and western provincial stuff, but there’s also Thai, Hindi, and anything else within those regions. About the only thing I don’t fool with is Japanese, because I don’t have enough patience to do all the meticulous presentation that’s so much of their cooking.

Anyhow, this month I’m fooling around with Indian cooking. I recently came into a wonderful introductory book, The Taste of India by Madhur Jaffrey. Ms. Jaffrey started out as an actress (and, I understand, is still very popular in India), but expanded her interests into cooking and restaurants. The nice part of this book is that it covers almost the whole of modern-day India. As she explains, most “Indian” restaurants in Britain and America are run by Punjabi and Pakistani refugees who went first to Delhi and then emigrated. Thus, on the limited basis of this experience, many people have the idea that India has only one national cuisine. Yeah, and so does America (or at least, we didn’t until Big Mac started watching us). When you’ve got hundreds of millions of people in hundreds of tribes of one sort of another speaking twenty major languages over a land mass a sizable fraction of the North American subcontinent, then ain’t no way they all like exactly the same foods. For one thing, the same foods aren’t available up in Kashmir and the Punjab of the Northwest as down in Tamil Nadu and Kerala of the far South.

Some common elements, however, do show up in Indian cuisines. Many of them use red and green peppers, stuff that makes jalapeños taste tame. They also use a good deal of yogurt, as it’s a good way to cope with dairy products in a tropical climate with no refrigeration. There’s lots of split peas of several kinds (lumped under the class name of dal), composed spices like garam masala, ver, or panchphoran, and much ginger root. Which is how I wound up with a ginger plant. I had some ginger which I let sit around in the refrigerator too long, and instead of withering like most too-old ginger does, this root sprouted. So I stuck it in a pot, to see what would happen, and I now have this three-foot ginger plant growing in my kitchen window. (In case you’ve never seen it, ginger plants are very cane-looking, with a bamboo-like leaf. Incidentally mine has developed a case of leaf-edge wilt, so if anyone has an idea of what caused it and what I should do about it, I’d like to know.)

And no, Indian cooking does not mean just vegetables. There are vegetarian castes like the Jains of Gujarat in the west, and the Hindi won’t eat beef and the Muslims won’t touch pork, but for everything somebody won’t eat, there’s somebody else who will, particularly when it comes to chickens or mutton (a pukka Sahib euphemism for kid goat). This month’s recipes are an oddly assorted lot. The chicken comes from the Delhi region’s Muslim culture, created by the ruling Moguls three hundred years ago. The spinach is from Kerala way down south, where the Tamils are strong. I may be fond of all these regional cuisines, but I’m not above mixing them and borrowing right- and left-handedly from anytning that comes by, if I happen to like it.

3½ pound chicken, skinned and cut up	2” cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon salt	2 bay leaves
Pepper	2½ teaspoons blanched slivered almonds
2 tablespoons oil	2½ tablespoons raisins or sultanas
4 tablespoons unsalted butter	1 cup plain yogurt
7 whole cardamom pods	1 teaspoon ground cumin
8 whole cloves	¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne

Spread the chicken pieces out in a single layer and sprinkle with a quarter teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Pat the salt and pepper in so they adhere. Turn the chicken pieces over and repeat.

Heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan over a medium-high flame. When hot, put in the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, and as many of the chicken pieces as the pan will hold in a single layer. Brown the chicken on both sides. As soon as the pieces get brown, lift them up with tongs or a slotted spoon (not a fork) and put them in an oven-proof casserôle. Do all the chicken this way.

Put the almonds left in the frying pan. Stir them once or twice. As soon as they start to brown, put in the raisins and stir once. Quickly, before the raisins start to burn, pour the contents of the frying pan, fat and all, over the chicken in the casserôle.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Put the yogurt in a bowl. Add the cumin, cayenne, and the remaining half teaspoon of salt as well as some pepper. Beat lightly with a fork or whisk until smooth and creamy. Pour the yogurt over the chicken and mix well. Cover the casserôle tightly and place in the oven. Bake for twenty minutes. Turn the chicken pieces over and baste with the juices. Cover tightly and return to the oven for another twenty to twenty-five minutes.

When ready to serve, lift out the chicken pieces and put them in a warm serving dish. Skim off the fat from the sauce, and cook it down over medium-high heat if it appears thin. Fish out the cinnamon stick, cloves, and cardamom pods. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.

1½ pounds fresh spinach	2” cinnamon stick
½ cup chopped fresh dill	¼ teaspoon whole black mustard seeds
½ teaspoon Salt	1/8 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1/3 cup heavy cream	1 whole dried hot red pepper (Thai pepper)

Separate the spinach leaves and wash them thoroughly. Sand is good for chickens’ gizzards, but not necessarily for yours. Holding a good handful, cut the leaves crosswise at half-inch intervals.

Put the spinach and dill in a large pan. Cover and cook on a medium-low heat. The spinach will cook in its own juices. Stir once or twice and cook about twenty minutes or until the spinach is tender. Remove the lid and add the salt and the cream. Turn the heat up a little and boil away most of the liquid, leaving just enough to keep the spinach moist.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. When hot, put in the mustard seeds. As soon as they begin to pop (only a few seconds) throw in the cumin. A few seconds later put in the pepper. When it starts to darken, empty the contents of the frying pan into the spinach. Stir to mix. Make sure you don’t eat that red pepper.

At some future time, I’ll talk more about Indian cooking. There’s tons I haven’t said, but I think several columns in a row on the same subject are like having leftovers several days running. You get tired after a while.

Will our hero think up something else to say next month? Will a sudden thaw cause a cooking storm as he frantically tries to use everything in the freezer? Will he burn the cream sauce? Tune in next month (all together now) “SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT STATION!”

first ran: July 1988

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