My grandmother's cooking is better than your grandmother's cooking

Every time my grandmother cooks its an event. Not only because the whole family descends upon her place but also because of the kind of stuff she puts together - always meat. Even though she is a vegetarian! Most of her recipes were honed keeping up with the ever adventurous demands of my grandfather. If ever he ate something that took his fancy he would describe it to my grandmother or have her get the recipe - even in restaurants or when they were out travelling - and a recreation would follow. My grandfather wasn't one to mince his words. If it was crap, he would let it be known. Over a few attempts the dish was perfected.

The other thing that my grandfather was notorious for was playing a sort of recipe book roulette. He'd come home, sit around for a bit and then start going through recipe books. Once he'd find something that seemed worth a try, it would be all hands on deck - my grandmother's hands that is. Now the kind of stuff that he enjoyed wasn't exactly the kind of stuff that you can pull out of a packet. And he was a stickler for not cutting corners - if something had to be cooked over a wood fire, that was the way it was going to be. Most evenings were dedicated to the discipline of dinner.

This particular recipe is from our family food bible - a cook book from the House of Sailana. A fairly simple recipe this. Goat meat with lots of coriander, green chilies, ginger, garlic, all put together in an earthen pot and cooked slowly in its own juices over a wood-burning open fire.

Despite the fact that this particular recipe, as well as others, are printed in a book, there exist handwritten notes for each and every one of them. And I'm not just talking about odd scribbles here and there. Besides my grandmother's experience, I am convinced that the pot, which I remember from my childhood, and the wooden spoon, that has more than half a century on its side, definitely have something to do with how good this dish turns out every single time.

This dish goes great with bread.

Ras el Hanout Spit Game

I've been wanting to build myself a spit for some time now. I wanted something simple to begin with - something that could be put into the boot, taken along and set up without much of a fuss. Of course, fairly sophisticated ones with motors, gears, et. al. are available but it's overkill if you ask me. The iron crucible isn't part of the set up - it had to be used to keep the lawn from burning out. It's not particularly large either - a couple of large chickens or a quarter portion of a small goat.

Alfresco cooking is a therapeutic. There's something about an open flame that makes cooking a whole lot better. Not to mention that great charred, smokey flavour that it imparts.

Ras el Hanout is a Moroccan rub that is used on meats or stirred into couscous. Pretty versatile. I don't think there is any one recipe for the rub. It's one of those things that everybody has their own variants to. Mine came out of a bottle. Some interesting ingredients though - lavender and rose petals!

I made a wet marinade using ras el hanout, sumac, orange juice, lemon juice, pepper and vinegar. The vinegar was to tenderise the meat whilst it marinaded. Leave the cut of game to marinade for 24 hours.

Once the meat was put on the spit, I stirred in a bit of honey into the remaining marinade to make a glaze.

With the meat, a simple tomato salad, some green, home-made bread, Hummus and Baba Ganoush.

 

Coorg - Pork Heaven, Piggy Hell

There are few things that are more miserable than a lean piece of pork. Fat makes pork. In fact, fat makes most food. It is the best carrier of flavour. Nothing breaks my heart more then seeing someone sitting across the table, picking out the fat off a lovely portion of pork chops and pushing it to the periphery of the plate. Why? WHY? Don’t like fat? Eat chicken then. Or better, chew on a courgette.

When I was in Coorg I must have gone through ten kilos of pork in less then a week, half of which was fat. And did it make me happy. In fact, in Coorg cuisine, which is basically no more than pork and rice, in one form or the other, fat is prized. But then, imagine, back in the day, a culture of warriors, traversing hills, living in the dense forests, hunting for food – I don’t think a smoothie and celery would have kept them going.

Ask anybody in Madikeri or there abouts  (Coorg is a district, with many hill stations, Madikeri being the most popular) what the best place for local food is and chances are that every body will point you to Coorg Cusinette. A functional place; tables, chairs and a sink to wash your hands. And while the food they serve would have been ‘functional’ to the people is has sustained over the centuries, to someone like me it is nothing short of gourmet. This is one of those place where the food is sold out by 8 pm, so head there early.

The menu doesn’t run into pages and having tried every meat dish on the menu I can tell you that the Pandi Curry (Pork Curry) and the Pandi Beev Barthadh (Pork Chops) are pretty similar. But then they would be; they both have the same magical ingredients – fatty cuts of pork and lots and lots of pepper. Now, I am sure there are subtle differences, barring the cuts used, but the proportions of fat and pepper don’t leave much room for these to stand out. I have managed to get the recipe for a Pandi Curry, not from this place but from the chef at the resort where I was staying, so I will be giving it a shot at some point. The Pandi Malukootunadh (Chilli Pork) was also superb. Dry, sticky, crisp in part, spicy. Basically, fried bits of fatty pork tossed in a spicy sauce. I do think that this is not that traditional a dish as the other two. Or maybe it is, but doesn’t go back that long. I just got the impression that while it sort of made sense on the menu it wasn’t authentic – like Butter, Pepper, Garlic Crab at the Mumbai Lunch Homes.

 

Pork Chops

Spicy Pork

The pork was served with rice rotis and rice dumplings. I apologise for the photograph of my half eaten plate of food. Though I am notorious for not letting people dig in till the time I have got a shot the the food first, I forget all about my camera this time around.



11 o clock to 6 o clock - Pandi Curry, Pork Chops, Spicy Pork, the Rice Dumpling, Rice Roti

 

Of Coffee Beans and Pepper





 

Flame of the Forest - Butea Monosperma

After more than a year, and a stone the heavier, there was a culinary journey really worth writing home about. After almost an hour in an auto-rickshaw, zipping down the slops of the hills around Coorg, through coffee plantations and dense forest riddled with flowering trees, we arrived. This was a smaller plantation relative to the others around; more a summer retreat. The 10 acre property was cultivated with Arabica and Robusta coffee beans, some Cardamom and Pepper. The clusters of Pepper dangled from vines twisted around trunks of the Oak trees, in the shade of which the coffee flourished.



Piper Nirgum

Funny thing about Pepper - Black and White Pepper is the fruit of the same plant, picked at different stages of ripeness. I always thought that they came from different ones - because they taste so different and you often read recipes that call for both together. Black Pepper is allowed to dry on the plant itself, giving it a spicier flavour. Pepper is the original spice in Indian food. Chilies only came to India with the Portuguese, the the 1200s if I am not mistaken (not going to  run a Google check). Of all Indian Cuisines, Pepper is most abundantly used in the South. In fact, Coorg, even Chettinad, cuisine is best defined by their generous use of this spice. Pepper gives you a much more balanced, wholer, heat and this, I think, gives it a stand-out flavour. Not always the case with Chilies.

 

 

 

  

 



Coffee Plant

One major disagreement I have with the way they do things down South is to do with the way Coffee is consumed. I am a 'black coffee, no sugars' man myself and I have a tough time digesting the concept of filter coffee the way they do it. I really don't see the point of harping on and on about how great the coffee from the region is when you are going to bugger its body, flavour and aroma with the copious amounts of milk and sugar. Too sweet for my liking, but I did enjoy a few glasses. More a dessert if you ask me.

 

 

 

Coffee - ready for picking

The Arabica coffee fetches the farmers a better price than the Robusta variety. Not sure which was cultivated more widely. The plants are pretty similar, but spend a couple of days around a plantation and you can tell the difference - something in the leaves.

 

The smaller plantations sell their beans as they are to the larger plantations, that have process plants. The plantations are very clever in their ability to generate cash flows all year around. While Coffee is indeed the main crop the other spices that co-habit ensure that incomes are not only confined to the coffee harvest months. Though I was there during the harvest season, I am told that the plantation in full bloom is a sight to behold, with white flowers splattered till the eye can see.

 

A few hours walking around the plantation is enough to work up a substantial appetite for a feast of Pork! - watch this space.