So it's another recipe for meat-free days. I went into some of the environmental arguments for going vegetarian in my last blog entry but one real advantage for eating vegie is that it's just much cheaper than meat. It's not that I'm pleading poverty, and I've no intention of giving up meat any time soon, but there is something great about knocking up something like this which costs next to fuck all and takes little more than an hour.
I've twatted on about courgetttes and how great they are in a previous post, but what I was unaware of is that this humble vegetable is another import from the Americas. So, along with peppers, chillies and tomatoes, which were also brought over from the New World, European and Asian cuisine would have been so fucking dull before the Conquistadors made it to America. They also brought back syphilis, so, I guess that's a case of swings and roundabouts. And let's not forget that chocolate also came from the New World, so, on balance, it's a win for white Europeans, in addition to the devastation they wreaked on the native civilisations and the population as a whole on the other side of the Atlantic. We got a whole new pantry full of ingredients, they got genocide.
Conquistadors OK, we'll swap you horses, the wheel and Catholicism for the contents of your gardens
INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ground tumeric
1 whole star anise
1 tsp ground coriander
3 cloves
4 whole green cardamom pods
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp whole fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
1 10cm piece cinnamon stick
pinch ground black pepper
pinch dried chilli flakes
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 large courgette, topped, tailed and sliced
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
100ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
Salt
More spices (clockwise from 12 o'clock: ground cumin, bay leaf, tumeric, cinnamon stick, ground coriander, star anise, cloves, chilli flakes, black pepper, cardamom pods with fennel seeds in the middle)
RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and add the spices for 2 minutes.
Throw in the onion, ginger and garlic, and fry gently for 10 minutes.
Add the courgette and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and water, stir then add salt to taste.
Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes
Serve with rice
Ready to eat
(on right of plate with aloo gobi on left on a bed of plain, boiled basmati rice)
NOTES
This is a great dish to serve with aloo gobi that I posted a recipe for recently. This uses more earthy flavoured spices which contrast well with the richly fragrant nature of this courgette curry.
Courgettes are members of the pumpkin/squash family, the cucurbit. It's
not all about versatile vegetables, mind. This family also contains the penis gourd which has made an appearance in this blog in a previous post.I'm not sure who dreamed up the idea, but they must have had a pretty eccentric outlook.
"That's a funny looking vegetable. Does it taste nice?"
"Not really. Not sure what to do with it"
"Well, if you dry it out it would make a great cover for your cock"
A bucket of vindaloo Somehow it seem appropriate to include this shouty football song
Misappropriation was one of the buzzwords of 2016. It usually referred to things like white people wearing dreadlocks, white people wearing a bindi or white people doing yoga, apparently. I agree to a certain degree. Why do you need to wear a bindi? It's a mark of religious significance in the Hindu faith. You wear one as a fashion statement, you're a twat. Yoga is a great way to improve flexibility and can lead to a generally improved sense of well-being, but if you subscribe to the pseudo-mystical bullshit that accompanies it, you're a twat and you can stick your chakra up your kundalini . If you have ginger hair and wear dreadlocks, not only do you look like a twat, you probably act like a twat (go on, off you fuck. Those gaudily coloured fucking balls won't juggle themselves, you fucking waster) and almost certainly smell like an unhygienic twat.
The question, though, is when does the sharing and enjoying
of other cultures become misappropriation? I've mentioned the fusion and
adaption (or bastardisation if you prefer) of certain cuisines in
previous posts (notably this one)
and if it tastes good, do it. I mean it's not like you're taking
something of deep cultural significance and shitting on it. You're not dropping off the kids at the pool
in a font for example, it's only food. Besides, a lot of the time you
can't make a truly authentic meal according to the recipe because the
ingredients have never been seen within 100 miles of your town. You
know, like that Yottam Ottolenghi
recipe for veal that he insists only tastes authentic if you use the
pickled foreskins of virgin aardvarks in the sauce. Thing is, whilst
using lime juice instead of tamarind paste might not give the same
authentic flavour you get from a street vendor in Kuala Lumpur, it will
still taste great, so do it!, Fuck authenticity, it's dinner. Even more importantly, where would the cuisines of the old world be without integrating the things brought over from the newly discovered Americas - things like chilli, tomato, potato - 500 years ago?
This
dish is more of a double-reverse cultural assimilation/misappropriation
though. In the UK, vindaloo curries are generally renowned as the
hottest of the dishes in your regular curry house (apart from the
notoriously legendary phaal). There is a potato element (the "aloo")
in a lot of versions. In my experience, however, they tend to have
sacrificed all the delicate flavour you expect in a curry to produce
something that is merely "hot", mainly so that pissed dickheads can show
their mates how tough they are at 4am after a skinful. A UK curry house
vindaloo is not usually a great option for a curry. But, is this a
culturally accurate version of vindaloo? Is it bollocks! It shares its
name with the original vindaloo, but little else. This is the second occasion of cultural (mis)appropriation for the vindaloo.
The dish in this entry is a more authentic version of vindaloo, a curry originating from Goa during the time it was under Portuguese control. Its name does not come from the Hindi or Urdu word for potato, "aloo", but from the Portuguese for wine and garlic, carne de vinha d'alhos (literally "meat in garlic and wine") as this was a way of helping preserve meat, mainly pork, for long trips at sea. This Portuguese dish evolved further in the colony to use locally produced vinegar and spices to make this dish and the name became "vindaloo". So here's the first cultural appropriation of vindaloo and it's an example of a western idea being assimilated into eastern cuisine.
Anyway, onto the recipe in hand. Christmas has been and gone. In the sweary household we alternate year-on-year between turkey and goose for Christmas dinner. This year it was
goose, but what the fuck to do with the leftovers? It had to be yet
another curry.The problem with reheating roast meat still exists, but this is overcome by using vinegar to cut through the vaguely wet doggy smell and the inherent fattiness of the meat.
As I noted in the title, this also works for other birds, so is a great way to use leftover roast chicken
INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil (eg rapeseed)
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp ground tumeric
½ tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
3 green cardamom
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
4-500g cold roast goose (or chicken!) meat, no skin, chopped into 2cm chunks
200 ml white wine vinegar
400 ml water
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp garam masala
More spices than you can shake a stick at! (From top left, 11 o'clock: fennel seeds, cloves, paprika, cardmom, onion seeds, tumeric, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, cumin, chilli flakes, coriander, salt, pepper and a bay leaf in the middle)
RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the onion and fry gently for a good 10 minutes.
Add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 5 minutes
Throw in the spices (except the garam masala) and fry gently for another 5 minutes to allow the flavour to develop.
Add the green pepper and tomatoes, mix and allow to stew for 10 minutes to soften the peppers.
Throw in the goose meat, gently stir then pour in the tomato puree, vinegar and water.
Stir well and leave to stew for 30 minutes, stirring in the garam masala at around the 25 minute mark.
A panful of joy
Fill yer boots! I don't actually know why you'd want to fill your boots with anything other than your feet, so it's a ridiculous phrase
Serve with rice or an Indian-style bread like naan.
NOTES
Only pretentious foodie wankers like me end up with leftover roast goose. This is why I need to stress that this dish works just as well with chicken but you could also use roast duck if you have any, as unlikely as that may be. I think I have also tried something similar to this with leftover roast pork so that would also work
I have tried a phaal curry on a couple of occasions. Once was an attempt at a prank, the other time was as a bet. The prank failed as I ate the curry without any problem and I also won the bet because I ate the curry without any problem. I did find, however, that on at least one of theses times I did need to spend most of the next day within close reach of a flushing toilet.
The use of vinegar means it's kind of a pickled curry. This is not
the same as pickling your knees, and you're using vinegar rather than cheese. What
the fuck am I on about? I refer you to the wonderful song below from the late Ivor
Cutler on the subject:
This has some similarities to the recipe I posted for Hyderbadi chicken, which also uses vinegar.
As any regular readers may have realised, I have a tendency to hark back to the 70s and 80s of UK TV, and this is yet another occasion. It might be hard to believe in this post-Brexit, "No Nanny State tells me what the fuck to do!" world, but back in the day, they used to show adverts made by the government. Public information films were made to advise people that doing certain things were a generally a stupid fucking idea to have thought about doing in the first place. They had ads about making sure you didn't leave your TV plugged in overnight because it could cause a fire. They had ads saying you should be able to swim. Then there was a different class of ads for kids. Many of them were about how to cross the road safely. We had the Tufty Club, which isn't a euphemism for a lady's private parts (well, not originally, at least); there was a pre-Darth Vader Dave Prowse as the Green Cross Man.
It wasn't all about crossing the road, though. By far the most memorable public information films for kids were the "Charley says...." adverts. For readers that don't know these, they were shit cartoons and featured a poorly drawn small boy (not to be confused with Badly Drawn Boy or the Viz character he took his name from) and his pet cat, Charley, about to do some stupid shit, until the cat meowed his apparently incomprehensible advice that was then interpreted by the small boy. The Charley ads included warnings to kids not to play with matches; not to bugger off without telling mummy where you're going; and even not to pull on table cloths in case you pull hot tea all over yourself. When the boy did the right thing, as prompted by the cat, the mother rewarded the boy and Charley. The boy received an apple (thanks a lot Mum, This is the 70s, they do sell chocolate, you know, you tight-fisted, joy-sucking bitch) and Charley got given a whole fish, which he proceeded to eat very noisily, as you can see from the video
So, what the fuck does this have to do with your recipe, you might be asking. Well, the point is, Charley eats the fish but leaves the skeleton, including the tail and, most relevant, the head untouched. This is a load of bollocks, since any self-respecting cat would relish the head of the fish as one of the best parts. The head might usually be only regarded as fit to make fish stock in the West, but go East and they are far more food-savvy and a lot less food-squeamish.
This is a dish that originates in the culinary melting pot of Singapore. Now, I know I have a tendency to take the piss out of Rick Stein for twatting on about when he first ate yak meat risotto in a Mongolian yurt, or how the best aubergine he ever tasted was this one time in Paris after it had been fermenting up a poodle's arse for a fortnight, but I'm going to do the same thing. No, not stick an aubergine up my arse (well, not right now, anyway, as it's more of a butternut squash kind of day), but reminisce about the time I ate fish head curry in a hawker centre in Singapore. I mean, yes, the curry was amazing, as food in Singapore generally is, but eating a fish head was an adventure in itself. Picking away at the meat around the neck and the cheeks, and the joy of discovering another little morsel here and there as you dissect it. Besides this, it's not every day you eat something that is looking back at you.
Recently I had bought a whole salmon which I cut into steaks and froze, including the head. I decided to reproduce the culinary experience of a fish head curry in the comfort of my own home. Now, as you may have gathered, Mrs Sweary is not actually that adventurous when it comes to food, bless her. She'd not touch a fish head with a pair of barge poles being used as chopsticks (she can't use chopsticks, anyway). Therefore I included some salmon steaks in the curry as well for her. In fact you could make this with just fish steaks, and do away with the head. You'd still have a great fish curry, but then you'd be missing out on the visual effect of eating something with eyes and a mouth gaping at you, and the fun and satisfaction of dissecting the tasty meat out from the rest of the head.
INGREDIENTS Curry paste
5 small shallots, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
3 red chillies (eg birds eye), topped and chopped
a thumb-sized piece of ginger, roughly chopped
1 small piece of fresh tumeric (around the size the tip of you little finger), roughly chopped
half a stalk of lemon grass, sliced
Spice paste ingredients Clockwise from top: shallots, garlic, ginger, tumeric, lemon grass, red chilli
Dry spices
3 tsp ground coriander
3 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fenugreek
sick of cinnamon (around 5cm)
1 whole star anise
3 cloves
3 whole green cardamom
1 tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp salt
Other ingredients
2 tsp oil
200g okra, trimmed and cut into 2cm pieces
200g small (or 1 medium) aubergines sliced into 2cm pieces
200g cherry tomatoes, whole, washed and stems removed
20 curry leaves
400ml water
200ml coconut milk
1 tbsp tamarind paste, diluted in a couple of tbsp water and sieved to remove seeds
1 salmon head, plus two or three other salmon fillets
It's a salmon jigsaw!
Vegetables
RECIPE
Combine all the spice paste ingredients in a food processor and blend until they are a fairly smooth paste.
Add the oil to a heavy-based pan then add the dry spices.
Fry them for a minute then add the curry leaves for 2 minutes before adding the spice paste.
Fry for five minutes, stirring to prevent the mixture catching on the pan bottom.
Add the coconut milk, tamarind paste and water
Gently bring to the boil and add the vegetables.
Simmer gently for 5 minutes then place the fish into the liquid.
Allow to gently simmer for 20-30 minutes
Serve with plain boiled rice
Keep an eye on my dinner would you?
NOTES
Salmon is probably about the
only fish you can easily get hold of in my locale that has a big enough
head to make a meal of, compared to something like a kingfish or a large
snapper that are more common in the far east. See the notes to get some
alternatives.
On the other hand, while I enjoyed this dish, salmon didn't work as well as a more
neutrally flavoured fish probably would. You could do away with the idea
of the fish head and do the same recipe with a whole seabass or red
snapper. It may also work with a more traditional cold water fish like
cod, but I haven't tried it.
I used fresh tumeric and curry leaves which may be a little difficult to get hold of. Use a teaspoon of ground tumeric and perhaps a bay leaf as an alternative. Likewise, for tamarind paste, replace it with the juice of half a lime to give a similar sour flavour. You could also use red onion instead of shallots.
An interesting fact about the "Charley says..." adverts, which I only discovered in writing up this recipe, is that the cat was voiced by the late, great Kenny Everett
It would be remiss of me if, having mentioned the "Charley says.." adverts, I didn't post this:
The Prodigy Putting the "E" in Charley
The range of UK public information films produced by the UK government is actually quite staggering and an archive of them, from 1946 to 2006, can be found here
I've already stated how much I despise cold leftover roast meat. The way in which the delicately tender slices have turned into sheets of greasy polythene really gets on my tits, so any recipe that makes it more palatable is a great thing. If this is a proper hearty, dinner-sized meal, all the better (as opposed to a soup, for example).
In the UK, the granddaddy of roast meat is the pteranodon-sized Christmas offering, the roast
turkey. Tradition dictates that you need to buy the biggest fuck-off
turkey you can find or the biggest turkey that will actually fit into
your oven, whichever is smallest. How this tradition arose I have no
idea. I mean, it's
not as if it's biblical, is it? The domestic turkey is native to North
America and wouldn't be seen east of the Atlantic for 1500 years after
the birth of Jesus. Besides which, the
gifts mentioned were gold, frankincense and myrrh, not gold, frankincense and a
fucking ginormous turkey.
Just your average family turkey for Christmas You'll get a cracking curry from this
However the tradition started, it means there is enough
leftover meat for at least a full week of meals for the average sized
family. The cold leftovers themselves become part of the Christmas holiday tradition. There's using it as a sandwich filling for the Boxing Day buffet. Then there are other options that work as recipes. Cold turkey makes a pretty good
Chinese-style hot and sour soup (recipe to follow, at some point) or turkey and sweetcorn soup, for example. The
turkey curry, however, is another part of post-Christmas rituals
and I have had some truly fucking diabolical versions in my youth. The sort of curry I have nightmares about, where the turkey is thrown in with fried onions and a random
selection of spices, or worse, generic "curry powder", and fuck all else.
The thing is, reheated roast meat really needs to be prepared properly. Turkey, especially, tends to be pretty dry, so that's something to consider, and then there's the awful, vaguely wet dog aroma that dry, poorly stored cold roast meat develops. It doesn't matter how much garam masala you use if it's still got the all the culinary qualities of licking the arse of a Lhasa Apso (it's a Dougal dog from Magic Roundabout, see picture below) that's just been fetching a stick from Lake Windermere. However, this version of turkey curry does work and does the meat justice, mainly due to the acidic lemon that cuts through the moist canine character of reheated roast meat.
Dougal, the only Lhasa Apso worth mentioning The scent of Christmas past.
One last thing, this curry should have a decent chilli kick to it. Picture the scene: you've been cooped up in the house for a few days; plied with way too much rich food, chocolate and booze; bored to death by the shit programming on TV. You've still got a mountain of cooked turkey to get through and you need something to really give your guts, your tastebuds, indeed. your very soul, a defibrillating shock to get you back to something like a normal routine again. A pallet-cleansing, tangy, hot curry is just that shock. Just don't forget to shout "CLEAR!" as you use the toilet next day.
TIMING
Preparation: 5-10 minutes (not counting the time to roast the turkey first time around, obviously)
Cooking: 15-20 minutes
INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil 300g leftover roast turkey meat, shredded
3 small onions, sliced
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 red or orange pepper, cut into 2 cm squares
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground tumeric
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 whole bay leaf
4 red or green chillies, finely chopped
4 med/ 6-8 small tomatoes, peeled and quartered
1 tbsp tomato puree
juice of 1 lemon
50 ml water
2 tsp garam masala
RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and add the spices to gently fry for a minute or so.
Add the onions and garlic and fry until soft, around 5-10 minutes. Add the pepper and and fry for a further few minutes.
Pour in the water along with the rest of the ingredients, except the turkey. Mix well and allow to simmer for 10 minutes.
Gently stir in the turkey to heat through.
A panful of leftover joy
Finally, pep up the flavour with the garam masala and serve.
Like many curries, this works with plain rice, or something a little more fancy like a pilau like my lemon flavoured version or this Indian egg fried rice, with or without a South Asian bread, like naan.
NOTES
One of the other beauties of this recipe is how fucking quick this is to
cook. I'll probably go into this a bit further in a subsequent recipe
entry, but my worst habit in cooking is how slow I am, mainly as a
result of being really anal about how I chop vegetables. I can't help
it, I cook like I'm making love (no, not anal): with care and attention
to detail. However, even I could bang this out in about half an hour.
This recipe would work pretty well with leftover roast chicken.
It's not the most appealing looking dish as you can see, but what can you expect from leftovers? It tastes fucking great, and that's all that matters.
Jalfrezi is one of my favourite curries in UK curry houses. The local curry house version bears almost no resemblance to this recipe. On the other hand, research tells me this is a more authentic version of jalfrezi since it is supposed to be a really dry curry.
I have a recipe waiting to be written up for roast turkey with
various trimmings, but I reckon that may be better posted in the run up
to Christmas.
I made it through this whole blog without once taking the piss out of a famous TV chef. I really am slipping.
