Fusion Flavours!

Anglo-Indian cuisine, India’s ‘original fusion cuisine’ is a fascinating one that’s spiced with centuries of history and culture.   

By Raul Dias

As one of India’s most underrepresented cuisines, Anglo-Indian food and its wonderful cache of fusion dishes is all but a lost legacy. Once the mainstay of colonial-style gentlemen’s clubs and railway canteens overseen by khansamas, Anglo-Indian cuisine is slowing inching out of the woodwork. All this, thanks to efforts of people like Bridget White Kumar—author of several cookbooks on this unique cuisine who are seeking a revival of dishes that hold within them centuries of history and culture. The latest boost comes in the form of the recent opening of India’s first true-blue Anglo-Indian cuisine restaurant, Anglow in New Delhi’s Khan Market.
We look at some classic Anglo-Indian dishes that have stood the test of time here in India…

Jalfrezi and Pepper Water
This two-part Anglo-Indian dish is a strange one given its geographical antecedents. The former part of the dish was born in erstwhile Calcutta when it served as the capital of India right up to 1772. Derived from the Bengali word jhal parhezi which means “hot dish”, the vegetable stew—that’s tempered with mustard oil—is always served with a thin broth-like side dish called pepper water. The latter itself came from another British strong-hold of the then Madras Presidency, where the tamarind pulp-based dish is more-commonly known as rasam or saaru.

Chicken Country Captain
This three-way fusion dish is an amalgamation of the Italian chicken stew of cacciatore, a British roast chicken and an Indian korma. Named after the captains of the ‘country ships’ owned by the British East India Company, in whose galleys this dish took shape, the red-hued preparation is a sweet-n-spicy chicken gravy best mopped up with slices of crusty bread.

Ball Curry and Yellow Rice
Taking the very British dish of meatball stew and giving it an Indian flip, this quintessential Anglo-Indian classic sees the introduction of thick coconut milk added to the stew that’s further spiced width cumin and coriander powder. This Anglo Sunday lunch staple is always served with an accompanying duo of sides that take the form of a sunshine yellow turmeric rice and a devil’s chutney made from Kashmiri chillies, tomatoes, sugar and vinegar.

Spiced Allahabad Fruit Cake
This dense, rich confection—that is part of the edible legacy left behind by the once strong Anglo-Indian community of Allahabad—best defines this fusion cuisine. While desi ghee stands in for the regular fruit cake shortening of butter, giving the cake a slight savoury edge, local Indian spices like nutmeg, saunf (fennel powder) and sonth (dried ginger powder) make it typically Anglo-Indian. Further augmenting this mélange is the use of petha (candy pumpkin) that replaces the once hard-to-procure candied fruit peel that had to be imported in from good ol’ Blighty. Today, Allahabad’s famous bakery Bushy’s on Kanpur Road is one of the few places where one can still get a slice of this unique cake.

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the March 2020 issue of Travel 360, the in-flight magazine of Air Asia India)

Taking Kedgeree Home

Post Independence, the British returned home with a whole lot of desi magic to jazz up their rather ‘uninspiring’ cuisine. Raul Dias introduces you to a few such dishes that have additions of that unmistakable Indian tadka to them!

By Raul Dias

I have very little doubt that Indian cuisine is one of the world’s greatest cuisines with its perfect blend of flavours and cooking techniques that range from the wonders of dum to the smoky brilliance of the tandoor and a whole lot more in between. The sheer variety of genres on offer across the country’s length and breadth sort of invalidates the term ‘Indian cuisine’ with each region giving us treats more exotic than the other.
No wonder then, that the Brits—on leaving India after Independence came into being in 1947—have co-opted several India-inspired dishes into the folds of their rather boring cuisine to come up with dishes that are delicious hybrids that have now gone on to define modern British cuisine. Here are four such examples:

Piccalilli
This low-on-spice British interpretation of Indian achar is a sort of relish made up of chopped pickled vegetables and spices, particularly cauliflower, onion, and gherkin—and seasonings of mustard and turmeric. And like in the various Indian achars, in Britain too regional recipes of piccalilli vary considerably. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to the middle of the 18^th century when, in 1758, a certain Hannah Glasse described how “to make Paco-Lilla, or India Pickle”. An apparently earlier reference is in Anne Blencowe’s Receipt Book, written in 1694, which has “To Pickle Lila, an Indian Pickle” credited to Lord Kilmory. Today, piccalilli is best had as part of a traditional Brit working meal called a ploughman’s lunch.  

Mulligatawny
We can easily see the underpinnings of this spice-redolent soup in the South Indian rasam. The tongue-twister of a name originates from the Tamil words for pepper (miḷagu), and water (tanni). Due to its popularity in England during British India, it was one of the few items of India that found common mention in the literature of the period. Recipes for mulligatawny varied greatly over the years. Later versions included British modifications that included meat, though the local Tamil recipe on which it was based did not.

Jalfrezi
Though it shares its name with an Indian dish, the British version of jalfrezi is a concoction all of its own. It consists of a main ingredient such as meat, fish, paneer or vegetables, stir-fried and served in a thick spicy sauce that includes green capsicum along with onions and tomatoes. The recipe for it first appeared in cookbooks of the British India as a way of using up leftovers by frying them with chilli and onion. This English language usage derived from the colloquial Bengali word jhal porhezi: in Bengali, jhal (not to be confused with jhol or water!) means spicy, while porhezi comes from the Persian word, parhezi means suitable for a diet. Today, there is probably not a single curry house in all of Britain that doesn’t sere an iteration of jalfrezi.

Kedgeree
Once again, like the others on this list, Kedgeree too has been adapted from a local Indian dish. This time from the ultra-popular comfort food and convalescence favourite preparation of khichdi! This dish moved to Victorian Britain and changed dramatically. The Brit take on the dish is one that is made up of cooked, flaked fish (traditionally smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, butter or cream, and occasionally sultanas. The dish can be eaten hot or cold. Other fish can be used instead of haddock such as tuna or salmon, though that is not traditional. It is believed to have been popularised by returning British colonials who had enjoyed it in India and introduced it to the UK as a breakfast dish in Victorian times, part of the then fashionable Anglo-Indian cuisine.

(An edited version of this column first appeared in the 11th August 2019 issue of The Free Press Journal newspaper's Weekend section on page 3 https://www.freepressjournal.in/food/food-review-taking-home-indian-tadka) 

Goan ‘tar’ for Easter’s kuswar!

Edging out cutesy chocolate bunnies and marzipan eggs from our Goan Easter table is always dodol—the true kuswar star

By Raul Dias

Growing up in a bi-cultural Goan-Anglo Indian home in the early 90s, almost everything, culturally speaking, was neatly divvied up between the two vastly different Christian communities. While Christmas was always spent in frosty Jaipur with my mum’s family, tucking into Nan’s brandy-spiked plum pudding and gossamer-light, deep-fried rose cookies, Easter in Goa was a whole other affair.
The night before Maundy Thursday, my father would pile us all into his trusted old Amby, as mum would neatly pack chicken sandwiches, a mighty quiche Lorraine and a giant thermos flask of iced nimbu paani in the picnic hamper. All this as sustenance for the then 14-hour-long, overnight tryst with the Western Ghats, en route to four days of Easter feasting in our tiny village of Cavelossim that hugs the River Sal in South Goa’s Salcette region.

Loving Indulgence
While our large family home did have a fully functioning ‘western-style’ kitchen, it was the coconut husk-fired outdoor stove that my late grand aunt Flory and matriarch of the house, preferred cooking over. Here, she would toil for hours on end over the cinder-spewing flame, churning out one edible masterpiece after the other. Never once complaining about the soot as it coated her spectacle’s bifocal lenses with a thin layer of grey soot. Nor did she mind my grubby little hands reaching into a thali of cooling ‘tar’ for a cheeky taste test.         
Now, among the vast pantheon of Goa’s hallowed Easter kuswar (sweets) platter, ‘tar’ was always my favourite, thanks to its gooey, messy texture and earthy taste. Not to mention its oil-slick, jet black hue. It was also Tia Flory’s most demanded treat to us all. Never a fan of those luridly coloured marzipan Easter eggs with thick splodges of royal icing covering them or those waxy-tasting chocolate renditions of bunnies, my preferences were more local Goan sweets. Much to Tia Flory’s delight. And so indulge me, she did!

Onomatopoeia on a Thali
Even though it has a perfectly onomatopoeic name, the kind that rolls off one’s tongue just as smoothly as its silken texture does, dodol has always been ‘tar’ for me. It is also known to be referred to as black halwa by my posse of pals who seem to magically apparate into my dining room whenever mum sends over a thali of dodol, after carefully replicating Tia Flory’s original (and much guarded!) recipe.
Brought over to Goa from West Java by the Portuguese, it’s not surprising that I’ve encountered several iterations of dodol on my travels around South East Asia. But particularly in Indonesia. Commonly served during Eid, it is called jenang in the Javanese language, with even a local durian dodol available that is popular in the city of Medan. Closer home in Sri Lanka, it can be found in two versions: kalu dodol that’s made with kithul palm (caryota urens) jaggery and kiri dodol made with milk and cinnamon.

Bubble, Bubble Toil and Trouble!
But my earliest memories of dodol will always lie in those humid pre-Easter, March-April days in the Goa of my childhood. Carefully scraping a coconut on the kantonem to ensure that its milky white flesh bore no flecks of brown, Tia Flory would then introduce the scrapings to a fistful of soaked rice. Both soon to be ground to a thick pulp on the typically Goan rough granite mortar and pestle called a fator, which literally means stone.
The secret to its inky black colour, I’d soon learn, was thanks to the black jaggery. The kind that’s sold in the shape of tiny pyramids in Goa’s food markets. Made from the sap of the coconut palm, this madachem god jaggery was the de facto sweetener-cum-colourant of dodol, though Tia Flory did throw in a wad of the regular yellow jaggery for a bit of additional heft.
But the real action always began with the onset of the laborious hour-long stirring process. It was only when the lubricating ghee was added to the mixture that the real alchemy unfolded. Akin to a smouldering volcano, the by-now deep brown viscous liquid would bubble up. Every now and then its surface erupting with blisters of molten yumminess.
However, only when it had cooled down hours later, did it take on a shiny black colouring. Loathe to ruin its appearance with a garnish of any kind—despite protestations from other aunts who demanded cashew nut garnishes and other frivolities—Tia Flory would leave it as it was. Letting it revel in its firm, yet jellified countenance and sensual taste that bore hints of a molasse-y depth, coupled with top notes of toffee-like sweetness and that all-important additive—love!  

           

SUNDAY RECIPE
Goa Dodol
(Recipe courtesy, Ann Dias)

INGREDIENTS:
Coconut (scraped)1
Black Goa jaggery 250 gms
Regular yellow jaggery 50 gms
Ghee 2 tbsp
Rice (soaked) 4 tbsp
Chopped cashew nuts 10 gms (optional)

METHOD:
1. In a mixer, grind the scraped coconut and soaked rice together with a splash of water.
2. Reserve both the thick and thin extracts of the coconut-rice mixture and set aside separately.
3. In a heavy bottom kadhai, combine the thin extract and the two kinds of jaggery and cook on a medium to high flame, stirring continuously.
4. Once the mixture solidifies a bit, add the thick extract and the ghee. Keep stirring till the mixture turns a dark brown, almost black shade and till it leaves the sides of the kadhai.
5. Pour the mixture onto a greased thali and top with chopped cashew nuts, if desired.
6. Once cooled to room temperature, cut into squares or diamond shapes with a greased knife.    

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 14th April 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on pages 26-27 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/make-some-goan-tar-for-easter/article26817493.ece?fbclid=IwAR31OIkUuvuaIJ31ybyRcNc2tdzDU2fA5ClmtqN3hsD8BoYCGfuIxb4-khY)

A Slice of India!

From the bakeries of Allahabad and Puducherry to homes in Mumbai and Goa, cakes made with typically Indian ingredients like ghee and petha can be found jostling for space along with the more ubiquitous varieties, making for interesting confectionary chimeras.  

  

By Raul Dias

Incredible as it may be to believe, but until I was around 10, I thought that ghee was the only shortening agent employed in baking a cake! It was only when I began to get ensnared in the vice-like grip of a multitude of cookery shows—thanks to the satellite television invasion of the early 90s—did I discover butter as being the de facto, world’s favourite cake fat. All this, much to the chagrin of my Anglo-Indian grandmother who resolutely refused to make the switch, insisting that her spiced fruit cake could only be made with lashings of shudh desi ghee.
Thanks to the forced WWII frugality thrust upon her in the form of grocery rationing, as a young homemaker, she came up with several recipes substituting the expensive and tough-to-procure butter with the easy-to-prepare homemade clarified butter. Recipes, along with a larder of rather strange ingredients, that would remain intrinsic parts of her baking repertoire, forever.     
Speaking of strange, long before it became fashionable to add a bit of puréed pumpkin (and grated zucchini, too!) to impart a rich, moistly dense crumb to a fruit cake, my Nan would chop up bits of her favourite sweet—Agra ka petha, or sugar candy pumpkin—in lieu of the more ‘kosher’ candied peel and tutti-frutti. Along with ghee and a sprinkling of spices like sonth (dried ginger powder) and javitri (mace), she’d lovingly make her legendary fruit cake that both my mum and I have tried to replicate rather unsuccessfully over the years since Nan’s passing. 
But on a recent trip to Allahabad, I came across a version of a spiced rich fruit cake that could easily step in as a worthy doppelganger to the one I’ll sadly never savour again. Once a stronghold of thousands of Anglo-Indian ‘railway’ families, Allahabad today has barely a dozen or so left. But what they’ve left behind is an edible legacy of sorts in the form of the Allahabad Cake, which is what I discovered at Bushy’s on Kanpur Road. This modest, 54-year-old little bakery still makes a scrumptious, Indianised version of a traditional fruit cake using nutmeg, saunf (fennel seeds), cinnamon, caraway seeds, ghee and a marmalade that the person at the counter told me is sourced from Loknath ki Galli—Allahabad’s foodie haven.
The mava cupcake is another Indianised cake treat most of us grew up eating here in India. Dried whole milk or mava is the chief ingredient of the moist, eggless cake that’s flecked with cardamom seeds that go pop in the mouth when bitten into! This classic tea time delicacy has been made famous by the Irani and Parsi bakeries of Mumbai and Pune—particularly Merwan’s that has several branches in both cities and by Mumbai’s iconic Sassanian bakery at Marine Lines.
Made with copious quantities of salted butter, eggs, semolina and the main star ingredient—desiccated coconut powder—the bhaat cake is Goa’s pride and joy (see recipe). A vestige of Goa’s Portuguese colonialists, this dense, intensely coconut-y calorific treat has its underpinnings in Middle Eastern confectionary, given its remarkable similarity to the basbousa semolina-orange blossom water cake of Egypt, that is understandably bereft of the very coastal Indian ingredient—the coconut.
Another close colonial cousin of bhaat is the East Indian thali sweet that uses an additional ingredient in the form of almonds ground in rose water. And alluding to its name, this festive treat is both baked and served in an inch-high steel thali. Once ready, diamond shaped slices are cut and eaten more like an Indian mithai than a cake.
On a year-long work assignment in Chennai a few years ago, my weekends were mostly spent driving down to Puducherry, both, for bar essentials restocking, and to partake in the wonder that is the vivikum cake. Also known as the Pondicherry cake, this more-ish treat is prepared by Puducherry’s Franco-Indian Christians for Christmas, though one can find it all year round at bakeries such as La Boulangerie and Baker Street. Made with ghee (there we go again!), eggs, semolina, nuts, brandy-macerated raisins and zesty lemon peel, the alcohol in the cake helps lengthen the vivikum cake’s shelf life. Not that longevity matters in this cake… err, case!

Bhaat Cake Recipe

Ingredients
500 gm granulated sugar
250 gm salted butter
250 gm semolina
250 gm desiccated coconut powder
1 tbsp rose essence
1 tsp baking powder
6 whole eggs
200 ml water (room temperature)
25 ml water (heated)

Procedure
* Put 200 ml water and sugar in a thick bottom pan and allow to melt over a medium flame.
* When melted, add butter and allow to combine.
* Now add desiccated coconut powder and semolina and cook for five minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature in pan itself.  
* Add baking powder to heated water and pour into the cooled batter.
* Add rose essence to batter and keep aside.
* Beat the six whole eggs till frothy and add to batter combining well.
* Line a 1kg-bearing cake tin with butter paper and bake in a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 180˚C.
* When cooled cut and serve on its own. 
 

--Recipe courtesy Ann Dias

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 5th February 2017 issue of The Hindu newspaper, India http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/Cake%E2%80%99s-colonial-cousins/article17193172.ece)