Salty things

Tomatoes are everywhere on my social media feed at the moment and people praise their heavenly, late summer aroma. I have to admit though that I rarely have eaten really good, flavourful tomatoes. The german standard tomato simply isn’t as good as it’s Italian or Spanish relatives. Also tomatoes in India are only average and not even our homegrown tomatoes are anywhere near to what I ate on holidays in Italy.

But I actually don’t mind, as even the standard tomato has a lot to offer. One of the reasons why tomatoes are such popular fruits is probably because they are natural umami providers as they contain high levels of glutamic acid. Indian cooking embraces this quality and many dishes contain tomatoes in their base gravy, where they provide acidity, volume and savouriness without the taste of tomato.

My recipe for tomato sauce takes a similar approach. With a very unique technique it magically transforms average tomatoes into an unbelievable hearty sauce which reminds me almost of eating goulash (which I think is a very desirable result).

It tastes fantastic with noodles but can also be used as a base for other dishes. The cinnamon might seem a bit out of place, but it  is a really good flavour combination which my grandmother taught me many years ago. In India cinnamon is actually only used in salty dishes..

You’ll need a big heavy bottomed pan or pot for this recipe. I use a cast iron pan with 28 cm diameter and high edges.

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Smoky Cinnamon Tomato Sauce

For 2 - 3 people.

Ingredients

• 9 - 10 tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons ghee or oil
• 1 onion
• 1 cup red wine
• salt, per taste
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1,5 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions

Cut the tomatoes into half and the onion into rough pieces. Heat the ghee/oil in the pan on medium high heat. Once it’s nicely hot lay the tomatoes in the pan with the cut side down.

Best to do that with a cooking spoon or something similar as the oil will splutter. Only add as many tomato halves as there is space, they should not lay to tight or overlap. In my pan fit ca. 9 tomatoes/18 halves.

Wait till the tomatoes have nicely browned with a few black spots. Don’t stir or move them around as this will release water and stop them from browning. Depending on your pan and heat source it will take around 5 - 10 Minutes. Half way through add the onion pieces and brown them as well.

Deglaze the tomatoes with the cup of wine and add another 1-2 cups of water. Reduce the heat and simmer the tomatoes for around 10 minutes. Add sugar, salt and cinnamon and roughly puree the sauce in a blender or with a handheld mixer.

I love pumpkin and as it’s a typical summer vegetable in India, we eat all kind of pumpkin dishes already since months. From an Ayurvedic point of view pumpkin belongs to the vegetables which cool the body and are an ideal food for summer. To cool down further in the Indian heat we often keep the stove off and I prepare the pumpkin raw as a salad.

To eat pumpkin raw as a salad is not so well known, but actually most pumpkins can be eaten raw and they have a wonderful mild, nutty flavour and are pleasantly crunchy. Some decorative pumpkins can’t be eaten raw, but you can use any common pumpkin or squash which is meant for eating. Raw pumpkin salad tastes best with a sweetish, creamy dressing and for my salad I borrowed the flavours from an Indian chaat. These are fantastic, north Indian snacks, which can come in wide variety of ingredients. They all are a wild combination of flavours and textures and taste salty, sweet, sour, crunchy and creamy, all at the same time.

Most chaats use some deep-fried item as the base, but the flavours also tastes great with crunchy pumpkin. The salad is done really fast and it’s the perfect healthy snack, which fills you up without being heavy.

Only the tamarind date chutney takes a little time. But once ready it’ll last for months in the fridge and also makes for a fantastic dip, ketchup replacement and can be used in many more recipes. Tamarind is a very versatile ingredient and injects a deep sour-savoury flavour in many dishes (Ottolenghi called it once one of his secret weapons). It’s really, really worth buying! I’ll be posting some more tamarind recipes in future to show you what it can do.

You’ll get tamarind paste in any Asian market or online and it’ll also last for ages and can be used for many more Indian/Asian/Freestyle dishes.

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Raw Pumpkin Salad with Tamarind Date Chutney

Enough as a snack for 2 people. The recipe for the tamarind chutney will yield one big jar and last for up to 3 months in the fridge.

Ingredients

Tamarind Date Chutney

• 200 gram dates without stones, cut in small pieces
• 5 tablespoons tamarind paste or 100 gram dried tamarind
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 TL teaspoon chili powder (optional)
• 500 ml water

Salad

• 1/4 of a medium sized pumpkin (hokkaido, muscat, etc)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• one handfull fresh coriander leaves
• one handfull boiled chickpeas
• one handfull roasted peanuts (salted or unsalted)
• 1 green chili, finely chopped (optional)
• 250 gram yogurt
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons tamarind chutney

Instructions

Chutney

If you use the dried tamarind you first have to make your own tamarind paste. Pour 1 big cup of boiling hot water of the dried tamarind and let it soak for 30 min. You can stir it from time to time to loosen it up a bit. After 30 min add the tamarind and water to a sieve and by pressing on it try to extract as much pulp as possible.

Quickly dry roast the cumin seeds in pot over medium heat till they change colour and smell aromatic. Then add 500 ml water and chopped dates. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. The dates should dissolve in the water, depending on how dry your dates were when you started, it’ll might take a little bit longer. Pour the dates and water into a blender (or use a handheld blender) and puree it, strain through a sieve. Add the puree back to the pot.

Now add the salt, chili powder and tamarind paste (or the extracted pulp), bring to a boil and simmer till it has a thick pouring consistency (a bit thinner than ketchup). Fill in a sterilized glass jar.

As tamarind pastes vary in sourness you should taste the chutney. If it feels too sour add some brown sugar to it, till you feel it tastes balanced.

Salad

Peel and deseed the pumpkin, then grate it as rough as possible. I use a mandoline for it, but if a box grate is all you have you can use that too (it won’t be as crunchy though). Mix the grated pumkin with the lemon juice and green chili (if using), distribute on 2 plates and scatter the chickpeas, peanuts and coriander leaves over it.

Stir the salt into the yogurt, if the yogurt is very thick you can thin it out with a teaspoon full of water. Spoon the yogurt over the pumkin salad and top each plate with a generous tablespoon of tamrind chutney.

Notes

You can also add other ingredients to the salad. A handful of pomegranate seeds or some cubed potatoes or cucumber taste nice. If you are brave enough you can also crush some potato chips and add them on top.

In our backyard grows a big mango tree, which bears fruits every couple of years. As we are competing with a gang of  notorious monkeys I’ve never gotten any of its ripe fruits, but you can trick them and pluck your share while they are still young and sour. Mangoes in India (similar to jackfruits) are used in various stages of ripening and can be used in savory dishes or enjoyed as a sweet fruit. There are many uses for unripe mangoes – they get dried and grind to a powder (amchur powder), turned into a tangy summer drink (aam panna), sprinkled with chili salt  as a snack or sun-dried and preserved in oil and spices.

after 1 week

I guess most of my readers don’t have a mango tree in their backyard and won’t need a recipe for pickled green mangoes and even in India, where mangoes are abundant, nowadays less people preserve mangoes themselves as a huge variety of commercial pickles and chutneys are available. I was also not particularly interested in cutting and drying kilos of mangoes and if it weren’t for our gardener I would have never attempted this project. He basically forced me into it with first dropping off sacks full of green mangoes at our house, than bringing his wife Devi to show me how to do it and finally uncovering a glass full of preserved mangoes from last years harvest. After trying a spoonful of the pickle my husband and me were very impressed – the mangoes were still a bit acidic but tasted incredible savory with a pleasant meaty texture. It seemed magical how the sour fruits had turned into these little umami flavor bombs and I was now very willing to spend my entire weekend with cutting and drying of mangoes.

My husband remembered that his grandmother used to preserve mangoes that way, but in the generation of his parents already many traditional recipes were not used anymore. Since his childhood he hadn’t eaten anything comparable and got really excited about the flavor of the homemade pickle. The preserved mangoes made me wonder one more time how many recipes and how much flavor already got lost through the industrialization of our food ?

after 1 year

The family of our gardener still makes their own pickles as they are poor and preserving mangoes means a cheap way to enhance their diet and stock up their supplies. A few pieces of preserved mangoes, with rotis (flatbread) and sliced onions can be a simple but satisfying meal.

If you don’t have a mango tree in your backyard you’ll maybe still be thinking that the recipe is pretty useless to you, but you can also preserve other vegetables in a similar way and I’ll update about that later. Till then I hope I maybe could inspire someone to see what’s ripe wherever you live and ask some grandmother for a recipe for how to preserve it.

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Sun-dried Green Mango Pickle

You will find 2 variations of the spice mixture, please choose one, both are equally delicious. As every family in India has their own recipe there are probably a million more ways to make it. These are the 2 recipes I learned from Devi, the wonderful wife of our gardener Jadav.

Ingredients

Mangoes

• 2,5 kilo young, green mangoes
• 2 teaspoons salt 
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder

Spice mixture 1

• 30 gram fennel seeds 
• 40 gram fenugreek seeds
• 20 gram ajwain seeds
• 12 cloves
• 14 gram turmeric powder
• 3 gram chili powder
• 40 gram salt
• 120 ml mustard oil

Spice mixture 2

• 15 gram fenugreek seeds
• 15 gram fennel seeds
• 5 gram ajwain seeds
• 20 gram coriander powder
• 8 gram turmeric powder
• 7 gram chili powder
• 12 gram garam masala powder
• 40 gram salt
• 120 ml mustard oil

You will need an additional 1/2 liter mustard oil or so. The amount will depend on the size of the jar and how tight you pack the mangoes in it.

Instructions

Wash the mangoes with skin thoroughly and let them dry completely. Then half them completely (the seed of the young mangoes is still soft so you can cut through them completely), cut in quarters. Remove the inner part of the seed (this is the part which will fall out easily), the skin of the seed which is attached to the flesh of the mango should stay.

Rub the mangoes evenly with the salt and turmeric powder and spread them on a sheet to let them dry in the sun. (I did let them dry for 1, 5 days in the sun, in the night I did bring them back in). You could also dry them in the oven or a dehydrator (50 - 60 degrees). They don't have to be completely dry, but most of the moisture should have evaporated and the skins start to turn greyish. Drying helps to preserve them for longer. You can skip this step if you plan to eat the pickle relatively fresh.

Choose which spice mix you wanna use and measure the spices accordingly and mix them. Warm the mustard oil slightly, pour over the spices and mix everything. Once the mixture has cooled down distribute it evenly over the mango pieces. With clean hands or a big spoon try to rub in the spices as even as possible till all mangoes are covered with the paste.

Sterilize a big glass jar with boiling water and let it dry completely. Fill in the mangoes and cover the jar with a piece of cloth and a rubber band. Keep the jar in the full sun for another 2 days. This helps to "cook" the pickle and let the mangoes absorb the flavor of the spices fully. A few hours in a slightly heated oven should do the same (50 - 60 degrees).

Once all this is done fill up the glass jar with some mustard oil, so that the mangoes are fully dispensed in it (warm and cool down the mustard oil, before pouring). Now you can close the glasses with the original lid of the jar and keep it at a dark place to ripen further.

You can already eat the mangoes after a week, but I think they are even better after a longer resting phase.

Notes

Work as clean as possible (wash your hands properly, use clean utensils, etc) to ensure a long storage life.

The highly aromatic oil in which the mangoes are preserved can be used later for cooking, salads or drizzling over rice or steamed vegetables to aromatize them.

My parents-in-law live in a sun flooded house in a cosy small town close to Kolkata. Whenever we go and visit them my mother-in-law makes a huge effort to feed us all kind of delicacies. There are local vegetables, duck eggs, small and big fishes and of course everybody’s favourite dish – chingri malai curry (prawns in coconut). The days pass with good food, visits to our relatives, short excursions to town and long afternoon naps. From time to time I get out my notebook to write down a recipe or note an idea. One of the easiest but most essential recipes I learned from Maa is the one for her garam masala.

Garam masala is a spice blend widely used in India but it’s preparation varies very much from state to state, but in contrast to other spices mixes it is mainly used as a finishing spice at the end of cooking time. In Bengali cooking, spices are used more sparingly and the typical Bengali garam masala consists of cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Maa only uses cinnamon and cardamon and instead of roasting the spices in the pan she dries them in the sun.

In India the sun plays an important role to prepare certain ingredients – in mountain regions like Kashmir vegetables and fruits are dried to preserve them for the harsh winter months. Achaars are traditionally fermented in the sun and papadums dried on rooftops. Often it’s said that the sun gives the dishes a special flavour and the romantic in me willingly believes that the soaked up sun rays will shine through the food and enhance every dish.

Ma’s garam masala is sweet & aromatic and a very universal spice mix. It does not only fit well with bengali dishes, it also adds an exotic flavour to roasted vegetables, dals and rice dishes. 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon added at the end of the cooking process or sprinkled over the dish will drastically improve many dishes. And don’t worry if you live somewhere cold or it’s raining non-stop, you can of course also roast the spices in a pan.

You will need a little mixer, coffee grinder or mortar and pestle for this recipe.

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Sun roasted Garam Masala

A quickly made garam masala which goes well with roasted vegetables, dals and rice dishes.

Ingredients

• 25 grams cinnamon bark (cassia)
• 20 gram green cardamon pods

Instructions

In the sun:

On a hot summer day lay the spices for a few hours into direct sunlight. After they have dried you can break the cinnamon bark into smaller pieces and grind the whole spices in a small mixer or coffee grinder to a fine powder. Give them through a sieve to get rid of leftover pieces of the cardamon pods.

In case you grind the spices with mortar and pestle (it seems like a lot of work, but is a lot of fun) you should remove the seeds from the cardamon pods and only used the seeds as it is difficult to powder the pods.

Store the spice mix in a dark airtight container it will stay fresh for several weeks.

Roasting in a pan:

Heat up a pan on medium heat and once it's hot add the spices. Roast them, while stirring constantly, till they smell aromatic. This will take 3-4 minutes. Then continue as described above

Notes

In India cassia cinnamon is used for cooking and thats what you need for this recipe. You will get it in any asian store, you can easily recognize the rough bark pieces which are not rolled up like the cinnamon generally used in western countries.

As a child one of my favorite dishes was a simple broth with noodles. Already very early on I was able to cook it all by myself, standing on a little chair I mixed stock powder with hot water, boiled some noodles in it and after a few minutes I was in a salty broth heaven.

Nowadays I don’t like stock powders that much anymore, but I still love a good broth and have tried a lot of recipes, which promised to turn a pot of hot water into broth heaven. But as I like my broth clear or only with little add ons I find ordinary vegetable broths often a bit boring and they also take ages to cook (and having some bones or a soup chicken at home takes quite some planning).

A while ago I read a book by David Tanis and he mentions a provencal garlic soup which only needs 20 cloves of garlic and hardly anything else. After trying it out I knew I had found the holy grail of vegetable broths. The garlic loses its penetrant smell while cooking and turns he water into a savory broth which is comparable to a long boiled chicken broth. And it only takes 20 minutes with ingredients I always have at home!

It also made me think that many indian dishes start with the same procedure – at the beginning of the cooking process a good measure of ginger-garlic paste is fried together with the spices and then cooked for some time to give the dishes their particular savouriness.

My turmeric garlic broth recipe is a mix between Tanis recipe and the beginning of an Indian curry and uses also turmeric and ginger, which make the soup not only a bit more peppery but also at least as wholesome as a good chicken broth. My 2 year old son loves it by the way.

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Turmeric Garlic Broth

A savoury vegeterian broth ready in 20 minutes!

Ingredients

• 20 garlic cloves 
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 piece of ginger (5 cm)
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 3 black peppercorns
• 1250 ml water (5 cups)
• salt, as per taste

For serving:

• herbs
• noodles
• vegetables
• poached egg

Instructions

Give the garlic cloves in a pot or bowl, put some kind of lid or plate on top and shake strongly for 30 seconds. This helps to loosen the skin and makes peeling much easier. Peel the cloves roughly and mash them a bit with a mortar, bottom of a pot or anything else heavy.

Clean the ginger and grate it (it's not necessary to peel it).

Heat the olive oil over medium heat, add the garlic and fry it lightly, it should not take on any colour (2-3 min) Add the ginger, turmeric and peppercorns and fry for another minute.

Add the water and 1 teaspoon of salt, close with a lid and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

Once ready give everything through a fine sieve while pressing on the garlic, so that all liquid releases. Add salt per taste (don't skimp on the salt, a good broth is always a bit salty). Serve with a lot of fresh herbs (I like coriander), noodles, vegetables, egg or whatever you feel like.

Notes

You should use good quality, fresh garlic for getting maximum flavour.