Vindaloo
This Goan dish combines the Portuguese liking for pork marinated, and then stewed, in vinegar with a south Indian spice mixture and lots of chillies. Some recipes for vindaloo call for as many as twenty fresh red chillies. The spiciness of vindaloo is a matter of taste. This recipe is hot but not eye-wateringly so. If you like very hot food, feel free to add more of either the dried or the fresh red chillies, or more black peppercorns. If you deseed the chillies first they will be less piquant; blending the red chillies with a little water in a mixer before adding them to the paste will increase their potency. Vindaloo is traditionally made with pork but the British liked it best with duck and so do I. If you can obtain palm vinegar or jaggery, these will add a particularly Goan flavour to the dish. Serves 3–4.
2–4 breasts of duck (or 700g stewing pork), cubed
Paste
2 large dried red chillies
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon poppy seeds
4–6 whole cloves
10 black peppercorns
½ teaspoon turmeric
2 fresh red chillies, finely chopped
(or puréed in a blender with a little water)
1 tablespoon palm or wine vinegar
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
6 large cloves of garlic, mashed
2cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
In a cast-iron pan dry-roast the dried chillies, cumin seeds, poppy seeds, cloves, peppercorns and turmeric for 1–2 minutes. Grind these spices into a fine powder in a coffee grinder. Put in a bowl with the fresh red chillies, wine vinegar, tamarind, ginger and garlic and mix to a paste.
Add the meat and mix again. Make sure all the pieces of duck (or pork) are coated in the marinade. Cover and leave in the fridge overnight.
Sauce
4–6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
2cm cinnamon stick
1 large onion, finely chopped
300ml water
salt to taste
pinch of jaggery (palm sugar) or soft brown sugar
a few curry leaves, crumbled
The next day, heat the oil in a large pan and when hot add the mustard seeds and cinnamon stick.
When the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the onions and fry over a medium heat until they begin to brown. Add the meat and its marinade and sauté until all the pieces are browned. Add the water, and a pinch of salt to taste. Cover, turn down the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes (if duck, longer if pork).
Remove the lid, keep the heat very low and simmer gently until the meat is tender (about half an hour with duck, an hour with pork) and the sauce is thick (you may need to add a little more water to prevent burning).
When the meat is tender add the jaggery or sugar, the crumbled curry leaves and simmer for another 3 minutes. Then serve.
Bebinca
This is the Goan pancake-layer cake adapted from a Portuguese recipe which used wheat flour and milk. It is laborious to make but the effect of the layered cake is striking. It should really be made over a fire fuelled with coconut husks but a modern grill is a sufficiently effective substitute. Serves 10–15.
1kg caster sugar (or jaggery if you can get it)
750ml coconut milk
20 egg yolks
100g rice flour
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon cardamom essence (or about ⅛ teaspoon cardamom powder)
250ml melted butter
Mix the caster sugar with the coconut milk until it is dissolved.
Beat the egg yolks until creamy and mix the flour into them thoroughly until the mixture is smooth.
Add the egg yolks and flour to the mixture of coconut milk and sugar, along with the nutmeg and cardamom.
Heat the grill. Take a deep pan, about 12cm in diameter, and put a tablespoon of melted butter in it. Place it under the grill. When it is hot take it out and pour enough batter into the pan to cover the bottom to the depth of about 1½cm. Put under the grill for about 2 minutes and let it cook until it is deep brown in colour. Remove from the grill, put a dessert spoon of melted butter over the cooked layer, and heat under the grill. Then pour over enough batter to cover the first layer, to the depth of about ½cm. Repeat this process until all the batter and melted butter have been used up. Make sure each layer of batter is the same thickness. The final layer should be of melted butter.
When cool, turn out on to a dish, keeping the first layer face down. Decorate with a few slivers of toasted almonds. Cut into slices and serve.
Yash Muthanna’s appam
Although this is a complicated recipe I have included it because the soft rice breads of southern Indian are not very well known in the West. Appams are very good eaten with fresh chutney, or dipped in warm stew (vegetable or mutton) flavoured with cardamoms. They also come in handy for mopping up runny almond and coconut-milk sauces. The idea is to aim for a thick soft centre and a thin crispy outer edge. As a child Yash Muthanna, whose recipe this is, was persuaded to eat up her appam by the addition of an egg which was cracked whole into the centre of the appam and became embedded in the mixture as it cooked. Serves 4–6.
450g rice
225g cooked rice
225g grated coconut
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
a little milk
a little oil
One day in advance, soak the rice for at least 2 hours. Drain, saving some of the water. Mix the soaked rice with the cooked rice and grated coconut. Add some of the saved water and grind together in a blender to make a paste. If necessary add more of the water, until the paste has a batter-like consistency. Cover and set this batter aside overnight.
The next day, add to the mixture the baking powder, sugar and enough milk to thin the batter.
Take a small non-stick wok or round-bottomed pan with a lid. Smear with a tiny amount of a non-tasting oil. Heat the wok to a high temperature.
Coat the sides of the wok with the batter, using one large serving spoonful at a time. Then pour ¼ of a serving spoonful straight into the centre of the wok. Put the lid on tightly and cook for 2 minutes.
The edges of each appam should be brown, crispy and very thin; the middle should be fat and soft and absorbent. (The sugar should help you to achieve the brown edges as it caramelises.)
Remove the appam to a warm plate and repeat the process until the batter has been used up.
The Dutch factory at Surat
fn2 One chittack was equivalent to about one ounce and one seer was about one kilogram.
4
Korma: East India Company merchants,
temples and the Nawabs of Lucknow
EVERY DAY AT twelve noon the East India Company merchants living at the English factory in Surat filed into the great hall and sat down at the dining table in order of their seniority. A servant brought round ‘a large Silver Ewer and Bason’ and everyone washed their hands. In 1689 John Ovington, chaplain on board an East Indiaman which had sailed into the Indian port, joined the merchants at their dining table and savoured the fragrant Mughal specialities which were served. There were pilaus of ‘rice boil’d so artificially that every grain lies singly without being added together, with Spices intermixt, and a boil’d Fowl in the middle’; ‘dumpoked’ chicken, a rich and greasy dish which involved stuffing the bird with raisons and almonds and then baking it in butter in a tight-fitting pot; and beef and mutton ‘Cabob . . . sprinkled with Salt and Pepper, and dipt with Oil and Garlick’ roasted ‘on a Spit, with Sweet Herbs put between every piece’. Ovington observed that ‘several hundreds a Year are expended upon their daily Provisions which are sumptuous enough for the Entertainment of any Person of Eminence in the Kingdom’.1
In 1689, when Ovington dined with the English merchants, Surat was the main port for the largely landlocked Mughal Empire, then ruled by the Emperor Aurangzeb. It was also an important hub in the European East India tr
ade. By then the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade had been broken by the Dutch, the British and the French, all of whom had established factories in the town. These storehouses and living quarters were known by this name, as the representatives of the East Indian trading companies were called factors.
The Dutch were the first to capture a share of the lucrative East India trade from the Portuguese. Their long relationship with Spain (which ruled the Netherlands until 1581) and Portugal gave them an advantage. The Dutch merchant fleet had always played an important part in distributing the goods brought into Europe through the port of Lisbon. And men like Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had worked in the service of the Portuguese in India, provided detailed knowledge of their sea routes and trading practices. The first Dutch fleet sailed for Bantam on the island of Java in 1595 and returned loaded with pepper two years later. The Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie was founded in 1602.
The English were not far behind their Dutch rivals. A group of merchants gathered together a list of investors in 1599, and in 1600 the English East India Company was granted a royal charter. The next year four ships set sail for the spice islands of the Pacific. The voyage was successful and eleven men were left behind to establish an English factory at Bantam and gather together a cargo of pepper ready for the arrival of the next fleet.
Between 1604 and 1613 the British concentrated their efforts around Bantam, but it quickly became clear that bases in India would prove useful. The Europeans brought out broadcloth, woollens, tin, lead, copper and some ‘fancy goods’, such as swords and mirrors, to trade for spices. But the only really good currency were Spanish reales de plato (pieces of eight) which they bought in the European currency markets. However, they realised that the inhabitants of the spice islands were eager to trade cloves, pepper and nutmeg in exchange for Indian textiles.
The Dutch had already (in 1608) established a factory on India’s east coast at Masulipatnam in the territory of the King of Golconda. Here they were able to buy fine chintz which they then traded in Bantam. The British joined them at Masulipatnam in 1611. But they also wanted to break into the market at Surat. This was the hub for trade in ‘rich Silks and Gold Stuffs curiously wrought with birds and Flowers; . . . brocades, velvets, taffetas’, exquisite muslins, chintzes, and calicoes, produced in the Gujarati hinterland. Here raw silk and carpets arrived from Persia, and a brisk trade in rhubarb and asafoetida was conducted across the Arabian Sea. The British ship the Hector touched at Surat in 1608 to allow William Hawkins to disembark. Equipped with a letter from James I, he set off for the Mughal capital of Agra where he petitioned Jahangir to grant the company a firman which would give them favourable terms of trade and allow them to establish factories in the Mughal territories.2
Hawkins was popular with the emperor. He had probably been a merchant in the Levant, and he was therefore able to speak Turkish. This meant that he could communicate with Jahangir without an interpreter. The emperor made him a permanent ambassador to the court and granted him a generous allowance. Hawkins settled into the life of a courtier, adopted Mughal dress, married an Armenian lady, and is reported to have ‘used altogether the custome of the Moores . . . both in his meate and drinke and other customes’. But he was out of his depth when it came to intriguing at the Mughal court. He eventually fell out of favour, ostensibly for having been caught in the presence of the emperor with alcohol on his breath. Disgraced, he set off for Britain without having obtained a firman for the company.3
He was succeeded by Sir Thomas Roe, who, in contrast to Hawkins, was determined to preserve his English habits. Roe spent vast sums on suits of English clothes in crimson, sea green and white damask, trimmed with gold and silver lace. His entourage wore green outfits with red taffeta cloaks and his chaplain, Edward Terry, was expected to ‘walk abroad’ in a ‘long black Cassock’. Terry commented with some humour that ‘the Colours and fashion of our garments were so different from theirs, that we needed not, wheresoever we were to invite spectators to take notice of us’. At his house Roe dined from silver-plated dishes, seated at a table, and, although he kept an Indian cook on his staff, his main chef was English.4 Although Roe was careful to preserve his dignity, he was no more successful than Hawkins in persuading Jahangir to grant the East India Company a firman. However, even before his arrival in India, the British had gained an important foothold. In 1614, the Mughal governor of Surat, persuaded by the British defeat of several Portuguese ships, allowed them to establish a factory there.
In the spice islands, constant skirmishes with the Dutch made life difficult and dangerous for the British factors. But in India the English East India Company gradually put down firm roots. The popularity of Indian textiles in Britain shifted the company’s focus towards India as the trade in cottons and calicoes began to overtake that in spices. By the time John Ovington visited the town, two or three British ships were arriving at Surat every year. Besides Surat and Masulipatnam, the British had established a number of other factories round the Indian coastline.5 Indeed, Surat’s heyday was virtually at an end when Ovington visited. Attacks by the Marathas on the town meant that the British moved the centre of their west coast operations to Bombay. They were followed there by many of the wealthy Indian merchants.6
Before sailing to Surat, Ovington’s ship had briefly visited Bombay. The town had been given to the company by Charles II who received it in 1661 as part of the dowry of his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza. At Bombay, the company had built a fort and a ‘barracks or soldier’s apartment in imitation of Chelsea College’. A half-finished church stood nearby and a small kitchen garden. However, the dominating feature was the British cemetery. In the short time that Ovington’s ship was there they buried twenty out of twenty-four passengers, and fifteen sailors. Another visitor commented that the British who lived there walked ‘in Charnel-houses, the Climate being extremely Unhealthy; . . . whence follows Fluxes, Dropsy, Scurvy, Barbiers [elephantiasis] . . . Gout, Stone, Malignant and Putrid fevers, which are Endemial Diseases: Among the worst of these, Fool Rack [arrack] . . . and Foul Women may be reckoned’.7
On the east coast the British moved their main base to Madras in 1640. It was not a sensible choice as offshore sandbanks, which often shifted their position, and a rolling surf made it extremely dangerous for shipping. But it was said that one of the factors favoured the site as his Indian mistress lived nearby. The British built a fort (St George), and a small town, populated mainly by cloth weavers, grew up next to the factory. Further east, in Bengal, the British, who had been trading there since the 1650s, settled for Calcutta as their base around 1690. Here, a collection of bungalows which looked like ‘thatched hovels’, a stables, a hospital, a barracks and a powder magazine could all be found huddled next to the imposing Fort William. Malaria was a problem, probably due to the ‘pools of stinking water’ which gathered around the settlement.8
The three as yet unpromising settlements of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, were eventually to become the power centres of British rule in India. But the seventeenth-century merchants were uninterested in empire building. They were too busy making money, for the company and for themselves. During the busy season between September and November, when the East Indiamen were able to sail, the factory courtyards were transformed into bustling stock exchanges. The Indian middlemen, who the merchants employed to contract the weavers, would come in to negotiate with the British in corrupted Portuguese. The factors were kept occupied checking the quality of the cloth, loading it on to the ships and drawing up new contracts. Besides conducting the company’s trade, the merchants engaged in small-scale commerce on their own behalfs. They used ‘country’ (meaning Indian) ships to ferry musk, spices, cottons and carpets across the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea. Those East India merchants who survived the diseases, which killed most men within two years, were able to amass large fortunes.9
A description of life in the factory at Surat was written by Albert Mandelslo, who had been educated as a pag
e at the court of the German Duke of Holstein. In 1638, the duke sent an embassy to Persia in order to try and find a way of carrying on the overland silk trade. Mandelslo was allowed to accompany the duke’s ambassadors. In Persia, he met two English merchants whose tales of the Indies inspired him to continue travelling. He set off with three German servants and a Persian guide and interpreter. In April, he took an English boat across the Arabian Sea to Surat, where he was invited to stay with the English in their factory.
The factors led a collegiate life. Divine service, which everyone was expected to attend, was held twice a day, at six in the morning and eight at night, and three times on a Sunday. After prayers the merchants spent the mornings working. Mandelslo commented that there was ‘no person . . . but had his particular Function, and their certain hours assigned them as well for work as recreation’. All the factors took their meals together in a ‘great Hall’, and Mandelslo, like Ovington fifty years later, noted that they ‘kept a great Table, of about fifteen or sixteen dishes of Meat, besides the desert’. Every evening after supper ‘the President, his Second, the principal Merchant, the Minister and my self’ retired to ‘a great open Gallery [to take] the coolness of the Sea Air’.
The merchants spent their leisure time in the Mughal fashion. ‘The English have a fair Garden without the City, wither we constantly went on Sundayes, after Sermon, and sometimes also on other dayes of the week.’ Mandelslo described how they entertained themselves by shooting at butts, eating ‘Collation[s] of Fruit and Preserves . . . bathing in a Tank or Cistern which had five foot water, where some Dutch Gentlewomen serv’d and entertain’d us with much civility’. The merchants also whiled away their time playing board games, under the mellow spell of the hookah (hubble-bubble pipe), or watching pretty Indian dancing girls, who sometimes offered sexual favours to their admiring audience.
Curry Page 9
