Hello! My book, Ghost Chilli (out 4 July) is available to pre-order: here (Bookshop), here (Amazon), and some other places. Pre-orders are really important because they show bookstores there is interest, which means they will stock the book. If you can do it, I would really appreciate it – thanks so much!
When I was in Dubai last month, my family took me to a restaurant called Canara, which specialises in Mangalorean seafood. Mangalore is on the west coast of India, the exact other side of the peninsula as Chennai, where I was born. The food seemed more Western, not as dark or peppery as Tamil food – more sourness, more sweetness, more fish and meat. It reminded me a bit of Goanese or Portuguese food, and this was confirmed by both the Catholic imagery in the restaurant and the internet. We ordered a curry with prawn and green mangoes that was unlike anything else I’ve ever tasted – sour, creamy, a little spicy, fishy in the best way.
I Googled ‘Mangalore food London’ (no dice), and figured the only way to enjoy it at home is to find some green mangoes and make it myself. But I hesitate to cook Indian food at home because I know it will never be as good as what I ate growing up, at restaurants or cooked by my family. It doesn’t matter how successful my attempts have been; all I can taste is what it should be. Then I get nostalgic, and think about how the people I enjoy proper Indian food with live far away and won’t be around forever. All of which is to say, I quickly abandoned my plan to find green mangoes and recreate this dish at home.
Enter: rhubarb, a sour ingredient much easier to source than green mangoes. I thought that if I used it as a substitute, it could A) work and B) let me circumvent the whole ‘cooking Indian food makes me think of death’ issue.
The rhubarb that’s in season right now is called forced rhubarb, which can only be from Yorkshire (like the DOP status of certain wines and cheeses), making it a Very English Thing. They are grown in dark candle-lit sheds to the rhubarb has to try harder to search for light before it’s fully matured, which is why it is pinker, sweeter, and more tender. It’s a little sadistic and I’m glad the name reflects that. I feel like in America some marketing team would have suggested they call it something along the lines of ‘Pink Rhubarb’ or ‘Candlelight Rhubarb’. Or ‘Forest Rhubarb’, even though it’s not grown in forests, but it kind of sounds like ‘forced’ so you could create a fun origin story out of that transliteration.
Forced rhubarb is the perfect substitute for green mangoes in the following recipe, but regular rhubarb works well too (you probably just want to add a bit more sugar to mellow the sourness).
Mangalore-Style Prawn and Rhubarb Curry
Adapted from Maunika Gowardhan’s Konkani Sour Mango Prawn Curry and this recipe from One Plate Please, my recipe requires toasting spices and crushing them in a mortar and pestle, which is annoying but necessary.
300g prawns (I used frozen and defrosted with tail off)
1/2 tsp turmeric
Coconut or vegetable oil
2-3 large shallots, sliced
Fat 1-inch piece of ginger
6-8 garlic cloves
1 green chilli, split in half lengthwise
10 curry leaves (I used dried)
1 medium-large tomato, chopped
200g rhubarb stems, chopped
250ml fish stock
1 tablespoon sugar, plus more to taste
50ml creamed coconut
Spice mix:
6g whole coriander seeds
2g cumin seeds
2g whole peppercorns
Pinch of fenugreek
1 tsp chilli powder
1. Let the prawns marinate at room temperature with turmeric and a pinch of salt as you make the spice mix and ginger-garlic paste (next steps).
2. Over medium heat, toast the coriander, cumin, and peppercorns on a frying pan (do not add oil). After a couple of minutes, once you can start to smell the spices, add the fenugreek and chilli powder. Stir for just a few seconds then take it off the heat. Let the spices cool a little then add it to a mortar and pestle. Grind and set aside in a separate bowl.
2. Make ginger-garlic paste: Peel and chop the ginger and garlic. Add them to the same mortar and pestle you used for the spices, and grind into as fine a paste as you can manage. Alternatively, do yourself a favour and buy or make ginger-garlic paste in advance; 1-2 tablespoons is what you need.
3. Add enough oil to a pot (saute pan, ideally) that it coats the bottom, and let it heat for a minute or so. Then add 5 curry leaves. Let them infuse the oil for a minute or so, then add the shallots and cook for 8 minutes. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for 2 minutes. Add the halved green chilli, the chopped tomato, and a pinch of salt. Fry for 8 minutes. Add the spice mix and stir; leave for a minute. Finally, add the rhubarb and fish stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and the sugar and a pinch of salt. Taste for sourness: If it’s too sour, add some more sugar. Stir well and simmer on a low heat for 2 minutes. Now add the prawns and simmer the curry for 5 mins with the lid on, until the prawns are just cooked.
4. Stir in the creamed coconut and add the remaining curry leaves; simmer for 2 minutes until the gravy thickens and the prawns are cooked through. Taste and add more sugar or salt if needed. Serve warm with steamed rice.
Links Links Links
Everyone is buzzing about the Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performance at the Grammy’s, which I loved too. It led me down a rabbit hole and I found this duet of her singing ‘Baby Can I Hold You’ with Pavarotti.
I think what makes the Luke Combs cover so good is that he’s very faithful to the original, including not changing ‘checkout girl’ to ‘checkout boy’. That’s a real pet peeve of mine, when cover artists change gender markers in a song’s lyrics to make it seem, I don’t know, more their own? When it’s obviously not?
It rained all morning yesterday, then suddenly it was a gorgeous day. I ate delicious Columbian food and watched my first Premier League game, where the Spurs kicked like 7 balls that just missed the net and then, in the last 15 minutes or so, scored three. It was wild! A day of depressing things suddenly turning around. I never thought the day would come where I follow sports but here I is. Naturally, I looked up the coach Big Ange’s astrology chart, and he’s got Mars in his Scorpio-ruled first house. I love this, because it’s aggression channeled towards sports in a tactical way that his Virgo sun and moon are well-suited to. (That’s my interpretation as someone studying astrology, at least.)
I love reading advice columns and especially John Paul Brammer’s ¡Hola Papi! Substack.
See you in a fortnight!
nb
That recipe looks yummy! Excited to read your book!