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Manipur black rice, grown in Assam in this case, and an Assam inspired boiled chicken. Both cooked at home in Mumbai. |
I was taken to Dharma Prakash Mills by Shriya and Varun Shetty, readers who had connected with me through Instagram and with whom I caught up for a coffee at the Diesel Cafe and where I listened to their dreams of introducing a more modern dining format in Mangalore and which would be rooted in the local culinary tradition. They then took me to the Flower Market and suggested I buy jasmine hand bands for the ladies in a house I was invited for dinner that night instead of mundane bouquets that I had wanted to buy. Mogra lower shopping done, they took me to the flour mill and pointed out lots of stuff that I could buy to take back home.
I have used the ghee roast masala from the shop so far and made chicken wings with them when friends dropped in home the other night for the pork baffad that I had got back from the Mangala Bar and Restaurant in Mangalore and the gudgud alambe mushrooms too.
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Pork masala/ bafad from Mangala. I brought back a frozen 1 kg block and thawed it in Mumbai |
The gudgud alambe mushrooms are available for just a week after the first rains and grow in the cracks that appear in the soil that in the forest land around Mangalore when the rains hit them. They are then foraged and sold. Each mushroom has to be peeled and then eaten. They require minimal time for heating. These were packed for us by Shobha and Girish Kamath. Shobha had prepared these for dinner for us in a mellow onion flavoured coconut gravy. Back in Bandra, we just heated the mushrooms and had them and enjoyed their flavours in their full glory. The raw mushrooms in the picture below are from a shop just outside the Shri Krishna Matha in Udupi. Gudgud means thunder as Dr Pradeep Rao told me.
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Shobha Kamath’s Konkani gudgud alambe curry |
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Not quite wild boar, but by Toutatis it works! |
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Enjoying the black rice payokh that she had made with Kashmiri Nath at the Trident BKC with some pitha too |
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My plate at the end of lunch. As Babita said, the colour of the rice does blend into that of the broth |
- Add the ingredients to a heated (I used my cast iron wok) wok and gently stir the contents.
- The chicken releases a bit of its natural juices so you jut need to add half a coffee mug of water to this after a few minutes.
- Cover the wok with a lid and let it simmer on a low flame for half an hour, at the end of which the stew will be read ready.
While no oil is added to the dish, the fat released from the chicken adds a beautiful glaze on the surface of the curry. The curry was intensely flavoured despite the simplicity of the ingredients. A true example of the benefits of slow cooking. This tasted a lot more robust than the chicken stew that I make AND I have never enjoyed lau so much in my life. To give context, this is a vegetable I have hated all my life and have only recently begun to allow on my plate. This one, I loved!
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Boiled chicken |
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Black rice, in focus |