A Dinner Party Showstopper

মুরগি মুসাল্লাম
Murgi Musallam

A labour of love

I've had this dish a few times growing up, always at dinner parties where it would be the centrepiece at the table. It isn't something my family cooked themselves, so until recently I didn't have a recipe I could pilfer from anyone to post on the blog. Since moving to the UK, I roast chicken in the oven often enough, but usually the recipes I use are British or fusion-y concoctions, and I've always wanted to add this traditional Bangladeshi recipe to my repertoire. Although as a quick side note, I'm sure this murgi mussallam isn't uniquely Bangladeshi. Versions of this dish are common across South Asia and the word mussallam itself - meaning whole - isn't a Bengali word.  

Lucky for me, I was having dinner with my best friend's family one day when her mom brought a whole chicken to the table, boasting that she had cooked this on the hob rather than in the oven. I was ecstatic, not only because the dish was delicious, but I finally had someone who could teach me how to make it! Long story short, she shared the recipe below with me, but also ended up giving my younger brother and I a few practical lessons in cooking the dish during subsequent visits. It's quite a long and laborious process, so I have to admit I don't make this often. However, it's too delicious not to share, and if you're happy putting in the extra effort for a special occasion, the results are worth it.

Ingredients:

• A whole chicken, approximately 1.50 kg in weight
• 20.00 g freshly minced garlic
• 20.00 g freshly minced ginger
• 1.00 teaspoon of powdered turmeric
• 1.00 teaspoon powdered chilli
• 6.00 tablespoons of plain yoghurt
• 2.00 medium onions
• 200.00 ml whole milk
• 1.00 teaspoon of mace
• Half a nutmeg, grated
• A pinch of saffron
• 1.00 tsp of black pepper
• 2.00 cardamoms
• 1.00 clove
• 1.00 bay leaf

Method:

• Mix the turmeric, chilli, garlic and ginger with 4.00 tablespoons of yoghurt. Spread over the chicken and leave to marinate for at least two hours in the fridge, or ideally overnight
• Take the chicken out of the the first 15-20 minutes before cooking
• Add a large amount of oil to a pot, ideally non-stick, big enough to hold the chicken with a lid on
• Once the oil is hot, add the chicken, including the marinade
• Brown the chicken, letting the bird sit undisturbed on each side for about 7-8 minutes
• While chicken is browning, mince the onion - either by hand or in a food processor
• Once, the chicken is browned, add the minced onion to the pot, directly into the oil rather than onto the chicken
• Cook the chicken and onion on a medium-low heat for about 20-30 minutes, stirring the onion around occasionally so it doesn't burn
• While the chicken and onion and cooking, put a small pot onto the stove on medium heat 
• Once hot, add the nutmeg, mace and saffron and toast the spices for a couple of minutes before taking off the heat
• After the 20-30 minutes have passed, add the tempered spices into pot, mixing into the paste
• Add 50.00 ml of milk, again mixing in and flip the chicken. Turn the heat to low, cover and cook for 1.5 hours, adding milk every now and again and mixing it into the sauce when it begins to look dry
• During the cooking, move the chicken around so it doesn't stick and burn, either with a large ladle, or by gently shaking the whole pot. 
• Occasionally lift the lid on the pan and flip the chicken too so it doesn't only cook on one side, and spoon sauce over the whole thing before putting the lid back on
• After 1.5 hours, grind the black pepper, cardamoms, clove and bay leaf using a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. 
• Add this spice mixture to the chicken, along with the final 2.00 tablespoons of yoghurt. 
• Cook for a final 20 minutes before taking off the stove. 
• Serve while still hot with polao or your preferred carbs 

Additional Info:

There are as ever endless variations of this recipe. My friend's mom occasionally adds tomatoes to the sauce to give the dish a slightly tangy flavour, and stuffs the bird with a couple of boiled eggs before serving it with a garnish of salad. I know other recipes add nuts to the sauce as well for added richness, which I've tried before and it works quite nicely. However, this recipe is a lot of effort as it is so I've posted the simplest version I make! And if you want to make quite a bit easier, substitute the whole chicken for a chopped up one of about the same weight. 

Cooking During the Pandemic

ফুলকপি ডাল  
Cauliflower Daal 

Cauliflower daal with brown rice

What a year its been. Apart from that, I don't think I have much to say. 

Like many of us, I've spent a lot of the year inside - food shopping in bulk to avoid being in busy public places for too long. That's meant a lot of cooking at home, and while for me that's been an unexpected blessing, most of what I've cooked has been the usual curries, stir-fries and simple pasta dishes. 

And despite the pandemic, work has been as busy as ever. Only now at the end of the year am I taking a bit of a break, and this is my chance to share a quick recipe. In the last few months I've gotten better at cooking Bangladeshi and South Asian vegetarian food - making different types of daals and experimenting with spiced shobji bhajis and Bangla-Chinese stir-fries. This is mainly because of the frozen veg I started buying when fresh produce ran out near me. The larger portions frozen veg comes in meant learning to cook bigger veggie dishes rather than just side dishes. 

This slightly spiced vegetable daal is a result of that - nothing too glamorous and indeed quite similar to another daal recipe I shared a while back. I originally cooked it using frozen cauli, but I've reduced the cooking time assuming fresh cauli in the instructions below. I also like the veg in my daals to be quite mushy, so do reduce the cooking time further if you want more crunch. The recipe below makes enough for 6 portions as a side, or perhaps 4 as a main. It's great comfort food if you like daal, and in normal circumstances I would serve this with rice and another protein course. 

Ingredients:

• 140.00 g or mushur daal (red split lentils)
• 1.00 teaspoon of garlic paste
• 1.00 teaspoon of ginger paste
• 0.50 teaspoons of turmeric
• 0.50 teaspoons of powdered chilli
• 0.50 teaspoons of powdered coriander seed
• 0.50 teaspoons of powdered cumin seed
• 1.00 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds
• 2.00 tablespoons of cooking oil, any type
• Half a head of fresh cauliflower
• 60.00 g of frozen peas
• 2.00 cloves of garlic
• 2.00 fresh green chillies
• 2.00 tablespoons of mustard oil
• Salt, to taste

Method:

• Place the daal in a large bowl and fill with water. Wash it thoroughly, draining away the water and repeating the washing process until the water runs mostly clear
• Leave to soak for a few hours - this will help the daal cook quicker later
• Place a deep saucepan on the hob over medium heat, and add the cooking oil
• Once the oil has heated add the garlic and ginger pastes, along with the dry spices
• Mix thoroughly, and allow to cook for a couple of minutes
• Drain the daal and add it to the pan. Mix the spices and daal together, and allow to cook for 2-3 minutes
• While the daal and spices are cooking, boil a litre of water in an electric kettle. Pour the water into the pan, giving the daal a good stir. Partially cover the pan and leave to cook for 25-30 minutes, lowering the heat slightly
• After 30 minutes have passed, chop the cauliflower into smaller bite size pieces and add to the daal. Partially cover the pan again, and leave to cook for 10-15 minutes
• After the cauliflower and daal have cooked together for at least 10 minutes, put a small frying pan on medium-low heat and add the mustard oil
• As the oil heats up, chop and add the garlic cloves. Once they've begun sizzling add the fresh chillies and cumin seeds, continuing to fry for about a minute, before taking the frying pan off the heat
• Check on the daal, stirring lightly to check if the cauliflower is cooked and tender and the daal has broken down into a creamy base. At this point, top up with some more freshly boiled water depending on the consistency of daal desired
• Add the mustard oil, garlic, chilli and cumin seeds from the frying pan to the daal - followed by the peas
• Leave to cook partially covered for a final 10 minutes, before taking off the heat
• Serve hot with rice, as a main for a simple meal or as a side as part of multiple courses 

Family Food Fights

মুরগির কলিজা 

Curried Chicken Liver

Chicken liver and potato swimming in deliciously spicy jhol :) 

Organs and innards aren't everyone's cup of tea. While heart, lungs and offal are part of everyday Bangladeshi cooking, I know many people who pass on these options. Which is their loss, as far as I'm concerned. I was introduced to animal innards early in life, and I am a big proponent of cooking and consuming them. After all, as people who eat meat, we should make efficient use of the animals we (indirectly) kill. I eat everything from cow's intestines to chicken's feet and goat's lung, and in fact, intestines are a particular favourite in my family! 

The most common organs at my table, however, come from the humble chicken. While I was growing up, everything from the head and brain, to the heart, gizzard and other parts I have no English translations for, would be cooked into our everyday chicken dishes. And that would set off the fighting between siblings and cousins, as we tried to decide who would get to eat what. The head seemed to be most people's prime target, though for me, the prize was always the liver. And with no one else interested, I grew up stuffing my face with the liver from every chicken cooked at home. For me, chicken liver with its soft, fluffy texture is like an amazingly meaty, savoury cake. And I love it just as much as I love cake.  

Calamity struck when we moved abroad though, where supermarket chickens were sold without livers. The next few years of my life were spent devoid of chicken liver, except during the visits back home, or after the odd trip to particular butchers. However, it seems more and more supermarkets in Britain (where I currently live) stock liver as a standalone product. This has meant a return to cooking liver curry for me. The spicing I favour is similar to most other Bangladeshi curries, though the amounts of each spice is toned down in comparison. Chicken liver cooks easily, and doesn't need the super-charged treatment that cow or goat liver might warrant. The recipe below is for 400.00 g - the standard weight sold near me. This technically serves two generously as a main dish, but as liver is rather rich I'd recommend it as a side dish shared amongst a few more. 

Cooking on the Trail

সবজি ডাল  

Daal with Vegetables

Spiced daal with vegetables

I spent a weekend in Glen Affric earlier this summer, staying at an off-the-grid hostel while attempting to climb some local munros. The hostel itself was quite unique - 13 kilometres from the nearest road and powered solely by a wind turbine and solar panels. This is enough for lights and some heating, but not much else. Cooking is done on gas stoves - supplied by cylinders that are transported in using off-road vehicles. The remote location also makes it difficult to carry supplies onto site regularly, and guests are encouraged to bring food for their own trips. I was travelling with a group of friends, and we all pitched in to carry enough for 3 days. But this was 3 days without access to refrigeration, and we had to make sure everything we brought was non-perishable. 

Did I mention Glen Affric was beautiful?! 

I was in charge of dinner on day 2, and I had to think of ingredients that would cope well without a fridge. Hence I opted for daal with vegetables - but spiced up a little to make it work as a main event. I was a little worried about feeding a group of hungry hikers something like this, especially as at my family table daal would never be more than a side dish. So I decided this iteration needed to be richer, and I immediately knew I'd be using meat spices as a base. I've also always loved tart daals with jolpai and green mango - so I replicated that tartness here with tinned tomato. For the veg, I opted for carrots and courgettes because they were tough enough to survive the journey in our backpacks. The result was a spicy, tangy and thick daal: something I know I'll be cooking for years to come. The recipe below serves 6 generously. 

Vegan Bangladeshi

নিরামিষ

Mixed Vegetables

Mixed vegetables with panch phoron

Don't worry about the title, I've not gone vegan. I'm just finally confident enough about my veggie cooking skills to share this recipe. I'm not sure quite why it took me so long to get here, but vegetables don't come to me as naturally as meat. I find it more difficult to get the flavours right, and the cooking times correct. However, I am trying to eat more of them, while at the same time cutting down on meat for health and environmental reasons. Right now I'm helping this process along with a bright and interesting recipe for mixed vegetables with panch phoron, a staple of most Bangladeshi kitchens. Aside from simple turmeric-and-chilli stir fries and hearty mashes, this is how I'd expect vegetables to be eaten in a Bangladeshi household. In our family, vegetables cooked this way could be served for breakfast, lunch or even dinner - though hopefully never all on the same day!

Panch phoron is a five-spice mix consisting of cumin, fennel, fenugreek, black mustard and nigella seeds. If you're not in Bangladesh, don't fret. The mix is commonly stocked in many Asian corner stores and supermarkets around the world. Of course, you can always make up your own mixture, using each component in equal amounts. My most vivid memories of panch phoron are from its use in pickle-making, along with cooking vegetables like this. In my mind, panch phoron is to cooking what colour-blocking is to the fashion world. In most dishes I make, the spices come together and create a unique new flavour - like a colour-coordinated school uniform. It's not so with panch phoron, where instead it feels like the different flavours all compliment and bounce off each other. If you're not Bangladeshi, this spice mix may feel like an acquired taste. 

The recipe below is quite long, but only because I've broken it down into simple, easy-to-follow steps. I would advise not using store-bought garlic and ginger pastes here. The short cooking time won't rid them of their vinegar-y smell. You wouldn't normally encounter chickpeas in this dish, but the eateries near my late nani's all make their shingara fillings this way. Inspired by them, I've included chickpea in my recipe too. It adds some protein, and helps me turn this into a one-dish dinner for weeknights.

Finally, a few notes on the cooking times. These will vary depending on the vegetables used. Fresh, younger plants will cook faster than the older and tougher. Equally, there will be differing opinions on what constitutes "cooked". Some people prefer everything in this dish to go soft and mushy, while others prefer their vegetables to retain a slight crunch. In our family, we opt for the crunchier version of this dish, unless we're serving it for breakfast. For breakfast, we cook this for longer than stipulated below, and with more water. The end result would be soft dollops of vegetable and a tiny bit of broth - ideal for scooping up with ruti! Do experiment with timings and combinations that suit your own preferences. The recipe below serves 4 as part of a larger Bangladeshi meal. 

Re-Inventing The Wheel

থাইম, মধু ও সৃরাচা দিয়ে মুরগি  

Chicken with Honey, Thyme & Sriracha

Serving challenges when you have no dining table! 

I discovered how well Sriracha and thyme compliment each other by accident. I was basting some chicken in thyme-butter one day, and the Sriracha was just sitting there on the counter...calling to me. I added some to the frying pan, purely because I always love a little heat in my food. I realised the combination was a success with my first mouthful, and made a mental note to try it again in the future. Fast forward to early 2018, and I started to make mom's chicken ketchup curry, only to realise there was no tomato ketchup at home. I quickly decided substitute in Sriracha, and as soon as I did I recalled my previous positive experience with thyme. 

I wondered how to incorporate the herb into my curry, eventually deciding to stir it in towards the end of the cooking process. The thyme didn't impart a pronounced enough flavour in this first try. In subsequent iterations, I've also scattered an extra portion into the pot before taking the dish off the heat. All in all, I end up using quite a bit of thyme because it's easily overpowered by the other spices. The herb gives the dish quite a nice after-kick of flavour, but I do recognise this is probably a rather esoteric, acquired taste. I don't think I'd be a fan had I not learned to love thyme while living in the UK. Of course, feel free to leave the thyme out completely if you so desire, and the end result will be a strong, garlicky version of my mom's original curry.  

Basic Bangladeshi Greens, Part 1 of n

Swiss Chard with Mustard & Fennel Seeds

সরষে ও মৌরি দিয়ে সুইস চার্ড 

Messy but delicious

I bought Swiss chard by mistake the other week. Embarrassingly, when I got home and unpacked my groceries, I didn't recognise the plant for what it was. I tentatively trimmed and washed some of it, then cooked it into mac & cheese. I was counting on the smoked cheese from my sauce to cover up any weird tastes or smells. It turned out the apprehension was unnecessary, as eventually someone on Instagram confirmed it was just chard! Chard I could work with, and I initially contemplated cooking the remaining plants just like spinach. Our family relies on the tried and tested garlic-and-chilli combo to cook most of our leafy vegetables, expect for maybe potato leaves and thankuni patha. 

But then I reconsidered, and began wondering how I could incorporate mustard into the dish. I've been a little obsessed with mustard since moving to Scotland, and I go through this thought process for pretty much everything I cook now. I decided ground mustard seeds would work quite nicely as a base flavour, with some fennel seeds as complement. I rounded off the ingredients list with a little turmeric for colouring, and some sliced onion to ease the frying process. The result was a win: think soft pieces of plant peppered with caramelised onion, each mouthful accentuated by a slight prickly heat from the mustard. I'm definitely adding this to my regular vegetarian repertoire. Speaking of which, I'm hoping to post more recipes for easy to cook greens, hence the title of this post. The recipe below makes enough for 2 as a small side, but scales up quite easily. 

New Year's Eve Snacking

ডালের বড়া 

Daaler Bora or Lentil Fritters

My batch of NYE daal bora, all plated up for us to devour

Happy New Year everyone! To kick-off 2018, I'm posting a very traditional recipe for daaler bora, or lentil fritters. 

The daaler bora is very different from the other fritters I've written about for the blog. First of all, it has no flour - gram or otherwise - and the daal or lentil is what goes straight into the hot oil. Secondly, making a batch of them is a bit of a challenge: the lentils need planned pre-soaking, followed by blending and careful frying to avoid disintegration. Oddly enough, in generations past they were considered an easy enough snack to whip up. I assume this is because households would have lentils soaking anyway as part of their daily routine, and making daaler bora would just involve swiping some from that stash. Things have changed nowadays though, and in our family the daaler bora is usually bought from neighbourhood eateries - at least when we're in Bangladesh. It's much less frequently made at home, and usually only for special occasions like Ramadan, when it's an iftaar staple. In general, the daaler bora is a tea-time snack, though it can also be eaten as a side during a larger meal. The fritters are also the first phase of another dish called the doi bora, though I'm not a big fan.

The ingredients used vary from family to family, and change between Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, as well as between Hindu and Muslim families. My family recipe is quite basic, using only one type of lentil, salt, chilli, turmeric and onion. Other families may use a mix of different lentils, and also add spices and herbs to liven things up. In the recipe below I've added coriander, but otherwise I've kept things pretty simple. I've also snuck in a bit of baking powder, something one of our chefs taught me to do, as it makes the boras stay crunchier for longer. This is really useful if you want to make them a little ahead, as I was doing to take to a New Year's party an hour away. Boras like these are usually served with dips and sauces. I served my most recent batch with sriracha, but tamarind-based sauces or ketchup are the more common accompaniment. The recipe below makes about 24 boras, each about 3.00 centimetres across. 

Sweets From Meherpur

গুড়ের সন্দেশ
Goorer Shondesh

Goorer shondesh - baked and slightly caramelised on top

Shondesh has been such a staple in my life. During my childhood in Dhaka, Nani would provide a steady supply from her favourite sweet shop in Meherpur, couriered over on a semi-regular basis. If it wasn't her, it would be my dad or uncle bringing some back from their trips to the countryside. Unfailingly, each would point out that shondesh made in their hometown was the best. Shondesh keeps well in the fridge, so even after a week we'd be digging some out to have with tea. As a voracious and indiscriminate eater, shondesh was just another sweet I stuffed myself with, but I do remember it being a favourite of my brother's - the picky eater in the family. 

Shondesh comes in a few different forms, but basically it's yet another curd-based Bangladeshi dessert. If you're unfamiliar, imagine something a little like halwa, but softer and creamier. Making it involves sweetening and cooking curd on the hub, an easier process than cooking roshogolla or golap jaam. There are slight variations: you can sweeten the curd using sugar or goor, and you can opt to use spices or not. I prefer a version very lightly spiced with cardamom and sweetened with goor. The bones of this recipe comes from a friend's mom, who recommended that I just mix all the ingredients together before popping them into the oven. She served me a version of this one Eid, and I loved it, so I've now adopted her recipe. 

The egg listed in the ingredients below is very non-traditional - the result of her experimentation with texture and consistency. I've kept it in because I quite like the resulting squidginess. Baking gives the top of the shondesh a slight caramelisation, in case you're into that kind of thing (I am). Make this in the right dish and you can serve it as is, rather than chopping it up into smaller pieces (which is traditional). Shondesh can be eaten as a dessert after a larger meal, but more usually in my family it was reserved for tea time snacking. 

The Best Biriyanis in Aberdeen

All lined up for Biriyani Club!

A dish of fragrant rice cooked with spiced meat, biriyani is an old favourite of mine. In our family, it has always been celebration food. We usually buy biriyani from any one of Dhaka's numerous biriyani houses, or less commonly cook it - and I've posted my mom's recipe on the blog already. It's something I often order while eating out  in the UK, and a friend suggested collating my experiences for Aberdeen in one post. Something short and snappy - useful for folks who don't want to read long, in-depth reviews. 

I've been doing an informal biriyani tour of the town for a while anyway, so this post has an easy, happy challenge! I've stuck to some hard and fast rules throughout the process (see the footnotes at the bottom). This will be a live post, and I will be updating and reposting it as I eat at more restaurants. Hopefully old names will drop off and new names will appear. I don't know how many venues I'll list when I'm done...but I'm aiming for the top 5 right now. I will mostly limit myself to writing about biriyani here, rather than diverging into fuller reviews. Also, a big thank you to my long-suffering friends, who have often waited patiently as I photographed everyone's food :)

Korola Masochism

করলা ভাজি
Stir-Fried Bitter Gourd

Stir-fried bitter gourd garnished with red chilli

I've moved to a neighbourhood with a Bangladeshi store around the corner! Unsurprisingly, I've been re-living all kinds of childhood food memories. I try not to buy perishables with lots of air miles, but I couldn't resist picking up a couple of fresh looking bitter gourds the other day. Bitter gourds, or korola, get their name from the very distinct bitter taste they retain even after cooking. Despite this, they are unreasonably popular back home, probably because the fruit has long been associated with alleged health benefits. I've heard people claim it does everything from curing an upset stomach to preserving healthy eyesight. 

I suspect the fruit I bought (photo in this post) is from India, as commonly available Bangladeshi varieties are quite small. They're eaten green and unripe, usually fried but also on occasion mashed or stuffed. Folks have various methods of dealing with the bitterness. The most common technique I've come across is to cook the gourd in lots of oil with plenty of onion and potato to distract from the bitter taste. On a similar principle, some people garnish the gourd with chopped coriander or squirt lime onto the dish to mask the taste with sour notes. Others soak the fruit in salt-water to counteract the bitterness, though I have never tried this myself. 

My family was quite masochistic when it came to korola though - we'd often have it without any onions or potatoes - fried in a bare minimum of oil, salt and turmeric.  The recipe below is a little more conventional, with onions and potatoes left in. Be as healthy or unhealthy as you want with the amount of oil. This makes a good side as part of a larger meal - it's the kind of everyday dish cooked alongside plain rice and simple chicken. Given my childhood hatred for vegetables, I find it hard to believe now that I liked this dish quite so much!

Breakfast during Mango Season

আম দিয়ে দুধ-ভাত
Rice with mango-milk

Rice and mango-milk, topped with mango
What's not to like? :) 

It's mango season! In Bangladesh this means a glut of mangoes everywhere. Their sheer number has people scrambling to find ways to use them up. On top of cooking, pickling and drying, making mango-milk is another common way we at the fruit growing up. We mixed the pulped flesh of a sweet, ripe mango into hot milk, creating a warm alternative to the mango lassi. Sometimes, we would pour this onto rice - the result of a family habit of pouring any kind of milk onto rice. In fact, whenever we didn't like the food on offer for a particular meal, rice with milk was the go-to substitute dish for the kids in my generation. 

Of course, unconventional meal replacements aside, this dish makes a great breakfast. I also have it for seheri (the pre-fasting meal during Ramadan), as it makes a nice change from cereal. Folks who've had Thai mango with sticky rice will be familiar with the flavour and textures. To make this, you want mangoes that almost melt when crushed, rather than those with firm, springy flesh. In the UK, safe bets are South Asian mangoes sold as Alphonso or Kesar. When fresh mangoes aren't in season, tinned mangoes are another option. The recipe below makes a full "meal" for one, or serves two to three as a snack.

Ingredients:

• 1.00 small South Asian mango (around 175.00g whole, unpeeled)
• 150.00 g cooked rice
• 100.00 ml whole milk
• Sugar, to taste

Method:

• Heat the milk in the microwave for a minute
• While the milk is heating, peel and slice the mango
• Crush the flesh to form a pulp, and remove any overly large pieces of fibre 
• Mix the mango into the milk, and taste for sweetness. Add sugar if desired
• Place the cooked rice in a bowl. Pour in the mango-milk and mix
• Serve while warm

Additional Info

If you want something a bit richer, heat and thicken the milk on the hob before adding the mango. For a different flavour, swap the mango for banana, something we would also do quite commonly in our family. 

Cholar Daal and Eggs for Breakfast

ছোলার ডাল

Cholar daal

Cholar daal
Topped wit a fried egg, coriander and black pepper

It's taken me a while, but I finally have most of my family's recipes for daal written down. We usually serve them simply - but this cholar daal is a little unusual. Spiced and cooked like meat, I've been told it's something of a special occasion daal in Bangladesh. However, in my extended family it's always been breakfast food. We eat it with eggs cooked various ways and flatbreads, or sometimes with vegetables and beef curry. As a child, I used the spicing to mask the taste of egg, which I hated. To be fair, even now the eggs in my life come drenched with Hollandaise, filled with cheese or pimped with smoked salmon, so I guess some things never change. 

This dish makes a great accompaniment at a heavier breakfast or brunch, whether it be with eggs, veg or meat. It takes a while to cook, so I'd recommend tackling it the night before you intend to serve it. In the morning, all that's left to do is heat it up (this works well, like reheating curry), make the eggs and bake your flatbreads (which can also be pre-formed). In my book, this is something to attempt for a leisurely weekend brunch rather than during a weekday cooking session. I promise the other daals (coming soon, i.e. whenever I get a craving for them) are simpler and cook quicker. 

Cholar daal soaking

Finally, a quick note on language and ingredients. "Chola" in Bengali means chickpea, and "daal" - translating vaguely - means lentil. Cholar daal together means chickpea lentil, although I realise chickpeas aren't really lentils. The chickpeas you will need for this dish are dried, skinned, and split. They're commonly stocked in Asian food stores. In the UK, they're usually sold under Indian brands and labelled "chana dal". If you're familiar with dried chickpeas you should have no trouble identifying them, but use the photo above to help as well. 

Cooking Fish

স্যামোন দোপিঁয়াজা 

Salmon Dopiyaza

Salmon dopiaza servd with veggie biriyani.
I obviously went a little overboard with the onion placement,
I'm sorry you can't really see the fish!

A lot of fish that featured in my childhood was cooked delicately, as lightly spiced stews. I wasn't a big fan of these then, but I do want to know how to cook them now. Unfortunately, my experiments to retrace these recipes haven't yielded any postable results yet. Until they do, the below is an easy recipe for salmon that I often refer back to. It's cooked a little bit like meat, because salmon is both rich and tough enough to survive the process. There are a few other fish we normally cook like this at home - eel being the first that comes to mind, though that would be more cumin-heavy. The onion base works great as sauce with texture, and I could eat it by itself, something I rarely say about fish based sauces! 

Ingredients:

• 400.00g filleted salmon
• 3.00 medium onions
• 1.50 teaspoons of garlic paste
• 1.50 teaspoons of ginger paste
• 1.00 teaspoon of powdered turmeric
• 1.00 teaspoon of powdered coriander
• A pinch of cumin
• Powdered chilli, to taste
• Salt, to taste
• Half a red pepper
• Fresh chilli, to taste
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method:

• Finely chop the onions
• Put a pan onto the stove on medium heat, and add a generous amount of vegetable oil
• Once the oil has heated, add the onions and fry till they soften - around 6 to 7 minutes
• Add the turmeric and mix in, and let onions cook for a further minute
• Add the garlic and ginger pastes, along with a dash of water if the onions have begun to go dry
• As the mixture is cooking, add the coriander, cumin, chilli and salt. Stir thoroughly to mix, and cook for 5 minutes
• As the spice base is cooking, prep the salmon. Hold the fillets under warm running water, and rub the skin to descale the fish. This is important, as you don't want to end up with loose scales mixed into your curry

Salmon laid out on the onion base

• Cut the fish up into smaller pieces if desired, and add to the pot. Lay the fish carefully on top of the spice base, making sure none of the fish is in direct contact with the pot 
• Cook uncovered for 10 minutes, adding a dash of water near the 6 minute mark if the liquid in the pot has dried up, especially if you're aiming for a lot of curry sauce
• Make sure to never put a lid on the dish - this will cook the fish too quickly and may cause it to break up. Instead of stirring the onions, give the entire pot a gentle shake now and again to avoid breaking up the salmon
• Once the 10 minutes are up, flip the fillets over (I find it easier to do this using silicone tongs). Continue cooking for a further 10 minutes
• Slice the red pepper and fresh chilli, then add to the pot along with freshly ground pepper
• Mix in gently, taking care not to break up the fish. Cook for another 4 minutes, then take the dish off the hob
• Serve hot with plain rice or polao

Additional Information

This dish tastes a little bit like a British curry house dish - probably because curry house dishes depend on similar spices and onions as a base. The red pepper here is definitely optional, I only add it when I want a little more veg in my diet. 

Review: Dhaka Biriyani

The Best Biriyani in East London

Dhaka Biryani on Mile End Road
(Yes, it seems we disagree over the
spelling of biriyani)

Dhaka Biryani is right on Mile End road, and the name makes it hard to miss if you're Bangladeshi. I've walked past several times while promising myself that I'll visit, and spending the day with friends in East London last weekend provided the perfect excuse. This review will be short and sweet, much like the others that I've done for Bangladeshi eateries in London. And just like these other places, Dhaka Biryani is a casual venue, serving up food from a counter with some basic chairs and tables laid out over a small space. In fact, despite the smart facade Dhaka Biryani is probably the most basic of the Bangladeshi places I've been to, including the shop-cum-eatery Amar Gaon. But like Amar Gaon, I'd encourage you not be deceived by looks, as the food here is excellent.

Another Weekday Dinner

শাক দিয়ে চিংড়ি
Spinach with Prawns

Spinach with prawns, served on a bed of boiled rice

It takes 10 minutes for rice to cook in the microwave, and another 2 minutes for it to cool down. That gives me 12 minutes to whip up a main dish - not quite enough time for anything traditionally Bangladeshi. But if you’re happy to spend just a little bit longer in the kitchen, this spinach and prawn combo will be done in around half an hour. Think 5 minutes of ingredient prep, 10 minutes to temper spices, and another 15 minutes to finish off the cooking process. The amounts below make a generous portion for one, or a side dish for two. It's an easy weeknight venture, making some allowances for the ingredients of course. I'm assuming a kitchen stocked with readymade garlic and ginger pastes, and prawns bought peeled and cleaned from a supermarket. 

It’s very common in Bangladesh for leaves to be cooked with freshwater prawns or the discarded bony parts of fish. The prawns or fish are meant to liven up a purely vegetarian dish, but traditionally they were never the main attraction. As people’s purchasing power has increased, this has changed, and growing up I looked forward to these more as seafood dishes. Across the extended family our parents upped the prawn content considerably, all to get the kids to eat their greens. The spices add a bit of heat to the dish, and the cooking time does mean that both the prawns and spinach are on the stove longer than is strictly necessary. But that’s the idea of the dish - mushy, soupy leaves studded with spiced prawns for a bit of bite. 

Ingredients:

• 1.00 medium onion
• 0.75 teaspoons of garlic paste
• 0.75 teaspoons of ginger paste
• 0.75 teaspoons of powdered turmeric
• 150.00 g of fresh prawns, cooked or uncooked, peeled and cleaned
• 200.00 g of spinach
• Salt, to taste (if using)

Method:

• Put a large frying pan on the stove. Add a tablespoon of oil, and leave to heat
• Finely chop the onion, and add to the pan
• Fry the onions until they go soft, translucent and start to brown at the edges
• While the onions are frying, boil 1.50 cups of water in the kettle
• Once the onions are slightly browned, add the garlic and ginger pastes to the pan. Add a splash of boiled water, and stir everything together
• Add the powdered turmeric, mix in and cook for 10 minutes. If the water starts to dry up add some more, making sure that the onions stay wet enough to form a sauce

The cooked prawns just after they
went into the pan with the onions.
Try and maintain this level of liquid
throughout the cooking process by adding hot
or boiling water as necessary

• Add the prawns - cooked or uncooked will make no difference since raw prawns will cook quickly
• Mix the prawns into the onion based sauce and leave to cook for 10 minutes, again adding water as needed if the dish dries up too much
• Add salt to taste - bearing in mind cooked prawns are already salted and shouldn't need any extra
• Add the spinach, mixing it in as it wilts and reduces

The frying pan just before the cover went on

• Cover the pan and leave to cook for a final 10 to 15 minutes - the spinach should go dark green and mushy, as opposed to bright green and crunchy
• Serve hot with plain boiled rice

Additional Info:

I leave out chillies from this recipe because I enjoy the natural sweetness of the prawns. However, feel free to add either powdered chilli with your turmeric, or some dried whole chillies just before adding the prawns. You can skip the prawns entirely to make this a vegetarian dish, but I'd recommend adding 0.25 teaspoons of garlic on top for a little more flavour. This dish would normally be served as the fish and/or vegetable component of a mutli-dish meal - combine this with recipes for chicken, other meats and carbs for a dinner party. For a purely vegetarian spinach recipe, see here, and for just prawns see here. 

Dhaka-Style Biriyani

মাটোন বিরিয়ানি 

Mutton Biriyani

Biriyani served normally, i.e. not in a flour casing,
because my house isn't try-hard Indian restaurant

This is going to be one of those epic recipe posts. Not so much because I'm going to waffle, but rather because the recipe itself is so long it may as well be a novel. Biriyani I believe needs little introduction: a dish that mixes meat and rice, possibly of Persian origins, it has travelled throughout South and Southeast Asia, and most regions nowadays produce their own varieties. The recipe below is what my mom cooks at home, and is close to what I could call Dhaka-style biriyani - though it is not identical to what you'd get from traditional roadside eateries. I've been building up to this post for a while, watching people cook biriyani and even cooking it with more experienced friends whenever possible. I wanted to wait till I was a reasonably competent cook before I had a go at this myself, so that I wouldn't mess it up and could post an actually workable recipe. 

As luck would have it my mom visited me earlier this year, so the photos you see are of what we cooked together and the recipe below has been signed off by her. A few words of advice though - I used 1.50 kg of meat for 1.00 kg of rice - but be as generous (or stingy!) as you want with the meat to rice ratio. My mom wanted to go for 2.00 kg of meat to 1.00 kg of rice, but I convinced her we shouldn't be eating quite so much red meat. The liver I used is definitely optional - the only way liver ends up in Dhaka biriyani is if there isn't enough of it to make a standalone curry. But liver in biriyani is a weakness of mine, and therefore a quirk in our household. Biriyani houses in Dhaka serve each portion of the dish with potatoes, a boiled egg and a side salad - but I don't mention the egg anywhere below because I don't like eggs have a complicated relationship with eggs.

Finally, I know restaurants around the world serve various types of biriyanis with chicken, fish, vegetables etc., but those didn't really exist back home until recently. Chicken biriyani isn't a thing for example - instead we have a lighter chicken and rice combo sold by biriyani houses called morog-polao (morog meaning chicken). Similarly, we have a fish-based ilish-polao, though this is mostly cooked at home. The spice combinations for these two dishes are different from traditional Dhaka biriyani, and I'm not sure how I would go about cooking them. If you're feeling adventurous, perhaps try cooking a more heavily spiced version of my classic chicken curry into your polao - but you're on your own with that kind of experimentation (though do let me know the results!). 

Review: Gram Bangla

More Bengali Food in Brick Lane

Left to right: biriyani, chicken curry, daal, tomato "tok",
lotar shutki and piazu

Forays into East London are rare for me, given my southeast England base is in Surrey. But I escape when I can, and last weekend I used my freedom to try out another Bangladeshi joint. Gram Bangla in Brick Lane follows a well-known recipe: a basic restaurant space, a little traditional decor, and the day's menu served canteen-style from a counter. The food is the main reason anyone would come here, and so that's what I'll focus on right away. Find yourself a table, drop off your bags and coats, then walk up to the counter to find out what's on offer. There is no written menu to be had, so ask the staff for descriptions of anything you don't recognise. The selection isn't vast (the whole place is half the size of Amar Gaon, my favourite in Brick Lane), but adequate. Between two, we asked for servings of chicken curry, lotar shutki, lamb biriyani, daal and plain rice, while our server also upsold us a plate of piazu.

The food counter (or about two-thirds of it)

We sat back down at our table, grabbing drinks from a fridge on the way. Our food arrived in batches, in a mostly sensible order. The piazu was served with onions and chilli, which I thought was a nice touch, and I've filed the idea away for future salads. It was well spiced, had a hard crunch, and would have been excellent when fresh - a limitation of the canteen format. The biriyani was a similar story - all the right flavours but obviously made a while ago. A better recipe than what I've had in say, Kolapata, but less fresh. It was also very generously meaty - uncommon in any Bangladeshi restaurant that I've visited so far. It was vastly improved by the daal, a mixed grain affair with a lovely cumin-onion shombar. The basic chicken curry was also good - but it was hard to get excited by something I can do better at home. The shutkir lotha was a bit disappointing - quite tasteless despite the generous amounts of prawns and shutki cooked into it. I would guess this is because the actual vegetable is not grown locally, and loses it's potency during import.

The interior

Our meal was satisfying, but I can't get recommend Gram Bangla as a "find" for great, authentic Bangladeshi food as I did for Amar Gaon a few months ago. The food cost £21 with two cans of coke though, so Gram Bangla is definitely the cheaper option if you want a Bangladeshi meal in London. Service wasn't particularly great - I feel like we only got words out of the man at the counter because we spoke Bengali and Sylheti, and even then he wasn't all that interested. It was empty on the Saturday night we visited - this place doesn't serve alcohol and doesn't aim for the weekend party crowd. This is something of a mixed blessing, as you'll definitely get a table, but they won't have bothered to keep the food fresh. I imagine the quality improves during the week, when the target market of local workers and families are more likely to visit. The verdict: consider this a cheap and cheerful lunch spot more than anything else - but be prepared to provide the cheer yourself. 

Food: 6.5/10

Service: 6.5/10

Atmosphere: 6.5/10

Value: 8/10

Final Score: 6.5/10

Contact Information

A: 68 Brick Lane, Shoreditch, London E1 6RL United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)20 7377 6116
W: www.facebook.com/Gram-Bangla

NB. The final score, while influenced by the sub-scores, is a qualitative reflection of my overall impression of the establishment.