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. 

Review: Matir Ghor, Purbachal

Great traditional food just outside Dhaka  

Our table at Matir Ghor  

I feel lucky to have visited Dhaka at the end of 2019, just before the global pandemic kicked in. I've counted my blessing more than once over the last couple of years, especially as so many people haven't been able to see loved ones and family for much longer than me. My last visit home was unusually short, in between two busy periods at work, so it meant I actually stayed in Dhaka for once rather than travelling out to other places in the country. 

Of course, this wasn't something my parents could bear, so they had to take me out of the city for one road trip at least. Except, we didn't really head that far out of the city - only going partway to a planned new town project to the north-east of Dhaka called Purbachal. Apparently there was a really good fresh produce bazaar by the road on the outskirts of the town they wanted to shop from, as well as a nice traditional restaurant called Matir Ghor they thought I would like. And they were right, because Matir Ghor served up some really delicious traditionally Bangladeshi food. The restaurant is over an hour away from Dhaka, depending on where you're travelling from and what traffic is like on the day. As I was on holiday and my parents are retired (aka permanently on holiday - not as great as it sounds, they're usually bored), we went outside of rush hour on a weekday, making for quite a swift trip to a fairly empty restaurant. 

The restaurant building, just to the left

The venue is on a side street just as you turn off from the main road. There wasn't a gate or sign when I visited, just a bright-red clay path winding away from the street into the trees. Follow the path down, and you'll realise you're in the right place when you get to a bit of a clearing with parked cars. The site is a collection of single storey buildings set amidst a nicely overgrown garden. Talking to the staff, we learned that this was the owners' grandparents' home. Apparently the family aren't in residence anymore, but they wanted to preserve the site by turning it into a traditional restaurant. The main restaurant building is indeed made from earth as the name suggests, complete with a tin roof and bamboo supports. The structure has some supporting brickwork, along bright red metal doors and windows.

Clay walls, wooden benches and art on sale 

The look continues on the inside, with lanterns hanging form the ceiling, wooden furniture and earthen tableware - everything from the serving dishes to plates and glasses. But the little fans give away that the place does have electricity, despite the lanterns on the ceilings. And despite the old-fashioned look, this is a slick operation - with attentive staff, written menus and art for sale on the walls. A lot of the food is out on display in quirky serving dishes at the end of the room, and I would recommend wandering up to a have a look before ordering. 

Clockwise from the bottom left: tomato, lau, shutki, haash and murgi

The whole family loves eating, and so we ordered generously. From the vegetables we had tomato bhorta, lau pata or gourd leaf bhorta and paachmishali or 5-grain mixed daal. From the meat and fish options we had chicken cooked in bamboo, duck bhuna, king prawns with aubergine and shutki or dried fish bhuna. All of the food was delicious and clearly expertly cooked - and refreshingly a far-cry from the overly oily and spicy food served at a lot of Dhaka eateries serve. The ingredients tasted fresh too, and it really did feel like I was having a meal made from ingredients just brought in from the farm a few hours ago. I particularly liked the veggie dishes, as there's nowhere to hide when you're working with delicate flavours. The shutki was also very welcome, as I hadn't had it in quite a while. The bamboo-cooked chicken made it clear the place was potentially serving Chakma food and that the chef was possibly Chakma. And indeed, the spicing in some of food was slightly different to what I'm used to, but I don't know enough about Chakma cuisine to be able to describe exactly what was different. We rounded off the meal with some doi and payesh for dessert, but the former was bought-in and the latter was made with plain sugar - so I wasn't a big fan. However - dessert is not why anyone's coming here! 

This is a meal best shared with others, as all the portions are one and a half person's worth of food in my opinion. It's worth noting that this place is an actual restaurant catering to clientele on a day out from Dhaka - rather an a casual roadside eatery - and the prices reflect this. You pay similar to what you could expect from similar places in Dhaka back in 2019, with vegetable dishes around the TK 50 mark, whereas meat and fish dishes cost TK 200 upwards.  

Matir Ghor can be a bit tricky to find as it doesn't have a very specific address. I've noted down the restaurant's contact information as usual at the bottom of the review, but for convenience the Google maps location is here. I've decided to stop scoring reviews, and given I visited Matir Ghor a good while ago I'm not sure I could justify scoring it anyway. However, I can certainly say I'm looking forward to visiting next time I'm in Dhaka! 

A: Ketun, Dhaka Bypass Road, Kalihonj, Gazipur

T: +8801716883120

W: None

A Dessert That Kept Me Alive

ডিমের জর্দা
Dimer Jorda

Dimer jorda, or halua

This is basically how I liked my eggs done as a child. Not that my family would let me have this regularly - with good reason - just look at how much sugar the recipe calls for! But deemer jorda (or deemer halua to some) is very easy to cook, and my mom or aunts would often rustle some up when they needed a quick, fuss-free dessert. During my university years, the cheap and common ingredients meant it often featured in my diet. A healthier home cooked substitute to store bought desserts, or so I told myself.

Nowadays I'm a little more restrained, and I see dimer jorda as an occasional indulgence. The easiness of the dish makes it a great go-to for when I've just cooked a large meal for guests, and need a little less stress with dessert. During our various lockdowns, I found myself eating it on occasion to give myself a reason to live break up the monotony of store bought treats - though before the pandemic I never would have imagined tiring of chocolate and ice cream.

The dish is meant to look a little like yellow rice - and so it's important to watch the egg cook and break it up at the right time. Do this wrong and you end up with a pan full of sweet scrambled eggs. And of course, while I've talked about dimer jorda as dessert, it's often also served as a tea-time snack. The recipe below serves 4. 

Ingredients:

• 4.00 eggs
• 125.00 g white sugar
• 125.00 ml evaporated milk or 250.00 ml whole milk
• 2.00 tablespoons of butter or ghee
• 1.00 "capful" vanilla essence, or to taste
• 2.00 cardamom pods
• 1.00 "capful" kewra water, or to taste, optional
• 2.00 cm of cinnamon, optional

Method:

• Leave the butter or ghee to soften at room temperature
• If using whole milk, begin by reducing this to half in a non-stick saucepan on medium heat. Stir frequently to ensure it doesn't stick or burn. Once done, leave to cool
• Beat the eggs and sugar lightly with a fork until mixed, making sure there are no remaining clumps of egg white
• Follow up by pouring in the cooled reduced whole milk or evaporated milk, and again mix to incorporate
• Put a frying pan on medium low heat, adding the butter or ghee. Once warm, add the cardamom and (if using) cinnamon - then continue frying for a couple of minutes  
• Transfer egg, sugar and milk mixture to the frying pan
• Mix everything together, and let cook on low heat, stirring continuously
• Add the vanilla (and kewra water, if using) at the 5 minute mark, and continue cooking
• After 10 minutes the mixture should start solidify into loose, slimy clumps - break these up by stirring, and ensuring the clumps look like approximations of rice grains
• Cook until all of the jorda clumps into something that looks like mushy rice - this can take up to another 20-30 minutes
• Cooking times will vary based on the size of the saucepan - a larger, wider dish will let the jorda cook faster
• Once done, transfer out of the saucepan immediately to halt the cooking process
• Serve as a snack during tea or as a dessert, garnish with raisins and crushed pistachios

Additional Info
Dim (or should it be deem??) is the Bengali word for egg, and there are countless variations of this recipe, often called dimer "halua" rather than "jorda", based on national and regional variations. People have numerous methods of manipulating the texture, from the use of breadcrumbs to the addition of powdered milk, or adding food colouring to make the dish pop. I've kept this recipe very simple, but do look around for other versions to find what you personally prefer.

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 

A Lighter Fish Stew

পাঙ্গাস মাছের দোপিঁয়াজা 

Basa Dopiaza with Peas & Tomatoes

Pangash in a broth of onion, peas and tomatoes

My only New Year's resolution for 2019 is to cook more fish, and so I'm pleased that my first recipe this year is a Bangladeshi fish stew. I've been wanting to share a recipe like this for a while, but I just wasn't sure what fish to use from the supermarkets around me in the UK. However, it seems they've started stocking basa nowadays, which I grew up eating and know as pangash in Bengali. Native to South Asia, pangash has gently flavoured white flesh - which works well with the lighter spicing of this recipe. 

The classic Dhaka "hotel" version of this dish is made with spices and onions only, in keeping with what a dopiaza usually is. But mom used to add tomatoes and peas at home to give the dish a little more flavour, which is especially important if the fish you're using isn't fresh. Traditional cuts of fish in Bangladesh leave bones in, which means the fish survives* the vigorous cooking process more easily. In the UK I can only get fillets**, which are a little delicate and prone to breaking up from frying and stewing. I recommend cooking this in a pot large enough to hold all of your fish in a single layer, so that the pieces aren't rubbing against each other as you try to flip them or stir the sauce. Additionally, you could opt to flash fry the fillets rather than frying them for 4-5 minutes as I recommend. This makes it easier to keep them intact. However, do note that it's typical in Bangladesh to fry the fish in hot oil long enough so that the pieces are left with a crust - and flash frying won't quite give you the same texture or flavour.

The recipe below serves two generously, or four as part of a bigger meal. Please note that unlike most of my meat recipes, this stew will not keep in the fridge for more than a few days.