Ray Street

The vindaloo is one of the more popular Indian curry dishes eaten in the UK. A vindaloo is usually spicy hot and not the first curry that somebody would (or could) eat. The vindaloo is a popular dish amongst English football fans. In fact, a song called “Vindaloo” was released prior to the 1998 FIFA World Cup finals and reached number 2 in the UK music charts. The song is frequently sung by English fans at football matches.

So what is a vindaloo?

Well the journey starts with Christopher Columbus way back in 1492. Columbus sailed west to find a new route to the Spice Islands and stumbled into the Caribbean, landing at what he called San Salvador and which is now part of the Bahamas.

Columbus was not the first European to reach the New World but was the one to stimulate permanent travel, and trade, between the New World and the Old. Columbus was convinced that he had succeeded in reaching the Spice Islands and this was confirmed (to him) by observing that the local population spiced up their meals with pepper.

But the locals were not using pepper – they were using chillies. Chillies are native to the New World, being extensively grown in Mexico and South America and have been used in cooking in the Americas for thousands of years.

Confusion starts here because Columbus thought that the locals were using pepper, so he referred to the spices as pepper (he laso thought that he was in India and called the local people “Indians”). But chillies are not peppers. Rather, they are members of the capsicum family of plants and the name “chilli” is reputed to come from the Aztec word for the plant. So trade between the New World and the Old World started and part of the cargoes were chillies.

Not long after this, in 1498, the great Portuguese explorer called Vasco da Gama sailed down the west coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Arabian Sea and landed in India The sea route to India had finally been established.

And this was the time when the chilli first appeared in India (yes, believe it or not, the chilli was unknown in India until the very end of the 15th century). The Portuguese established themselves in the Goa region and traded between the New World, Portugal and India.

Chillies were planted in India and quickly replaced the peppers that were previously used in India because chillies were easier to grow, were easier to store and were a lot cheaper than the existing peppers.

Unlike the local population in Goa, the Portuguese ate meat, mainly beef and pork. The Portuguese had a popular dish that was meat cooked in wine vinegar with garlic and they started to add chillies to this dish. The dish was known as “carne de vinho e alhos” which, because of bad pronunciation by the local population, gradually changed into the word “vindaloo”.

So now the world has a vindaloo with chillies in it.

The Portuguese spice trade boomed and the British invaded and took over Goa in 1797.

The British tried the vindaloo and loved it. Even though the British stay in Goa was relatively short (only about 20 years), the British took Goan cooks and recipes across to British India. From there, it was only a short time before the vindaloo reached Britain where it became very popular.

To this day the vindaloo remains a favourite curry dish in Britain. Traditionally, a vindaloo is made with pork but there is nothing to stop you from making a vindaloo with beef, chicken and lamb. Just check out the Curry Focus vindaloo curry recipes for some easy to make vindaloo dishes. You can reduce the heat by cutting back on the chillies, pepper and mustard.

 If you like a spicy curry, then why not try a vindaloo for yourself? You’ll probably enjoy the experience. Singing the vindaloo song is optional.

Curry Focus

http://www.curryfocus.co.nz/

Great curry recipes and recipe reviews

[email protected]

Virgil Evetts

There is little under the culinary sun not available in New Zealand these days, provided you know where to look, from every conceivable Asian ingredient to obscure eastern European cheeses. If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably here somewhere. Viva globalisation. Kidding.

In fact, for my purposes there is only one product that I just can’t find – and oh how I’ve searched. Clotted Cream.  It was available for a time, back in the 90s, and damn fine it was too, but quickly fell victim to fat-phobia  and an ignorant market.   Since then it’s been nowt but a happy, calorific memory. So resigned was I to the passing of this genuine crème de la crème, that I almost forgot it existed at all. But a couple of weeks ago  I happened upon an episode of the very good BBC series Edwardian Farm, which featured a demonstration of traditional clotted (or ‘clouted’) cream production. Just to clarify, clotted cream is effectively a cream concentrate, made by heating fresh cream until some of the water evaporates, the sugars caramelise and the proteins set slightly. It has a thick, sticky texture and a sweet, scalded-milk flavour. Clotted cream is the traditional accompaniment for Devonshire teas (scones, jams etc), but goes very well with most hot desserts, and is the perfect foil for poached fruit- particularly quince.

Originally, the cream was produced as a means of extending the shelf life of fresh cream so that it reached market (possibly several days later) in an edible- and more importantly- saleable  condition. It is however so much more than long-life cream, with its gorgeous butterscotch notes and almost chewy texture its comparable to a fresh cream cheese or the very best mascarpone. Of course it’s loaded with saturated fat – upwards of 70% – but aren’t all the best things?

Making clotted cream, as it turns out, is extremely easy – it just takes a while:

Add 1 litre of cream to 1 litre of full milk and heat it over a double boiler (on medium) for around 5 hours. You will need to keep the water in the bottom pot topped up during this time.  Do not disturb the yellow skin that forms on the surface of the cream- this is where the magic happens.  After 5 hours remove from the heat and allow to cool completely in the fridge, preferably overnight.  Now carefully remove the raft of cream (which will be topped with a thin layer of  golden butter-fat) on the surface,  and transfer to a sealable container.  The remaining liquid is effectively skimmed milk and can be used as such.

That’s all there is to it.

So far I’ve served the scrumptious stuff with scones, some every fine Malaysian steamed puddings and stirred through a barley risotto. It is truly the finest of fats.

But it’s all gone now and I think it’s in my very best interest that I don’t make any more for while. It’s far too easy to eat.

Virgil Evetts

Some of you might recall me mentioning I was putting down a trial batch of mead earlier this year, in an effort to use up some of my rather daunting honey harvest. Well, after several months of something approaching patience, I popped the cork the other day for some serious sampling (if truth be known I snuck a few inconclusive snifters along the way), and found, to my deep delight that it is shaping up to be hands-down the finest thing I’ve ever brewed.  Although there was that apple brandy of a years back…

Far from just a novelty drop, the mead has mellowed into an eminently drinkable and rather sophisticated wine, comparable to a good Gewürztraminer with its multilayered complexity and almost oily texture.

Although it’s a natural assumption to think of mead as a sweet drink, many versions are in fact bone dry, and this is certainly what I sought to achieve. Basically what this means is that you allow the yeast to naturally run its course and convert all available sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This is a bit of a balancing act though because if the initial honey ‘must’ (unfermented solution) is too strong, the resulting alcohol will end up killing the yeast before it’s finished working. Evidentially I got it right  as things have proceeded swimmingly. The mead has used up most of the sugar, with only a vague suggestion remaining which will vanish over coming months. But as with good aromatic wines the mead tricks you into thinking it’s sweeter than it actually is, due to its strong honeyed aroma and almost viscous texture. Tricksy stuff.

By my reckoning wine is meant to be drunk with food. Sure there are plenty out there who believe it’s best appreciated as a solo performance, but not me. Life is too short and I can’t stand drinking outside of meal times. So the real test of my mead would be how well it went with food.  Following my instincts with the gewurtz theme I tested a generous measure with a gutsy Thai curry the other night and found it to be a perfect match. Quite sublime really. 

But the trouble with anything this good is that it doesn’t last long- especially once friends and family enter the fray. And I only made four litres. So my most urgent job for this week will be to kick-start a full 25 litre batch, which ought to last me well into next year. Ought to…

Elsewhere on the brewing front I trialled  plum wine this year too, made with the mountain of ripe fruit cast off my red-fleshed Japanese plum tree during a summer storm, and a smaller quantity of damsons retrieved from the depths of the freezer.

Having never made plum wine before, I wasn’t prepared for the pectin  forming a large pink clot which quickly blocked the air lock. Fortunately I discovered this moments before it would have blown free  and splattered the entire kitchen in a ghastly mess of mucus-bound fruit pulp. It just exploded in my face instead. My smug best beloved has dubbed this event ‘the great plum-plosion,’ and brings it up far more often than is really warranted.

But vengeful pectin plugs aside, the plum wine has  matured into something akin to a Pinot Noir, if a little more gutsy. Interestingly it doesn’t taste of plums at all, and after a few more months in the bottle should be quite indistinguishable from a grape wine.  By my reckoning this is a far better use for my annual plum glut than interminable litres of jam (which never gets eaten) or sauce (that never gets used).

Wine making is much easier than most people think and on a domestic scale doesn’t really require much in the way of special equipment. Pretty much any fruit or vegetable can be turned into wine- (although I’d urge caution when it comes to onions and cabbages), so why not give it a whirl sometime soon? Even if you buy  a wine kit complete with grape juice concentrate it’ll work out more economical than the shop finished product- by a long shot.

Ray Street

Just what are the ingredients that go into a curry?

This is one of these questions that have so many answers that it is difficult to know where to begin.  It’s like asking what the most popular words in song titles are. But seeing that I’ve asked the question, I‘ll do my best to give some answers.

What I usually think about when I look forward to a curry is a spicy dish that is served on rice. My favourite dishes are madras, vindaloo, jalfrezi , balti and bhuna. All of these dishes are, to me, typical curries. Of course there are lots of other different curry dishes including dals, biryanis and fish curries.

Assuming that my favourite curries are representative of a “generic” curry, what do they contain?

They can contain meat, vegetables or both. The main meats for a curry are chicken, beef, lamb and fish (often a white meat fish but there’s no hard and fast rule and there are lots of different fish and seafood curries). Goat curries are popular in some parts of the world (particularly Jamaica) and goat meat is becoming more available here in New Zealand (I regularly see goat meat in Pak N Save). And the main vegetables are onions, capsicums, potatoes, green beans, peas and carrots.

You only have to look at the recipes for a lot of curries to see the main ingredients. Most recipes start off by heating cooking oil (or ghee – but I use oil) and sautéing/frying an onion. At some stage grated fresh ginger and crushed garlic join the onion. Then in go some spices (often ground coriander, cumin and turmeric) and maybe a chilli or two. The main ingredient (meat and/or vegetables) often arrive at this stage followed by tomatoes (usually chopped) and/or some water.

Of course, there are lots of other spices and ingredients that go into curries but, as you can imagine, the possible combinations of spices, meats and vegetables are huge. You’ll get a good feel for the most popular ingredients if you browse through the recipes on the Curry Focus website.

I would guess that the most used ingredients in curries are cooking oil, onions, ginger and garlic. If you open up my kitchen cupboard and look at the vegetable tray you’ll always find onions, garlic and ginger. I buy onions automatically when I’m out shopping if I see some good ones. For the past few weeks the onions have been small in size but I notice that some larger ones are arriving at the fruit and vegetable stores.

The most often used spices would be ground coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli (my March blog talked about spices and my February blog was about chillies). A lot of recipes call for fresh chillies but a fair number use chilli powder instead. Curry powder sometimes features in recipes but often recipes just use the raw spices to flavour the food (curry powder is a mixture of spices and featured in last month’s blog, titled “Curry Powder and Garam Masala”).

And where would a curry be without tomatoes? I go through a lot of cans of chopped tomatoes as well as tomato puree/paste.

And don’t forget the rice. I always use basmati rice and it is always great. I put a cup of basmati into a sieve and rinse it thoroughly before putting it into a microwave-proof bowl along with 2.5 cups of water. I leave the rice to soak for at least 30 minutes before microwaving it for 14 minutes. I do have a rice cooker but find that microwaving the basmati gives me a better result (I find the rice from a rice cooker is a bit stodgy).

So now you know a little about the main curry ingredients.

Of course, it’s more fun to make curries and taste the results for yourself rather than read about them. So why not treat yourself? A lot of the recipes on the Curry Focus website have been reviewed by myself – just click on the “Recipe Reviews” link to see the taste and heat/spice ratings and then either click on the “Read Review” link to get a description of how I cooked, and rated, the curry or click on the name of the curry recipe to go straight to the curry ingredients and methods page.

Curry Focus

http://www.curryfocus.co.nz/

Great curry recipes and recipe reviews

[email protected]

Virgil Evetts

And so we bid adieu to another season of the local rendition of Masterchef. It’s done and dusted and there’s nothing much left to say. Hell, I barely even watched the show this time around. Didn’t need to really, because I’ve seen it all before. The tears, the tantrums, the tight, manipulative editing and staged cutaways, the cliff-hangers preceding every commercial break. No different really to last season and to the inevitable one that will follow. It’s like so much clay moulded in a template.

Yet as contradictory as it may seem, I’m quite a fan – if not of the show itself, then for how and why our local version is so successful. The franchise started in Britain over 20 years ago  (with  a rather prolonged hiatus), and is now produced in 18 different countries and counting. I’ve only seen a handful of them, but firmly believe the kiwi version is among the most comfortable in the format’s skin. The UK version takes itself just a bit too seriously for something that is -and let’s be honest here- Big Brother with a cooker. The Australian version is more upfront about its trashy agenda but is hampered by overly long seasons of almost nightly episodes. Meanwhile the US version is dogged by that uniquely American assumption that all reality television viewers are severely brain damaged and deaf. A not entirely unwarranted assumption, but to my tastes and abilities it’s almost unwatchable.  Masterchef New Zealand enjoys a short, snappy run (thanks no doubt to a relatively Spartan budget), and never pretends to be anything other than a bit of stupid fun. And make no mistake. It’s very, very  stupid and huge fun. I suspect that a big part of the show’s local success is due to our tiny population. All of us know at least one of the contestants either directly or by a degree or two of separation, and can’t help but gun for the home team.  Even I ended up caring about this contestant or that one, and wanting to reverse my car over others. It’s an infectious, addictive and gorgeously guilty pleasure. 

Despite appearances,  Masterchef  is not really even about food. It’s about winners and losers, the gifted and the guileless.  It’s about watching ‘ordinary’ people sweat it out in the ring. Contestants are effectively playing parts- although they might not actually realise this- and the eventual outcome has more to do with viewer favourites and brand synergy than kitchen aptitude. To have any kind of qualm with this is to misunderstand the genre completely: it’s a game show. An elaborate, protracted and beautifully choreographed game show, but a game show none the less.  It does not aspire to appoint and anoint New Zealand’s greatest cook. It just aims to entertain and hopefully lull us into watching the commercials.

And anyway, where else can we watch a group of socially diverse and largely incompatible punters co-habiting and competing for prizes and attention? (I mean apart from Idol, Got Talent et al.)

But to criticise Masterchef for being contrived and trashy is to miss the point entirely. Yes, it is both of these things, but if it was anything else it would be a failure and a bore. Masterchef New Zealand is no more and no less than it is supposed to be- a fabulously fun and unashamedly tawdry vehicle for some very pricey advertising. Why would or should it be anything more?

So long live Masterchef, and long may we all be sucked into its big, dumb and deeply fun vortex.

Virgil Evetts

I’ve had an epiphany, of sorts: I’ve found a healthy addition (well, substitution) to my diet that I genuinely enjoy. Actually I think it might be love. Brown rice. My mother’s been banging on about it for years, but I paid her no heed. A Japanese acquaintance was forever scolding me for my attachment to white, or ‘polished,’ rice. She ate only brown rice, grown in her home town and sent over by her mother. I ignored her too.

It’s not that I’d never tried brown rice- obviously; I’d just never stopped to properly appreciate it.  It took my doctor’s comment that I could ‘afford to lose 10 kilos’ to finally force the switch. And believe me, I didn’t go down without a fight – but my health-conscious best beloved jumped on the bandwagon with bolshie glee, especially when a fitness freak she’s friendly with told her about the miraculous, low GI properties of brown rice. This is exactly why I steer clear of truth-speaking spoilsports – I’m notoriously argumentative and contrary, but I have no comeback for sound logic.

So I capitulated. My hunting around various health and whole food outlets (thus my run-in with the allergy hobbyists a couple weeks back) turned up brown versions of both basmati and jasmine rice, as well as a number of varieties I’d never heard of. I’m yet to encounter brown Arborio, but with all the starch locked up, I don’t think it would work properly in risotto anyway.

It took me a couple of nights to get to grips with cooking brown rice. It takes a less water than the packet suggests, and longer in the pot than I’m used to, but after some slightly gluggy hiccups, I had it sorted.

Turned out, I rather liked it. We both did actually. The next time more so, and the time after that we were both stopping every few mouthfuls to mutter appreciatively. Neither of us can now imagine going back to white rice as staple. Brown is just so much more interesting and flavourful. The individual grains burst in the mouth, rather than just mushing, releasing little bursts of mild, nutty flavour. Due to that famously low glycemic index rating, it keeps you feeling full and satisfied for longer much longer than high GI (i.e. rapidly converted into glucose) white rice. On rice nights (every second night on average) I’m no longer hounded by late night hunger pangs, which are my downfall on the waist measurement front.

As I’m sure you will know of me by now, I don’t follow fads, or jump on nutritional band wagons. At all. But in brown rice I’ve found a food that I genuinely adore that just so happens to be holier-than-thou healthy.

So if you’re of the healthy body/healthy mind persuasion, or just enjoy a tasty mouthful, I urge you to try (or as is more likely re-visit) brown rice. It’s bound to be better than you remember.

But I’m sure I’m slow off the mark here. Most of you have probably been converts for years. Pray tell what other delicious-and-incidentally-healthy foods have I been thus far dismissing in my usual narrow minded way?

Virgil Evetts

Having a young baby has given me cause to wander the side streets and back roads of my neighbourhood every other day. Whenever she gets bored and grizzly, or when La Madre needs a break, we hit the pavement.  Other people would probably be perving at the architecture: the ramshackle villas, the transitional bungalows, even the odd gothic-revival mansion, but that’s really just so much wallpaper to me. I’m just prowling for things I can eat. 

Being an older part of town, Devonport is home to a good many antiquated fruit trees.  Just the other day in a neglected corner of the suburb I found what I suspect was once a grafted pear tree. The pear scion had long since died and rotted out, but the quince rootstock has revelled in its freedom, forming a dense bush, now groaning under the weight of small but powerfully fragrant fruit. A few streets over we found an ancient and beautifully contorted mulberry tree. Judging by its height and girth trunk it must be at least 50 years old, and possibly much older.  Back in summer the tree was covered in large and richly flavoured fruit and the pavement underneath was stained blood red from crushed windfalls.

But our most exciting find to date happened only last week and just a street away from where we live: three large and productive carob trees. I must have passed these tree hundreds of times over the years without paying them any attention at all.  Carobs produce bunches of sugar-sweet, chewy pods, which can be dried and ground to make a delicious and highly nutritious chocolate or cocoa substitute. Although carob doesn’t really taste much like chocolate the suggestion is certainly there, and it has a wonderful, almost honeyed flavour and fragrance all of its own. My mother used to make carob cakes and drinks for me when I was little, and the fragrance of the fresh pods slapped me with a warm nostalgia straight away. As a point of interest, carob pods were the ‘locusts’ consumed by John the Baptist whilst camping out in the wilderness (as opposed to the ill-mannered grasshoppers I used to imagine he favoured).

In many Mediterranean countries fresh carob pods are a popular sweet snack, and I can certainly see why. Although little past their best the pods I found were still very tasty, and as the trees are flowering right now, I’ll be checking up on them regularly over the coming months so I can catch the next crop at its peak.

As I usually do with exciting, rare and potentially threatened food plant I find (they are on council land, so who knows how safe they are) I took seeds from the carob pods, which have already germinated. I still regret not taking seeds and cuttings from a huge and very productive pomegranate tree, reputed to be over 100 years old that was felled in Devonport not so long ago. These days I take no chances.

Virgil Evetts

Considering their popularity as a store-bought fruit, it’s surprising that bananas aren’t more common as a backyard food crop. They grow faster than pretty much any fruit tree (bananas are actually giant herbs, not trees), and if properly maintained produce massive crops year after year. Although not as hardy as apples or even feijoa, bananas can be grown in many parts of the country. Roughly speaking, if you can grow limes, you can probably grow bananas too.

Most of the bananas available to the home gardener in New Zealand are of the lady finger type. These produce weighty bunches of stubby, sweet and richly flavoured fruit. Lady fingers can be white, yellow or orange fleshed, but all taste considerably better (somehow more banana-like) than their imported, store-bought counterparts.

Being an avid urban forager, I nose about in other peoples gardens at every opportunity. I actually see a lot of banana plants around Auckland, but very few that have been properly managed, and thus very few that bear much in the way of fruit.  Although bananas are very easy to grow, there is one very important and rather counterintuitive secret to their success: you don’t cut down the fruit, you cut down the whole ‘tree’.

What looks like a tree is actually merely a stem, and it can only fruit once. If allowed to linger, it will suck energy from the underground rhizome and cause crowding as more shoots reach for the sky. Within a year or so the plant will become a tangled, tatty mess, producing only the occasional small flower spike, most of which will shrivel or form hard, perma-green fruitlets.  If you’re in possession of such a thicket, get out there now and start slashing. Leave only two to three young shoots. Sounds brutal I know, but come next autumn you’ll thank me. Almost forgot- banana sap stains like blood, so throw on something old and scruffy before the carnage begins.

Anyway, I raised this topic with an ulterior motive. You see well-managed bananas really are astonishingly productive, and therein lies the problem. This week I harvested my first bananas of the season: a single bunch weighing around 20 kilos, which in typically irksome banana fashion, is ripening en mass.  More dauntingly still, a second (even larger) bunch is only about a week away, so I’m racing against the clock.  I’ve been using them in curries, in cakes, fried and will try drying some this weekend too. But I’m running short on inspiration. They’re a wonderful fruit and I don’t want any to end up as chicken feed.  So I’m keen, nay desperate, for some knockout suggestions. Help me. Please.

Virgil Evetts

The other day I was in a health food store. It doesn’t’t happen often, as I find the notion of such places redundant and vaguely irritating. I can make healthy food from pretty much anything, bought pretty much anywhere, so can’t really see the point. Anyway, as I was waiting at the checkout in said den of superfluity, I overheard a beautifully moronic conversation between the cashier and a similarly home-spun customer. The pair were locked in a ludicrous duel of dietary intolerance- oneupmanship. Eventually, to my barely concealed delight, the customer knocked her sparring partner out the water with the claim that she’d acquired a serious digestive disorder from sulphites in vinegar. She’d decided!

For this to be even remotely possible she’d need to be throwing back liters of vinegar a day, which would cause far bigger problems than a bit of a tummy upset. Like renal failure and death.

I despair, I really do. Once upon a time, people relied on anaphylaxis or medical opinion to identify allergies and digestive complaints, and accepted such diagnoses with due glumness. Today, gleeful self-diagnosis seems to be something of a national pastime.

Next time someone tells you they’re lactose or gluten intolerant, ask them how they know. Chances are, they just decided. Chances are they’re wrong too.  Yes, there are plenty of people with genuine food allergies and intolerances knocking around the place, but the figures for clinically diagnosed cases are well below those for people who believe they are afflicted. It speaks volumes that such studies have even been carried out.

To clarify, having a food allergy means your immune system has decided that elements in certain foods are toxic, meaning all hell breaks loose when they enter your system. Anything from a bit of a rash to a bit of massive cardiac arrest is on the cards. Intolerance, on the other hand, is when your body cannot process or bear the presence certain foods for physiological reasons. The latter is usually not fatal, just often very unpleasant. Neither of these conditions are remotely desirable, nor are they the sort of things you can categorically self-diagnose. If you do so and happen to be right, great, but what if you’re wrong? What if the cause of your discomfort is something else, something much worse? That’s assuming you actually have any discomfort. I might just be a terrible, monstrous cynic, but I suspect there are more than a few people out there who perceive a certain caché in such conditions, and enjoy the attention their fussing attracts. Never mind that such attention is mostly derision.

If you’re feeling poorly and don’t know why, go see a doctor. Why commit yourself to the misery of a controlled diet for the sake of a hunch? And when the only explanation left in your overused arsenal of self-pity is vinegar poisoning, it’s probably time to pull yourself together. Too harsh?