Episode 1 Rick Stein's India

There's something about a curry that's all-pervading,

just the thought of it ignites a longing deep inside us.

It's the only food I can think of where the sense of smell works

so wonderfully well with memory and imagination.

At the mere mention of the word I sense turmeric, coriander,

garlic and cumin.

No other food I know gives the taste buds such a roller-coaster ride.

For nearly three months I travelled all over India,

tasting curries and watching cooks, trying to find out their secrets,

because curry is full of complexities

and it's taken very seriously here.

And I wanted to show that there's more to curry

than three pints of lager and a prawn vindaloo.

First-class curry, Ricky!

Well, this is where I'm going to be cooking all those lovely

dishes I found on my travels in India.

-Good morning, Ashok.

-Good morning, Rick.

I mean, it's so beautiful.

I mean, it's teeming with life. It's a delight.

This place, this lagoon, is so Rudyard Kipling.

There's a whole host of birds and animals I see every day.

There's Bluey the kingfisher with a voracious appetite.

Blackie the cormorant, for ever searching for eels and little fish.

Krishna the wise old kite, keeping a beady eye on everything below.

Marcus and Florence the newlywed ducks

and of course Cynthia the water snake who lives in the drainpipe coming from the kitchen.

No morning swims for me!

And then there's Kaiser the boxer dog mixed with something else.

No doubt I'll be adding more animals to my list as the series goes on.

But this is my kitchen. It's lovely.

It's just the sort of place I imagined

when we were thinking of coming to India so many months ago.

It's even got its own well.

And it's a brilliant setting for cooking all those fabulous recipes

I've come across on my travels all over India.

Well, it's tradition here that to bless a new cooker

you have to boil some milk and let it overflow

and then serve it to everybody in the house.

That blesses the house, the cooker

and ensures that everything you cook on it will be wonderful.

And here's to cooking wonderful food. Cheers.

ALL: Cheers.

A lot of people might say, I mean, with great respect,

that, you know, this is called "Search for the Perfect Curry",

you could be able to find it in your high street rather than coming all the way to India.

You know something, David? When I hear you say "with great respect",

you haven't got any respect at all.

I get what you're saying,

OK, I do understand you can have a good curry in the high street.

But let me remind you,

your favourite curry is, I believe, prawn vindaloo.

-King prawn vindaloo.

-OK, king prawn vindaloo.

All you think king prawn vindaloo is something searingly hot

which you can have with a couple of pints of beer.

-Am I right or am I right?

-Could be right.

Vindaloo is this beautifully fragrant, vinegary curry from Goa,

which has no resemblance to what you eat at all.

As you know, I don't need to say unto thee,

that most of the restaurants back home came from Bangladesh anyway!

These pictures of Sylhet's famous bridge

will excite Bangladeshi cooks,

restaurant owners and waiters all over the UK

because the majority of the so-called Indian restaurants

in Britain stem from this one town, Sylhet in Bangladesh,

known once upon a time as East Bengal.

But it's in India's West Bengal, in hot, steamy Calcutta,

or should I say Kolkata, where my curry odyssey begins.

Before I flew to Kolkata my friends told me to start my curry odyssey

right in the centre of the city at Nizam's,

famous for its kathi rolls.

Basically, it's a fried paratha, a flatbread,

filled with omelette and wonderful spicy meat,

mutton or chicken, cooked with onions and chillies.

The interpreter for this leg of the journey, Seema,

thoroughly agreed with my suggestion to meet up here,

in the place that put kathi rolls on the world map.

Excuse me.

That is unbelievable.

I mean, I've only just got off the plane and I'm just thinking,

I've had that idea in my mind of the perfect street food.

I think I've found it.

What's the origin of these then?

-Well, they started here in Kolkata in the early 1900s.

-Right.

And then we had the British here who came to eat the food.

But it's a little oily, as you can see it.

Now the British who were here,

they didn't like to touch it with their fingers,

so this guy Nizam came up with this lovely idea.

He wrapped the entire paratha in a fine piece of paper.

So am I, is that what you do then? You just tear the...

Yeah, you just go on tearing it like this, go piece by piece

and there it is all open for you to eat and you can just, you know, enjoy it.

If the rest of the food here is going to be like this, I'm in heaven.

You really started it at the right place, you know?

-Really?

-This is so popular.

We've had a PMs, PMs meaning prime ministers, also had food from here.

Wow! How much does the food of Bengal mean to you and all your friends?

We just love food.

Bengalis are crazy about food.

From morning to night, the only thing they can really talk

very well is firstly food, secondly politics.

So you see how important food is for Bengalis, right?

You can go anywhere in the world, but to try Nizam's rolls,

you have to come to Kolkata.

-I'll have to open a Nizam's type...

-Maybe.

-..kathi roll in the UK somewhere.

-Yes, I think so. I think so.

-Brilliant.

-I hope you really enjoy it.

SHE LAUGHS

I find it very difficult, in a seemingly ancient place,

to get to grips with the fact that the city's only 320 years old.

Compared to Padstow, that's nothing.

The history books tell us that before the East India Company came,

led by a determined young Lancastrian called Job Charnock,

this was just a collection of ramshackle huts,

lining the muddy banks of the Hooghly river.

I love big rivers and they don't get any bigger than this.

And I'm reminded of the poem The Wasteland.

And running through it all the time is this image of water,

and particularly images of rivers.

And Eliot describes a river as being a brown god.

And thinking of the Thames, I couldn't get it.

This is a brown god.

And I just imagine when Job Charnock came up the river here,

a tough Lancastrian.

And there's a fabulous romantic story about this.

He discovered a funeral pyre

and a girl about to be burnt alive cos her husband had died

and he rescued her and lived happily with her,

married to her for 25 years.

And when she died, he built a palace next to her grave.

It might sound like an overstatement,

but I think our love of curry stems from this plant, pepper,

sometimes known as the king of spices.

Europeans couldn't get enough of it.

And then there's the queen of spices, cardamom.

As a chef I've been using this perfumed spice for years,

but I hadn't a clue how it grew or how it was harvested.

What the British wanted was spice - nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves,

but above all, pepper.

Just imagine what it tasted like if you'd never tasted it before,

if only a few people could afford it.

I mean, that heat, there'd be nothing like it.

You would absolutely think it would make you live longer,

give you virility, whatever, it would make you a better person.

It was literally worth its weight in gold.

The trade here must have been phenomenal at the end of the 17th century.

Young, ambitious men came here in their droves in the hope

of making a fortune and having a grand estate back at home.

But sadly many of them died like flies because of the heat,

the mosquitoes, the stagnant water

and a whole host of unsavoury diseases.

The Hooghly river takes no prisoners.

I think this building, the Writers' Building,

symbolises the astounding wealth the East India Company created here.

This is the place that housed hundreds

if not thousands of clerks or writers

and curiously, the food today in Kolkata

still reflects what the office workers eat.

I met one of the most passionate foodies ever,

Kaniska Chakraborty, who took me to his favourite place.

So, what's special about this place?

OK, this place is an age-old institution of Kolkata.

This was not here to begin with.

This place, believe it or not, started in 1879.

-Good Lord.

-Yeah, and... but it was way down that side.

About 80-odd years back they moved in here

and the inside hasn't changed ever since.

-So, yeah.

-It's not very big.

It's not very big, it's not big at all.

You can barely fit in ten people.

-And the thing that we come here for is prawn cutlets.

-Right.

This is melt in the mouth, ethereal prawn cutlets.

They're like pillowy soft and all that,

fried in complete butter so there is no oil nonsense.

-In butter? In ghee?

-No, in butter, not ghee, but butter.

So Kolkata had a long-standing clerical culture,

even during the day of the British Raj.

There were a lot of clerks who were employed by the Raj to run the administration.

They were always on the lookout for fast food.

Therefore this kind of tiffin took place.

Tiffin is this little filler-up time between let's say lunch

and by the time you get home.

Have you ever thought of going on TV?

You're doing a much better job than me, I must say.

So enthusiastic. We'd better try something.

-We should try, we should try, yes.

-Fire away!

This is an exercise in how to get the most out of something relatively small.

A freshwater prawn dipped in lime juice.

Well, so far it doesn't set the world on fire.

What he does is take the gut tract from the prawn

and then split it open and flatten it.

He uses the knife to very gently cut the flesh

so it tenderises it and it's also able to absorb the lime juice

and then it's dipped in batter.

Now, he wouldn't tell me what the batter is made from.

He said it was a secret.

But if it was me I'd make it like the Japanese tempura,

that's cornflour, plain flour,

a bit of baking soda mixed with iced soda water.

Then what he does is to fry this plumptious prawn in butter so it puffs up,

like Kaniska said, just like a soft pillow.

-Here they come.

-They're here. There you are.

-Well, I'm looking forward to this.

-Ta-da!

-I know you're going to be right, I know they're going to be...

-Let's try them.

-..special.

And we got, what? Mustard sauce, here?

Yeah, this mustard sauce packs a punch.

-How do you like it, by the way?

-Oh, I love it!

No, you're right about the butter, just transforms it.

Well, you know what, Kaniska?

Without you I never would have come to this little hole in the wall

to eat these delicious prawn cutlets.

I wouldn't have known about them, I bet they're not in many food guides.

They're not in many food guides, as you say, Rick.

And I'm glad you like them, glad you could come here.

Do you mind me asking this question, because do you mind using the word "curry"?

Because apparently it's a British name anyway.

Curry doesn't exist, does it?

I'm so glad you brought this up and I was wondering,

"How do I bring this up to you?" Because, yeah.

I mean, there are names for curries like we call that jhol.

Jhol essentially means a light curry.

So I'm sure every region had its little name for a curry.

But curry, it helps us understand it better, I guess, to the international audience.

So it's important, that name, to me, is important,

but yes, I do not think it correctly captures a sense of what we eat.

I completely agree with you.

So back at the little house on the lagoon,

it's time to cook a brilliant prawn curry I had at a restaurant in Kolkata.

And as soon as I tasted it I said, "I've got to cook that."

Gosh, it's really hot today but I love where I'm cooking.

Now, I've just added some mustard oil into this very lovely pan.

When you first see the amount of mustard that goes

into Bengali cooking, you think that is far too much

and you have to get used to the flavour of mustard seed.

It's not like the flavour of our hot English mustard.

It's that really bitter, pungent flavour which comes

when you whizz up the seeds, because the seeds are little,

like, cases that encase this wonderful, slightly moist

but very, very vigorous flavour which is in all Bengali cooking.

It's really important, I think, in all Indian cooking,

cook your onions for a long time at a moderate heat

so they don't burn but they get this lovely brown colour.

Then, in a blender, grind up a couple of ounces of mustard seed into a coarse paste.

That'll give this dish of prawns and coconut a real hot zing.

You don't want to blend them too much

cos that becomes a very sort of smooth puree,

you need a little bit of warp and weft in it,

a bit of mustard husk in there.

Good. Right, my onions are nearly done.

Now turmeric. A teaspoonful.

Experienced curry cooks never overdo the turmeric.

It has a way of dominating the other flavours.

Then coconut milk.

And this is made fresh out here

but if I was at home, I wouldn't hesitate to use a tin from the supermarket.

And next, of course, the mustard paste.

So even from this far it's sort of catching the back of my throat.

And as I keep saying,

that flavour that, you know, it's like so much in cooking,

the first time you taste something we're all a bit conservative.

And you think, "Oh, I'm not going to like that",

and then after a while you think, "I can't have enough of it".

And that's the case with mustard.

And next, the grated coconut.

About a teaspoon of salt.

Stir that in and now the prawns.

And while it's cooking I'm just going to chop up some green chillies.

The vexed question of whether you leave the seeds in or take 'em out.

You know, I like spicy but I must say, a couple of these recipes,

I'm sort of sending the recipes home back to Padstow

and my son Jack is testing a lot of them.

And this particular one he sent me the e-mail saying,

"Delicious, Dad, but nobody could eat it. Too hot."

And I think the problem really is...

That's about three or four chillies,

The problem really is that I've just got a bit immune to chilli.

So it's up to you.

But for me and for the guys that drink lots of beer

and like our prawn vindaloo as hot as possible, leave 'em in.

Even if I wasn't a cook I'd come to Kolkata

purely because of the street food.

There are hundreds of these little stalls here.

Most of them can be loaded on a pushbike

and each one serves its own tasty speciality.

I know it's not very practical

but what I would love to do is bring all my aspiring young chefs here

to see what can be achieved with so little in such a tiny space.

Angus Denoon is a chef in the UK,

but he fell in love with Kolkata and the street food here is his passion.

-It's quite organised cos the street food guys got a union.

-Have they?

When they go on strike, the office workers go on strike.

-Cos there's nothing to eat!

-HE LAUGHS

We can't expect them to come to work if there's nowhere for lunch.

-This is a chuda shop and...

-Chuda.

..also a lassi shop.

And basically it's based around the curd.

Fantastic curd in Kolkata.

Comes from a bottle of milk, which is very fatty, it's good fat.

In England we have low-fat stuff but low fat is not an option here. That's seen as a bad thing.

-It's never an option for me, I must say.

-That is good.

What it is, the chuda is basically rice that's been cooked

and then it's flattened and then dried.

And what we're going to do is reconstitute it,

add a little bit of water to it, mash it around a bit

then he makes basically a thin lassi, so he puts some

yogurt in the pot, mix it up with a little bit of water,

a little bit of sugar and then pour it over the plate with the chuda.

And then put a little bit of sugar on top.

And this is like a morning treat.

-Good for breakfast.

-Good for breakfast. Good for breakfast.

-Oh!

-It's nice, isn't it?

-It's so subtle.

-Yeah, yeah.

The rice is fab.

Got a bit of texture, crunchy sugar, tart yoghurt.

Really simple but just on the button.

It's a big kind of thing when you mention street food,

people are just, you know? Especially in India.

"How's your tummy? I wouldn't touch that."

But that's kind of wrong because in a city this is their life.

There's a very competitive market here so it's perfect economy.

So, like, you don't need the authorities to say,

"You gotta keep it clean", cos they know to keep it clean.

It's like, "Why you going to tell me that?

"Cos if I poison people then they won't come and I don't feed the family."

You just can't look anywhere that's not interesting.

So, do you ever get aggro from anybody?

Everybody seems very, very friendly.

Very friendly, very cool.

Now, this is the most popular street food here.

It's called a puchka, little balls of deep-fried flour

filled with spicy mashed potatoes and sour tamarind water.

It's cheap as chips.

So, is the puchka when he crunches it with his thumb?

That's a puchka. But they're, like, just over a rupee each.

They're strangely addictive.

Oh, God!

It's, a first taste is, "I don't like this",

cos the black salt is very sulphury, then you get the tamarind,

then you get the chilli, then you get the crunch of the, what's the...

-The puri.

-..the puri.

And the ultimate taste is very, very satisfying, I must say.

-How do I tell him I've had enough?

-You can't.

-Or do I just walk away?

-Until you finish.

-What?

-HE LAUGHS

Angus talks like he's seen this sort of thing every day.

He probably has, but I just marvel at scenes like this.

Some of these men have been making these puchkas for over 30 years,

and their fathers before them.

They're made with plain flour, semolina, ghee and water.

Ghee, of course, is clarified butter.

To the Western eye this production line may look a little chaotic,

makeshift even, but I think it's quite wonderful

and it runs like clockwork.

And everyone in Kolkata has got their favourite puchka wallah.

-You know everyone's like....

-So civilised, isn't it?

So civilised and also you think, "Well, it's just like a puri

"and then with mashed potato filling and a little tamarind water."

But the more you learn about it and the more you taste it,

there are many, many levels, many, many levels.

So they've got something very basically simple

but they just kind of break it right down

and the more you eat the more you realise.

And I'm just a tourist and stuff, I just know a bit. But these guys have got it in their blood.

And the Bengalis just understand these

little nuances which people like this kind of continue.

It's like history. And you're eating a bit of history, it's amazing.

Bengal is sweets, desserts and puddings.

Most of them far too sweet for me, I'm afraid.

And the heart of many of them stems from the sweet,

creamy milk of the buffalo.

Other than fish it's the thing they love most in the whole world.

Angus was very keen to take me to a stall that sold fresh yoghurt.

It's served in these lovely clay pots

which are thrown away afterwards.

Like so many things here, this stems from the caste system,

where the higher-caste people wouldn't dream of eating

out of a pot which was used by the lower castes,

no matter how many times it was washed.

-Mishti doi.

-Mishti doi. Sweet yoghurt.

Sweet yoghurt.

Oh, very good!

Thank you.

It reminds me of the first time I went to Greece, funnily enough.

When they used to do yoghurts as, I don't know whether they still do

them in little terracotta pots, but Angus was just saying it actually firms them up,

cos they're porous and some of the moisture comes out.

It is exquisite.

I'm thinking when I'm writing recipes,

cos a lot of Indian recipes have yoghurt in,

how am I going to match this?

I don't think so with the average supermarket stuff.

It's so beautifully tart, isn't it?

And it tastes, it doesn't taste fatty,

it tastes just very, very clean.

-A natural one.

-Natural. It's lovely.

Happy customer.

-Cut. Can I have one to try?

-It is so good.

Well, this is the last of the snacks I'm having this morning.

I mean, this morning started at eight o'clock

and I've been having snacks ever since.

But this is probably the most famous in Kolkata, called jhal muri.

I've never tasted anything like it.

It's sort of like, I thought when they were describing it

it was a bit like Bombay mix, cos it's all dry,

but then you've got lots of things like chopped tomato,

coriander, fresh cream, chillies, coconut, onion in it as well.

And a little bit of mustard oil

so it's really hot but very satisfying.

And the main thing is this puffed rice.

It's a bit like sort of savoury Rice Krispies, if you like.

You could be here for months and still find new things to eat.

But I suppose, like any tourist, I keep seeing things that perhaps

they don't really want to see and you do notice people

living their private life out on the streets,

which is a bit disconcerting.

Probably best summed up by the novelist EM Forster

who came here in the '40s on a lecture tour.

And he said, he's obviously been here before,

Passage To India, that sort of thing.

"Externally the place has not changed.

"There is still poverty and it's the poverty,

"the malnutrition which persists like a groundswell

"beneath the pleasant froth of my immediate experience."

And the immediate experience is a pleasant froth.

People on the street smile at you, they're happy, they're kind to you.

And I think above all, it's that persistent feeling,

for me, of human resilience,

the resilience of all us human beings

which so impresses me about Kolkata.

This is the All Bengal Women's Union,

formed in 1932 to protect and rehabilitate

destitute women and girls here in Kolkata.

They run a restaurant called Suruchis

that serves really good Bengali food.

I know this because I have friends who have eaten there and loved it.

Anjana Chatterjee is one of the organisers

who helps teach the girls the gentle art of cooking.

You know, I have these lovely girls, they are working every day.

But they have very few leaves, they are always working

but they are very happy.

-They are lovely girls.

-Very lovely girls, and...

What sort of backgrounds do they come from?

Mostly they're abandoned by their parents.

Sometimes they are lost, you know? On the road.

Neither the parents can find them, nor the girl.

Sometimes they're so small that they don't know their address,

they don't know their locality, have nowhere to go.

But they don't want to be reminded of that, you see?

Because they get all the love here.

We love them very much and they also like us very much.

-SPEAKS TO THE WOMEN

-They all like to work here.

-Happy, happy.

-They're happy, happy.

So, I mean, when they leave will they find jobs somewhere? Or...

They don't usually because I told you they don't have nowhere to go.

-So they can't find jobs, so...

-No, they can't find.

-When they're very old we have an old-age home.

-Oh, OK.

They have so much of love, you know,

-and affection that you sort of can't fail to love them.

-Yeah.

And they are so nice.

Well, it must be very nice for you to see them blossom and...

-That's right.

-Very rewarding.

-Yes, very rewarding.

What I'm learning here, and I really enjoy watching people

cook their own food, cos you just pick up so much from doing it,

is the absolute importance of keeping the garlic, the onion,

the ginger paste and all those spices from sticking to the pan.

And this is a very simple egg curry.

She's boiled the eggs and then fried them, probably in a bit of ghee.

-Finish.

-Finish? Is there any potatoes in it or just...

I'm having to get used to the way, what a head nod means.

Is it yes or no?

Sometimes it's yes and if they go like that, that is yes, emphatically yes.

Sometimes that means no,

sometimes it means yes, but I'm getting it.

-Vinegar.

-Vinegar. Vinegar?

I don't believe that.

It's very unusual in this part of...

Bring the, bring a bit of acidity because normally they use tamarind

but this is the Portuguese influence.

Lovely.

What I really like is there's a few whole spices in there.

Now, back in UK if you put whole spices in a curry,

people would say there's something wrong with this, these whole spices.

-But biting into a bit of cinnamon like that, I really like it.

-Tasty.

-And it's fresh, it's got... It's very, very...

-Good.

-It's very good.

You see our Bengali cooking,

-most important thing that we add is our love.

-Aw!

That's how I suppose it tastes so good.

'If you're interested, this is my step-by-step guide

'to cooking the All-Bengal Women's Union first-class egg curry.'

And now I'm adding, first of all,

some chilli powder and then some turmeric.

Now here's the interesting thing. I'm adding my boiled eggs now,

and the reason for that is I want them to pick up the colour

as well as the flavour from the chilli and the turmeric.

Now I'm just going to add some onions

and cook them out a little bit.

And now some ginger and some chilli.

Now some liquid in the form of coconut milk.

To flavour that, a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt.

Let it bubble away for about three to five minutes just to thicken.

And then I'm just going to finish the dish off with a sprinkling

of garam masala and some coriander and that's it.

This takes no preparation, of course,

apart from boiling a few eggs.

So I sort of think it's almost like,

"Shall I have scrambled eggs tonight or shall I have curried eggs?"

'Because India believes in the old adage

'"waste not, want not", one of the people helping us

'make this programme suggested we come to this place.

'It's a rubbish tip where they recycle practically everything.

'He said that once we'd been there, we'd be seriously impressed,

'because this place is a real success story,

'providing loads of work and food for the villages that surround it.'

Every time I come to India, I just love watching people at work

because they just get on with each other so well,

and actually, everybody is very nice to us, you know?

You never feel threatened in India,

because everybody's just getting on with their life.

And it's a bit ironic, because right at the back of them, if you can see,

there's a massive garbage tip but everything's being recycled,

including the food waste which is turned into compost,

which is used to grow these green, leafy vegetables

that you eat and see everywhere in the market.

Fish, vegetables, rice paddy. This was an old rice paddy.

That is the staple diet of Bengalis, and what I would call the climate

and the terrain of Bengal is very fertile,

I would call it very fecund.

'I've been here in Kolkata for about four days now,

'and I haven't eaten much meat.

'In fact, I've nearly forgotten about it,

'the fish is so good here.

'They cost very little compared to chicken or mutton.

'I knew I should have packed my Observer's guide

'to Indian freshwater fish.

'It's a really vital piece of kit,

'because I don't know the names of many of these.

'I'd be tempted to call these dace, which swim in our rivers at home,

'not that we'd ever think of eating them.

'Now these, I think they're called karimeen,

'and they're very popular over here.

'The locals bake them in banana leaves after skinning them

'and plastering them in masala and onions, and they're lovely.'

It's amazing what preconceptions one has,

because obviously coming from a small island like Great Britain

and what I do, I love sea fish.

I love the taste of saltwater fish.

But I've been asking around here and everybody says sweet water,

sweet water, that's what we like.

And of course it's what they like, cos it's where they come from.

And I sort of can't get it out of my head

that this fish, to them, is far better than sea fish.

I'd like to know what they'd like to eat every day,

what do they really like to eat, would you ask them?

Yeah, surely.

HE SPEAKS LOCAL DIALECT

-Fish rice.

-Fish, rice.

So I like fish.

THEY SPEAK LOCAL DIALECT

And that's good fish?

I like vegetable, any vegetable.

And how do you like to eat rui?

INTERPRETER SPEAKS DIALECT

Soup, soup, soup.

-In a soup.

-In a soup.

It's another type of soup, with a lot of spices with mustard oil.

Good. Thank you very much.

'Remember this for a long, healthy life.

'Rice, vegetables and fish.

'I really think so.

'I'm going to a restaurant that specialises in Bengali cuisine.

'In fact, it was one of the first restaurants to specialise.

'It's called Kewpie's,

'and anyone who's been to Kolkata more than once will know about it.

'It's fairly upmarket, and the rui fish

'will be one of the top things on the menu.

'The owner is Rakhi Dasgupta.'

This is rui, and it's dressed like this when it goes

from the girl's family to the groom's family.

It's called Bou Bhaat. She is going to cook for her in-laws.

So it's very symbolic that she's a good cook.

-Good idea.

-Yeah.

-Very important.

-Very good idea.

So, Rakhi, I'm told that we start with turmeric.

With all fish in Bengal,

we normally put turmeric and salt, it's like an antiseptic.

Yes, so it's like a sort of marinade, then?

Yes, it is.

And then I rub it nicely into the fish.

I'm going to now heat some oil...

-Yeah.

-..In a pan.

What sort of oil?

It's mustard oil.

Just a little.

'This is the heart of Bengali cuisine,

'making these mustard seeds into a paste with a chilli.

'And this is called a shil nora. It's like a mortar and pestle.

'Shil is the flat stone, nora is a roller.

'I wish I could take one home with me, but it's far too heavy.

'The process, just adding water, is very gentle,

'and eventually you end up with this, a creamy, pungent paste.'

That's really interesting.

It's like I've never seen that sort of frying a liquid before,

but presumably it'll thicken up now?

Yep.

And I return my fish.

Well, that is fascinating.

I've never seen a dish cooked like that before.

Twice cooked like that.

Wow.

How do you like it?

I like it well.

It's very... It's got a lot of flavour.

And the sauce, love the coriander in it,

love the lemon, like the mustard.

And I used to make it in London with Colman's Mustard.

With Colman's Mustard?

Yes, what we would do is put a little water...

Yeah.

And put milk to get the consistency.

Or we would use a bit of coconut milk.

Well, I'm blowed. Were you happy with it?

Yes, it tastes great.

-Well, I'm blowed.

-Really, really great.

Well, straight in the book.

Absolutely.

'It goes without saying that not everyone from the East India Company

'was liked by the Bengalis.

'But Job Charnock was.

'I love this story,

'because it's the sort of thing that can happen to any traveller.

'Apparently, when Job Charnock dropped anchor here,

'he asked a local farmer what this place was called.

'The farmer misunderstood the question and thought Job had said

'when was the last time he harvested,

'to which he replied, "cal cutta", meaning, "I cut it yesterday."

'I love it!'

I suppose it's a bit arbitrary to come up with a place

where our love of curry began, but, for me, I think Madras

is as good a place as any, simply because I can remember, as a child,

those little tins of Madras curry powder

with the medals all over them.

And I remember my mother's curries with great affection.

They had things like desiccated coconut, apple, banana,

but above all, for me, were the raisins that you found

right in the middle of the stew, I suppose.

Of course, it's fashionable now to look down on those early curries,

and probably quite rightly, too, but I have a little fond memory of them.

And why I'm here, of course, is to find the real thing,

find the proper curries.

But either way, for me, the biggest influence in my life from India,

first, second and last is curry.

I thought I'd cook a curry similar in style and taste

to the one my mother made all those years ago.

That Anglo-Indian cooking is a bit looked down on these days,

but those curries were a great source of affection to me,

and lots of people, and of course, during the British Raj period,

you couldn't go on a railway journey or you couldn't go

into an officers' mess

without getting a menu that contained dishes like this.

But as I said, I'm going to make my own,

so I thought it had to be beef, and it had to have onions in it.

But then I would make up my own Madras curry powder.

So, first of all, I'm going to put some butter,

ordinary butter in a very hot pan.

'I'm browning this braising steak,

'which is how we start a stew back home,

'but not the way Indians would start a curry.

'They wouldn't bother browning the meat first.'

Just thinking how curry caught on back home in Britain.

It took a while, because in the 18th century, stews were regarded as

lower orders' dishes, and therefore a curry, which was seen as a stew,

didn't really catch on until the 19th century...

..when there's a very, I think, quite amusing piece in Vanity Fair,

where the infamous heroine, Becky Sharp, tries to ingratiate herself

with an Anglo-Indian family by saying, "Yes, I like curry,"

and then it describes how she

suffered the tortures of cayenne pepper.

Course, she knew nothing about curries

so they give her a chilli to cool her down,

and because it's called a chilli,

she thinks it is a cooling vegetable, which of course it's not.

'Well, there was much laughter around the table

'at poor Becky's expense.

'And let's face it, we've all done it in Indian restaurants,

'suffered from too much chilli.

'Now, onions, and all the onions over here are red,

'unless anyone tells me otherwise.

'Garlic, three to four cloves, roughly chopped.'

So now the spices, and here it gets interesting,

because, of course, I'm not using a rather old curry powder.

First of all, lovely, bright reddy-orange chilli,

about a teaspoon of that.

And now some also lovely bright yellow turmeric, teaspoon of that.

And now I'm going to put a lot of garam masala in,

about a tablespoon and a half.

And this is my own garam masala.

We've got black pepper, we've got coriander, we've got cumin,

we've got cloves, we've got cardamom, and we've also got,

let me remember, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Smells delicious, that.

This is the difference,

this is what makes my British Raj curry a bit better than I suspect

you might have had in the 19th or indeed early 20th century.

'Salt, two teaspoonfuls and then water.'

And now we're going to add two very important ingredients,

which really bring it back to my mother's curry.

First of all, not desiccated coconut that she would have used,

but freshly grated coconut.

And secondly, some lovely plumptious sultanas.

But this is now going to have to cook for an hour and a half,

so see you later.

If I can find the lid, I'll put that on.

'All those years the British were in India

'played a big part in our gastronomic life at home.

'Kedgeree is still a great breakfast dish, and there wouldn't be

'Worcester sauce without the Raj, or chutney, for that matter.

'Mulligatawny soup or piccalilli. Christmas without piccalilli?

'Meanwhile, back to my curry.'

That is lovely. Wow. I'm very happy with that.

And this sort of reminds me of going

out to pubs in the '60s and '70s and ordering it.

And you'd always get desiccated coconut,

very important slices of banana.

But most important, most exotic, your poppadoms.

Lovely.

'The British had learnt a few things about the art of building forts

'when the East India Company erected this low and lethal fortress

'to establish a trading post at Madras in 1640,

'the first real British settlement on the subcontinent.

'The flagpole was 150 feet high, and flew the Union Jack,

'probably to remind any French frigates

'that might have been sniffing around the Coromandel coast

'that this was indeed British territory.

'Try and take it at your peril.

'It's one of those curious things,

'but although India got her independence in 1947,

'they wouldn't allow any Indians to join the Madras Club

'until the early '60s. It's unbelievable.'

Hello.

Hello, welcome, Rick. Madras Club is honoured to have you.

It's very nice to be here.

I've been imagining what it looked like all day.

And we're all looking forward to you cooking for us.

Oh, I'm not cooking, I thought the chef was cooking.

Oh, OK. The chef is there, the chef is there.

Oh, right, OK.

'I'm here because of the most famous soup in India,

'the one created in the heyday of the Raj by the British.'

It's not often that strangers get invited into these hallowed grounds.

So I feel, you know, very, very lucky,

but more so that they're actually making mulligatawny soup for me,

because as I understand it, this is where it came from.

And he's starting off by making a paste.

We've got some coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black pepper seeds,

ginger, garlic, mint, turmeric, water going in here.

-Is that garam masala or...?

-Curry powder.

Curry powder. Curry powder? Wow. Curry powder.

Madras.

How popular is mulligatawny soup in the club?

It's very popular, it is our signature dish.

But now the most popular dish is the roast lamb, grilled chicken,

and we have shepherd's pie, the very most popular dish.

Wow. I would certainly feel at home.

'So that pungent green chloroformy paste goes into a saucepan

'with carrots, leeks, celery, onions, cardamom and tomatoes.

'They've already been fried with cloves and cinnamon.

'And now the chicken.

'Add a tablespoon of flour and turmeric.

'Chicken stock.

'Water.

'A tadge more turmeric...

'..and then simmer for at least half an hour

'until the chicken is cooked.

'Coconut milk.

'And now two teaspoonfuls of salt.

'And then sieve.

'A squeeze of fresh lime.

'I know they look like lemons, but they're limes.

'And then rice.

'And voila, the first mulligatawny I've tasted for 20 years.'

That is very nice indeed.

It's really intense in flavour. And what's interesting, it's really hot,

but there's no chilli in it, it's just hot with black pepper.

I'm rather saddened, really, because you used to be able to buy

tins of mulligatawny soup very easily in the UK,

but I guess the taste for it has just gone.

Partly, I suspect,

because the tinned soup tasted nothing like this.

This is thick and absolutely full of lovely, green, spicy flavour.

'There's no such thing as a free lunch, we all know that one.'

Let me introduce Mr Rick Stein.

'And so the nice people at the Madras Club

'asked me if I'd give a chat, which I did,

'but I thought I'd use the opportunity

'to find out how they regarded the word "curry".'

If you said to me what do you think is a curry,

I'd say, probably a meat dish with a gravy.

But I think what we really mean, is it spicy food?

A curry, when you say curry in Tamil, it is meat, mutton.

In very traditional Brahmin households,

you have what is called a curry.

Which is basically vegetables.

When you went to a store you wanted either meat, you said curry.

You wanted vegetables, you say kai curry,

so it could have been confusing for the British

so they just took the curry and left everything else.

For me, curry is something minus lentils.

Any kind of gravy in India is a curry,

basically, the way we look at it, it goes with rice, it goes with

chapattis or it goes with any kind of staple that we eat with.

As long as it has a little gravy to it, we call it a curry.

In that case, Rick Stein's India, In Search of the Perfect Gravy.

Yeah, I think gravy would be better.

'I've always had a romantic notion to come to the Coromandel coast

'ever since my mother used to read me Edward Lear's

'A Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

'It tells the tale of the unrequited love of the Tamil Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

'for the English rose Lady Jingly.

'"On the coast of Coromandel, where the early pumpkins blow,

'"in the middle of the woods, lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo."

'"Two old chairs and half a candle, one old jug without a handle,

'"these were all his worldly goods, in the middle of the woods."

'"These were all the worldly goods of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,

'"of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo."

'So he's saying to Lady Jingly, "These are the things I offer you

'"if you come back to Coromandel and be my love."

'This is Mr Mani, my exceedingly good interpreter, who was surprised

'that I, a foreigner, wanted to go to a fishing village.'

It's very rarely tourists are interested in coming

to the fishermen's village.

And you have noticed nobody come near us

and ask for anything because it is unknown.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's not a tourist place.

No.

If I was by the sea,

I'd always want to find fishing, where the fishing is,

cos I come from by the sea, so I love my fish.

WOMEN ARGUE IN LOCAL DIALECT

Why is she so angry?

Oh, she is angry because she didn't get the fish.

So that's why she is fighting with the other girl.

I just picked up these,

fetching 900 rupees a kilo, which is about ten quid.

And the reason for that is it's really rough out there,

there's no more fishing today and it's Diwali tomorrow,

the Hindu festival,

so obviously, fish is fetching really good prices,

just like at home.

'Well, the women have patched up their argument

'and are off to the main market, I suppose to Pondicherry.

'While not at sea, the men ashore mend their nets.

'And like many other fishing communities

'it's a hard life and can be a short one.

'And the perils are not just those at sea.'

I've just been talking to this guy,

he actually speaks very good English.

And he asked me how old I was and I said I'm well over 60.

He said, "Well, over here you won't have much longer to live then,"

because they all drink cheap brandy and over 60, so...

But some people, after 50 they don't want to go

to the fishing or nothing, they only drink raw...

Raw spirit. So it kills them off quick.

Yeah.

How hard's the life being a fisherman here on this coast?

No, fisherman is hard work.

Every day of life is up to 70 also they are still going to fishing.

Still working at 70.

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-Strong men.

-Strong men.

-Yeah.

Because normally the fishing work is very hard.

Yeah. Same the whole world over.

Yeah.

It's quite funny, really, cos when we were trying to find out

what the coast of Tamil Nadu was like,

we were told there's nothing really to see.

It's all dirty and a bit derelict.

Would you call this nothing?

I'm sorry, but it's everything to me.

I mean, it's enchanting, I mean, everybody is really happy.

The fishermen are, you know, as fishermen everywhere,

hardworking but cheerful.

And just looking at this scene, I was sort of thinking about

really the first time I ever went to Spain in the '50s.

It's a bit like that there, then.

I mean, obviously, the boats are a bit different,

but everybody was really poor, but really happy.

And you look at this scene, and you just think

some hotelier, maybe even watching this programme, says,

"What I wouldn't give for a piece of action there."

And you can imagine in another 20, 30 years.

No fishermen, plenty of hotels.

DIRECTOR: Cut.

'I consider myself very privileged,

'because I've been invited to lunch here with a fisherman's family

'and of course it's going to be a fish curry made with kingfish,

'which has just been landed.

'So she's grated up fresh coconut in the mixer followed by a dozen,

'yes, a dozen really hot chillies.

'Loads of garlic and then peppercorns.

'A good handful of freshly chopped tomatoes...

'..onion, quite a bit of salt, and that's it.

'They all have these wet and dry very powerful blenders.

'I predict a lot of people will be getting one of these.'

We don't tend to blend vegetables together like that in a sauce,

but she just says it adds more flavour.

And also, you get a lot of texture from all those blended vegetables.

Interestingly, I don't think we have a contraption to do

that in the UK, a small container with lots of power

that will blend dry and wet things together.

SHE SPEAKS LOCAL DIALECT

You get more taste.

Thank you.

'This is unusual. She's frying up mustard seeds

'and white daal or lentils.

'Not many of them, but she says they add texture.

'Now the paste. It looks lovely made with all those chillies,

'tomatoes and onions.

'Actually, it reminds me of an Indonesian curry.

'I wonder if fishermen or traders from the Coromandel coast

'travelled there years ago?'

She doesn't want to turn it over with a fish slice

or something like that, cos it's obviously very delicate fish

and it'll break up, so she's just shaking it.

You learn something every day in cooking.

'Now curry leaves.

'Oh, how much I love fresh curry leaves.

'I think it should be the curry symbol for southern Indian dishes

'and then coriander.

'The two together, perfect.'

Can I try some?

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Just have a bit of the fish.

And a bit of the masala.

That is delicious.

That is so good.

-You're a very good cook.

-Thank you.

And what I was thinking was, the first time I came to India,

when I first tasted the fish curry, I thought,

"If we had fish curries like this back in the UK, we'd all love fish."

'And so my search for the perfect curry continues.

'Are the kitchens getting even hotter? Is that possible?

'Can you overdose on too much chilli?

'And this wonderful thing, the ultimate spice grinder.

'A work of art, and a tribute to the ingenious Indian mind.

'And will the driving standards improve?

'Because there's an awful long way to go

'in my search for the perfect curry.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media

That's a mind-blasting curry, Ricky.