Episode 4 Rick Stein's India

CAR HORN HONKS

I'm here because of my fascination for the food of this fabulous country.

The fact is that the cooking of India is of such colour and flavour, it demands a response.

ENGINES AND CAR HORNS

Just like the country, you can't walk down the street

without the senses being overwhelmed.

The heat, the dust, the beggars, the slums, the poverty,

the sheer pressure of people everywhere.

CAR HORN, DRUMS AND CHEERING

And yet also the riot of colour, the friendship of everyone,

the feeling that wherever you go,

in spite of the appalling problems of this vast country,

you never feel threatened by anyone.

And in the end, a realisation that you can't change anything,

so you might as well celebrate what you find to love.

Because there's so much to love in India -

and you know what I'm going to say next - especially curry.

-MAN:

-First-class curry, Ricky.

That's a mind-blasting curry, Ricky.

The city of Lucknow is pretty special in the story of curry.

It was the domain of the nawabs -

rich, sophisticated Muslim rulers who loved their food...

..and were always trying to outdo their rivals

to put something really special on the plate.

CAR HORNS HONK

Well, Lucknow means a lot to me,

both as a schoolboy - the sort of Siege of Lucknow -

and latterly because it was the birthplace of Cliff Richard.

An insignificant point, I know, but it means a lot to me.

But most importantly,

because of the food, because this was one of the centres of great Mogul cuisine.

And also, the home of pulao, mutton pulao,

which intrigues me because I can't quite understand the difference

between mutton pulao and mutton biryani.

It's a sort of subtlety so far I haven't caught up with,

but that's typical of Indian cuisine - it's very subtle.

And it just so happens that the story of pulao

is linked to this famous landmark of the city, the Imambara.

During a time of famine,

the nawab at the time gave people work to build it in exchange for food.

The story goes that during a royal inspection,

he caught the most wonderful aroma

coming from a cauldron of pulao that had been sealed with dough,

called a dum pukht, which means "cooked with steam".

From that moment, a humble peasant dish was exalted to the Royal Court.

CAR HORNS BLARE

And this place - called Idris - I'm told cooks the best pulao in town.

I was really privileged to meet up with Mir Jafar Abdullah,

who's descended from the nawabs and a pulao expert.

-So this is the complete family which is available over here.

-OK.

-And the grandson.

-Ah-ha.

-So the whole family is involved in this traditional business.

-How nice.

And this is really a great traditional thing which is happening over here.

-Yeah.

-Because my ancestors, they had the royal kitchens.

-Yeah.

-The same recipes and the same traditional food is being cooked,

giving the same taste and flavour.

And this is mutton pulao.

And the beauty of this particular mutton is that they do not use an old goat.

So the first lesson in making pulao is never use an old goat.

This is young goat.

And here they're marinating it with ginger and garlic paste.

Then salt, chilli powder - and you can tell it's fresh by the fluffiness of it...

..cloves and cardamom...

..and water, about a couple of pints.

This, they told me, was refined oil.

There's a lot of it, and at the bottom, I noticed some well-fried onions.

This will really give it flavour.

Before the lid goes on, whole spices - cinnamon sticks, betel nut and cassia,

that's another bark similar to cinnamon.

Then it's cooked.

To... To a stranger,

what's the difference between mutton pulao and mutton biryani?

-You see, in Lucknow, we do not have biryani.

-Right.

-We have, normally, the pulao.

-Right.

-But biry...

-This was the improvement done on biryani, that Lucknow introduced pulao.

Bombay, Calcutta,

they used to have biryani.

But Lucknow is a more refined place and here we use less spices.

So that they do not...you do not feel that particular spice on your tongue.

You feel the flavour.

-So it's subtle. Subtle?

-Subtle, very subtle and very refined.

So that is the difference between the pulao and the biryani.

Lessons learnt. Subtlety,

this is new to me.

So many of us go to Indian restaurants to be hit with a whole load of spices.

Chilli, of course, being the main one.

But here in Lucknow, those excesses are frowned upon.

Once the mutton is cooked, the stock's strained.

It's got loads of flavour and that's called yakhni.

It's added to milk which will be used to cook the rice.

Now they put in ground cumin,

and in a well-practised flurry, in go these bottles.

Two, I know, are rose-water, for that exotic touch of luxury,

and one of them is kewra, essence of screw pine -

new to me, totally new - but an essential flavour of Lucknow.

Saffron colouring. I saw the same thing used with paella in Spain.

Sugar, salt, chilli powder,

and then the cooked mutton.

So what they do is layer the lamb with the rice.

CARS HORNS HONK

Unfortunately, we don't have any shots of that

because the crew at the time were filming from the roof of a nearby police station

and only got back to see the final colouring of saffron water

over the top of the rice.

That's now steamed and will be served for lunch in half an hour.

Wow.

-This is...

-Can we taste it?

Ready for taste.

Wonderful.

It's totally wonderful.

Would you say this was perfect?

Lovely taste.

The longer I stay here, the more I realise the various dishes I come across,

especially in Lucknow, are ingrained in history.

Their colours and tastes derive from those cooks in the palace kitchens.

What they were creating a couple of hundred years ago

for the rich nawabs is the food of the people now.

It's become street food.

And this dish, nimish, sums up all the things the nawabs stood for -

luxury and subtlety.

And it's so delicious.

People sometimes say to me, "You're so enthusiastic about everything you try,

"surely you don't like all of it."

And I'll say, "Well, actually, I like nearly all of it,

"but if I use the word "interesting", maybe not so much."

But this I absolutely love.

And it is so light. It's, like, lighter than air.

And what they do is take milk and cream and boil them a little bit

and then they chill the milk and cream overnight

and then they whip it with sugar

and then they add saffron, cardamom, pistachios,

almonds, and top it with some silver...

very, very thinly beaten out silver foil. Pass, come past, please.

We got this idea from our Indian translators that it contained morning dew.

And we were thinking, "Well, where do they get the morning dew from?"

But that's just poetry,

that's just the romantic use of English that the Indians have.

You know that expression "lost in translation"?

Nothing is more lost in translation

than anything the Indians talk to you about food.

Because they're so enthusiastic and so in love with their food,

you sometimes have to tone it all down a bit.

Nimish, once tasted never forgotten.

And I want to make it.

And what better place to create such a thing

than my lovely bungalow on the lagoon.

It's a place I know I'll miss like mad when I leave.

So...

I'm pouring this chilled cream into my whisking bowl.

I mean, this is absurdly simple to make, this nimish, but...

it is very luxurious.

You can only get it in the autumn in the early morning

because it requires the addition of dew

from a chilled night at that time of year to make.

Now, when I first heard that, I was a bit cynical, I have to say, a bit cynical.

Um, the idea in my head was of these people going out to collect dew

with maybe a little dustpan and a scraper off the grass.

So I sort of said I didn't really believe it.

But apparently it's true.

What they do is just stretch material on a frame, leave it out overnight,

and it collects the dew, which they add to the nimish.

And I suppose that seems fanciful, but this is a nawab dish

and nothing was too much trouble for them,

they'd get chefs from all over the Middle East

and they'd pay them fabulous sums.

And also they'd do things like give their chicken saffron to eat

in the belief that that would make the chicken taste of saffron.

So I whisk the cream until it's thick,

and then sprinkle icing sugar into it.

I didn't get morning dew this morning, because...

er, well, I...I got up too late.

Next, it's milk infused with strands of saffron,

and keeping up that Middle Eastern tradition,

because many of the cooks in Lucknow came from Persia, rose-water.

A bit more whisking and then it's ready to pour into a bowl and chill.

And that goes into this beautiful fridge for about three hours.

It's just a little difficult to shut, it sort of has its own life.

There we go. HE SNIGGERS

That chills for at least a couple of hours in the fridge,

but this is still an important part of the recipe

and something that shows the lengths the people of Lucknow,

the Lucknowis, go to to impress their friends.

Well, this is fascinating. The man in front here

is just putting little wafers of silver

in hundreds of pages of quite hard nylon,

and then the guy behind is bashing it,

and he does that for about two to three hours

until that silver turns into silver leaf about the size of a paperback book.

And the Muslims really like that.

With meat it's a sign of real strength and virility.

And of course, if you're eating food that's adorned with silver,

you've got to be worth a lot of money.

And, my gosh, it doesn't half make a perfect finishing touch to a nimish.

This is a typical Lucknowi dish because it has all the hallmarks of the nawabs.

It's not just cream, it's saffron, it's rose-water,

and above all, you finish it with silver leaf.

Look at these mongooses... Mongeese?

..playing right in the middle of a busy city.

I was named after one of these,

the mongoose in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book,

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

My brother Jeremy kept calling me that after he'd read the book

and it's stuck to this day.

I was just looking around, as you do everywhere in India,

and just saw all that up there, and I thought actually it was a dead tree.

Then I sort of looked a bit more carefully and realised it was wires,

millions and millions of wires going all over the place,

and it sort of reflects to me about life in India,

the intricacies of everything, and indeed,

I was also moved to consider, it also reflects the intricacies of curries, too.

I'd like to introduce you to the Mohan family

who are terribly proud of the cooking from Lucknow.

Rocky, that's him in the cream shirt,

prides himself on making the best chicken korma this side of Birmingham.

It's a lovely dish, and Rocky starts off

by flavouring ghee with cloves, cinnamon and cardamom.

This process of infusing spice flavours with ghee is called dorost,

very important in curry making.

And now a puree of onions -

often a hidden secret of a good curry.

So how long are we going to cook this for?

-Well, I'm going to allow the water to evaporate.

-Oh, OK.

And you can control the taste of a curry by how much you brown the onions.

So, would you say that korma was the sort of centre

-of what typifies Lucknow cuisine?

-I'd say, yes,

because it's one recipe where the use of spice is next to negligible,

as you will notice through the recipe.

We don't use any spice, except some red chilli powder.

-Uncooked chillies actually are bad on your stomach.

-Really?

So the whole idea is to basically allow the oil to work on the red chilli

and, um, also help it to add a little colour to it.

And that is why I think the korma is very delicate in its flavour,

it's because this is the only spice that is added to this particular dish.

And in terms of Indian food that's really quite mild.

-Very mild.

-Yeah.

So that's marinated, the chicken, is it?

I see it's got... What's that on it, then?

-Garlic.

-Yeah.

-Um, ginger paste.

-Yeah.

And a few green chillies.

Rick, I'd like you to smell this, please.

-Love to.

-Just pick up these flavours.

Oh, that's perfect.

Indian food is the best out of the world, with due respect to all the fancy chefs.

But then a lot of English curries are Bangladeshi.

Absolutely right.

Because Indians who migrated abroad didn't want to cook in restaurants,

what they wanted to do was to become engineers, doctors,

lawyers, what have you.

They didn't want to cook.

So cooking was left to the women who migrated, who cooked at home.

Bangladeshis took on the right of being called Indian cooks

and started cooking supposedly Indian food.

-Right.

-Cor, that looks so deliciously creamy.

-What's in there, then?

-Well, that's desiccated coconut, cashew nut, and poppy seeds.

-Really?

-The three fundamental ingredients of a good korma.

Right, Rick, now we are adding the black cardamom seed powder

which is right at the end now.

Because the korma's colour is perfect.

-The chicken is cooked.

-Fantastic. I love black cardamom.

I think a lot of, um, British people don't really know the black cardamom.

It's a more nuttier...nuttier cardamom and higher in flavour than the green.

I think green overpowers food.

-I do, too!

-Yeah.

-Unless you really want it in there.

-That's right.

Well, that's it, and I have to say it was the finest korma I've ever tasted.

Rocky garnishes it with cashews and khoya,

that's milk reduced down till it's thick.

And sultanas.

Fab!

-There we are, Rick.

-Thanks.

-No, Rick, roti.

-Oh...

-Tell... I'm...

-Please!

-Not knife and fork, please.

-Sorry, sorry.

What... What are we doing now?

No, no, what you need to do is to make a small, little...

-Um, break that roti.

-OK.

And let's make a small spoon out of it and then you dunk it straight in and...

Dunk it straight in.

Absolutely right.

Absolutely great!

-Thank you.

-You're a pretty good cook.

-Thank you very much.

-It's lovely.

-Now, I just want to ask you something...

-Yes, Rick.

-..With my mouth full...

-Yes.

..Which I'm sure is as bad manners here as it is back home, but...

what do you take by the word "curry"?

We don't have the word "curry" in our language at all.

It's unfair to call our variety under one major heading, as curry.

I think the word "curry" is coined by the British themselves.

I think that when they lived in India

and they...were eating at various parts of India,

so the one single word that they thought would carry the message

to the kind of food they wanted to have, which had gravy,

so they called it "curry".

And...and one thing that I must point out,

the worst thing that ever happened to Indian food is the madras curry powder.

Absolutely horrendous stuff.

And you go and add it to just about everything, they all taste the same.

-That came back with the British. Cos I can remember the tins.

-That's right, the British created it,

and the British created it and call it the madras curry powder.

Presumably they just wanted a flavour

of what they remembered in India.

And it was turmeric, and lots and lots of turmeric, lots of coriander seed powder,

some cumin and all dunked together and tasted horrible.

You know, I personally believe to a large extent

that the Indian palate is extremely evolved

because we're able to understand

a numerous number of spices at the same time,

while in European cuisine, I have found that you normally cook with one spice,

one flavour, like cumin, saffron, or something else.

So it's a very singular way of cooking.

Ours is a very multiple way of cooking.

And this is where I think the evolution is.

I really begin to feel I'm tasting all these broad flavours,

all this sort of complexity of flavour,

I just think I'm on the beginning of a long journey,

a very enjoyable journey.

And I have to say this has been a very enjoyable lunch.

So, Raka and Rocky, thank you very much for this wonderful, wonderful...

Thank you very much, Rick, thank you for being here.

-It's a pleasure.

-Thank you.

It's funny how things get stuck in your mind from history lessons at school.

The Siege of Lucknow was one of them for me.

This is the famous and tragic Residency building where 3,000 men, women

and children, including about 700 loyal Indian troops,

were trapped by a force of mutineers -

about 8,000 heavily armed soldiers called sepoys -

who broke away from the British and tried to kick them out of India.

This was a serious exercise of the famous British stiff upper lip.

EXPLOSION

EXPLOSION

Life goes on, even under the most extreme circumstances.

Tea was taken while cannonballs came flying through windows and doors.

People were dying from infected wounds and cholera, tiffin was still served,

and soap was getting short.

The snipers were a terrible nuisance, killing some of the more popular officers.

Which was a pity.

One lady trapped here, Adelaide Case, said,

"It makes me shudder to think how death is hovering about and around us all day,

"busy indeed has it been among this little garrison."

She went on to say that the price of a tin of the soup

had grown out of all proportion.

And of the original 3,000 people that retreated here into the residency,

only a thousand survived.

During the siege, some of the sepoys who were good at tunnelling

started to tunnel under the residency

to lay explosives and blow the residency up.

But there was a division, a 32nd Cornish Division,

among whom were a load of tin miners

who saw this coming and understood what was going on,

and tunnelled back, got hold of their explosives

and blew up some of the sepoy buildings.

That is derring-do in a Cornish manner.

And finally, when the siege ended and relief was at hand,

the surviving ladies in the residency

wouldn't take tea because the Highlanders who relieved them

hadn't brought any milk with them.

I was just about to set off to get some shots at sunset

when I noticed these people emptying carrier bags

of what I thought was household rubbish into the Gomti River.

But I was soon told that this was indeed an auspicious day

and what they were doing was emptying offerings from prayers said earlier.

This is the Festival of Dussehra,

and we're about to witness the triumph of good over evil.

Very strong in the Hindu faith, this celebration when good triumphs.

THEY CHANT

Basically, the story goes like this -

and remember, it's over 3,000 years old -

Lord Rama, a good guy, had a beautiful wife called Sita....

HE SHOUTS IN LOCAL DIALECT

CHEERING

..who was kidnapped by the evil ten-headed demon called Ravana.

It's all terribly complicated

and to do with love triangles, and of course, it ended up in a major punch-up.

CHEERING

I'm getting quite stuck into this, it's a bit like sort of wrestling,

but sort of slightly more cheerful.

And somehow it's a bit like sort of May Day in Padstow,

which is a celebration of the sort of rebirth of spring, of summer.

These sort of elemental things get to us all.

In the end the demon was slain, Sita was rescued

and they all lived happily ever after.

FIREWORKS EXPLODE

Oh, blimey.

That was one hell of a firework.

I wouldn't know which end to light.

I was told later that there were over 200,000 people there

lining the banks of the River Gomti watching this,

a story that had been handed down from generation to generation

for well over 3,000 years. Amazing.

It's far too easy in India to get diverted

because I'm here for the food of Lucknow

and next to pulao, Lucknow is famous for its spicy and silky kebabs.

You won't get anything like them anywhere else in India.

So back at the bungalow by the lagoon - incidentally, it's called Naksatra Mana,

which means "a cluster of stars", how good is that? -

I'm going to cook the best kebabs you've ever tasted.

So, I've got my garlic, onion and ginger paste already whizzed up into a puree

and I'm just going to fry it now in lots of ghee.

So in goes the ghee and in goes the paste.

Now, I need to cook this for really quite some time,

till all that liquid in the paste has been driven off

and it starts to caramelise.

I learnt that from cooking with Rocky.

A really good tip, I think.

So that's cooked down very nicely now, so I'm going to add the mince,

the mutton mince.

There we go.

Stir that in.

And now some yellow lentils, some yellow dhal, which I've already soaked.

The great thing about these yellow ones is that they cook very quickly.

Fry that until the pink colour from the mince has disappeared.

There we are. Really the pink's all gone now

so I'm just going to add about a teaspoon and a half of salt.

There we go.

And now enough water to sort of barely cover.

The point is that I want to cook this mince, but I don't want any water left.

So...simmer the water and the mince and the dhal till the water's all gone.

Well, I've got to wait about 20 minutes for that mince to cook on a low heat.

I'm just reading up about how shammi kebabs came into being, really.

It may or may not be true, but it's a nice story.

One of the nawabs, a very fat nawab called Asaf-ud-Daula,

was so fat that he couldn't ride on a horse.

And he had no teeth, probably as a result of his endless eating of luxurious food.

But his chefs, who were always inventive and highly paid,

came up with a brilliant idea of making shammi kebabs,

mincing them so fine that he could actually eat a kebab with no teeth.

So I've just chilled the kati so that the mince

and the dhal have chilled down and firmed up a little.

And now to add...some really quite interesting flavours to go in there.

First of all, some green chillies.

And then some roughly chopped coriander. Everything is quite rough

because it's going to go in the blender.

And now a teaspoon of garam masala.

And about the same amount of chilli.

Chilli powder.

And some cumin, about the same amount.

And very important now, the juice of...

well, a couple of local limes.

I'd say the juice of one lime, but they're very small, the ones here.

That really makes a difference to the final kebab,

gives it a lovely fresh taste.

There we go.

Now, into my blender.

To...turn...my kebabs...

into...

a puree that will suit a toothless nawab.

Lid on.

And blend away.

(LOUD WHIRR)

Me and cookery machines...don't seem to go together too well.

Now, put it back into the fridge so that it really is very, very chilled

and very, very firm.

That's better.

Curious things, these Indian fridges.

Shutting the door's almost as difficult.

So in order to give these shammi kebabs a real zing,

in goes some chopped green chillies for heat,

chopped mint for freshness,

finely chopped onion...

..a bit of sugar,

then salt,

and finally, lime juice.

Sweet, salty, sour and spicy, it's all there.

And now it's time to make some mud pies.

I'm really rather enjoying this, it's just really nice having this sort of cold,

clay-like material

in your hands and moulding it.

And actually, for somebody that's a little bit clumsy, like myself,

to be able to do this successfully is a great source of delight to me.

Now you have to be really careful, so you gently fry them

taking great care to make sure they're cooked through.

They're extremely delicate.

But they could well be the best kebabs you're ever likely to taste -

teeth or no teeth.

For me,

this would be a perfect lunch.

Some chapatis, a few of these kebabs and a little salad like that.

And...green chutney.

The Punjab is the bread basket of India.

Punjab means "five rivers" and rivers in this hot country

mean crops, wealth, health and a great deal of happiness.

Traders from the days of Alexander the Great would travel here.

In fact, that's why the country is called India,

because one of the rivers was named Indos by the ancient Greeks.

The fields in every direction are full of wheat, rice, cotton and sugar cane.

There's a lovely story about the Persians, who discovered sugar cane here

and described it so beautifully as "reeds that produce honey without bees".

It's really nice to get out here into these hills in the Punjab

and watch them making jaggery.

I was just noticing how much juice comes out of one sugar cane.

It looks quite a sort of dry thing out in the fields there,

but you get gallons out of it, and you can hear the motors are labouring,

with the enormous pressure to get all that lovely juice out.

They put it in this big pan and boil it right down

and they were just saying they also do corn here as well, and they use the husks,

so this is really good organic farming, every bit is used.

They just reduce this down now, down and down and down

till all the water's bubbled away, and stirring all the time.

It's just like making fudge.

It goes into crystals and you get this lovely brown sugar, unrefined sugar,

which the...the taste is so much nicer than ordinary sugar.

People here love the taste of jaggery, as do I, and they use it in lots of ways.

I mean, the most popular is just as a little digestif

after a big meal of dhals and everything else.

But they also use it as the basic balance of sweet and sour,

the sweet being jaggery and the sour being tamarind.

The Punjabis have a reputation for being really hospitable, and this family

must have thought I looked very hungry, so they made these really lovely pakoras.

It's onion, gram flour,

potatoes, spinach, turmeric, coriander, cumin,

baking soda - very important -

green chilli, salt and water.

That's all mixed together and formed by hand and dropped into hot oil.

What a snack.

I'm with chef Navdeep Sharma.

He's the principal of the local catering college, and he wants me

to help judge a Punjabi cookery competition later this afternoon.

But first to enjoy the pakoras,

dipped in a spicy home-made chutney full of green chilli.

They're very good.

They've got lovely spinach, there's, erm, onion, potato in there.

Would you tell her how much I'm enjoying this?

HE SPEAKS IN LOCAL DIALECT

Very good, excellent.

He has thoroughly enjoyed these pakoras which you have made.

-Thank you.

-SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL DIALECT

-What's that?

-She's saying you come back again sometime,

she'll have more varieties of pakoras for you.

Oh, I'd love to.

Well, this is it, the finished jaggery in granular form.

And the bit I've been waiting all morning for.

You might think it looks like light brown sugar, but it doesn't taste like it.

It is absolutely...

It tastes a bit of honey

and almost like you can taste little sort of fascinating bits of impurity in it.

It's a real...a real artisan product.

I have to thank chef Navdeep for getting us to film this.

He said this is so important around here.

It's a skill that's fast disappearing.

"Film it now, because when you come back, it'll be gone."

And so we did.

HORNS BLARE

BHANGRA PLAYS

And so we arrived to judge the cookery competition

at Hoshiarpur Catering College.

I was with a group of top chefs, mainly from Delhi,

and the bhangra dancing boys of the Punjab were there to welcome us.

Fantastic.

Sometimes I do have to pinch myself.

What am I doing in the middle of the Punjab judging a curry competition

amongst all these experts?

I mean, these men are the Michel Rouxs of the subcontinent.

Anyway, this competition, called Star Chef Punjab,

challenges members of the public to come up with a classic regional dish.

Ten competitors, as keen as mustard, are going for this regional heat.

Chef, this competition, the food of Punjab, why is it so wonderful to you?

Smell and flavour memories are the most predominant triggers in the human mind

so based on that, we have tried to honour the dishes

which have been lost during the passage of time.

I suppose if they're not written down, these recipes, they just get lost.

Yes. We have gone across the state to bring out the lost gems of Punjabi cuisine,

but really, the Punjabi food is something which is very hearty

and which is really very delicious

so that is the attempt which we are trying to do in this event, Star Chef Punjab.

I think this search is a pretty good idea.

To find a long-lost curry would be like finding an old friend.

A thought entered my head - there are 10,000 Indian restaurants back in Britain

and well over half of them, more or less, I think,

are serving the same type of curries.

You know, dhansak, madras, dopiaza, vindaloo, korma.

It would be great to find a fabulous forgotten jewel of a recipe.

-This is basically a meaty roti...

-Meaty roti.

..which will be served with a chilli pickle and the elephant foot.

-Elephant foot.

-An Indian vegetable.

-Vegetable.

-Which grows in the ground.

SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL DIALECT

Ma'am is cooking a kumbh palak chicken.

Kumbh palak...chicken.

-Kumbh is a mushroom.

-Mushroom.

Palak, that means...spinach,

-and chicken, that means...

-HE LAUGHS

SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL DIALECT

Ma'am wants to be a chef

and, if she wins, that means the dreams will come true, to her.

She's making a gravy and cooking chicken in it.

SHE SPEAKS IN LOCAL DIALECT

-..housewife.

-OK.

Ma'am said that although she belongs to...not from this region,

but she is cooking the Punjabi food, so she will, you know...

she will prove to her family that she can also cook good Punjabi food.

For them. That's what she wants to do.

-MAN:

-This is mutton.

It will not be mutton curry, it will be a dry masala.

Now, what would it mean to you if you won the competition?

-If I won?

-HE LAUGHS

If I win the competition, it means I have won the competition, nothing else!

THEY SPEAK IN LOCAL DIALECT

We tasted.

We thought.

So, we've got almonds in there, and not in the rice.

And discussed.

I find it really difficult to make a judgment between a sweet

-and the savoury, though, so...

-But...

-Does it fit into all the categories?

-Yes, it does, it does.

We tasted a bit more.

-Mushroom, spinach, and with chicken.

-OK.

We thought very deeply.

So we have to have a chapati or a naan roti.

And finally...

Which portion of the meat are we using in this?

-Front leg.

-Front leg.

Well, it was a good dish. A mutton curry.

It just had something that was authentic, rustic, very Punjab, and it tasted great.

I'm pleased to announce we have Mr Balwant Singh for the Star Chef Punjab.

So, the only man in the competition won it. Mr Balwant Singh.

The origins of the winning recipe came from pretty tough times in the Punjab.

The dreadful days of partition,

when Pakistan was created and India got her independence.

Balwant Singh remembers his dad

cooking great pots of mutton curry for the refugees,

when millions of families were uprooted from their homes and herded onto trains,

taking them to places where the authorities thought they'd be safe.

The western bit of the Punjab formed part of Islamist Pakistan

and the eastern bit, where I am now, remained as part of India.

There were many bloody massacres, especially on board trains.

The lucky ones made it here, an abandoned British Army hospital,

where they could take shelter before they were moved on.

This is the administrative block.

Now it is in ruin.

So, it was originally a British hospital?

A military hospital.

-And then it became a refugee camp?

-A refugee camp.

Wow, so those were all the huts round there, then?

Yeah, these were all the walls of a British hospital.

-Originally.

-And then the refugees were living here.

It was a very pathetic scene

because some people lost millions and millions of rupees there.

They left all their properties there.

They had no money to fend for themselves. Some people lost their children.

You can't...imagine what misery they had.

So, your father came around here and...cooked curries for them. Cooked...

Yeah, for a few people. Not for everybody, I mean to say.

And anybody who could talk with them

with a little sympathy and all that, they became friendly.

Now, do you think that partition was a good thing?

-Do you think it was necessary?

-No, it was not a good thing.

It was not a good thing, you know.

By, I would say, any imagination it was not a good thing.

Otherwise, to partition a country, it's not a good sign.

On what grounds?

His father's dish goes something like this.

First of all, in goes the oil, and this pan's pretty hot.

Next he puts in ghee, a lot of it.

Then in go about a dozen dried chillies, which he fries,

and after a minute or so, he takes them out,

so they just flavour the oil and the ghee.

Now he adds fried onion paste,

followed by another paste made from boiled onions,

and he cooks that for a minute or so until it gives off a lovely aroma,

almost like a fairground aroma from hot dog and hamburger stalls.

And finally, ginger and garlic paste.

-Then the time to put mutton into it comes.

-Yeah.

The mixed masala, that is onion, boiled onion paste, fried onion paste,

ginger and garlic, they start emitting a lovely smell.

You can make it with your experience.

-Now it is smelling differently now.

-Yeah, it is.

You know? Now it is ready for putting the meat.

Mr Balwant Singh, tell me everything I need to know about mutton or goat.

OK. Basically, a goat should be matured.

But not old. About 10kg in weight, because then it's healthy

and, if you get a mutton from a male goat, that will always taste better.

Ah, right.

I can't explain you the reason, but this is a fact.

I just... Every time I think of mutton...

Because mutton to us is an old lamb, is an old sheep.

-But mutton to you is goat meat.

-Yeah, definitely.

-Yeah, OK, the mutton is from the goat.

-Got it.

-Not from the lamb.

-Right!

Balwant Singh makes the masala in the good old-fashioned way,

using a mortar and pestle.

It's a mixture of mace, coriander seeds, cumin,

cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a very good masala it was too.

Funnily enough, all the bark and all the seeds stayed in the mortar,

which they never quite seem to do when I do it.

I'm a bit tempted to tell my recipe readers to use a coffee grinder.

If you grind the masalas in the coffee grinder

then after you complete the grinding, you touch it, it will be hot.

In this grinder, they will never get heated up.

When they get heated up, they lose taste.

Masalas are basically used for flavours.

Yeah.

I won't mention coffee grinders again.

He now puts in whizzed-up cooked tomatoes

and then starts to seal the pot with dough.

In India this is called dum pukht, which means "cooked with steam".

So, do you think that really does make a difference?

Absolutely. You take a pressure cooker,

that will make it tender in five minutes or ten minutes.

Cook it on a slow fire and give it a dum for ten minutes now.

One of the recipes I've been looking at is called a first-class mutton curry.

I think it comes from a railway station in Kerala.

This is a first-class mutton curry.

-Is it?

-Must be. There's so many...

-I don't know, you can taste it, Rick.

-So much thought gone into it.

Oh, well. I meant that as a compliment.

Now it's time, thank goodness, to taste.

Well, this is the moment of truth, I must say.

I'll start with the gravy.

Very good.

-Is it?

-It's got lots of depth to it,

and what I really love about it is the quality of all that onion puree,

the ground onion, ginger and garlic gives the gravy a delicious thickness.

That's right.

-First class.

-Thank you.

Truth to tell, I think it's quite possible to have too much goat curry.

Don't get me wrong, I really like it, but after three days on the trot

I yearn for something lighter, something fresh tasting, vibrant and vegetarian.

I don't think one really, before one goes to India, quite understands how big

vegetarian food is in India.

The majority of the population in India are vegetarians.

Meat eaters are the exception rather than the norm,

and you have get used to a sort of vegetarian diet,

and a lot of the dishes, the first time I tried them, were...

I wouldn't say I disliked them, but I just thought they were a bit dull.

But then - you know what I'm going to say now - dhal ain't dull.

I mean, sometimes all these dhals that you taste are a little bit

sort of, you think, "Well, they're all the same."

But they're not. They've all got their subtle little differences.

And all the vegetables that you see in the markets,

there's always wonderful ways of cooking with them.

When you go into those markets and you see all these strange gourds,

these bitter gourds and ones that you sort of try first time

and you think they haven't got a lot of flavour,

when they're mixed with tomato,

with carrot, with onion, with garlic, with ginger,

in something like a sambar, all those sort of things like aloo bhaji,

which isn't just potato, it's other vegetables as well,

you realise that vegetarian, the cooking of vegetables,

is so dear to the hearts of most Indians.

With vegetables in mind, in the Punjab I came across a really good dish.

It's vegetables cooked with Indian cheese.

It's called paneer jalfrezi.

I put oil into the karahi, followed by cumin seeds

and a dried Kashmiri chilli, just the one, roughly torn.

And then ginger. I've cut it into matchsticks

because I want to see them in the finished dish.

Next, onions and fresh green chillies.

As always, one of the secrets of a good curry

is to take time softening and cooking the onions.

Some turmeric.

Never overdo this spice. A little goes a long way.

Now, freshly ground chilli powder.

It really is worth the effort of grinding your own,

even, dare I say it, in a coffee grinder!

Next, peppers,

and I'm going to be a little abandoned here in the choice of colours.

Normally I think mixed peppers are a bit garish, you know,

like red, yellow and green,

but I think in Indian cookery, they're exactly what's required.

A little water to produce what the Indians call a gravy.

And here's the paneer, the Indian acid-set cheese that I love.

It's made by heating up milk and adding lemon juice or vinegar to curdle it,

and while cooking, it stays hard and firm.

Salt, and a bit more water, and lots of fresh tomatoes,

which in India have such a good flavour.

It's so fresh, it's almost like a hot salad.

And I just like a bit of vinegar in my salads

but, of course, in India

they very rarely use vinegar, unless we were in Kerala or Goa.

Or in Pondicherry, where the French were.

So, only a tiny bit.

Toddy vinegar is like coconut vinegar.

I'm just going to finish with a little bit of cumin, ground cumin.

About half a teaspoon.

Garam masala.

And that's ready to serve out.

Fresh ginger on the top.

You've got to have a few dishes like that.

I mean, you know, when you see that on a plate,

you think, "I do want some of that."

Also, it benefits from being cooked so quickly.

It will taste really fresh.

You'll really taste all those vegetables, and the paneer.

The most famous place in the Punjab is Amritsar.

The word stems from the lovely lake in the Golden Temple.

It means the pool of the nectar of immortality.

There are food stalls all over the place,

because this is where the pilgrims come, and where there are pilgrims,

whether Spain, France, Italy or here,

there's always people selling cheap, tasty food.

Now, these are kulchas, and this is the most famous kulcha shop in Amritsar,

and unlike normal kulchas, which are just flaky bread,

these are stuffed either with potato, cauliflower, paneer, which is cheese,

or mixed, so you've got a choice of four.

I've gone for the cauliflower. It is totally delicious.

It's got cumin in and it's got chilli, and these two accompaniments,

a lovely chickpea dhal and a very, very lovely onion chutney.

There's absolutely nothing that goes better with a hot curry

than an ice-cold cup of lassi.

Salt lassi. I don't have a lot of truck with the sweet one.

Sometimes as a... After a meal, yeah, but the salt one's the one,

and a little tip about travelling in India.

Delhi belly?

I know about Delhi belly, I won't go on any further than that,

but a glass or a cup of lassi every day

is the best bit of medical advice I can give you.

I know this place is firmly on the tourist map of India

but even so, I found it wonderfully peaceful.

Especially this cool, soothing lake.

Sometimes it's a very hot, stifling country,

and the use of water has such a sublime significance.

That is so overwhelming.

I expected it to be about three times as big

but the fact is, it has this sort of perfect shape

and the gold leaf on it is truly spectacular

and, actually, I prefer it to be more on a sort of human scale.

It means more to me.

I've been in India for quite some time now and it's becoming apparent to me

that food really does play a part in religion over here, quite a large one.

It unites people, and more importantly,

it reduces the chance of the poor suffering from malnutrition,

because this system of feeding so many without discrimination works so well.

Serious big pots here. I'm absolutely intrigued.

They serve about 10,000 meals a day and everybody working in here is a volunteer.

I think that sort of says a great deal

about what I might call the conviviality of the Sikh religion.

In fact, all the dishes served here are vegetarian,

though the Sikhs are allowed to eat meat.

In their religion there are five evils to be avoided at all times -

ego, attachment,

anger, greed and lust.

Something we could all take heed of.

I remember in a Hindu shrine seeing a sign that read,

"Before you feed yourself, feed your soul."

RELIGIOUS SINGING ECHOES

I'm well over halfway through my curry odyssey, and I have to say,

not for one second have I tired of this spicy, hot, fragrant food.

Unlike certain members of the crew,

who occasionally witter on about roast beef and Yorkshire pudding!

There's lots more hot stuff to come as I continue my travels.

Once the mere thought of a curry enters your mind, no other food will do.

It just has to be curry!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd