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The Hirshon Chettinad Egg Curry – முட்டை குழம்பு

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The Hirshon Chettinad Egg Curry - முட்டை குழம்பு

Chettinad Egg Curry Image Used Under Creative Commons License From calmlycookingcurry.blogspot.com

Citizens, the culinary map of India never fails to amaze your sovereign Leader, and I can (and will) spend my lifetime exploring it! Today, I give you a small but gastronomically important region of India and one of my favorite recipes from there! 🙂

Chettinad is a southern Indian region located mainly in the Sivaganga district of Pandya Nadu and has a small portion extending into the Pudukottai District of Chola Nadu in Tamil Nadu, India.

Chettinad is the home of the Nattukottai Chettiars (Nagarathar), a prosperous banking and business community. It is also known for its local cuisine, architecture, and religious temples.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many residents of Chettinad emigrated to South and Southeast Asia, particularly Ceylon and Burma. By 2010, only 74 villages remained of the original 96, organized in clusters spread over a territory of 1,550 km2 in the Districts of Sivagangai and Pudukottai in the State of Tamil Nadu. It finds itself in the UNESCO nomination for sites of historic and cultural value.

The word “Chettiars” refer to the social caste of mercantile bankers. The word ‘Chetti’ is derived from Sanskrit word ‘Shreshthi’ (श्रेष्ठी) meaning wealth. The chettiars are known to be traders in salt and spices and this is reflects in the Chettinad cuisine.

Meals also consist of cooked lentils, Brinjal curry, drumstick sambar, ghee for flavoring rice, and sweet meats like payasam and paal paniyaram. In general, beef and pork dishes are not served. Some well-known local dishes are Chicken Chettinad (Spicy Chicken Curry), Vegetable Chettinad (a vegetable curry) and dishes featuring seafood.

The Chettinad region is well known for its 19th-century mansions, whose wide courtyards and spacious rooms are embellished with marble and teak. Construction materials, decorative items and furnishings were mostly imported from East Asian countries and Europe. The marble was brought from Italy, chandeliers and teak from Burma, crockery from Indonesia, crystals from Europe and wall-to-wall mirrors from Belgium.

Many of these mansions were built using a type of limestone known as karai. Local legend has it that the mansion walls were polished with a paste made out of egg whites to give them a smooth texture.

Citizens, I recognize that an egg curry may at first impression sound strange – but trust me, it is DELICIOUS! 😀

Battle on – The Generalissimo

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The Hirshon Chettinad Egg Curry – முட்டை குழம்பு
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The Hirshon Chettinad Egg Curry – முட்டை குழம்பு

Ingredients

  • 6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and underdone by about 2 minutes - TFD strongly prefers duck eggs for this recipe
  • 3 tbsp cooking oil
  • 1 cup finely-diced onion
  • 1 tbsp garlic paste
  • 1 tbsp ginger paste
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1 ½ cups pureed Pomi tomatoes
  • 10-12 curry leaves (optional but strongly recommended)
  • 1 cup water
  • Minced Cilantro leaves for garnish
  • Grind until smooth for masala:
  • 3 green cardamoms
  • 3 cloves
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns
  • 2 tsp coriander seeds
  • 2 tsp Kashmiri red pepper (or 1 tsp paprika plus 1 tsp cayenne)
  • 1 tsp shahi jeera/black cumin
  • ⅓ cup dried grated coconut
  • ½ tsp fennel seeds
  • ½ tsp turmeric

Instructions

  1. Grind all spices listed for masala into powder and set aside - TFD uses an electric coffee grinder.
  2. Heat oil and 1 teaspoon kosher salt in a kadhai or deep heavy-bottomed skillet for 7 minutes. OPTIONAL STEP - Fry peeled hard boiled eggs in oil about 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown. (If you wish to be authentic and have yellow fingers for weeks you can rub the eggs with a bit of turmeric.) Slice 3 long, shallow longitudinal cuts in each egg, then put eggs aside and continue to next step.
  3. Add mustard seeds to the same salted oil and fry for a minute. Add finely diced onions and fry until golden brown.
  4. Add ground masala powder, garlic paste, and ginger paste to fried onions. Stir well and fry for two minutes. Add masala powder, tomato and optional curry leaves to mixture and allow to simmer for five minutes or until oil separates from the mixture.
  5. Add water to the fried mixture and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or until sauce is to desired consistency. Salt to taste and stir in fried hard-boiled eggs. Serve with rice and or chapattis.
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-chettinad-egg-curry-%e0%ae%ae%e0%af%81%e0%ae%9f%e0%af%8d%e0%ae%9f%e0%af%88-%e0%ae%95%e0%af%81%e0%ae%b4%e0%ae%ae%e0%af%8d%e0%ae%aa%e0%af%81/

The Hirshon Latvian Potato Salad – Rasols

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The Hirshon Latvian Potato Salad - Rasols

Rasols Image Used Under Creative Commons License From mammamuntetiem.lv

My Citizens, I wish all of you who reside in America a Happy Independence Day – a day which has inspired your glorious Leader to provide a recipe for that most beloved recipe at any 4th of July BBQ – potato salad!

Ah, but not just any potato salad – this one is from Latvia and is both tart and refreshing! I have deliberately chosen a “foreign” recipe as opposed to the excellent American-style as a reminder that we are indeed a country of immigrants and that we are stronger with their unique culinary legacies and perspectives than we are without them!

As noted on latvianeats.com:

When food is involved, every Latvian will have their own recipe for everything and anything. Most heated discussions, however, revolve around the best pīrāgi dough and what is the correct way to make rasols. You see, I grew up in 80-ies with rasols made from potatoes, green peas, salted cucumber, “doctor’s sausage” and eggs. I know other families added boiled carrot and/or grated apple (but that’s just wrong as far as I’m concerned). But ask any Latvian that left the country pre-WW2 and they will tell you that rasols must have boiled beetroot and herring in it.

Rasols was inspired by Russian or Olivier salad, invented in 1860s by Lucien Olivier, then the chef of famous restaurant Hermitage in Moscow. His recipe was a closely guarded secret, but the salad did contain rare and expensive ingredients – grouse, crayfish, caviar, smoked duck, capers – which would explain the richness of pre-war rasols. During and after the war many ingredients were not available and were replaced by simpler and cheaper substitutes – sausage for grouse, eggs for crayfish and pickles for capers – resulting in the version most Latvians will recognise as theirs.

Picture of recipe in an old Latvian cookbook

So what is real, undiluted rasols?

According to Household Almanac (“Mājturības kalendārs”, photo above) published in 1937 in Riga, recipe is as follows:

Take 1 herring, 3 lampreys, 2 eggs, 200g veal roast, 200g potatoes, 300g apples, 2 salted cucumbers. Debone soaked herring and cut in pieces. Boil potatoes with skin on, then peel and cut. Peel apples and cut. Roast, lamprey, cucumbers and hard boiled eggs also need to be chopped in fine pieces. Mix everything with 400g of sour cream with added pinch (“naža gals”) of mustard. Boiled beets also suit rasols, but it is better to cut them nicely and use as a garnish on the top of salad. Herbs can also be used as garnish. 

My version of this recipe omits the usual sausage and goes for an ovo-lacto vegetarian version. I have played with the recipe to make it my own – I omit the green peas, add in pickled carrot instead of pickled beet (to avoid staining the salad purple), added in a touch of Latvian herbs and garlic and uniquely, a drop of the world-famous Latvian herb bitters!

You can buy this – FINALLY – in the United States – get it here.

I hope you enjoy my version of this wonderful dish, my Citizens – please also enjoy this wonderful dialogue about American liberty and justice!

Battle on – The Generalissimo

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The Hirshon Latvian Potato Salad – Rasols
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Ingredients

  • 6 Yukon Gold potatoes
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 pickled eggs (optional - if unavailable, use regular eggs)
  • 4 Polish-style pickles
  • 1 Asian cucumber or 2 small fresh cukes, seeds removed
  • 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored and kept in acidulated water (water with a bit of lemon juice or vinegar in it to prevent browning)
  • ***
  • Approximately ½ cup pickled carrots - made from:
  • 1 pound carrots, cut into 3 ½- by ⅓-inch sticks
  • 1 ¼ cups water
  • 1 cup cider vinegar
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
  • 1 ½ tablespoons dill seeds
  • 1 ½ tablespoons salt
  • ***
  • Salad dressing ingredients:
  • 3 large dollops mayonaise (Russian-style preferred, or use Duke's or Best Foods/Hellman's, if possible)
  • 2 large dollops Smetana (sour cream if unavailable)
  • 2 teaspoons Russian mustard (Mother-in-Law style, VERY sharp)
  • 2 teaspoons Cider vinegar
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 teaspoons white horseradish from the bottle
  • 1 tiny dash Riga Black Balsam-brand bitters (VERY optional)
  • 1 teaspoon minced fresh dill (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon minced scallion (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic (optional)
  • minced Dill and minced celery leaves for garnish

Instructions

  1. For the pickled carrots:
  2. Blanch peeled carrots in a 4-quart nonreactive saucepan of boiling salted water 1 minute, then drain in a colander and rinse under cold water to stop cooking. Transfer carrots to a heatproof bowl.
  3. Bring remaining ingredients to a boil in saucepan, then reduce heat and simmer 2 minutes. Pour pickling liquid over carrots and cool, uncovered. Chill carrots, covered, at least 1 day for flavors to develop.
  4. Carrots keep, chilled in an airtight container, 1 month.
  5. Boil potatoes until fairly soft (but not until they are falling apart). Hard boil eggs. Remove skins from potatoes, and shells from eggs. Dice into fairly large chunks (about ½ inch (1 - 1.5 cm) in diameter). Dice other ingredients into smaller pieces. Put all diced ingredients into a very large bowl.
  6. Make salad dressing. Start with smaller amounts, and keep adding sour cream, vinegar, mustard, etc. until it tastes good to you. The salad dressing should taste somewhat salty and tart.
  7. Add salad dressing to diced ingredients. Stir well. Cover. Refrigerate at least overnight.
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-latvian-potato-salad-rasols/

The Hirshon Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew – 猪脚醋

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The Hirshon Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew - 猪脚醋

Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew Image Used Under Creative Commons License From Pinterest.com

Citizens – this recipe is specifically for the half of TFD Nation that brings the miracle of life into this world – yes, ladies, this recipe is for you!

Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stew (pinyin: zhū jiǎo jiāng) is not an everyday Chinese meal. It is a traditional postnatal therapeutic food in the Guangzhou region of China, eaten to aid the recovery of new mothers after giving birth. It helps in the recovery of maternal health from the fatigue of pregnancy in the first forty days of post-partum confinement known in Cantonese as choe yuet (坐月).

The ingredients used in making pork knuckles and ginger stew are very nutritious, which help the new mother to recover.

Calcium in the bones of the pork knuckles will be dissolved by the vinegar during the cooking process – a major nutritional value of the dish is to replenish the loss of calcium in pregnancy. Moreover, not only is ginger rich in Vitamin C, which helps to strengthen the mother’s immune system, it also has the function of removing the “wind”, which is known as “fong” in Cantonese, that is generated during childbirth and when the body is at its weakest; ginger also helps lactation. Eggs provide the new mother with large amounts of protein, which is especially good for repairing muscles and the shells also dissolve calcium into the stew. A bowl of pork knuckles and ginger stew has nearly 600 kcal.

The main ingredients of Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stews are: pig trotters, ginger, sweet vinegar, eggs, salt, and oil.

The tradition is to cook this dish in a tall earthenware pot with a glazed interior. The acidic vinegar and cooking method will leach metals from iron or aluminum pots into the stew, more so than with water-based stews, so please do use the traditional earthenware pot or an equivalent.

According to legend in the early Ming Dynasty there lived a butcher who had the good fortune to marry a very pretty, kind and gumptious girl. However, their happiness was broken by the fact that even after several years of marriage, the wife was still without child. Now in traditional Chinese feudalism, there are three unfilial sins, and of these failure to bear a descendant to carry the family name is by far the most unforgivable. Therefore, the butcher’s mother forced the two to divorce.

The wife was heartbroken, leaving the family home she moved to a hut on a hill. However to her own surprise she found that she was now pregnant.

The butcher still loved his wife and visited her. When he received the news of her pregnancy, he was afraid that his wife and the newborn would be malnourished, so he brought her some unsold pork knuckles and stewed them in sweet black vinegar in a big pot together with ginger and eggs.

After several years, the child finally grew up. The wife forgave the butcher’s mother and returned with her son to the marital home and asked her son to take with him a pot of sweet vinegar stew as a gift for his grandmother. His grandmother was elated to receive him and the stew.

Thereafter, whenever a baby is born, the family will make a pot of sweet vinegar stew and share it with friends and neighbors.

According to Cantonese custom, Pork Knuckles and Ginger Stew is used to celebrate the birth of a child. The new parents will distribute this dish to their relatives and friends to herald the arrival of the newborn twelve days after the baby’s birth.

As a traditional ritual, families usually make the stew themselves, sometimes according to their own secret family recipes. In modern times people are less able to spend the time for the time-consuming preparation of the stew. In Hong Kong, Chinese herbal franchises such as Hung Fook Tong and vinegar maker Pat Chun have started selling ready-to-eat Pork Knuckle Stew.

Citizens, here is my secret and totally authentic version of this classic recipe. My version calls for the traditional black sugar of the region, called 黑糖 (hei tang in Mandarin), as well as the finest in aged, top-quality Chinese Zhenjiang vinegar. My secret addition used to be a few spoonfuls of the Chinese female tonic Dong Quai Jin, but that is now very difficult to find. My new recipe uses a surprise ingredient from France – Chartreuse élixir végétal! This alcohol-based tonic uses more than 130 different roots, flowers and herbs of which angelica (the primary ingredient in Dong Quai Jin) is a primary recipe component. This recipe is more than 400 years old and was created specifically as a health tonic – read all about it here. If you decide to use it, you can purchase it here.

Citizens – this is not a difficult recipe to make and I hope you decide to give it a try at your next happy occasion! 😀

Battle on – The Generalissimo

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The Hirshon Chinese Black Vinegar Pork Trotter Post-Partum Stew – 猪脚醋
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Ingredients

  • 1 pig's trotter - between 2 ½ and 2 ¾ pounds
  • Between 2 ½ and 2 ¾ pounds old ginger (yes, you read that amount right), skinned, cut into pieces and smashed lightly (TFD note - old ginger is exactly that, the typical stuff you get in the supermarket, do NOT use actual OLD ginger, this is just a Chinese term to differentiate it from 'young' ginger, which is harvested early)
  • 4 tbsp sesame oil (TFD note - I prefer Kadoya brand)
  • Slightly more than 3 ⅓ cups Aged Chinese black vinegar (TFD note - do NOT use Sweetened Black Vinegar in this recipe!)
  • 6 ⅓ cups bottled water
  • Slightly more than 1 ¼ -1 ⅔ cups brown sugar (adjust sweetness to your liking) (TFD note - if you can find it, use Chinese black sugar (actually closer to brown than black)
  • hardboiled eggs in shell, to taste
  • 1 tbsp. or more to taste of Chartreuse élixir végétal - optional, TFD addition

Instructions

  1. Clean and pluck hair of trotters (if there are any). Cut into big chunks. Blanch trotters in boiling hot water, drain.
  2. Heat sesame oil and fry ginger till fragrant.
  3. Add ginger and oil and put into a clay pot. Add vinegar, water and brown sugar.
  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 - 30 mins or until ginger is soft.
  5. Add pig's trotter pieces and continue to simmer till meat is tender, about 2 hours.
  6. Add hardboiled eggs and élixir végétal half an hour before serving - crack the shells all over lightly but completely to enable a marbled effect when peeled (note - this is a TFD affectation, and not in the original recipe).
  7. This should be served to the new mother for at least 1 month or preferably 40 days - repeat the recipe as needed and add to the leftovers (important - there should always be some leftover added to the new batch of stew) and reheat, as it gets more and more nutritious over the 30 days (as well as delicious).
https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-chinese-black-vinegar-pork-trotter-post-partum-stew-%e7%8c%aa%e8%84%9a%e9%86%8b/