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Turmeric in India: An exhausting examination

They often say that variety is the spice of life. To this I say two things.

Variety is a trade magazine whose chief function is the timely publication of celebrity obituaries. So, if anything, it’s the spice of death.

The real spice of life is turmeric.

That’s right, turmeric. And today I’m going to take you to turmeric school. The story of turmeric is a long one, so strap in.

The Taxonomy of Turmeric

First, let’s get the pleasantries out of the way. Readers, Turmeric; Turmeric, Readers.

From a modern botanical point of view, turmeric is one of many members of the ginger family (along with its common companion galangal). If you want to get downright taxonomic about it, turmeric is a citizen of the kingdom of plants, falling within the order of the Zingiberales (which sounds like a wise-cracking Latino street gang), and nestled comfortably within the family of Zingiberaceae. While there are many varieties of turmeric, the species as a whole has been given the Latin binomial title Curcuma Longa.

Above ground, the plant can reach up to a meter in height (though in commercial production this is rarely the case). Typically long tube-like leaves extend from a central point and unfurl. These longer leaves surround a densely packed central ‘tower’ of bracts, from which the flowers of the plant extend. These flowers themselves can be quite beautiful - ranging in colour from pale white and orange to a brilliant fuschia. If it weren’t otherwise of interest, turmeric might have been cultivated simply for the beauty of its flowers.

There are a few recipes, particularly in India, which employ the leaves of the turmeric plant like a banana leaf to wrap up sweets of various kinds. The most common of these is patoleo - a festive recipe from Goa which involves steaming rice, fresh coconut, and jaggery in a package of turmeric leaves. I don’t have easy access to turmeric leaves or good fresh coconuts so I haven’t tried to make this, but I intend to try it with banana leaves.

While the leaves are of some culinary use, the main point of interest from the (human) culinary point of view is the subsurface root or rhizome of the plant. These rhizomes are, typically, cylindrical and often branched. Beneath the thin, light brown outer skin and scales of the rhizome we find the orange flesh, which can vary in intensity from a deep almost rust-coloured orange to a pale, light orange not unlike the flesh of an unripe peach.

This rhizome can be used ‘fresh’ (though after cleaning and often boiling at the site of production), as well as in the more common powdered form. We’ll look at how this powder is produced below, but first, let’s look at the names for turmeric. This will help us when we are reading through 12th century Indian cookbooks or trying to cast spells in Sanskrit.

Etymology: Turmeric by any other name would stain your fingers just as yellow

Most of the names for turmeric with which I’m familiar originate in the Indian subcontinent. Given the importance of various turmeric subspecies for Ayurvedic medicine and a wide variety of Vedic cultural practices, it is not terribly surprising that there are many names for turmeric in Sanskrit. I say not surprising, but, if I’m being honest, I am still surprised at just how many words for turmeric there actually are in Sanskrit. I attempted to count them all but got annoyed when I reached 50, so I stopped.

The most common name for turmeric in Sanskrit is Haridara or (more usually) Haridra (हरिद्रा).

The word is taken to be a compound of hari (meaning supremacy, to shine or to flourish, but also referring specifically to the colour yellow) and the word dara, meaning to wear. This etymology is often taken to be a reference to Vishnu, the supreme Vedic deity amongst Vaishnavist Hindus, who is typically pictured clothed in yellow. Indeed, many of the earliest recorded uses of turmeric have to do with its peculiar yellowness rather than its flavour (as we will see below).

In English, turmeric is called ‘turmeric’, another word of Indo-European origin. Here the term derives from the Latin terra merita, meaning something like ‘good earth’ - presumably a reference to the fact that ground turmeric resembles a rich, earthy pigment (though it actually suffers from several chemical problems which make it a terrible dye).

It’s ‘official’ scientific name, Curcuma, is also Latin, though it derives from an earlier Arabic term Kurkum ( كُرْكُم‎), which, in turn, is thought to have been derived from an even earlier Sanskrit term कुङ्कुम (kukguma) which means ‘crocus’ or, in its feminine form, ‘saffron’ (a spice itself derived from the flowers of the Crocus sativus). Hence, again, yet another English term for turmeric: ‘Indian Saffron,’ common in the 18th and 19th centuries, and now fallen into disuse. All this to say: there are tons of names for turmeric, and most of them have their source in India and, in particular, they are linked to Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas.

Today, India accounts for nearly 80% of the world’s turmeric production - with 17% of world production centered in the state of Telangana alone. While Turmeric is important in a variety of cuisines, it is almost impossible to imagine Indian cooking without turmeric. So, let’s first look at how turmeric is produced and then how it has been used over the course of India’s long history.

Dung-slurry and toxic adulterants: powdered turmeric’s journey to your pantry

Despite its easy availability around the world, the production of powdered turmeric is a rather involved process. I’m going to skip all the agricultural work that goes into obtaining a field of turmeric. Let’s just assume you’ve got one, the plants are fully grown, and you’re ready to go.

The first step in the manufacture of powdered turmeric is to dig up the rhizomes. This can be arduous work, and is rarely made easier by mechanization.

Once you’ve collected together enough rhizomes, the next step is to wash them thoroughly. This can be done in a number of ways, and there is a significant amount of scientific research produced by agricultural universities in India which dictates EXACTLY how this ought to be done. (The Spices Board of India often coordinates these kinds of efforts and spends quite a bit of energy regulating and improving upon the production of turmeric in India).

The most low tech way to wash turmeric is to do it by hand, much like you would wash a potato. This, as you might expect, is not terribly efficient.

A slightly more high-tech way of doing it involves the use of a large perforated drum, elevated on a pedestal for ease of use. The bottom part of the drum is partially immersed in water and, somewhat like the machine used for picking the numbers for bingo or a lottery, you can rotate it so that all the turmeric rhizomes within get their chance to take a dip. Because of the perforations, chunks of dirt float into the water tank below and you are left with relatively clean turmeric rhizomes. If you’re feeling particularly lazy or are just after that elusive dream of perfect turmeric harvest efficiency, you can also replace the hand-cranked drum with a powered version.

Once you’ve got your relatively clean turmeric rhizomes, you are ready for step three on the road to powder: boiling or steaming. This procedure, too, is often done directly in the field. The function of boiling/steaming is, basically, to ensure that the rhizomes are dead, so that they don’t start sprouting in storage. Without soil and sufficient nutrition,, sprouting rhizomes tend to turn into rotten plants, which stink, attract pests, and don’t sell. Boiling is also useful in reducing the odour of the rhizomes generally and in the production of a more uniform colour at the end of the process.

Traditionally (and in some places still), the rhizomes were ‘cured’ in a slurry of cow dung rather than boiled. Various scientific field studies have shown that, in addition to potential contamination by the slurry, this curing process doesn’t work terribly well. It renders the rhizomes more susceptible to subsequent infections/pest infestation (shocking), rather counterproductively produces a weaker colour, and makes them more difficult to store. It hasn’t reached this point yet, but, if the industrialization of turmeric production continues, I would not at all be surprised if turmeric traditionalists pop-up who insist on the ‘flavour profile’ generated by dung-cured turmeric. I’m cool with boiling.

While there is, at the moment, a wide consensus as to the superiority of boiling in water over curing in a dung-slurry, there is very little consensus about exactly how the boiling should be done.

Traditional approaches tend to recommend longer boiling/steaming times (often as long as six hours), over a fire produced from the turmeric leaves, bracts, and other plant waste generated from the rhizome harvest. The rhizomes are placed in a large galvanized steel pan and boiled or steamed in a little water. (Really, only the bottom layer of rhizomes is boiled, while the upper layers are steamed).

There is disagreement, too, about the exact method of determining when the boiling/steaming is complete. Some argue that the best method is to simply poke the rhizomes with a stick. When they ‘feel right’, they’re done! (Not useful if you’re new on the job). Others recommend cutting a rhizome open; when it is uniformly coloured with a deep yellow, rather than red, the boiling is complete.

More advanced, industrial methods of boiling have also been developed within India. These typically involve large-scale boilers with hoppers, timers, and temperature gauges that can be set to exact specifications. In the name of efficiency and scientific rigor, boiling times here are typically much shorter than in the traditional approaches. Instead of 5 or 6 hours, the rhizomes are boiled for as little as 40 minutes. While the industrialization of turmeric powder production is spreading, it is nowhere near complete - traditional approaches are still more common within India and throughout Asia. The Spices Board of India has recently begun a program meant to subsidize steam boiling units to encourage the industrialization of production, but this project is in its infancy.

Following boiling, the rhizomes are spread out in the sun on the ground, on bamboo mats, or on specialized drying floors in a thin layer. Once the sun goes down, the product is heaped together and covered to discourage pests and to protect them from the rain. Depending on the weather, it takes between ten and fifteen days to dry the rhizomes, which means a lot of fairly arduous labour heaping the turmeric, spreading it out, then heaping it again, etc. The process is similar to the traditional production of malted grains on specialized malting floors, though I haven’t seen anyone discussing the superiority of bamboo versus leaf mats in the subsequent flavour of the turmeric. To encourage hygienic production methods, again, the Spices Board of India has instituted a subsidy program for large plastic drying sheets.

Once the rhizomes are finally dry, they are often (but not always) polished. The aim of polishing is largely aesthetic in character; polishing serves to remove the scales covering the outside of the rhizome, and also helps to get rid of burgeoning rootlets, which resemble the eyes of a potato. Just as with washing, polishing can be done manually. This involves rubbing the turmeric against a hard surface, or placing a number of rhizomes in a stack and stomping on them (relatively gently). It can also be done using a rotating drum with an abrasive surface which is very similar to a rock tumbler (some of the rhizome washers can be adjusted to serve this purpose as well). At this stage of production, if the rhizomes are to be sold ‘fresh’ (i.e., unpowdered) many unscrupulous producers will adulterate the rhizomes by adding colouring agents to make up for any aesthetic defects in their product. Grading turmeric mostly relies on the depth and quality of colour, and so this kind of adulteration is a simple enough way to make more money.

Some of these adulterants are actually fairly toxic. For instance, Metanil Yellow (C18H14N3NaO3S), one of the most common adulterants, has been shown to be neurotoxic in animals and may also cause liver damage. Other unscrupulous dealers will add similar colourants even after the powder has been produced, which can result in even higher concentrations of toxic chemicals. Given the high demand for turmeric worldwide, it is perhaps not surprising that adulteration is a widespread phenomenon. The problem is exacerbated by the difficulty of detection. There are quite a few adulterants which are commonly added to turmeric, and they have to be tested for in quite different ways (and this only includes those adulterants for which tests have been developed). In short: it is very difficult to know if your turmeric is who it says it is. The Spices Board of India is in a bit of a difficult position regarding these adulterants: on the one hand, their goal is to promote the sale of Indian turmeric on the foreign market. On the other hand, they are also concerned with protecting the legitimacy of the Indian spice trade and public health. I’d say ‘buyer beware,’ but there isn’t really much you can do.

Toxic additives or not, once your rhizomes are dry, you can finally turn them into powdered gold. Traditionally, this was done in a large wooden or stone chakki (a hand operated mill similar to a mortar and pestle). Today, in almost every case of commercial production it is done using a large burr mill, set to produce a fine powder that can pass through a 300 micrometer sieve. Some of the larger producers also employ cryogenic mills which cool the rhizomes using liquid nitrogen prior to milling. This allows for high speed, more efficient milling, though the practice is uncommon and quite expensive.

After all of this you have a fine, earthy yellow powder ready for use

Out, damned spot(s)! - Turmeric and Ayurvedic Medicine

Aside from the fact that many regions in India are well-suited for growing turmeric, one of the chief reasons for the Indian dominance in the international turmeric market is that turmeric has been used there the longest. The earliest direct, historical references to turmeric come from Ayurvedic medical texts from 1500 BC to 1200 BC. But we can be sure that, prior to these written texts, turmeric was being used for quite some time already.

While it has been used as a temporary dye and, symbolically, in certain religious rites (e.g., its use as a mangala sutra (a kind of wedding necklace)), it has been most prominently used in cooking and medicine. Let’s take a look at early medical accounts of turmeric (which happen to appear in some of the earliest medical texts in the world).

There is significant debate as to the origin and dating of the earliest Ayurvedic medical traditions. Some scholars argue, on the basis of archaeological evidence, that rudimentary forms of later Ayurvedic practices like dentistry and trepanation were already in place by 7000 BC among the precursors of the Harappan (or Indus Valley) Civilization. A bit of a stretch. To me, this seems like it ignores what is peculiar to the Ayurvedic tradition: namely, the collection and organization of a variety of medical practices into a relatively coherent and theoretically consistent whole. For me, these systematized practices are what Ayurveda is really about, and they began to emerge in written form beginning around 1200 BC, with the appearance of the Atharva-veda. The Atharva-veda is the fourth of the Vedic scriptures. In contrast to the rather complex religious and philosophical quality of the first three vedas, the Atharva-veda concerns practical life and what we might call ‘popular’ religion. The text itself is broken up into three distinct segments: the Samhita, Brahmana, and Upanishad layers. The Brahmanic layer contains the Gopatha Brahmana and focuses on the proper performance of certain rituals. The three Upanishads within the Atharva-veda focus on meditation and the generation of correct spiritual knowledge. Finally, the Samhita layer, distinct among the early vedic texts, focuses on practical matters - things like surgery, medicine, herbalism, and various charms, mantras, and spells meant to combat specific physical and spiritual ailments.

It is within this Samhita portion of the Atharva-veda that turmeric finds its first recorded medical use in a hymn (or charm) intended to combat leprosy:

Night-born art thou, O herb, O dark, black, and dusky one: O coloror, do thou color this leprous spot and what is pale! [Atharva-veda Samhita, Book I, Hymn 23]

The ‘colourer’ (rajani) here is turmeric. The hymn continues:

The leprous spot, what is pale, do thou cause to disappear from hence, the speckled; let thine own color enter thee; make white things fly away. Dusky is thy hiding-place, dusky thy station; dusky art thou, O herb; make the speckled disappear from hence. Of the bone-born leprous spot, and of the body-born that is in the skin, of that made by the spoiler -- the incantation have I made the white mark disappear [Atharva-veda Samhita, Book I Hymn 23].

Here the crucial feature of turmeric is its ability to colour human skin: by invoking the power of turmeric as a colourer, and by applying turmeric to the skin, the leper’s speckles are made to disappear. The idea here is not simply to use turmeric to dye the skin directly -- since this effect is temporary - but to invoke the inner power of colouring which characterizes turmeric. This early invocation was the beginning of a very long medical tradition. In a later Ayurvedic text, the Sushruta Samhita (ca. 1st millennium BC), the same basic idea of using turmeric to treat various kushtha (diseases of the skin) is applied. Here, however, turmeric is to be taken internally, perhaps, also, to internalize and capture the inner power colouring. The patient is recommended to “use a lambative medicinal compound of [...] Haridra [turmeric] with an adequate quantity of cow’s urine every day for a month” [Sushruta Samhita, 357]. (‘Lambative,’ by the way, is a term applied to medicines which are taken by licking with the tongue - yum!)

In other later Ayurvedic works, like the Charaka Samhita (produced in stages between 400 BC and 200 AD), turmeric plays many roles in addition to that of the colourer and leper-saver.

Thus, for example, it is an important part of a ‘cleansing’ concoction used in rasayana. Rasayana is a blanket term which refers to treatments meant to promote health by halting or slowing various degenerative processes (e.g., aging). The first step in rasayana involves the near-complete evacuation of the body and mind of any sort of pollutant. The idea here is to return the body and the mind to a state of purity, and then to engage in practices which uphold this purity as against the corrupting influences of bad diet, bad thoughts, and bad companionship. As one might expect, these purifying processes are fairly involved.

First, a suitable location needs to be acquired, and the Charaka Samhita goes into great detail regarding this:

For this [treatment] a cottage should be built in an auspicious ground, facing eastward or northward and in a locality which is inhabited by king, physician, and brahmanas, holy saints, is free from dangers, auspicious and with easy availability of necessary accessories. It should have sufficient space area and height, three interior chambers one after the other, a small opening, thick walls and should be comfortable for the seasons, well-clean and favourable. It should be impermeable for undesirable sound, etc. (sense objects, free from women, equipped with necessary accessories, and attended by physician with medicaments and brahmanas [Charaka Samhita, 5].

Then, as now, health is 90% real estate.

After you’ve acquired such a cottage, and freed it from women, you can begin the second stage of treatment: the cleansing rituals. These are mostly mental in character. You first have to free yourself from “mental defects” and try to “feel companionship with all the creatures”. No problem. Done.

And, once this social and mental work is done, you need to begin work on physical cleansing or “evacuative measures” [Charaka Samhita, 5].

This is where turmeric comes in (...and goes out).

The person well-uncted and fomented, should take with hot water the formulation consisting of the powders of haritaki, rock salt, amalaka, jaggery, vaca, vidanga, haridra, long pepper, and dry ginger. When he is evacuated properly by this and has followed the routine dietetic regimen, he should be given barley preparation added with ghee for three, five, or seven days (according to measure of evacuation) till the accumulated feces are eliminated. Thus when he is considered as having cleansed bowels, the physician should administer the appropriate rasayana drug taking into consideration his age, constitution, and suitability [Charaka Samhita, 5].

So, now we’ve got our first turmeric-based recipe. And it’s an old one!

Bowel evacuator for the well-uncted cottager (from Charaka Samhita)

Ingredients

Amalaka (Phyllanthus emblica, aka Indian gooseberry, amla, purple-leaf plum, myrobalan)

Haritaki (Terminalia chebulia, aka Black Myrobalan)

Rock Salt

Jaggery (cane sugar)

Vaca (Acorus calamus, aka sweet flag)

Vidanga (Embelia ribes, aka false black pepper)

Haridra (Turmeric)

Long Pepper (Piper longum)

Dry Ginger

Instructions

Build an auspicious cottage (or, better, have one constructed for you).

Make sure no women are around.

Feel companionship with all the creatures.

Mix the above ingredients in hot water.

Consume along with a barley gruel mixed with ghee.

Evacuate bowels for days.

Consult your physician for further guidance.

Although most pre-modern recipes (medical or otherwise) are rather vague when it comes to quantities and the exact methods of preparation, the Charaka Samhita is (occasionally) extremely precise, giving both ratios of ingredients and in many cases exact measurements of quantity. This makes it somewhat irritating (if you are interested in really evacuating those bowels) that so much is left vague in our above recipe.

Fortunately, the much more important recipe for invincibility is slightly more precise and it also happens to contain turmeric:

Ghee extracted from milk is cooked with haritaki, amalaka, bibhitaka, haridra, salaparni, bala, vidanga, guduci, sunthi, madhuka, pippali and katphala. This (ghee) along with honey and sugar is mixed with the amalaka powder impregnated hundred times with the juice of amalaka fruits and added with iron powder (bhasma) in ¼ quantity. [Ten grams] of this formulation should be taken in every morning by the above method. In the evening, the patient should take diet consisting of sali and sastika rice added with ghee along with the soup of green gram or milk. If this formulation is used regularly for three years, the person attains a life-span of hundred years free from old age, acquires knowledge, his diseases are alleviated, poison becomes ineffective in his body which is rendered firm as stone and he becomes invincible for the organisms [Charaka Samhita 11-12].

While this is still not as precise as one might like, it does allow us to generate the following recipe, loosely in the ‘modern’ style.

Ghee of General Invincibility

Ingredients

Ghee

Amalaka (Phyllanthus emblica, aka Indian gooseberry, amla, purple-leaf plum, myrobalan)

Haritaki (Terminalia chebulia, aka Black Myrobalan)

Bibhitaka (Terminalia bellirica, aka beleric, bastard myrobalan)

Haridra (Turmeric)

Salaparni (Pseudarthia viscida)

Bala (Sida cordifolia, aka flannel weed, country mallow)

Vidanga (Embelia ribes, aka false black pepper)

Guduci (Tinospora cordifolia, aka heart-leaved moonseed, giloy)

Sunthi (Zingiber officinale, aka dry ginger)

Madhuka (Madhuca longifolia, aka honey tree, butter tree)

Pippali (Piper longum, aka long pepper)

Katphala (Myrica esculenta, aka box myrtle, bayberry)

Honey

Sugar (presumably jaggery)

Amalaka powder impregnated with amalaka juice

Lauha Bhasma (calcinated iron powder)*

Accompaniments

Sali rice (any variety of Oryza sativa)

Sastika rice (aka Navara rice, particularly as grown in Kerala - typically harvested after 60 days of growth)

Soup of green gram (aka mung bean)

Milk (aka milk, animal left unspecified)

Instructions

Cook the amalaka, haritaki, bibhitaka, haridra, salaparni, bala, vidanga, guduci, sunthi, madhuka, pippali, and katphala in ghee.

Mix this spiced and herbed ghee with honey, sugar, and the enriched amalaka powder.

Add calcinated iron powder in a ratio of 1 part iron powder to 4 parts of the mixture.

Consume ten grams of the mixture daily for three years with rice, milk, or mung bean soup.

Become invincible and ageless.**

*Note 1: While many of the metallic powders used in Ayurvedic medicine have been shown to be toxic, most of the evidence regarding Lauha Bhasma seems to indicate no such toxicity. For instance, a 2016 study indicated that, even at 100 times the usual therapeutic dosage, Lauha Bhasma did not result in any acute toxicity, though it did occasionally lead to weight gain.

**Note 2: As noted later in the Charaka Samhita, the effect of these herb- and fruit-based recipes depends on the user: “The effect of the divine herbs can be tolerated only by the persons like you and not by those with uncontrolled self” [Charaka Samhita, 30]. (I have to say I am flattered that the authors of the text think I have the requisite self-control). So if you lack the self-control of someone who has the wherewithal to construct an evacuation cottage, this recipe probably won’t make you invincible. But there’s no harm in trying - other than the slight risk of heavy metal poisoning I suppose.

In addition to its evacuative and invincibility-producing capacities, within the early Ayurvedic texts turmeric is also recommended to be used

as a key component in a vinegar-based enema designed to ‘remove obstructions’,

In an herb-paste used to evacuate an excess of a particular kind of dosha (or fundamental energy type) from the head,

to be taken as snuff as a cure for baldness

And many more besides!

The ayurvedic use of turmeric continues today in more or less modernized forms. Indeed, this continued Ayurvedic popularity is a significant instigator for research into the biochemical effects of curcumin (the chief chemical component found within turmeric). But, despite my interest in these early vedic texts and in turmeric, I’m not particularly interested in the modern medical uses of turmeric. I just want to use it to make things taste good and yellowy.

There is an argument to be made that the medical uses of turmeric recommended within the various ayurvedic texts are also culinary in character. Here the idea that food and medicine are separate spheres of human activity would have to be abandoned. I think this is reasonable enough: in almost every culture which developed a conception of ‘diet’, the medical value of food becomes important. But, despite this argument, I want to suggest that the REAL written culinary history of turmeric only begins much later, with a 12th century text called the Manasollasa, or, loosely translated, The Delighter of the Mind.

The Other Manasollassa

There are, in fact, two texts known by the title Manasollassa, and they are wildly different from one another. The first is an extended philosophical discussion of the doctrine of Advaita by the 9th century philosopher Suresvara. Advaita (literally ‘non-dualism’) is the philosophical view which identifies the Atman and the Brahman. That is to say: for the Advaitist, the ultimate ground of reality is to be found in the self, and liberation from suffering is to be found in this world, not somewhere else. Sounds good.

Now, I have to imagine that turmeric figures at some point in the story of individual salvation from suffering but, strangely, it is not covered at all in this first Manasollasa. Instead, we have a few hundred years for the second version. This one has nothing to do with Advaita (although I guess everything does?), nor is it related in any obvious way to the earlier text by Suresvara. Instead, it is one of the first (if not the first) encyclopedias, though with a slightly narrower focus than the most general encyclopedias. It is basically a detailed account of every aspect of royal life in 12th century Southern India.

The text was written in 1131 (roughly), by Somesvara III, the king of the Western Chalukya Empire in Southwestern India - someone with clear first-hand experience when it comes to the description of the intricacies of royal life. Somesvara’s text includes some of the most detailed information we have on medieval Indian cultural practices like wrestling, perfumery, angling, and choreography. It also happens to be one of the earliest known Indian cookbooks, with several chapters devoted to recipes for various occasions.

I cannot read Sanskrit, and Somesvara’s Manasollassa has not been translated into English (though, somewhat irritatingly for me, Suresvara’s much earlier and less turmericky Manasollassa has). As a result, my knowledge of the recipes contained within it is derived from two sources, neither particularly reliable.

The first source was simply brute force, word by word translation of the Sanskrit text into English. The results of these efforts were, predictably, not very good. While Sanskrit is highly regimented grammatically, individual words have several possible meanings - and these vary significantly over time. Translation depends significantly upon context, both historical and within the text itself, so machine translations are not very useful. I basically had to guess which pages might contain food related references and then translate sentences from there. So not much luck here other than figuring out the English names of specific ingredients mentioned.

The second source was a somewhat odd work by P. Arundhati, who wrote a number of texts about the Manasollassa in English. One of these, a shortish work called Royal Life in Manasollassa, seemed like a promising candidate for information on the turmeric-related recipes therein. As far as I could find, the book was not available at any Canadian library that I have access to, and there are no electronic versions anywhere on the internet that I could find either. After I eventually acquired the book from an American university, I was somewhat dismayed by its contents. It is, essentially, an English-language summary of the text (promising!) within which about 50% of the words are untranslated, though transliterated, Sanskrit (unpromising). As a result, I couldn’t understand quite a bit of it, though I did realize just how decadent courtly life was in medieval India, and how prominent wrestling was.

I did learn, however, that turmeric was used in a variety of foods. It’s most common use was as a colourant for pulses like lentils, chickpeas, pigeon peas, and so on. It was (and still is) so common in these various dahls that it is often noted when it isn’t supposed to be used. And its absence in a dahl preparation is almost always for medical rather than purely culinary reasons.

While it is omnipresent in dahls in the Manasollassa, turmeric is also used in a number of meat preparations. One interesting recipe called for the immersion of chunks of venison in a slurry of turmeric and cumin. These chunks were then threaded on a skewer and slow roasted over a large open fire. If I acquire any deer meat this year, I plan on trying this out.

Another interesting feature of these early recipes is that, as in modern Indian cuisines, turmeric is almost always used when preparing fish. One recipe in particular involves wrapping a whole fish in a leaf (the type is not mentioned, but presumably a banana, lotus, or possibly a turmeric leaf) along with turmeric and ginger, and then roasting/steaming it over a fire. I’ve actually made a slightly more complicated version of this leaf-wrapped turmeric fish, which is a relatively common dish in modern Kerala, in the far south of the Indian subcontinent.

In short: my hopes of plumbing the depths of the Manasollassa for medieval turmeric recipes have been put on hold until I learn Sanskrit. But the story of turmeric waits for no man, regardless of linguistic incompetence. So let’s press on!

Nimmatnama (c. 1500)

While I think it is reasonable to say that the Manasollassa is probably the earliest extant Indian cookbook, the primary aim of the text is not culinary. Instead, it is something like an encyclopedic instruction manual for a future king. It tells you not only what to eat, but how to dance, fish, ride elephants, wrestle, and perfume your hair. (It is hard, in fact, to find a medieval Indian text which doesn’t deal in some way with perfumery, and even we are going to delve into it a bit below).

A few hundred years later, however, we have something a little bit more like a proper cookbook - the Nimmatnama-i-Nasiruddin-Shahi, or The Book of Delights of Nasir Shahi, written in a heavily Persian-influenced Urdu. The earliest form of the book was actually composed by Ghiyath Shahi, a 16th century sultan of Malwa in central India (located in modern day Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh). Ghiyath Shahi was the father of Nasir Shahi, who later added to and embellished the text, so much so that it is named after him and not his father. Much like the Manasollasa, the Nimmatnama is aimed at a royal audience: it is a compendium of recipes for food, aphrodisiacs, and perfumes (duh), all of which were meant for the lavish life of hedonism typical of the rulers of the Malwa Sultanate during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. (I’m sensing a trend here).

Ghiyath Shahi has been variously referred to as medieval India’s greatest ‘bon vivant,’ as an unabashed hedonist, and as an Indian prototype for Hugh Hefner. While medieval numbers are often wildly inflated, he was reputed to have had a harem composed of more than 15000 women (probably the reason for the large number of ‘aphrodisiacs’ in the Nimmatnama). A more realistic examination suggests that his entire court (comprised of various artisans, wrestlers, concubines, cooks, and so on) numbered around 12000. Regardless of the size of his court, one thing is certain: he wielded his power almost solely in the pursuit of pleasure. In his younger years, sexual pleasure was his focus. But, as time wore on, he focussed on the pleasures of the table as well.

The result is the unique text of the Nimmatnama, which is lavishly illustrated by 50 Persian/Turkish-style miniatures, an artistic style which dominated the Islamic courts of the 15th and 16th century. Most of the illustrations show the sultan being waited upon by his court, performing some specific culinary ritual. In one, for instance, he is in the presence of cattle being milked. In another, betel nut is being prepared for his consumption.

Within the text itself, we find dozens of actual recipes, many of which contain specific measurements and clearly delineated steps - very much like modern recipes. Unlike the Manasollassa, where the recipes are mostly incidental, the primary focus of the Nimmatnama is the recording of precise instructions to help future sultans enjoy life just as Ghiyath himself did.

While several of these recipes feature turmeric prominently, the one which caught my eye is a recipe for quails or partridges.

Another recipe for partridges and quails: prepare tender partridges and quails. Rub in turmeric, asafoetida and salt. Put a cooking vessel (dathara) into a cooking pot, add water and put it on the fire. When the water is hot, put the quails and partridges on skewers and rub them with potherbs of all kinds. Roast the skewered meat and put some camphor and musk into ghee. Rub the ghee onto the skewered meat and roast it. When the meat is required for eating add lime juice or vinegar and eat it.

This recipe is quite a bit more careful than most of the recipes in the Manasollassa. Nevertheless, we need to do some work if we want to convert it into something more like a modern recipe that we can use to actually produce a palatable dish. Let’s give it a shot! The first thing I’m going to do is limit the recipe to quails. If you have easy access to partridges, feel free to use those.

Tender Roast Quails with Turmeric and Musk

Ingredients

Quails

Turmeric

Asafoetida

Salt

Potherbs of all kinds

Camphor

Musk

Ghee

Lime juice (or vinegar)

Instructions/Interpretation

1. Prepare tender quails.

I take this to mean, fairly straightforwardly, that you ought to choose quail which are ‘tender’ (i.e., not too old), and dress them by plucking and cleaning them, presumably also removing various undesirable bits (e.g., internal organs, head, and feet, as your taste dictates).

2. Rub in turmeric, salt, and asafoetida.

Another fairly straightforward step. Here quantity is not mentioned but, given the strength of asafoetida, it seems reasonable to assume that a much smaller quantity should be used than that of turmeric and salt - likely little more than a pinch.

3. Put a cooking vessel (dathara) into a cooking pot, add water, and put it on the fire.

This step is a bit unclear and requires some explanation. On the face of it, it sounds something like a double boiler: a pot within a pot, over some heat source. This isn’t exactly right. Here the term for ‘cooking vessel’ (dathara) has two possible interpretations. It may refer to a layer of leaves, or sometimes grass, placed within a pot. Whatever you want to cook is then typically placed on top of these leaves, or wrapped in them, and gently steamed. It may also refer to a specialized rack or grill to place within the cooking vessel. The modern reader might try to split the difference by placing banana leaves on a grill over relatively low heat.

4. When the water is hot, put the quails on skewers and rub them with potherbs of all kinds.

Here we encounter vagueness: which potherbs are meant here? For Ghiyath Shahi’s intended readers (i.e., medieval Indian royalty and their retinues of cooks) this would have been obvious. For us, we need to do a bit of historical research. In my version of this recipe, I use cilantro and fenugreek, both finely chopped.

5. Roast the skewered meat and put some camphor and musk into ghee.

By ‘roast’ here I assume it is meant that the skewers are to be placed on the dathara, the bed of leaves or the grill within the cooking vessel. Depending on how this is interpreted, you’ll end up with a fairly different product: if you opt for just the grill, you’ll end up with fire-roasted quails. If you opt for banana leaves laid flat, you’ll have a quail which is cooked lower and slower. And if you choose to wrap the skewers in leaves, you’ll end up with a kind of steamed/roasted quail. All of these options seem reasonable enough to me.

The preparation of the ghee poses further complications, however. First of all, while camphor was extremely common in Indian and Middle Eastern cooking from at least the 11th century onwards, it has fallen into disuse and today it is recognized as potentially toxic. It is potentially fatal in fairly small doses in children, especially, and can cause seizures when ingested orally. Fortunately, today a chemical analogue of camphor is available which is not known to be toxic. This is called pachha karpooram or, helpfully, ‘edible camphor’. On its own, camphor has a kind of cooling, vaporous taste. Within a dish, the chief function of camphor is simply to enhance and spread flavour, as MSG would, so only a small pinch of it is required here. You might also skip the camphor entirely without a drastic effect on the overall flavour of the dish.

The musk, however, poses a rather more significant problem for us. First, we also need to figure out exactly what is meant by ‘musk’. As I’ve mentioned, medieval Indian (and Persian) texts are rift with references to perfumery. There are a few reasons for this. First, these works are almost always produced by and for the idle rich. Then, as now, the upper strata of society has tended to eschew practical endeavours, favouring instead a life of aesthetic enjoyment. While I think it is fair to say that olfactory enjoyment is low on the modern list of priorities (probably because many more people have access to perfumes than ever before), in the medieval world, smelling good was one of the primary pleasures of the rich--and an exclusive one at that. Amongst the medieval perfumeries of India, Persia, and the Middle East, no scent was as heavily prized and used as musk. It was used as a fixative - a relatively stable substance which allowed the more volatile, floral notes of a perfume to last much longer. Today, for the most part, the use of musk within perfumes has dramatically declined. It is used very sparingly if at all, as there are many synthetic alternatives available. During the period in question, however, it was used extensively and any royal household in India would have had a steady supply of musk. Next question: what is musk, and what kind of musk is likely to have been used in this recipe?

Musk, as used in perfumery (and apparently in cookery as well) is a substance derived from the musk deer. To obtain musk, you must first harvest the musk pod of a musk deer (any one of the seven species of deer within the family Moschidae). This musk pod is a fur-covered scent gland located on the abdomen of the musk deer, near the penis (if you’ve reached the anus, you’ve gone too far). In order to harvest the pod, the deer is killed and the gland is carefully removed and skinned. The oily, dark red substance within the pod is then dried, producing musk crystals. In perfumery, a tincture is usually made by immersing these crystals in alcohol. This tincture is then used in combination with other scents to produce the desired perfume. While there are seven species of musk deer (six of them now endangered thanks to the harvesting of their musk pods), during the medieval period, the Tibetan musk deer was prized above all else. We can imagine that, if musk is recommended in the recipe book of a notoriously extravagant sultan such as Ghiyath Shahi, then it would be the best musk available. The question we now have is: in what form is this musk to be used in our recipe? There are at least 3 options:

The ‘fresh’ oily musk from a recently harvested musk pod.

The dried, crystalized grains of musk.

The musk tincture.

I honestly have no idea which form of musk is meant here. From a purely practical standpoint, it would make sense to use the tincture, as it is easier to store and transport, and a liquid would be easier to mix into the ghee and rub onto the skewered quail. On the other hand, I am not at all certain that the distillation of alcohol for the production of tinctures was a commonplace practice, even amongst perfumers, within 16th century India, so I have no idea if this is ‘historically accurate’. What I can say, with some confidence, is that whatever form of musk I used on my quail, I would use it extremely sparingly, for three reasons:

Most species of musk deer are currently endangered (only the Siberian musk deer is officially not endangered, it is, instead, listed as ‘vulnerable’ and is steadily inching toward becoming officially endangered). Harvesting the musk pod requires killing the deer. So, using musk at all likely involves participation in the future extinction of an entire species.

Musk is extremely expensive. I just checked and a single musk pod (weighing around 35 grams) from a Siberian musk deer sells for around $1500.

Musk is an extremely powerful scent, so (I would presume) it also produces an extremely powerful taste which, very likely, would not be immediately appealing to most modern palates.

For these reasons, then, I’d recommend just skipping the musk entirely, even if you happen to have some on hand (which you shouldn’t, how dare you). If you feel absolutely compelled to make your quail musky, I would recommend purchasing a 30ml bottle of muscone (a synthetic analogue which doesn’t require killing endangered deer) for $150 or so, and using the barest hint of it in your ghee.

6. Rub the ghee onto the skewered meat and roast it.

7. When the meat is required for eating add lime juice or vinegar and eat it.

It’s as simple as that!

Turmeric Adieu

I had initially intended this post to be the first of a long series of exhaustive examinations of the history of individual spices. My plan for turmeric was to begin in India and then take a look at its spread to westward to Persia (where it is used to great effect in a number of khoreshes, my favourite of which is probably Gheymeh) and eastward into Burma (garlic turmeric oil), Vietnam (Banh Xeo), and Thailand . As it turns out, even scratching the surface of the history of turmeric in India required thousands of words. So, in place of the exhaustive treatment I’ve decided to rest satisfied with exhausting.

“May your table be stained yellow!” (Traditional farewell, as coined by me, right here)

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foodzophrenia · 11 years ago

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Tripe Life

As a continuation of my inadvertent series on maligned meats, I bought too much tripe the other day. In my head it seemed like a great idea to buy 6 or 7 pounds of tripe, as there are a number of tripe dishes that I want to make. But, while tripe is a delicious and versatile meat, you can’t really eat it day in day out. Well, you can, but it gets to be a bit much after day 3. So I put half the tripe in the freezer and made one big pot of Guatita, an Ecuadorean tripe stew. Funnily enough, I made too much of it and ate it for 3 days. Best laid plans.

Much like the tripe I’ve just dealt with, I’m pulled in multiple directions. I would like to extol the virtues of Ecuadorean cuisine, but I’d also like to talk in generalities about tripe (life’s small pleasures…). I'll talk about tripe first, then see how far we can get with Ecuadorean cuisine.

(Note: It turns out I am too long-winded about tripe, so there is not much here about Ecuador).

Tripe: How does it work?

Until fairly recently, I knew two related facts about tripe:

Historically, it has been eaten by the poor anywhere beef, lamb, or pork are consumed.

It tastes really good when cooked properly.

I say related facts because it has been my experience that when people are put up against the problem of having mainly crummy cuts of meats, they tend to figure out the absolute most delicious ways to prepare them. When you’ve got a perfectly marbled slab of Wagyu beef in your face, you don’t really need to know anything to make it taste good.

And, since satiety is the enemy of invention, you probably wouldn’t figure out anything if that’s all you ever had. If you’re left with the problem children of the meat world, however, you’re gonna science the shit out of them until you figure out the absolute best most delicious number one top top method of cooking. This is definitely a big reason why American barbecue is so delicious. It’s also the reason why the traditional throwaway meats like trotters, brains, tendon, pork belly, hocks, tongue, cheeks, and sweetbreads end up being some of the most delicious: necessity made it so. Adversity breeds ambition breeds toothsome-ness.

Tripe is probably more difficult to deal with than all the meats I’ve just mentioned – maybe tendons can be a bit more troublesome to flavourize.

Before we get into preparation methods, let’s look at the thing itself, die Kutteln-an-sich, as Kant would have it. What is tripe?

For a long while I thought that the word ‘tripe’ referred indiscriminately to the guts of a large-ish farm animal (cow, pig, sheep, ox, etc.). Then, in my middle years as a student of tripe, I thought it referred more specifically to the intestines of those animals. This, in fact, is what the Spanish term ‘tripas’ means. Sometimes you will hear people use the word ‘tripe’ to refer to the stomach lining of a pig. This is not necessarily incorrect, but it is a pleasing fact about English that we have specialized words for almost everything. The more specific term for the stomach lining of a pig is ‘paunch,’ which seems hilariously appropriate to me. In English, the term ‘tripe’ is used mainly to refer to the stomach lining of a class of animals called ruminants.This class of animals includes cows, sheep, and goats. (Incidentally, there is also a class of animals known as pseudoruminants, a group of fraudulent, even-toed ungulates which includes camels, alpacas, and hippopotami).

The term ‘ruminant’ refers specifically to animals who ferment their food in the special kind of four-chambered stomach which makes tripe. (Side note: ‘ruminate’ comes from the Latin ‘ruminare’ which means to chew again, or to re-chew. If you’ve ever seen a cow, you know that they are chewing 90% of the time. This is closely linked to their stomachs.)

Let’s look at the details of the ruminant stomach, so that you have an idea of what the bits of tripe you’re eating actually do (which should also explain why you have to clean it so thoroughly).

Reticulorumen (Reticulum and Rumen)

After initially swallowing their grass or hay or other ground up cows and their prions, the food flows down the esophagus for the first time. There it enters a part of the stomach called the rumen, which is the largest part of a complex composed of the rumen and the reticulum. This complex is, appropriately enough, called the reticulorumen, which is a lovely word that flows off the tongue. In the reticulorumen, the food undergoes a whole bunch of sorting processes which help to separate out gaseous, liquid, and solid matter, as well as mixing processes, where the food is mixed with saliva which begins the long process of fermentation. As in typical human digestion, these processes are aided by an incredible variety of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. In cows (and in bulls, I suppose), these microorganisms help to break down the cellulose in the herbivorous diet of a normal animal. Part of the end result of this process is our smelly old chum methane.

The first component of the stomach, the rumen, is also called ‘blanket tripe’ or ‘flat tripe’ or ‘smooth tripe,’ because it is relatively smooth, flat, and has a pile similar to a blanket. This usually comes from the butcher with a fairly thick fatty layer that you can trim off if you so desire (I’d recommend it, as it doesn’t seem to tenderize terribly well). The second part of the stomach, the reticulum, when considered from the point of view of human cuisine, has many names: the bonnet, the kings-hood, or, most frequently ‘honey-comb tripe’. This last name is probably the most descriptive, because it is lined with ridges in a hexagonal pattern which looks exactly like a honeycomb. Honeycomb tripe is probably the most sought after sort, as it can be the most tender (though excessive boiling toughens it). I think it’s pretty good anyway if it’s tough. I’ve had plenty of bowls of Vietnamese phở with tough honeycomb tripe that I rather enjoyed.

The chief result of the work of the reticulorumen is the formation of solid clumps of food matter called ‘cud’ or, a more general term, a ‘bolus’. This cud is then shot back up to the cows mouth, chewed for what seems like forever, mixed with saliva, and shot back down into the reticulorumen for round two. Eventually a less-pulpy mass of stuff is moved from the reticulorumen into the next chamber of the stomach: the omasum.

Omasum

The omasum also has a number of names. It is called the bible, the fardel, the manyplies, the psalterium. I’ve heard it called ‘mille feuille’ in French as well, though it bears but a passing resemblance to the flaky pastry of the same name. What these names are trying to get at is the innumerable folds that make up its surface. It, like a Bible, is composed of thousands of sheets. In this case, however, these sheets are covered in a mucilaginous mixture of chemicals and bacteria. I suppose you might have a Bible in similar condition, but you ought to clean it up if so.

Somewhat surprisingly to me (given the fact that ruminants have been domesticated by humans for probably 10500 years or so), the functions of the omasum are not well understood. It seems to aid in the absorption of nutrients into the bloodstream, but it seems to do so only in fairly small amounts. Culinarily, the ‘manyplies’ is quite common throughout world cuisine. Roman cooking has a spaghetti with omasum and pancetta which is delicious; it is quite common to see it lightly flavoured (with ginger, garlic, green onions, or chillies) as dim sum; like honeycomb tripe, it is also used in phở. Etc., etc.

Abomasum

But let’s return to our digestive journey. From the ill-understood omasum, the remnants of the cow’s meal are transferred to the fourth and final chamber of the stomach: the abomasum AKA the maw AKA the rennet-bag AKA reed tripe AKA Abo ‘Kid Acid Hydrolysis’ Masum. Jesus there are so many names for these things. I think you need a chart to keep them straight. I’ll make one. Here is the chart.

The abomasum is the closest thing to a human stomach that the cow has, and, partially for this reason, it is the part of the stomach which is used least in cooking. Basically, in the abomasum, a number the remaining food is immersed in enzymes and acid and then churned through peristalsis until the remnants are pushed into the small intestine for further ‘treatment’. One of the enzymes produced in the abomasum is rennet. I never realized that rennet had to be extracted from the stomach after slaughtering, but that is how it goes. The modern method of rennet extraction involves grinding up a bunch of stomachs and then using a chemical enzyme to extract the rennet, which is then used in the manufacture of cheese. This has made me interested in the manufacture of cheese.

Culinarily, the abomasum has two distinct parts. In English we don’t have words for them, but the Italians (and particularly the Florentines) call these the spannocchia and the gala (not speaking Italian, I don’t know why or even what these words mean). They are right, though, to distinguish the two as the spannocchia is much denser and stronger tasting than the gala, and the gala is noticeably darker than the spannocchia. Reed tripe is usually harder to find than the other 3 varieties. According to several sources on the internet this is because of its high glandular tissue content, but I have no idea if this is true or why this should matter. Further inquiry is needed.

So, this completes the first and probably the most complicated journey through the digestive system of a cow. We’ll have to save the rest (the small intestine, the cecum, the large intestine, and, glory of glories, the anus) for another time – we’ve got our own food to think about.

Ecuadorean Cuisine

I had in mind for this blog post to make two tripe dishes: an Ecuadorian stew and hangover cure called ‘guatita’ and an Ethiopian breakfast dish called ‘dulet’. I ended up not making the dulet because I couldn’t get the proper spices I wanted in Halifax. I’ve since relocated for the summer to Montreal and have all the requisite spices and a bunch of tripe in the freezer, so I’ll probably get around to making it this week or next.

I DID make the Guatita though, and it turned out to be pretty delicious overall. I don’t know very much about Ecuadorean cuisine, but I’ve been reading up about it and making a few dishes here and there. It seems to me a shame that it isn’t more widely known as there are several quite interesting and surprising dishes to be tasted: e.g., llapingachos (potato or yucca cakes stuffed with cheese and fried), cuy (guinea pig, usually roasted), fanesca (an Easter-week soup with a huge list of ingredients including cod, chochos, and pumpkin). There is a great variety in Ecuadorian food, which is not surprising given its mixed geography (coastline, Amazon, Andes).

Guatita

So, let’s get to the Guatita! What is it? It is a mixture of tripe and potato (or yucca) stewed with a peanut-based sauce. It is, like the greasy breakfast of North America, seen as a hangover cure, and after having eaten several rich and hearty bowlfuls I can see why.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

To clean the tripe

2 lbs. beef tripe (For my recipe, I had a bit of every kind of tripe, but probably the best for this dish would be rumen or reticulum)

Juice of 1 lemon

10 cups water

A handful of cilantro

4 garlic cloves, crushed

1-2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 or 3 bay leaves

Half an onion

Salt and pepper

For the actual stew

½ cup of peanut butter

2 cups milk

3 tablespoons butter

½ of a big red onion, diced

A big white or yellow onion, diced

½ bell pepper, diced (I prefer a red pepper rather than a green one here, but it’s up to you)

1 reasonably sized tomato, diced

6 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons of achiote or annatto powder (I actually didn’t have any of the powder, so, on the advice of my girlfriend’s mother, I fried a bunch of annatto seeds in a bit of oil and added the oil to the stew, which was fun and worked just as well)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon oregano (I added 2, but I think less might have been better)

4 mid-size potatoes, cut into large-ish cubes (I always find Russet potatoes are good for stews)

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Depending on the state of the tripe when you buy it, cleaning it might take longer. In Canada, tripe comes pretty clean already. It’s basically white when you buy it – this cuts down the cleaning significantly. If it wasn’t so clean you would probably have to wash it dozens more times than I did. Even still, you have to clean it quite a bit for it to have any kind of decent taste. This is a fairly involved process. There are a number of ways to do this, I’ll give you the one I used.

First: clean the tripe. To do this:

Cover the tripe with the juice of half the lemon mixed with water and a bit of salt.

Rinse well.

Squeeze a bit more of the juice all over the tripe, then wrap it around the two halves of the lemon. (Note: I had a bit of time on my hands at this stage so I did this extra step, which is not necessary).

Rinse well.

In a large stockpot, cover the tripe with the 10 cups of water. Add the cilantro, garlic, onion, bay leaves, cumin, salt, and pepper.

Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer until tender. As with all meats, this can take a fair amount of time, depending on specific piece of tripe you have. In my case, I let it go for about 2 hours, which is on the long side.

Drain the tripe but reserve 2 or 3 cups of the broth for use in the stew.

Your tripe is now clean.

Dice the tripe into small-ish pieces. I think about an inch square is a decent size, but you can go even smaller if you’d like. I wouldn’t recommend much larger.

Mix the peanut butter with ½ cup of milk. This will make it a bit easier to mix.

Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat.

Add the achiote/annatto powder, cumin, salt, oregano, bell pepper, onions, tomato, and garlic. Cook for 4-5 minutes, until everything is softened up a bit.

Blend together all the ingredients from step #5 with the peanut butter and the remaining milk. You want this to result in a very smooth sauce. I used a hand blender which made things easy but you can use a food processor or whatever blending tool you have available.

Add the sauce, potatoes, tripe, and the reserved tripe broth to a large stockpot.

Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer for 20-40 minutes. Here the goal is to get the potatoes to their desired consistency and to thicken the sauce. I like to squish some of the potatoes up against the side of the pot to thicken it, but you can let nature take it’s course if you prefer.

Season with salt and pepper.

Eat.

I ate mine with white rice and avocado, as well as Curtido de cebolla y tomate (a lightly pickled mixture of onions and tomatoes) and Ají de tomate de árbol (Tamarillo hot sauce). This struck me as a really good combination of things. I was also snacking on lupini beans (chochos)the whole time so I threw a few of those on the plate too. This dish made me feel like I was on vacation, like Herby here chilling in the stew pot.

Curtido de cebolla y tomate

I’m not sure exactly how ‘curtido’ ought to be translated. I know the term mainly from the Salvadoran pickled cabbage and carrot dish that is served alongside pupusas. I would hazard guess that there is no exact English equivalent though ‘slaw’ or ‘pickled salad’ might do the trick. This one is a very simple combination of onions and tomatoes. If you like, you can take out the tomatoes and this recipe will deliver some pretty solid lime-pickled onions that you can keep in the fridge for a decent amount of time.

Ingredients

2 small red onions

Juice of 3 limes

1 tablespoon oil (avocado oil if you can get it, if not, any mild tasting oil will do)

3 tomatoes

Cilantro to taste, finely chopped (I tend to go crazy with cilantro, I think 1 tablespoon would be a ‘normal’ amount here)

1-2 tablespoons salt, then a bit more for seasoning

Instructions

Slice the onions and tomatoes as thinly as possible without cutting off your fingers.

Put them on a plate or in a bowl and sprinkle them with a healthy dose of salt (1 or 2 tablespoons). This is the beginning of a brief brining period which lessens the bite of the onion and also makes them more susceptible to pickling.

Let them rest for 5-10 minutes.

In a bowl, cover the onions with water for another ten minutes.

Drain the onions and rinse. Make sure to get rid of any traces of salt here.

Add the lime juie and the oil to the onions and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and cilantro to the onion/oil/lime mixture. Add salt if desired.

Serve.

Ají de tomate de árbol (Tree tomato or tamarillo hot sauce)

In my younger days I had a long term love affair with ‘extreme’ hot sauces. I slowly ratcheted up my sauces on the Scoville scale for weeks and months until I found anything but the most absurd sauces (e.g., Blair’s Ultra Death Sauce – 800,000 or so on the Scoville scale). I still think these sauces are cool, but I was only interested in them as a ‘challenge’. Now I like tasting things, and I’ve discovered there are tons of amazing hot sauces from around the world with completely different tastes and textures. Ecuador has some of the best.

This sauce, as the name suggests, is made from the tree tomato, also known as the tamarillo. Interestingly (to me, at least), the tree tomato was known around the world by that name until 1967. How, then, did it come to be known as a tamarillo? As ‘amarillo’ is Spanish for yellow, and most tree tomatoes are yellow, one might imagine that this is a Spanish name and originates in a Spanish-speaking country which grows tree tomatoes, like Ecuador. Not so! In 1967, W. Thompson, a member of the New Zealand Tree Tomato Promotions Council—that illustrious body—wanted to jazz up the product by introducing an exotic sounding name. And so the tamarillo was born. I myself had never heard of a tree tomato prior to making this recipe, but I’d heard of and eaten tamarillos plenty of times before. So a tip of the cap to W. Thompson for a partially successful rebranding campaign—though I can’t say that I’ve eaten more tamarillos because they have that name.

It is pretty hard to get a good tree tomato in Eastern Canada, but somehow I managed to do so for this sauce. The sauce itself can be made as hot or as mild as you want, but the interesting bit is combination of tomato-ness and citrus that the tamarillo brings. Note that most tamarillos that you get will produce a yellow/orange sauce. The ones I had were from a variety that is reddish-purple in colour, so my sauce was reddish-purple in colour.

Ingredients

4-5 tree tomatoes

Ajies or hot peppers (Here you can use almost any hot pepper and in any amount: serranoes or jalapenos are fine for a less hot sauce, habaneros or scotch bonnet peppers for a hotter sauce. For mine, I used two habaneros and the sauce wasn’t overwhelmingly hot, but this obviously depends on your relationship with hot peppers).

2-4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

3 tablespoons white or yellow onion, finely minced

1 tablespoon of cilantro , finely chopped

1 tablespoon lime

¼ cup water (use oil if you want a smoother sauce)

Salt to taste

The lupini beans in the picture are just for snacking.

Instructions

Boil the tree tomatoes briefly to make it easier to peel them. Feel free to skip this if you are particularly adept at peeling tree tomatoes (or regular tomatoes, for that matter).

Peel the tree tomatoes.

Blend the tree tomatoes with the peppers to desired consistency. If you want things less spicy you can take out the seeds and the pithy parts, but I’d probably just use fewer peppers if this is your situation.

Cook this blended mixture with the ¼ cup of water on medium-low heat for a few minutes.

Remove from heat; add the onion, lime juice, and cilantro.

Season with salt.

Serve cold or at room temperature.

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foodzophrenia · 11 years ago

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Adventures in Tongue

Tongue is one of the fattiest, most delicious, and wrongly maligned cuts of meat. A typical beef tongue has something like 75% of its caloric content delivered by fat. Fat makes things taste great. Therefore, tongue tastes great. QED.

It has been my experience that many people who otherwise enjoy fatty and delicious meats shy away from the tongue. This for a variety of reasons.

First: it looks weird. That is undeniable. At almost every stage of cooking the tongue looks odd. When you get it from the butcher, it looks like a disgusting boot-shaped lump that has been hacked off an unknown creature. If you’ve grown up around cows, it might at best remind you of the times when they lick their noses (inside and out) with that self-same tongue. There are also strange dangly bits, whose function is a bit of a mystery to me.

Even after you’ve boiled a tongue, it is covered in a thick white skin with blisters all over the surface, as well as with taste buds. Many people like to imagine that steaks grow on trees, so seeing something which has a recognizable function (beyond ‘oh this is a muscle’) is off-putting as well.

Even when you slice up the tongue and it has become mere ‘meat,’ it has little valves and tubules embedded in it. In short: it is a visually strange meat.

But beyond its mere appearance, many people find it strange to taste something whose chief function was also to taste. It draws an undesirable amount of attention to one’s own activity: I am eating this tongue, which used to be attached to an animal who used it to enjoy the taste of hay. That animal is now dead, and so, too, shall I flee this mortal coil.

For these delicate souls, the tongue is a stark reminder of our inevitable death. Every bite draws them closer to the great abyss.

[Note: I spent about 20 minutes drawing a tongue dressed up as a grim reaper but I couldn't get the hands to look right, so I scrapped it].

Well, we are all going to die, sure enough. But while we are here, we should relish the fleeting fatty pleasure of a well-stewed tongue. So let’s figure out how to do that and then, when we are pleasantly full, we can think about the graveyard again.

My girlfriend Anna’s lovely mother Patty is one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. Every time we visit her, there is a feast waiting. As soon as we get close to Kingston (where she lives) my mouth starts watering. We often arrive late in the evening and there is almost always a pot of Caldereta (sometimes spelled Kaldereta) waiting to be eaten. Caldereta is one of my favourite Philippine dishes. It is a hearty stew which is traditionally prepared with goat shoulder, but I’ve only ever had it with stewing beef. It is rich and meaty, containing chunks of beef, potatoes, and whole green olives. When I went to the butcher the other day, I had Caldereta in mind but I ended up buying a beef tongue instead of stewing beef.

Fortunately, there is another Philippine dish which is very similar to Caldereta except that it is made with sliced tongue and does not use the liver paste which is common in Caldereta. As evidenced by the name Lengua Estofada, the dish is historically linked to a Spanish stew, imported to the Philippines sometime during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish version often contains anchovies and cinnamon, which are absent in the Philippine version that I made today.

This was the first time I tried making this stew and it turned out pretty good!

Lengua Estofada (Stewed Tongue)

First things first: you need to clean the tongue.

Clean the tongue. Depending on the tongue and your skills, this can be an easy or an annoying procedure. In my case, this was a fairly annoying step. Begin by placing the tongue in enough water to cover. Add 3 or 4 bay leaves and a good dose of peppercorns. Bring to a boil. Boil for a good long while – I’ve seen suggestions ranging from 10 minutes to 3 hours. For this recipe, since you'll be stewing it anyway, you can make this step a bit shorter. Since I had planned on making another tongue recipe, I boiled it for about 2 hours. When you are satisfied with your boiling, pull out the tongue. It should look hilarious at this point, like a weird white leather haute couture Italian boot. Something like this:

The next part of cleaning the tongue can be annoying. In my case it was. When Anna’s mother was giving me tips on how to do all this she said that the white casing should come off like a sock. It did not do so (perhaps I boiled it too long). So I ended up hacking all of it off with a paring knife, which took a decent amount of time. At the end of all this you should have a handsome, boot-shaped lump of tongue. For the stew, cut this into ¼” thick slices. Given the odd shape of the tongue, there will probably be a decent variation in overall size of the slices. Don’t worry about this.

Ingredients, in space

1 – 1 ½ pounds ox or beef tongue, cleaned and sliced (This should be about half of a regular-sized tongue, which will make enough stew for 2 or 3 people easily)

2 tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 ½ tablespoons cider vinegar

Enough flour for dredging the tongue

4-5 cloves of garlic (more or less, to taste)

1 large-ish onion (I like yellow Spanish onions for stews like this)

Oyster sauce (to taste)

25 button mushrooms (I like a lot of mushrooms in stews)

2 – 3 Russet potatoes (Russet are the best for a stew like this because they are generally starchier, which will thicken the stew)

1 tablespoon cooking oil

Water (the amount of water will depend upon how long you simmer – 2 or 3 cups at least)

3 bay leaves

Peppercorns, to taste

½ cup beef broth

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Green olives (go crazy with the olives)

Recipe

Mince the onion and garlic.

Roughly chop the tomatoes.

Cube the potatoes into desired size (I like big chunks).

Saute the garlic and onion together until just about golden brown.

Dredge the slices of tongue in flour. I like to add salt and pepper to the flour for this step, but I doubt it does much of anything.

Add the dredged tongue to the pan and brown (about 2 minutes).

Add the tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, beef broth, cider vinegar, and enough water to cover.

Simmer on medium low heat for 1 to 1 ½ hours, or even longer (cooking it longer only really affects the potatoes negatively). Add water as needed.

Add the potatoes 30 minutes or so before you’d like to serve. For harder potatoes, add in later in the process.

To thicken up the stew, squish some chunks of potato against the side of the pot and stir.

A few minutes before serving, add in the olives. I love olives in stews (one of my favourite things about Filipino food!) so I add probably too many at this stage. Add however many you want.

This time, I cooked the mushrooms separately then added them afterwards and I liked the results. I left them whole and sautéed them in butter. You can put them in the stew directly when you add the potatoes if you like.

As you can see in this picture, I had hard-boiled eggs and fried potatoes left over from a previous meal, so I put them on the side. The double-potato situation was actually pretty good.

Lengua a la Vinegrata (Tongue with Vinegar)

Since I only used half of the tongue to make the stew, I had half left over, because one minus half is half. Tongue is a great thing to have left over, as there are quite a few unique dishes you can make with it. Since I had made a rich and hearty stew, I decided to go with a lighter dish with the rest of it: tongue with vinegar. The recipe I’ve used here is loosely related to a popular dish from the pampas of Uruguay and Argentina, though there are variants made all over the place (including, as it happens, the Philippines). You might very easily add chillies and cilantro to this recipe.

Ingredients

1 – 1 ½ pounds beef tongue (again, this should be about half a regular-sized tongue)

4-8 cloves of garlic

1 red onion

Small handful of parsley

½ cup of olive oil

½ of a smallish red bell pepper

¾ cup of white wine vinegar

2 hardboiled eggs

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

2 teaspoons sugar

Recipe

First, clean the tongue (as described above). In this case, 10 minutes of boiling won't be enough, since you won't be further cooking the tongue - so boil it for a good 2 hours or so. Now that that is out of the way, this recipe is super easy.

Finely chop the garlic, onion, parsley, and red bell pepper.

Roughly chop hardboiled eggs.

Add tongue, garlic, onion, parsley, red bell pepper, and chopped eggs to a metal bowl.

Season with salt and pepper.

Mix vinegar with sugar.

Add oil to vinegar, stir a few times.

Pour liquid mixture over other ingredients.

Cover and marinate for at least 24 hours. 48 hours is even better.

Serve cold. The tongue can be served with the marinade (my preference) or without. It is great with plain white rice or you can use it on sandwiches (with rye bread and an especially spicy mustard).

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