Darjeeling (41 page)
Authors: Jeff Koehler
Makes about one dozen
momos
, serves 2:
1 packed cup/100 g finely chopped green cabbage
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium-small carrot, grated
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ Tbsp minced fresh ginger
¼ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground coriander seeds
½ fresh red chili, diced
Salt
2 Tbsp vegetable or canola oil
¼ tsp turmeric powder
Broth for filling steamer, preferably beef bone or chicken, or water
12 to 14 dumpling or wonton wrappers
In a mixing bowl, add the cabbage, onion, carrot, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, and chili, and season with salt. Blend well.
In a large saucepan or wok, heat the oil over medium heat and add the vegetable mix and about 2 Tbsp water. Cook, stirring frequently, until the cabbage and onions have softened and the carrots turned a yellowish orange, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the turmeric powder. Return to the mixing bowl, and let cool. There should be about 1 cup/175 g.
Remove the rack(s) from the steamer. Fill the bottom of the steamer with at least 1½ inches/4 cm of broth. Cover with a lid and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and keep hot. Meanwhile, rub the steaming rack(s) with oil and set aside.
Fill a small bowl with water. Place a wrapper on the open palm of a hand, rub a touch of water around the top edges, then place a generous tablespoon or so of the mixture in the center. Fold into a semicircle, and working around the edges, pinch into pleats forming a slight crescent-shaped curl. Be sure the edges are well closed. Place on the steaming rack perpendicular to the edge with the pinched pleat facing upward.
Repeat with the remaining wrappers. Arrange the
momos
close but not touching in the steaming pan following the curl of the
momos
in a pinwheel formation.
Carefully place the rack(s) in the steamer, cover, and steam over high heat until tender to the touch, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve hot.
This favorite Darjeeling noodle dish is perfect for those cold, clammy evenings around the tea-covered hills.
The recipe make four generous, hearty bowls with plenty of warming broth. Serve with a spoonful of piquant chili oil (following recipe).
Salt
12 oz/360 g dried egg noodles
6 cups/1.6 L Light chicken, beef, or vegetable stock
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
Salt
1 medium carrot, grated
1 small turnip, peeled and grated
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
10 oz/300 g thinly sliced or ground beef or pork
Finely chopped, fresh coriander (cilantro) for garnishing
In a large pot bring 4 quarts/4 L water to a boil. Generously salt and then add the noodles. Boil until tender, 2 to 4 minutes, but follow the directions on the package. Drain and rinse with cold water to keep them from clumping together. Divide among 4 deep soup bowls.
Meanwhile, bring the stock to a simmer. Cover and keep very hot.
In a deep frying pan or wok, heat the oil over high heat. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and cook until they begin to turn transparent, about 5 minutes. Add the carrots and turnips and cook until they have softened and changed color, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, cook for about 1 minute until aromatic, while stirring continuously. Season the beef with salt and add, cook, stirring continuously until browned, 2 to 4 minutes. Stir in a spoonful or two of the simmering stock to moisten and remove from the heat.
Arrange the mixture on top of the noodles.
Ladle in the stock, adding it to the side of the bowls so that the meat stays in place on the top of the noodles. Generously garnish with the cilantro and serve immediately.
A spoonful of this piquant and deeply flavorful oil gives a stunning jolt to a bowl of
thukpa
(page 245). It also makes an excellent dip for
momos
(page 244). This recipe is adapted from a small, locally produced book by the Inner Wheel Club of Darjeeling, published nearly twenty-five years ago and sold exclusively at the Oxford Book & Stationery Co. on Darjeeling’s Chowrasta. With its deep-scarlet cloth cover glued over cardboard, faded gold letters, and landscape shape, it can be mistaken on the shelf for an album of antique panoramic photos of the Himalayas.
Makes about 1 cup/240 ml:
2 tsp minced, fresh ginger
5 or 6 spring onions (scallions), trimmed and minced (or chopped cilantro)
3 garlic cloves, minced, about 1½ tsp
1 Tbsp chili flakes or ground red, dried chilies
¼ tsp salt
1 scant cup/200 ml peanut oil
Place the ginger, onions, and garlic in a sturdy, heatproof bowl that can comfortably hold the ingredients and oil. Add the chili flakes and season with salt.
In a small saucepan, heat the oil to boiling, then carefully pour the oil over the ingredients. Stir and let cool.
To store, cover and refrigerate.
The firmest, and perhaps finest, piece of advice that Rajah Banerjee gave on a visit to Makaibari Tea Estate was to allow enough time in the Bagdogra Airport when flying back to Delhi to try the legendary chicken cutlets in the terminal restaurant owned by its employees and run as a cooperative.
“The great fault of Indian cooks in regard to cutlets is over- handling,” sternly warned the 1898 edition of
The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook
. “They beat, chop, and season the meat out of all distinctive taste. Now, a plain cutlet should simply be
cut
and trimmed, dipped in the yolks of eggs, bread-crumbed, and fried a light golden brown.”
7
Happily, cooks in the eastern Himalayas today rarely prepare
plain
chicken cutlets. Instead, as in the Bagdogra Airport restaurant, they rub the chicken with ginger, garlic, cilantro, and chilies before breading and frying. A delicious treat.
Serves 4:
4 boneless chicken breasts, about 1¾ lb/800 g
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1½-inch/4-cm piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 medium-small onion, finely chopped
½ to 1 small, green chili, minced
2 heaped Tbsp minced fresh cilantro (coriander leaves)
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper
2 large eggs
All-purpose flour for dusting
1 cup/140 g fine, dry bread crumbs
Sunflower, canola, or light olive oil for frying
Thinly slice the chicken on the flat into 3 or 4 pieces. If desired, gently pound with a meat tenderizer or mallet until flattened.
In a mortar, mash the garlic, ginger, and onion together into a paste. Blend in the chili and cilantro. Rub the paste over both sides of the chicken slices. Season with salt and white pepper.
In a wide bowl, whisk the egg. Place the flour in a bowl and the bread crumbs in another.
Generously coat the bottom of a large sauté pan or skillet with oil and heat over medium-high heat until the surface shimmers. Reduce the heat to medium.
Working in small batches that won’t crowd the pan nor bring down the temperature of the oil, lightly flour the cutlets, dip them in the egg mixture, then evenly coat with bread crumbs. Fry until golden brown on the outside and cooked through on the inside, 1 to 2 minutes per batch. Place on absorbent paper, and fry the remaining cutlets. Serve hot.
This is Sanjay Sharma’s divine take on deviled eggs with an Indian twist and a nod to those ancient teahouse eggs found in China. The results give the outside of the peeled eggs a lovely brown marbling and the filling a powerful combination of balanced flavors. The use of fresh mint here is less a reflection of the traditional Darjeeling kitchen than the influence of Sanjay’s mother. She loved mint’s flavor and added it to many of her dishes. With a large bed of it growing beside the
burra
bungalow on Glenburn, Sanjay followed suit.
Makes 12 egg halves:
6 large eggs, at room temperature
2 heaped Tbsp loose-leaf strong black tea or 3 or 4 tea bags of black tea
2 Tbsp minced onion
2 heaped Tbsp minced, fresh mint
½ to 1 small green chili, minced
¼ cup/60 ml mayonnaise, preferably Hellmann’s
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with at least 1 inch/2.5 cm water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium low, sprinkle in the tea leaves, and gently boil for 9 minutes. Remove from the heat.
Without discarding the liquid, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon, and using the back of a spoon, smack the shells to create webby veinings of cracks. Do not peel. Place in a large bowl.
Let the tea-infused water from boiling the eggs cool for a few minutes, then it pour over the eggs. Allow them to sit in the liquid until completely cooled, at least 1 to 2 hours. Turn the eggs from time to time for even marbling.
Gently peel. Slice in half lengthwise, carefully setting aside the whites. Place the yolks in a mixing bowl.
Add the onion, mint, chili, and mayonnaise to the bowl, season with salt and pepper, and blend with a fork.
Spoon a generous amount of filling into each of the egg halves and mound attractively with the inside curve of a spoon. Arrange on a platter.
This sorbet, loosely adapted from Anthony Wild’s
The East India Company Book of Tea
, is indulgent, even festive, and shows off one of Darjeeling tea’s many culinary possibilities. It can also be prepared in a sorbet or ice-cream maker. Instead of freezing and whisking with a fork as follows, pour the chilled tea mixture into the machine and churn, adding the whisked egg white toward the end of the freezing time.
Makes about 1 quart/1 liter:
3 Tbsp/10 g high-quality loose-leaf Darjeeling tea
¼ cup/50 g sugar
Juice of 1 ripe lemon, about 3 Tbsp
1 large egg white, at room temperature
Place the tea in a large, heatproof teapot. Bring 3 cups/700 ml freshly drawn water to a boil, remove from the heat, let cool for a moment, then pour over the tea. Let infuse for 5 minutes.
Pour the liquid through a fine sieve or muslin bag into a freezerproof mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar, then the lemon juice. Allow to cool.
Once the liquid has cooled completely, place in freezer and allow to freeze. Once the liquid begins to freeze, start frequently scraping the edges of the bowl with a fork or spoon and stirring.
Meanwhile, in a clean bowl, beat the egg white with a mixer over medium speed to soft peaks that are opaque and still moist.
When the liquid is nearly frozen, fold in the egg white and whisk with a fork. Keep in the freezer until ready to serve.
Serve in chilled sorbet glasses.
Store, tightly covered, in the freezer and use within 1 week.
Upon finishing university in the early 1990s, I flew to London and attempted to travel overland to Cape Town. I didn't make it, and that planned year on the road morphed into four of backpacking around Africa and Asia before I settled down in London to do graduate work. In a litany of exotic places, I discovered the disparate world of tea, learned that it was far more than just a hot drink, and that, in the diverse manners of its preparation and service, it played an integral part in the daily life of many cultures. Perhaps more than anything else those years, I was sustained by numerous daily cups of teaâgenerally milky, always sweet, often spiced.
I had been on the road for a couple of years when I traveled to Darjeeling and tasted
tea
itself for the first time: pure and fresh, no sugar, no milk, no lemon, no cardamom or ginger, no black pepper. It was winter, and that week, huddled near an ineffective coal fire in my room at the Planters' Club, a pot of autumn flush under a knitted tea cozy with fraying threads on a side table, tea warmed me after lengthy strolls around the surrounding tea-covered hillsides (glimpsing, briefly but memorably, Kanchenjunga). The liquor seemed just as bright and fresh as the mountain air.
While over the years I have visited many of the world's tea-producing areas, none managed to seduce or intrigue me like Darjeelingâthe tea itself, the hills, the industry's history, a garden's archaic structure, the warmth of the people. I long wondered exactly how and why the tea grown here is, simply, the finest, and why it could not be replicated elsewhere.
To find out, it took closely following an entire harvesting year and spending time on Darjeeling's gardens during each of the year's four flushes, from the opening first flush in March to the end of the autumn one in November, watching the tea change with the seasonsâand
tasting
those changes in the cup.
While the book is supported by broad reading and research, the secrets of Darjeeling's uniqueness were ultimately revealed by hanging out with industry experts in Kolkata and Delhi and, most important, with tea planters, supervisors, pluckers, and tea-factory workers on sixteen Darjeeling estates (and as an anonymous interloper on many others). Accompanying them in the fields among bushes they know intimately, checking tea fermenting on long beds, and joining the ritual of daily batch tastings, I came to appreciate the handicraft nature of Darjeeling tea. But I also learned of the deep and urgent challenges the storied industry is battling.
In researching this book in India I relied heavily on the generosity of others, quite often strangers. I was treated with surprising openness in the secluded, generally private, and often secretive world of Darjeeling tea, welcomed with
chaat
and biscuits,
momos
, and full lunches, as countless people generously shared their experience and knowledge. And, of course, tea. There were many hundreds of cups of tea not only in tasting rooms but also to leisurely drink on the verandahs of managers' bungalows. Afterward, I was inevitably sent on my way with bulging foil packets of tea leaves from the day's choicest batch, just fired and barely yet cooled, to sustain me between visits.
