Sumayya Usmani
Summers Under The Tamarind Tree
I picked up Sumayya Usmani’s cook book ‘Summers Under The Tamarind Tree’, this week. She’s our next guest chef and is coming to Bread and Flowers HQ to cook for 50 lucky people at the end of May, so I was keen to get my eye in on Pakistani food, cook something from its pages and share the results with some well-chosen friends.
I chose the Sindhi Karri on page 141, a simple enough sounding dish, but with lots of places in the proceedings where you can veer off-piste if you like and add your own take on the dish. I’d been in London a few days earlier, catching up with friends from Goa, when the dish ‘Karri’ was extolled by Tobit Roche, an artist friend who’s spent decades on the sub-continent, is a brilliant cook and knows a thing or two about the food there.
Back to the recipe, I think it’s what the phrase OMG was made for. I was lucky enough to have an empty, quiet kitchen, so I could really focus on the detail of its simplicity and relish the joys of using new ingredients, or old ingredients in a new way. I’m certainly now a convert to turmeric, which along with fresh ginger, seems to be ‘on message’ for the health conscious these days.
A simple dish with extravagant flavours, deep, rich tertiary colours, the textures of cumin and yellow, popped poppy seeds, crunchy, golden garlic shards, warming hints of chilli, hugging a cluster of boiled eggs (I added quail eggs, but pheasant would work too), with glistening dark green curry leaves and a scatter of coriander to finish it off.
My two lunch guests destroyed two helpings each, ordered the book on line immediately and went back to work, faces beaming with joy. They are friends I’ve know for nearly 50 years and cooked competitively against in an amateur way all my life, so I was pretty chuffed at the praise heaped upon me. I in turn would like to heap praise on Sumayya for introducing me to such a wonderful culinary, sensory experience. We’re so looking forward to cooking with her in person in May.
SINDHI KARRI
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes | Serves 6–8
INGREDIENTS:
• 340g/14oz/1¾ cups whole plain yogurt
• 1 litre/1¾ pints/4 cups cool water
• salt
• ½ tsp red chilli powder
• 1 heaped tsp ground turmeric
• ½ heaped tsp each of grated ginger and garlic purée
• 1 tbsp semolina
• 1 tbsp chickpea flour
• 50ml/2 fl oz/scant ¼ cup sunflower oil
• ½ tsp fenugreek seeds
• 50g/1¾ oz/scant ½ cup peas
• 100g/3½ oz carrot batons
• 1 Maris Piper potato, peeled and cut into batons
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, fried in oil and browned
separately
• 1 tbsp chopped coriander (cilantro)
• leaves, to garnish
FOR THE BHAGAR (TEMPERING)
• 50ml/2 fl oz/scant ¼ cup sunflower oil
• 1 garlic clove, thinly-sliced
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 4 long dried red chillies
• 5-6 fresh curry leaves
METHOD:
Put the yogurt into a large bowl with the cool
water and whisk until combined to create a thin
‘lassi’. Add salt, then add the red chilli powder,
turmeric, ginger, garlic, semolina and chickpea
flour and whisk until combined. Strain this mixture
through a sieve.
Heat the sunflower oil in a saucepan with a lid
over a medium heat. When hot, add a few fenugreek
seeds and allow to splutter. Take them out with a
slotted spoon once the oil is fragrant
Pour the strained yellow yogurt into the oil and
cook over a very low heat, stirring occasionally.
Increase the heat slightly to medium low and cook
gently for 25 to 30 minutes or until the karri is thick
and fragrant. Meanwhile, par-boil the vegetables
and prepare the eggs.
Once the vegetables are cooked, the karri is ready
to bhagar (temper). Add the eggs to the karri before
tempering. To temper, heat the remaining oil in a
small frying pan over a medium heat. When hot,
add the garlic and fry for 30 seconds, or until light
brown. Add the mustard seeds, cumin and dried red
chilli and lastly the curry leaves. Quickly pour this
on top of the karri, then cover the pan with the lid
for a few minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves.