Skip to main content

Following the Book: Bambalay curry and inspirations thereof!


As puerile as it sounds, the recipe for Bambalay curry caught my attention  purely on the basis of the phonetic sound of it, the inner loop voice in my head kept going 'Bambalay bambalay, bambalay...' (reminded me of the song by the Gipsy kings 'Bamboleo')




until I gave in (& gave up) & bought home some cans of bamboo shoots. I'd already got a pack of the exotic ingredient required, 'Kudampuli'.


So what on earth is Kudampuli? That was the question I was asking myself when I came across the ingredient in Raghavan Iyer's book 660 curries. A part of me was a trifle indignant & miffed at not knowing what it was, especially since it figures in dishes from Southern India. Its known as 'Gambooge', from the same family as Mangosteen fruits and is native to Indonesia. In the dried form, they're nothing to look at, resembling dried black bits of Candian Geese poop! Taste wise, they're tart with an astringent tannic mouth feel, but what really sets this ingredient as a prize catch is the smoky aroma that emanates from the dried fruit. Its perfect for summer dishes with its deep earthy smokiness.

Its used in a manner similar to tamarind pods, soaked in warm water and squeezing out the smoky liquid extract. The recipe presented in 660  curries was a smoky tart 'make you sit up & take notice' bamboo shoot curry from the Coorg region of South India.


The internal structure of bamboo shoot is unbelievably beautiful, the minute you cut it longitudinally, Just take a look at the picture above, Need I say more?

I stuck to the original recipe the first time I made this curry last week, but it definitely opened up a floodgate of inspiration for other adaptations. My supper tonight was a curry made with hearts of palm served over fusilli shaped Brown Rice Pasta (yep, Whole Foods carries them & they're delicious!), with grilled mushrooms, a gluten free treat.




Canned hearts of palm is a product that is easily available in most grocery stores. The whole types are soft & tender and lend themselves beautifully to salads. The cut variety often contains thicker, more mature coins that work perfectly for this curry.






Heart of Palm Curry with grilled portobello mushrooms over Rice pasta (serves 4)


(Recipe for Bambalay curry adapted from the book 660 curries by Raghavan Iyer. )

You need: 

  • 1 whole Kudampuli or 1/2 teaspoon Tamarind concentrate + 1 drop of liquid smoke (should be available in the same aisle that carries extracts & flavors in the grocery store)
  •  1 cup boiling water
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
  • 2-3 dried Arbol chiles broken in two
  • 1 sprig curry leaves, torn into small bits
  • 2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
  • 2 cans Bamboo shoots or cut hearts of palm (or 1 can of each). If using hearts of palm, cut  down on the amount of salt since these are packed in brine.
  •  Salt to taste
  • 1 tablespoon rice flour mixed in about 1/4 cup water
  • finely chopped cilantro for garnish
Soak the kudampuli in the boiling water for about 15 minutes. Squeeze out the fruit to obtain  the smoky tart extract.
Drain the  water from the hearts of Palm &/or bamboo shoots and cut into small bite sized pieces. Set aside.
 Heat the oil in a skillet and add the mustard seeds. When it pops, add the fenugreek and arbol chile pieces. Once the fenugreek seeds & chile turn a deep reddish brown, add the garlic & curry leaves and allow the garlic to turn golden brown.

 Add the shoots, kudampuli/tamarind extract and adjust for salt. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer, allowing the flavors to get absorbed by the shoots.

Give a quick stir to the rice flour liquid and add this to the curry, taking care to keep stirring (this ensures that the rice mixture does not coagulate into little lumps).

Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve the curry with the pasta (as described below), or simply over Basmati rice, or paired with deep fried Poori.


To finish the Pasta dish:
  • 2 cups dry Brown rice pasta spirals ( cook as per instructions on the package)
  • 4 caps portobello mushrooms, gills scraped off
  • Olive oil for brushing
  • Cracked peppercorn

Brush the caps of the mushroom liberally with olive oil and sprinkle with the pepper. Heat a grill pan to high  and place the mushroom over the pan, top facing down. Allow to grill for about 5 mins on high. (the underside of the mushroom will begin releasing the juices on the concave surface). Turn the caps over and cook the other side for another 5 minutes. Remove to a cutting board using a pair of tongs, and cut into slices.

To serve, ladle the curry over the pasta, garnish with cilantro & place the grilled mushrooms over on top.




Bon appetit!













Comments

  1. That is a lovely dish... I have never used so many ingredients mentioned in this recipe for the simple fact I didnt know they would work..
    Loved it...
    Reva

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow!!! I was attracted to reading this recipe for the same phonetic reason. Love your bold move. I need to muster more courage to buy ingredients like Kudampali and hearts of palm. For now I'll stick with tamarind and bamboo shoots, I'll let you know how it turned out. The pictures are very tempting and prompting me to try. Love it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jayanti.. I was kinda feeling sheepish admitting this, but heck, that was what it was!

      Delete
  3. Please collect the award awaiting you at Square Meals :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear feedback from you, your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Popular posts from this blog

Sputtering back....

I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

 One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things  culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30  minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their

Pickling & preserving the Buddha's Hand!

 Got your attention with that sacrilegious sounding title on this post, didn't I? Well, I'm as spiritual as the next person out there, and never in my life will I ever commit that variety of Blasphemy, so nothing to fret about. I still wonder why these curious looking citrus entities (other than the obvious visual reason) were called such. It turns out that these fruits are used as a religious offering to the Buddha. My neighboring Whole Foods Market (which is quite some distance away, in Princeton) had a stock of these weird looking citrus and I must have been the oddball customer who immediately went cuckoo on spotting them. Since I had never seen one before, I immediately went for the biggest fruit with the most tentacles (since they were sold as individual units rather than by weight) The first three 'tentacles' were peeled off for their zest, dried in the oven and went into making a citrus salt for my Food52 Secret Santa .     Making