Corinna Hardgravegets an informal cookery lesson from Suman Varadaraj, an Indian woman living in Ireland, whose culinary knowledge would make Madhur Jaffrey sit up and take notice
Manohar Shorey is Indian-born but has been living in Dublin since 1972. A former diplomat, he worked in the Indian Embassy in Dublin when the India Club was being established and, now club president, he estimates that there are between 3,000 and 4,000 Indian people living in Ireland.
"They're mostly IT professionals, doctors and pharmacists," he says. "There are about 100 of us 'oldies', but Mary Harney's invitation to professionals from outside the EU to come and work in Ireland has meant that the number has grown significantly over the past four to five years. The India Club brings many of these people together.
Suman Varadaraj is a member of the club, and an enthusiastic home-cook. "When I first came to Ireland 10 years ago, I was living in Limerick, where my husband Raj was a surgeon in Limerick Regional Hospital," she tells me. "Every time family members came to visit, I had a list of ingredients for them to bring over. But now, I can get just about everything I need here."
Varadaraj brings me to Razq, her compact local food shop in Lucan village, opened by Pakistani Mohammed Ajmal less than a year ago. Its shelves are packed with aromatic spices, herbs, exotic vegetables and rice. There is a halal meat counter at the back, and hard-to-find semolina flour. "It's very fine," Varadaraj comments. "We use many different types of flours. For chapattis, we use atta flour, which is a very finely ground whole wheat flour." She points to a bag of black salt and explains that it is lavender-pink when it is ground, has a slight sulphuric taste and is very good on top of fruits like mango or melon. "We often put salt on fruit," she explains, "and a bit of chilli powder is particularly good on mango."
The Indian cooking lesson starts in her house. Varadaraj has a cooking knowledge that would make Madhur Jaffrey sit up and take notice.
"I'm going to cook something you wouldn't get in a restaurant," she beams as she places a karahi - a pot similar to a wok - on the stove. "Do you know about tadka?" she asks as she drops cumin seeds and chopped curry leaves into the hot oil in the karahi. "It brings out the flavour, but in a different way from roasting."
She adds the spices to a pot with butternut squash, carrots, green beans, green chillies, cashew nuts and coconut milk. She also prepares a mango curry using a tadka made from mustard seeds, curry leaves, and split lentils to add nuttiness. Two dried chillies are added, then some turmeric, salt and sugar.
It is a dish from Mangalore, where Varadaraj was born, and is typical of the cooking in southern India. "The food is hotter in the south than the north. In the north, they use tomatoes and amchur (dried mango powder) to add sourness, while tamarind is the preferred agent in the south. We're on that hotter belt that stretches across to Thailand, so we use a lot of coconut, and there are similar influences."
Out comes a sabre-shaped knife, and Varadaraj uses it to whack a coconut, which breaks in half. She sets up an elaborate coconut grater on the floor, steadies it with the weight of one foot, and starts to turn the coconut against the blade. "Traditionally, this was used to test the cooking skills of prospective wives," she says as the coconut pares off. "It is important to grate the coconut evenly. The moist top layer is used where raw coconut is desired, as in salads, chutneys and garnishes; the bottom layer is reserved for cooked sauces."
A traditional dhal with split lentils simmers on the stove, and she deep-fries thin slices of sweet potato dusted with salt, chill, cornflour and semolina flour. Varadaraj puts on rice to cook, and then makes chapattis, which are more typical of the north, but will be great with the salad. Again, she gets down on the floor, using her own weight to knead the dough, which is left to rest before being griddled on a pan and placed for a few seconds on the naked flame to puff up.
We look through her enormous cookbook collection, and discuss vegetarian food and Hinduism, before sitting down to eat, using just our hands and a spoon, in the traditional Indian manner.
TASTE OF INDIA: CARROT KOSUMBARI
2 carrots
2 tbsp grated coconut (available in freezer section of Indian
food shops, not the same as desiccated coconut)
½ red onion, chopped finely
2 tbsp chopped coriander
2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 or 5 curry leaves, chopped
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 dried red chilli, crushed.
½ lemon
Salt to taste
Wash the carrots and grate them finely. Combine the carrot, coconut, onion and coriander in a shallow dish. Season with salt. Heat the oil in a small pot, add the mustard seeds and wait about 30 seconds until they crack. Add the curry leaves, followed by the chilli. Wait until it changes colour slightly. Pour the tadka (hot oil mixture) over the salad, squeeze a little lemon juice on top, season and serve.