For nearly three months,
I travelled all over India, tasting curries,
watching cooks in restaurants and trying to find out their secrets.
And talking to so many people about what makes the perfect curry.
It was a great gastronomic adventure, probably the best one I've ever had.
This is my quest to understand Indian food in all its complexities -
how the food of the Persians, with their love of robust meat dishes,
is overlaid with the traditional vegetarian food of the Indians.
It was also about the Indian respect for, and a sense of comfort from, home cooking.
I wanted to travel everywhere for dishes deeply flavoured with chilli and spice -
a delight to the eye in their rich colours -
and to understand this fascinating country.
CAR HORN HONKS Because when Indians talk of food, they talk of their life.
First-class curry, Ricky!
That's a mind-blasting curry, Ricky!
Madurai, one of the oldest cities in South Asia.
It's been an important trading place for Europe for over 2,000 years.
This Tamil poem, written in the 2nd century AD, could also apply today.
"Madurai is a city gay with flags waving over homes and shops
"selling food and drinks.
"The streets are broad rivers of people.
"Folk of every race buying and selling in the bazaars.
"Around the temple, amid the perfume of ghee and incense,
"are stores selling sweet cakes, garlands of flowers,
"scented powder and betel paan."
CAR HORN HONKS Those are the folded-up leaves that you chew
that can make you high as a kite.
As you can see, Madurai is a delightfully colourful and busy city -
lots of markets. Look at these beautiful flowers.
These are all for religious ceremonial use,
but I always think this
adds so much to just an ordinary fruit and veg market,
when people are buying flowers for religious purposes as well.
It's a very busy city, and amazingly, 2,000 years ago, it was equally busy,
and the Greeks and the Romans used to come here for the spices.
Particularly the pepper.
Indeed, there's an account at the time
that the Romans were increasingly worried about the drain of silver
from Rome to here, to Madurai, paying for those spices.
But I just picked up a little piece of information
from an anonymous Greek, writing at the time,
about what the Romans might have traded for those spices in addition to silver.
And it says, "Madurai was rewarded for its spices
"with Mediterranean eye shadow, perfume,
"gold and silverware, fine Italian wines
"and beautiful slave-girl musicians who doubled up as concubines."
Looking across the Madurai skyline,
I can see why the state of Tamil Nadu is known as the Land of Temples.
These towers belong to the Meenakshi Temple -
solid granite structures
decorated with colourful characters from the Hindu divine texts.
Around 15,000 visitors come here every day to pray and be blessed and also to eat.
And it's the eating part that interests me.
It's embedded in the Hindu religion.
And Sala, who grew up here, is my guide
to explain what these chefs are cooking for lunch.
Smells lovely, doesn't it?
Smells lovely. They're still using wood fires, I can smell that.
I know, and these huge pots. What's this, then?
So this is tamarind rice. It's really easy to make.
It's cooked rice and they toss it with a sauce that's made of tamarind and cumin
and it's tempered with... You can see the little pieces of lentils.
Oh, yeah. It gives a bit of crunch. Yeah.
And you just eat it on its own or sometimes with a mint chutney.
And this is called appam.
Oh, appams! Appam, yeah.
It's sort of like a pancake, deep-fried. It's a sweet one -
it's flour, sugar and it has a little bit of cardamom in it.
And it's a very typical temple offering.
These are vadas. Vadas. Oh.
Yeah, so you see the batter for the vadas here.
These are black lentils... Yeah.
..that are soaked and ground
and they skin half of them and they leave the skin on the other half.
Hence the black speckles in them.
So you can see he's using a piece of plastic or, like, clingfilm
and some people will use a banana leaf to do the exact same thing.
Modern technology.
The food is blessed by the god
and then it's sold to the people that come to the temple
and they buy it to take home, and it's blessed food.
That is so good.
I mean, I was just thinking about cathedrals back in Britain. Mm-hm.
The idea of going into a cathedral and buying some food made there,
to help the funds, to preserve the cathedral.
Exactly. And it's also... It's something special and something delicious
that you take back from your trip to the temple.
What a souvenir!
Getting the right balance is crucial to all things spiritual,
and food, I'm beginning to understand, plays a large part in that.
Preparations in the kitchens here start shortly after daybreak.
Sala, it's really amazing to me
how important food, cooking, eating food is to temple life.
Absolutely. Even all the rituals that they do for the gods at the temple
is everyday life, you know?
Bathing, eating, going to sleep -
each one of these is a ritual for the god of the temple.
And I'm looking at a saying that's written over the dining hall, right there,
that says, "Before you go in search of god, go in search of food."
That is very profound to me, because...
I think, before you do anything else in life, you have to feed yourself.
Then you can start thinking about spiritual matters.
The body is the temple. Your body is a temple.
Just, I mean, it seems very important to them, eating in the temple.
Is that the case?
Right, I mean, they've queued up ahead of time to eat at the temple.
This is their first time... eating here. Oh, really?
They feel very fortunate that they're here
and have the opportunity to eat at the temple.
So it's more than just because they're hungry,
it's the ritual, the celebration of food in the temple?
Yeah, it's more the sentiment behind eating at the temple
and not just the food itself.
The temple's public dining room only holds about 200 people,
so it's important to get there early.
Lunch is usually served just after midday
and hungry worshippers flood the dining hall
to enjoy the dishes that have been prepared by the chefs
and served by the many volunteers who help out on a daily basis.
These are the unlucky few that got there a bit too late.
Everything about to be served is carefully thought out
and always considered sacred.
Around four to five varied dishes -
always vegetarian and heavily dependent on rice -
are traditionally served on banana leaves.
Plain white rice and rice sweetened with jaggery -
that's unrefined sugar - are common to all temples.
But here they also like serving poriyal -
potatoes and cabbage fried with a handful of coconut.
We couldn't end the day without tasting one of Sala's most favourite snacks,
the famous South India dosas -
giant, crispy pancakes, cooked paper-thin on hotplates,
drizzled with ghee to give it a golden glow
and served with a variety of chutneys.
Such is the love of this snack that it's become a street food favourite
all over Northern India, too.
Wow!
Oh, these are nice and crispy.
This must be the sort of food you dream of
when you're in the States, in Portland?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is what reminds me of home,
and when I arrive back home, this is the first thing that I eat.
You know, I grew up with this.
We had dosas with sambar or a good chutney
almost every morning for breakfast or in the evening for dinner.
So it's very special. It's so good.
The South of India is famous for its dosas,
because this is the rice growing region, so we have a lot of rice-based dishes
and, you know, this is one of them.
Well, it's not exactly fish and chips,
but I certainly know where you're coming from!
Not far from the temple is The Modern Restaurant.
I feel there could be a little touch of Indian irony there.
Anyway, they purely serve vegetable dishes with lots of rice
on these banana leaves, which they call sadya.
There'll always be three to four different curries
made from lentils, chick peas, spinach and potatoes.
But the most popular is sambar, a spicy, rich vegetable stew.
The main word in this particular recipe is "lots" -
that's lots of tomatoes,
ditto with the turmeric...
..shedloads of salt...
..huge fistfuls of jaggery...
..and then tamarind water for freshness and acidity.
Finally, asafoetida - very popular in India,
especially in places where garlic is frowned upon.
He's put two lots of asafoetida powder in here,
first in the original masala and now this powder now.
Now, they're Brahmins and they do not eat garlic ever,
and I think asafoetida powder is the sort of closest thing to it.
They say, when it's cooked, it tastes and smells really earthy,
but when you smell it in the packet, it does...
It is slightly reminiscent of garlic.
And, of course, it stops... There's lots of lentils in here
and we all know what lentils do to us,
and asafoetida stops... What do you call it?
Well, wind, I suppose.
Bit hot, isn't it? Can I try a bit?
Hot. All right.
OK, only salt and the tomato juice.
Oh, it's good! Good.
Yeah, really good.
And it's already got chilli and the masala...
Just got the masala. After, is the masala.
Really nice. Great.
Now, what they call a tarka -
it's always added at the end to enhance the flavour,
and in this case, it's made with fenugreek and coriander seeds, lentils,
then curry leaves and dried Kashmiri chillies.
Now that's poured into the vegetables, as I said, right at the end,
and it really lifts the flavour.
In keeping with tradition,
the food is always served in a certain order.
It's auspicious to place the sweet elements on first,
followed by carbohydrates, which, in the South, has to be rice.
Then proteins in the form of dhals
and, finally, nutritious vegetables, and then curd.
This is the only thing they serve here but everybody loves it.
Everybody has the same thing.
I imagine probably half of India eats like this, all vegetarian.
And, certainly in Southern India, everybody eats off a banana leaf.
It's the most perfect vehicle for eating off,
because when you've finished, you just fold the banana leaf up
with anything that's left and throw it away.
But you don't throw it away into the garbage -
you throw it away for the cows.
I'm getting very much more used to eating with my hands.
I still find it very difficult,
because one's unfamiliar with eating with one hand
and it's very difficult to stop from getting extremely covered,
not only all over my hands but all over my shirt and trousers.
The technique, apparently, is not to get the rice too wet
and definitely you sort of roll it round a bit like this.
Then you use your thumb to sort of fire it into your mouth.
And I'm beginning to get it.
And, I think, as you begin to get it...
you begin to enjoy it.
A thought comes into my head -
it's a bit like eating jellied eels.
Most people don't like jellied eels cos they don't like the bones.
Once you get used to it, you think... "Piece of cake."
So, to cook.
And, I wonder, has there ever been a better location
for a television chef to cook his heart out,
surrounded by lovely birds and animals on the edge of this beautiful lagoon?
Well, this is just the most famous dish, I would suggest,
in the whole of Southern India.
It's called sambar and it's a celebration of vegetable markets everywhere.
It reminds me of walking down a long street quite near the temple,
just with one side, loads and loads of vegetable shops -
some large, some small
and some just with a woman with a couple of vegetables in from the country -
and just marvelling at the variety.
And, of course, you've got to have a dish that uses all those vegetables,
and sambar it is.
And here's the vegetables.
Just a selection that we got from the market this morning.
We've some okra there, carrots. We've got some pumpkin.
We've got some tomato, chillies.
You name it, it's there and I'm just going to add this to the boiling water here.
Oh, I've just heard that tip-tap-tip.
I've forgotten one really important ingredient
that goes into every sambar - that's mung dhal,
those tiny, little dhal, which actually cook so quickly
that they will soften just as quick as the other vegetables cook.
I've used green mung, but over here they prefer to use yellow.
Now a teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of sugar.
Well, I'm just going to leave that to boil and simmer away
and now I'm going to make a masala to pour into this.
So, into some oil, I add a teaspoon of chana dhal,
some fenugreek and coriander seeds
and three to four vibrant Kashmiri chillies,
a good handful of curry leaves and the obligatory asafoetida.
Now comes the fun bit and the thing I look forward to the most -
turning the fried masala into a smooth paste
using my trusty first-class wet spice grinder.
Just make sure that the lid of your liquidiser is securely on,
otherwise hot oil could go over your shirt and your face,
or in my case, WILL go over your shirt and your face!
"Mental note," I was thinking,
"in the final recipe,
"let the masala ingredients cool before blending!"
There we go.
So now what I'm going to do is make a tarka.
Now, a tarka is what you stir into quite a few dhals right at the end.
And it's normally things like really quite hard-fried onions,
mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds,
but if you stir that into something like this sambar or a dhal at the last minute,
it just gives it a real sort of flavour lift.
It's called a tarka, hence tarka dhal.
Before serving, add a final handful of curry leaves
and enjoy with a plateful of idlis and some coconut and tomato chutneys.
It's really nice.
Now for a relatively short road trip to the coconut heaven which is Kerala.
This is a lovely opportunity to drive through the beautiful, spice-laden hills
that form the border between Tamil Nadu and the holiday destination of Kerala.
These famous hills are known as the Western Ghats -
mile after mile of fertile plantations producing a fantastic array of spices
like vanilla and cinnamon.
We're travelling west, heading for the town of Thekkady.
Look at all these shops selling spices - cheek-by-jowl.
I'm reminded of when I first came to the Costa Brava in the '60s,
when practically every shop sold the same thing - straw donkeys and sombreros!
Well, here it's hot and tasty spices all the way.
We've just driven through Thekkady a few miles back.
I was just astonished by the number of spice shops.
There must have been 20, 30, 40, all next to each other
and all in the high street.
Well, that's not for the locals, that's for sure, it's for tourists
and I think it's testimony to how important food has become in tourism.
I mean, you come to Kerala, as somebody from Europe now,
and you don't just go for the beaches,
you go for the trip into the hills and the spices.
Well, Kerala's known to have the best cardamoms and pepper in the world,
but I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't true
for such things as cloves and cinnamon, too.
The Keralan Highlands are so fertile that practically anything grows,
a fact that the British cottoned on to
when they planted millions of tea bushes here.
They remind me of a sea of jade -
a series of great rolling waves of deep green -
or even a giant, well-manicured Hampton Court maze,
stretching for ever over the hills.
Just outside Thekkady is a plantation growing cardamoms and pepper.
Do you know, I've been a chef for over 30 years
and I didn't have a clue - until now, that is - how cardamoms grew.
There's something so tantalising and special about them,
a sweet scent that transforms all curries.
Well, I was sort of wondering, when I came here this afternoon in the minibus,
I was sort of thinking, "I wonder what a cardamom is?
"It must be like a sort of tea bush,
"probably hanging from under the leaves."
Not a bit of it.
These are cardamom... Well, you can't call them bushes.
They're rhizomes, they're like a ginger or galangal or turmeric
and the cardamom pods actually grow right down near the ground,
and the flowers pollinate, they have bees to pollinate them,
and then they have these little green pods.
Now, tasting them, I suddenly see, yes, of course, they're rhizomes.
They taste to me a bit like galangal more than ginger,
but they've got that distinctive taste.
But, of course, when they're dried, it becomes much more subtle.
No wonder they call them the queen of spices.
I mean, it's wildly sort of...
It almost sort of teases you out of thought.
Sometimes, you sort of think, "Gosh, they're too much, it's too perfumed."
And other times, you think, "That's just what I need."
I mean, like in a cup of chai, I mean, you've got to have cardamom
or in some of those sweets, those lovely sweets with vermicelli in them
and lots of cooked milk and, like... Payasam, I think it's called.
Just a tiny bit of cardamom.
It's subtle and it's absolutely the centre of where it's all at.
Well, if cardamom is the queen of spices,
then pepper is certainly the king.
It's what started the Portuguese quest to the East,
beginning the spice route as we know it.
Today, these little corns are said to outsell all other spices put together.
And these hills provide a perfect growing environment -
lengthy monsoon rains, high temperatures and good shade.
I mean, look at that.
It's not a pepper tree, there's no such thing as a pepper tree.
It's a vine.
Most of the heat in Indian cooking comes from chillies now, of course,
but there is nothing to beat pepper.
Particularly in the cooking of Southern India,
pepper really matters - it really is the king of spices.
And thinking about it, that trade -
you know, boats coming from Europe to India and back again -
it would have been worth, in today's values, billions.
I had the chance to taste a local dish
using the freshly-harvested spices from the plantation.
Matthew, the owner, is cooking me a pork curry
flavoured with spices virtually growing outside the kitchen door.
Matthew, like so many people in these highlands, is a Syrian Christian.
They came across the Arabian Sea in the 3rd century
and realised that the land here was perfect for growing spices.
So here we are then, the spices -
mustard, cumin, cloves, crushed cinnamon
and, of course, a couple of cardamom pods.
Matthew's already fried the pork with some shallots,
garlic cloves, green chillies and sliced ginger.
Tell me about cardamoms, why they're so important in Indian...
You know, it's one of those spices which, when used sparingly,
is just fantastic. It's just very subtle and nice.
But, the moment you add a little extra, it can get very overpowering.
So...traditionally in Indian home cooking,
you add just maybe one or two pods, that's about it.
Before serving he brings the curry to a simmer with water
and finishes off by adding some tamarind and crushed coriander seeds.
This recipe is from his grandmother,
who Matthew says is the best cook he's ever known.
They all say that, don't they?
Simply because she created delicious dishes out of very few ingredients.
Well, looking forward to this.
It's totally delicious.
What I really like about it is it's very...
It's sort of simple, it's very sort of...
It's got...it's sort of vigorous, it's fresh-tasting.
Pretty much what I liked about this dish is just the freshness of it, you know?
It's just, it's not what we would call masala-fied,
as most Indian restaurant food is -
it's typically what Indian home cooking is all about.
Dancing food, you know? It just dances on the plate.
I'm getting a bit carried away, but that's the way I feel.
Seeing all these cardamoms gave me an idea for what is probably South India's
most popular dessert - payasam.
It's a very simple dessert. And actually, after many,
many sticky Indian desserts, I found this a total delight.
First of all you've got to reduce a lot of milk down to a very little.
And while that's happening, in another pan, add a teaspoon or so of ghee.
You need this to fry off some rice vermicelli,
which forms the starch base of this dessert.
Cashew and pistachio nuts and a handful of raisins are also fried in ghee
to garnish the finished dish.
Once the milk is boiled,
simply add the fried vermicelli and a good amount of sugar.
But the main point of this dish is the cardamom.
Use green cardamoms, never black.
Black cardamoms will give it a smoky flavour.
Well, one of the things that I really like to do, filming here in India,
and collecting recipes, is to find things that I actually want to cook at home.
And this is one of them. It is a lovely, lovely sweet.
Just a little bit of ice cold cream,
beautifully flavoured with cardamom.
Yum!
Popular holiday destinations mark out, I think, great chunks of social history.
Package deals to Spain, villas in Tuscany, gites in the Perigord, and now,
I think, this is probably the latest, rice barges with all mod cons in Kerala.
Cruising through palm-fringed backwaters with full air conditioning,
your very own cook, sun deck and balcony.
They once brought rice from the paddies inland.
Who'd have thought, what a leap in imagination, they'd be taking
honeymoon couples on the holiday of a lifetime?
I suppose this is what Kerala's all about. Going in a boat
up and down the backwaters.
It's a bit like the exotic version of the Norfolk Broads, I was thinking.
You know, you've got these sort of wide rivers going into big lakes.
But looking around, it just sums up Kerala to me,
because, I know I use this word a bit too often, fecundity,
but, it is so fertile.
And the water is teeming with fish, with shrimps, with prawns, with crabs,
with clams. You name it.
And fringing the water, you've got coconuts.
Beyond that, the rice paddies.
And what I've eaten so far in Kerala,
it's just simple food that takes advantage of all these local ingredients.
Not just the fresh vegetables and seafood and fish,
but also the spices from the Ghat Mountains further east.
Those lovely cardamom, cinnamon, coriander,
all those wonderful spices which are supposed to be the best in all of India.
I can watch fishermen all day long.
It's timeless, basic and magical.
This guy's catching the most popular fish here, it's called karimeen.
And lots of little cafes along the backwaters serve it with masala.
Well, we just stopped off for a coffee from filming them catching karimeen,
the famous fish of the Keralan backwaters,
and they just said, "Would you like something to eat?"
So, I just had a look at this.
I mean, it's such a lovely advertisement menu.
So, I said, "Can we have some karimeen fry, please?"
So, I'm really looking forward to that.
They said, "Would you like some prawns too?" So, these are the prawns.
I mean... Call that...
I mean, this is a Bobby Dazzler of a prawn!
So, I said to them, "Is there any chance we can film them?" Because, you know,
it would be so good to be out there watching them come.
And they said, "Well, they only do them at night."
Well, we can't film that, because you wouldn't be able to see 'em.
So, we said, "Well, do you fancy cooking some for us as well?"
So, we're going to have them fried!
I was a bit peckish, so they ended up making two dishes for me,
starting with these giant prawns
that were fried with onions, tomatoes and curry leaves.
When the prawns have taken on colour, he puts in freshly ground garam masala,
ground cumin, turmeric and more curry leaves.
I think this is a prawn curry by which other prawn curries may be measured.
What they're doing now is cooking the karimeen fry.
That's the one that's just coated in the masala with cornflour,
and in the masala we've got garlic, ginger, chilli,
ground pepper, cumin, turmeric,
cornflour and lemon juice.
You won't be able to get the karimeen at home,
but it would work really well with bass or bream and, of course,
what's really important, it's got to be fried in coconut oil.
The guy helping us out here on the backwaters is Floyd. No, not that one!
But he was brought up here and he's also a chef.
He worked in the Middle East in Bahrain.
Any food in Kerala, if you go to any house,
they don't serve you with a fork or knife or
spoon, you have to eat it with your hand.
Let's go then. You start. You start from here.
Let's just see what it's like.
Mmm, what a good fish! Now, that tastes almost like a...like a sea fish.
Sea fish, yeah. The way it's cooked is wonderful.
This is the karimeen fry, isn't it? Karimeen fry, yes.
This is the one which you have, you know, when you are having a small function,
like, sitting with your friends,
you're having a beer or wine, they serve you this.
And this...this fish, the karimeen, is the most famous fish in Kerala.
Yeah, sure, it's the famous fish in Kerala.
You can go anywhere in Kerala and...but most in Alleppey, you come to Alleppey...
Yeah. ..they ask for karimeen.
Tell me this, what dish would you be most homesick for
when you were cooking over in Arabia?
The dish which makes me homesick, which I feel like eating...
Yeah. ..is fish molee and prawn curry,
because whenever I leave Bahrain, before I could leave there,
I call my mother and I tell her,
"Mummy, I want this dish."
So, she keeps it ready for me.
I can see what Floyd means.
This prawn curry certainly didn't disappoint.
It was bursting with the flavours of pepper, chilli, cumin
and the restaurant's home-made garam masala.
Words fail me. I mean,
just looking at those prawns when they were raw,
I was just thinking, "This is going to be fabulous."
I mean, I just love seafood, and...that is...spectacular.
And what I really like is, of course, the most, to me,
the most important ingredient in Kerala is coconut.
Kerala means Land of Coconut.
And the coconut oil flavour in this is superb.
Toddy is very important in Kerala.
It's not just for the tourists.
The toddy shops are to the locals what our local is to us.
The toddy comes from the nectar of the coconut palm bud.
And this is a bit complicated,
so bear with me, as I had a couple of glasses of this magic nectar
before witnessing this!
First of all, this chap climbs the palm and then beats one of these huge buds
in order to get the sap to rise.
And then it looks like he's already cut off the top of one bud, which he
rubs with a bit of mud.
This, I was told, promotes the rise of the nectar which starts to drip
almost straightaway and that's captured in the clay pot.
It's then left overnight and collected first thing in the morning.
It'll start to ferment straightaway and by lunch time will be quite alcoholic
and yet quite pleasant to drink.
But towards the end of a hot afternoon, it'll be absolutely lethal!
Floyd the chef and my guide here insisted that I visit a local toddy shop.
He said, "You can't say you've been to Kerala without having a glass of toddy."
To which I replied, "Well, all right then!"
Before you can drink the toddy... Yeah.
..you have to pour a little bit first.
Oh, I thought we were supposed to be drinking out of this, Floyd.
Yes, just a little bit. Yeah, OK.
You wash it, you wash it and just...
That's the style before you can drink the toddy.
Right, that... So. So, now...
How much do you put in there, then? Yeah, you put full.
And the first glass... Yeah.
..you have to take it full.
Oh, I've never tasted it before, what if I don't like it?
You have to!
If you're in a toddy shop... I have to!
..empty the glass, you have to. It goes like this.
Cheers! Cheers!
Crikey, that's not bad actually! That is...
Once you start with the toddy, it's starting...trouble.
It's like the engine.
Right, you've got to... You got to make...
..fill the carburettor up... Yeah, and then,
by the time you start it... Yeah.
..you keep on going.
Phwoar!
So, this is fresh this morning, this then?
Yeah, they're fresh in the morning.
I mean, it's very, very... It tastes quite healthy, really.
Yeah, it's good for health,
because it doesn't give you a kick very fast, like the other alcohol.
Yeah, it's not like whiskey or a...
Yeah, whiskey, brandy, they give you a kick very fast.
Just tell me though, I've heard that, you know, a lot people don't like toddy shops,
or they've got a bad reputation, why is that then?
Actually, the bad reputation came from out of state.
They used to add chemicals, extra chemicals, for us to get the kick.
Like what chemicals?
Oh, it's like, what they say...?
That means for the elephant. You know, to sleep, they put like a...
Tranquilisers for elephants? Tranquilisers, yeah. Wow!
Elephants are mighty ones, we are just small ones.
So, they put a little bit more quantity. Yeah.
That affects us. Anything else?
No, they put this one only, they say that.
Oh, right. Wow! But this is pure, this is pure.
Thank goodness for that!
Otherwise I'd have been in serious trouble!
Such a pleasant place to cook.
I've just been watching a cormorant catching eels in the water out there.
It's very peaceful, but back to business.
I'm going to do a Keralan pork curry, which,
in a way, it's a bit like a Goan vindhaloo,
cos it's pork with lots of spices and vinegar.
But first of all, I'm going to mash up some ginger and garlic.
I don't have a stone to do this on, I've got a very nifty Indian mixer to do it.
And it takes seconds. Well, it takes seconds if the electricity is on,
but we have electricity for only part of the day.
Fortunately, it's on at the moment, cos we're right out in the middle of nowhere.
Now for marinating my pork.
First of all, a teaspoon or so of chilli.
Then an equal amount of turmeric.
And lastly, and most importantly,
cos of the Portuguese influence,
about a tablespoon of toddy vinegar, which is made from coconut nectar.
Now, just leave that for a few minutes while I move over to my pressure cooker
and mess around with it. Everybody uses pressure cookers here.
Actually, I'm really frightened of them, I always think they're going to explode,
and I just remember when we used to have one in Trevone when Chalky was alive,
and he'd be out the door like a long dog, only he was only a short dog,
whenever the pressure cooker came out.
Because he just really worried about the whistles.
But, actually, the way they describe cooking this curry here
is the number of whistles. And this is a four whistle curry.
So, just take the lid off here
and now I think my marinated pork is about ready to go in.
There we go. Just apply a bit of heat.
I love these. I love gadgets. This is really the best
gas lighter I've ever come across.
Just got it in the market.
So, just add a little bit of water to that,
about 200, 300 millilitres.
There we are. And then on with the lid.
And we wait now till the first whistle.
So, while I'm waiting, I will make the masala,
which I'm going to finish the pork dish off with.
Just add some coconut oil and some onions, sliced onions,
and I'm just going to cook those for about ten minutes on a moderate heat
so they get really soft and golden brown.
Now, they're looking pretty lovely,
so now I'm going to just add my paste from whizzing up.
Such a good machine this, it just does a wonderful job.
Wish we had something like that back home.
OK, just stir that in.
Ah, first whistle!
That's all you get, it's not a whistle it's more like a snake's hiss,
but we are in India!
So...first whistle, I've got three more to go before my pork is done.
My gosh, that was a bit quick!
Was that the second whistle, or was that the continuation of the first whistle?
Oh, hang on, I forgot to turn the heat down.
Must remember the instructions.
If all else fails read the instructions!
OK, that's good.
The tomato is cooking down very nicely, and next, I'm going to add some salt.
Ah!
It's got a mind of its own. Right! Salt!
Next, coriander powder.
Then my home-made garam masala - I just love it.
Cumin seeds, and finally, black pepper.
Now I just feel a bit embarrassed to say that I am a bit hot.
It might show on my shirts. Um...
it's so hot.
It's got to be like 90-plus humidity and about 32 to 35...
Oh!
That's the fourth one, so I've just got to leave that now.
Just finish about my shirts.
We were just talking earlier, because I've only got one shirt today,
I should have bought three shirts all the same,
then I could have one drying while...
I'm wearing the other one. We've been now filming for about 17 years,
and it's only just occurred to us that would be a good idea.
Particularly in India,
where you can get shirts made overnight for about, you know, two quid.
Not hard.
We are foolish.
Now, about this.
I'm just a bit nervous. I mean, I've been reading instructions.
You've got to wait for this bit to sink down to there,
because there's no way I'm going to attempt to open it
until everything seems safe.
That should be all right.
But you still think this is the moment where everything
explodes all over the roof.
But of course, it doesn't, does it, really?
Oh!
No problem.
Perfect.
Good. Right, we'll just add that to my masala now.
Bring that to the boil.
And then I'll just stir in some curry leaves and chopped coriander,
and it will be done. Give it a taste.
Oh, I tell you what. I tell you what.
I do like my vinegar.
I have missed it in all these weeks we've been in India.
A little bit of vinegar in this just transforms it.
That's a proper Indian curry.
It was by sheer fluke that Cochin
became one of the most famous spice ports in India,
because a massive tsunami in the 14th century
swept away the landmass that blocked its way to the sea.
The Chinese for centuries traded here, and as a legacy,
left behind their famous lantern fishing nets,
that still work amazingly well.
Even the name Cochin sounds Chinese.
But it was the Portuguese that turned it into such a thriving trading port.
And wherever the Portuguese went, they were soon followed by the Dutch,
and then a few years later by the British.
It's a historical pattern that repeats itself all over India.
Just cruising past the waterfront here in Cochin,
it's really easy to imagine what it would have been like 500 years ago.
Teeming with boats, everybody scrambling to get hold of the black gold - pepper.
And just getting one cargo back to Europe was worth a fortune.
You could virtually retire and live the life of Riley after that.
It wasn't just about its pepperiness, about the flavour of pepper -
it was also a great preservative, and valued for its medicinal qualities.
It was that valuable that there's records at the time
of people cutting ground black pepper
with things like mustard husks, juniper berries, and even floor sweepings.
Well, this is the oldest Christian church in India.
In fact, Vasco da Gama, who brought European culture to India,
was buried here for some time.
Vasco deserves serious mention in the history of curry
because the Portuguese brought all those fabulous things from South America -
chillies, of course, but also potatoes, tomatoes, cashew nuts.
And the Portuguese established the first European trading post in India,
here in Kerala.
And that became the envy of everyone else -
the Dutch, of course, and then the British.
And fortunes were made on the back of it.
Yeah, yeah. Very hot.
Some Malaysian students were intrigued by our interest in this.
Why are you filming here? We're filming here
because Vasco da Gama was buried here for a while.
And he arrived in Kerala and brought lots of produce from South America -
he brought chilli, tomato, potato, cashew nuts?
And transformed...changed all the cooking.
Where are you from? I'm from Malaysia.
Malaysia! Whereabouts in Malaysia?
I'm from Malacca. Malacca!
Yes. Same thing.
The Portuguese were in Malacca - trade, you know, all the spice trade,
the pepper and the cardamoms
and coriander, between the East and the West.
The Portuguese went there too.
This is very important to us because it all started here.
Wow!
What I always do when I get to a new place
is ask the locals where's the best place to eat.
Here in Cochin they've told me here.
What really heartens me is there's no European writing there.
Heaven knows what it says.
Except that I do know the place is called Shappu Curry,
and apparently you get really good fish curries here,
which I'm very interested in trying.
I really see it as part of my job on telly to take you to places like this.
It remains me a bit of one of those Russell Flint watercolours,
the ones he painted in cavernous cellars.
The men out the back are peeling prawns fresh from the backwaters.
And this cook is making the most popular dish here - snakehead murrel curry.
It's simply simmered in masala,
and the sides have been slashed to take in all the flavour
of this classic South Indian dish.
Looking at this, it might be your idea of hell -
all these fires, the smoke, the gloom.
But to me, it's my idea of heaven.
And I would say to you, think of pizzas.
Where do the best pizzas come from?
They come from a wood-fired oven.
The point about this whole kitchen is, everything is fired by wood.
When I first came in here, I thought, "Well, this is Cochin,
"Ernakulam, very modern cities.
"Why...why are they using wood?"
The reason is because they say it tastes different.
And I have to say, if you don't think that the smell
and the taste of smoke gets into the food, you're totally wrong.
And I'm sure that I would never, ever, even though I'm writing down the recipes,
be able to recreate the taste of these curries precisely at all.
Here is my old friend the karimeen, and they plaster it with this masala.
It's not for the faint-hearted.
You don't have to be a curry expert to know that this is loaded with chilli,
and, I'm told, pepper, ginger, garlic, and a small amount of turmeric,
and cocum, that gives it a lovely smoky taste.
And fried shallots and coconut milk.
The fish is then coated with this and wrapped in a banana leaf.
Well, this, excuse my pronunciation, is Karimeen Pollichathu.
I've had it before, because I've been in Kerala for a while now,
but it's never been as good as this.
I was absolutely right.
The concentration of flavour, the smokiness, the deep intense redness
of this local dish, and the beautiful flavour of the fish, is superb.
It reminds me of the first time in Goa about 20 years ago,
when I tasted stuffed pomfret, pomfret stuffed with a masala like this,
and my whole world changed.
I had never tasted anything...
It's changed again.
What would be interesting is that this would ideally be the location
where even historically they would have been storing spices and selling them from.
Really? Yeah.
Oh, that looks good. Wow. What a lovely smell.
I met up with Ajeeth.
He's quite an important chef around here,
running the kitchens in one of Cochin's finest hotels.
Gosh. Is this it?
He really knows his stuff, especially about spices.
Ah, look at that!
This is the sort of place you dream of.
Just run through, what are we looking at here, then?
Very, very quickly. Actually,
one of the most famous spices from Kerala - cardamom.
There are about three grades of cardamom
that you can see here. I can see that. Those are smaller.
Those are the smaller ones, those are slightly bigger, medium-size,
and these are the most costly variety, the biggest versions possible.
And over here we've got some mace, isn't it?
Yes, absolutely. It looks very good.
This will be actually the covering of...
Of the nutmeg. ..of the nutmeg.
What they do is they break it open and then dry it like this,
and then once it's dried, it separates.
This is possibly one of the best varieties
that you would get. Really?
And that's dried turmeric there. That's dried turmeric.
You'd much favour buying the dried turmeric whole like this, then?
Well, then I would need a mill of my own to pound it into powder.
Yes, ideally that's what I'd like to do, but then I would have...
I have so many spices to pound.
It's too much. It's too much.
So as a part of the local community, what we do is I get my spices ground
by one particular gentleman who is there in the community, who grinds it for me.
He grinds all my spices. So you know what you're getting?
Absolutely. OK.
You must get very excited by all the quality here.
What's it feel like to be in the centre of the spice trade, almost?
It puts a big responsibility on the shoulders to ensure that every customer
or every guest who comes is able to get a feel of that.
Is able to actually feel that we are utilising the spices
and giving the best of the spices to them.
Yeah. I bet.
I feel that responsibility more to give that story to the customer,
and let them realise that this is the biggest thing that is happening here.
And they need to feel it from the food.
I love stories about food.
Especially if it's combined with a railway journey
set in the old British Raj.
And Ajeeth told me this one,
about his famous first-class railway mutton curry.
Are you sitting comfortably?
One day, a British officer was travelling down the Malabar Coast on a train,
and he was peckish.
And as the miles built up, he became ravenous.
He followed his nose to the kitchen car, and took a bowl of what was served up -
a mutton curry. It was far too spicy, and the cook, wanting to please,
added coconut milk to bring down the heat.
The officer enjoyed it so much,
he declared it fit enough for all railway first-class compartments,
hence "first-class railway mutton curry".
I associate, when you say to a lot of Indian people,
"What's this going to be like?"
"First class!"
So in a hot pan, vegetable oil, and the whole spices.
Bay leaves, mace, cinnamon,
black cardamom, star anise, and cloves.
Then a paste whizzed up with fresh garlic and ginger.
Next, a generous amount of chopped onions.
You can start getting the flavour of the ginger and the garlic and spices.
Getting the smell, yes, it's lovely.
So, Ajeeth, I know the word "curry" doesn't mean a lot to you.
We use it in the UK to mean lots of Indian food.
But what would you say was the most important thing about a good curry?
I would say it has to be something that has been braised slowly
and cooked on a slow fire... Yeah.
..and cooked with a lot of love and passion.
OK!
It's...it's very important.
You can't make a curry in a jiffy,
you can't, bam-bam-bam-bam, put in all the ingredients,
put it on a high fire, stir it, and put it in a curry bowl and do it.
That just doesn't make a curry.
So we're going to put the spices in next.
OK. The most important part.
Now we've got some chilli powder.
We're using Kashmiri chilli powder.
Lovely red colour. I've learned that already.
And that is? That's coriander powder.
A little bit of turmeric powder, and a pinch of garam masala.
OK.
What we're going to do is we're going to just...
I'm going to make a small paste of it, in hot water.
So that will drop the temperature of the pan a bit.
Why I put water in was because at this stage
if I just stick in the spices
and put them in individually, the spices would have burnt.
That's a really good bit of information.
And actually, I've been filming lots of curries,
that's the first time it's come up.
But it makes a lot of sense to me. It does. It does.
Now the mutton.
These are shanks marinated in yoghurt and tied with string to keep their shape.
Ajeeth explained to me that Westerners are used to lamb shanks on the bone
served like this, rather than cut into smaller pieces.
Then Ajeeth put in cashew nut paste
and a puree of fresh tomatoes to give it acidity.
So what happens next?
Now we're going to simmer it for the next four hours.
Four hours?! Yes!
The director will be pleased!
Hey, Ricky! First class!
I've been to quite a few Indian cities now and this one is really smart.
Very, very tidy, nice restaurants, nice houses.
And just a really open feel about it.
I thought it was going to be a sort of tight place with little small streets
like so many other parts of India, but no.
It's got wonderful vegetation everywhere, and also, it's just paradise.
I suppose the first Europeans coming here,
apart from the scurvy on the way over and the disease they picked up,
must have thought it was like paradise.
The beaches here are stupendous.
Fringed with coconut palms, and very unspoiled.
The backwaters too, really unspoiled.
I mean, it's a delight, I mean, it really is.
After many, many weeks of really, really thugging it through India,
this is paradise.
My journey for the perfect curry continues.
And I can't wait to try things further north.
The city of Lucknow, really famous for its architecture
and the sophisticated food of its Muslim rulers.
There are some lovely treats in store.
It's also where I heard some strong opinions
concerning Britain's legacy in the story of curry.
The worst thing that was ever produced,
and did a big disservice to Indian food,
is the madras curry powder.
Absolutely horrendous stuff.
That's a mind-blasting curry, Ricky.