Man With a Pan by John Donahue Read Free Book Online Page B

him and deliver him even the most fleeting enjoyment, I am more convinced of dinner’s dual purpose; and yes, suddenly I’m painfully aware that a man has only so many dinners in front of him.
    He has no interest in the blandest of food now. My response, more a reflex, may prove to be stunt cookery’s finest hour, or its undoing. I reach for that now-battered black composition book—a return to origins, of a sort. There, his curry recipes, scratched onto its rotting, sauce-streaked pages in the ambitious if impatient scrawl of a devoted, much younger son, are now crowded in among other recipes that I have collected along the way. I set the book open on the counter and place four yellow onions on the cutting board: garlic, two to three cloves, chopped rough; garam masala, three tablespoons; tumeric, one tablespoon; green cardamom pods, one tablespoon; celery seeds, one tablespoon; red chilies, one-half to one tablespoon (to taste). I conjure a curry and deliver it to him sitting on the couch in the apartment I grew up in. It proves strong medicine, our curry, and for a time it rekindles in him what burns in us both.

    Recipe File
    Jos’s Curry, or The Old Man’s Shiva Curry (Untouchable-Style)
    Spices (mixed together):
    1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons garam masala
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon green cardamom pods
1 tablespoon celery seeds
½ to 1 tablespoon red chilies (to taste), crushed
½ cup vegetable oil
4 medium yellow onions, finely chopped
2 pounds meat (chicken or beef), cubed to uniform size
1 16-ounce can chicken or beef broth
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 to 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
    Heat the oil in a pan, add the onions, and sauté until wilted.
    Add the spice mix and cook briefly (2 to 5 minutes), taking care not to burn.
    Cook the meat with the onion and spices for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring regularly, taking care not to burn the onions.
    Add the broth and crushed tomatoes and cover, stirring occasionally as needed.
    Add the garlic after the meat is tender.
    Cook until the garlic is integrated into the stew, about 30 minutes.
    Serve over rice. To mitigate the curry’s heat, serve with plain yogurt mixed with seeded, diced cucumber.
    Dum Aha (Fried-Potato Curry)
    1 pound potatoes
⅔ pint mustard oil
2 ounces ghee or peanut oil
½ teaspoon red chili flakes
¾ teaspoon ground coriander seeds
½ pint water
½ ounce diced fresh ginger
½ teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon dried ginger
1 tablespoon fresh coriander
    Preheat the oven to 200°F.
    Peel the potatoes, parboil, slice, cool, and reserve.
    To an ovenproof sauté pan, add the mustard oil and ghee (or peanut oil) sufficient to deep-fry the potatoes, heat to the smoking point, and cook the potatoes until golden. Remove the potatoes from the pan and reserve.
    Remove all but 2 ounces of the oil from the pan, remove the pan from the heat, and add the red chili flakes and ground coriander until fragrant. Add water, stirring regularly, taking care to loosen the caramelized potato from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for 2 to 3 minutes.
    Return the potatoes to the pan and cook until tender, then remove from the fire.
    Stir in the garam masala, ginger, and fresh coriander and place in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
    On the Shelf
    The River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Typically if by page 133 of a cookbook the author is still busy defining subcategories of free range for poultry, I hurl the book across the room, curse bitterly, and wait a full week before dropping it in the trash. Fearnley-Whittingstall has got my ear, and my full respect, however. This is probably because, only thirty-eight pages after his pious jobation about poultry joie, this erudite chef-butcher describes proper technique when skinning a rabbit. I’m willing to overlook the time Fearnley-Whittingstall spends in the same prissy corner of the tradition as Christopher Kimball because when he comes to his senses, he applies the same eager diligence while