Passport & Plate - Desi Karahi
Pakistan | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos
Ingredients
¼ cup ghee
1 rooster*, skinned, chopped into roughly 14 pieces with a cleaver, including bones
¼ cup yoghurt
6 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 inch piece of ginger, finely diced
6 plum tomatoes, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground coriander seed
1 tsp lightly crushed coriander seed
½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seed (whole)
½ tsp cracked black pepper
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp crushed chillies
½ tsp cayenne powder
1 tsp paprika
5-6 green chillies, coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
handful chopped cilantro
fresh ginger, julienned for garnish
How to prepare this recipe1- Place the ghee in a pressure cooker over high heat. Add the rooster pieces and saute until browned. Add the yoghurt and salt. Continue cooking for 3 or 4 minutes. Seal the pressure cooker, bring to full pressure and allow to cook for 15 minutes then release pressure. Alternatively, stew the rooster in a conventional dutch oven (instead of a pressure cooker) for 40 minutes.
2- Add the contents of the pressure cooker to a wok over medium heat along with the spices, garlic, ginger and tomatoes. Simmer on medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes until the oil has separated to the surface of the sauce. Add the green chillies and continue simmering uncovered.
3- Once the meat is beginning to fall off the bones, add the sliced onion. Saute for 5 minutes and then add the cilantro and julienned ginger. Serve with naan and dig in with your hands.
* Chicken can be substituted for rooster. Again, skin and chop the chicken, including bones. Skip step 1. Instead, saute the chicken with ghee directly in the wok, add the yoghurt and salt, then proceed with step 2. Chicken needs far less time to cook.
The story behind this recipeI’ve often considered the islamic ‘halal’ method of killing an animal to be somewhat cruel. The creature wriggles as its beating heart continues pumping blood through its body and out a sharply cut gash in its neck. It takes a long moment or two for the animal to succumb and go limp; enough time for the butcher to say the mandatory prayer.
I’m standing amid the throngs in a Lahore neighbourhood called Lakshmi Chowk, an ancient place known for desi karahi, a dish of gangly rooster cooked in a vast wok with tomatoes, chillies and chunks of ginger. In Lakshmi Chowk, the dish is hawked by karahi cooks lining sidewalks and cooking over open flames. Amid the din of car horns, roosters crow from cages, metres from the killing table.
The roosters have been skinned and chopped, steam rising from still-warm bodies. Now they lie in the pan, simmering with spices, garlic, ginger and tomato. The dining venue is at once inviting and off-putting. The plastic chairs are populated mainly by young men, keen on a macho dining experience replete with squawks of dying birds.
Lahore is among the oldest cities in the world. Empires risen and fallen here. The aroma and chaos of Lakshmi Chowk reinforce the realities of a city older than we know. The city’s food scene operates with an absence of any obvious oversight. Zoning and health inspections are foggy in a place where roosters meet their demise metres from diners.
But that’s OK.
Here, things trundle along just as well today as they have for millennia. There are Kashmiri chai-wallahs ladling out their steaming pink liquid, laced with pistachios; paan shops overflowing with young men looking for a hit of betel leaves, areca nuts and tobacco; chaat-stands hawking salted fruit and pomegranate juice; jalebi-wallahs pulling curly straw-like treats out of hot oil and plunging them into rose-scented syrup. And of course, there is the sizzling desi karahi, eaten with naan and fingers, sopping up the spice-tinged ghee at the bottom of the wok.
