Recently we enjoyed mouth-watering Indian food thanks to Asma Khan’s cookbook Ammu. When we were looking for a dessert in her book, we hoped to find a recipe for Kulfi or for Kheer, both delicious creamy desserts with ingredients such as cardamon and saffron. Unfortunately these recipes are not included in the book. Cream? Dessert? Why not try making a panna cotta with cardamon? The combination turned out to be very tasty, not too rich, a touch sweet and the cardamom was present in just the right way. Decorate with pistachios and rose petals for a delectable Panna Cotta with an Indian twist.
What You Need (for 6)
500 ml Cream
30 Cardamom Pods
20 grams of Sugar
3,5 leaves of Gelatine (5,25 grams)
Rose Petals
Pistachios
What You Do
Peel the cardamon pods
Use a pestler and mortar to lighly crush the seeds
Add the seeds to the cream
Slowly bring the cream with the seeds to the boil
Keep close to boiling for 15 minutes. Stir when necessary
Remove from the heat and while stirring add sugar until totally dissolved
Follow the instruction of the gelatine and soak the leaves
Pass the mixture through a sieve
Add the gelatine to the mixture and stir well
Cool the liquid somewhat before filling the forms. We used a silicone mold. Nice and easy! The only thing you need to do is to make the mold a bit moist with water
Let the panna cotta cool and than store in the refrigerator until set
Don’t forget to seal with cling foil, otherwise your panna cotta will absorb aromas from other food in the refrigerator
We continue our review of Asma Khan’s cookbook Ammu, Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul by preparing two dishes: Pineapple and Chilli Chutney and Eggs in Tamarind Gravy and asking our esteemed panel (André, Joke, Martine and Rutger) for their thoughts. . Earlierwe wrote about her Pumpkin and Coconut soup.
Asma Khan is an Indian British chef, cookbook author and restaurant owner. In 2012 her pop-up restaurant started for 12 guests at her home, serving food cooked from traditional family recipes. Today her all-female Darjeeling Express restaurant in London offers Indian Rajput and Bengalihome cooking specialties.
In 2024 she won the Johannes van Dam Prize, a lifetime achievement award for an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the world of gastronomy. Previous winners of the prestigious prize include Yotam Ottolenghi, Carlo Petrini, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Jeroen Meus and Alain Passard.
The book is called ‘Ammu’ which translates to ‘Mother’. The stories, the recipes, the whole book is a tribute to the food her mother (and the family’s cook) prepared. But we feel it’s more: it’s also a tribute to original flavours, to people taking time to prepare food, to sharing and enjoying, to communities and heritage.
Wine Pairing
Aska Khan doesn’t include suggestions for drink pairing in the book. As a main we served four dishes: Pineapple and Chilli Chutney, Eggs in Tamarind Gravy, Saffron Lamb and Pulua. We paired this with a red wine called Magenta produced by Domaine de l’Arjolle from the Côtes de Thongue area (west of the French city of Montpellier) made with merlot and cinsault grapes. The wine has a light red colour, and its taste made us think of cherries and red fruit. Excellent light wine that combined very well with the various flavours of Asma Khan’s dishes. In general, we would suggest a light, fruity red wine. If you would like to enjoy a white wine, we would suggest one with limited acidity, for instance Pinot Gris.
Eggs in Tamarind Gravy
When going through the book, we noticed this delicious looking dish. It made us think of Sambal Goreng Telor, an Indonesian side dishe which combines fried hard-boiled eggs with a sauce made with chillies, lemon grass, shrimp paste and other ingredients.
The recipe for Eggs in Tamarind Gravy is not too difficult, just a bit time consuming. The gravy is made with very thinly sliced onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chilli, tamarind extract and water. Once combined it needs to be reduced by half. We read the recipe again and started to wonder why it was called ‘gravy’. The liquid in our pan resembled a watery soup, not gravy. We left it to reduce, on low heat, and we waited patiently. It started to thicken and after two or three hours we knew Asma Khan was right: gravy it was. We think that the very thinly sliced onion, cooked through and through, worked as a thickener. Ten minutes before serving we made three shallow slits on the surface of each hard-boiled egg, which helps the eggs to absorb the gravy. The panel loved the combination of subtle flavours: sweet, tangy, sour and rich. The sauce has the texture of old-fashioned gravy and it coated the eggs perfectly.
Pineapple and Chilli Chutney
We decided to prepare Saffron Lamb because of the intriguing recipe (more in our next review). Asma Khan suggests serving the lamb with Rose, Apricot and Pistachio Pulau and Pineapple and Chilli Chutney, so that’s what we did.
The chutney is made with red chillies (we used Kashmiri red chilies), Indian bay leave (tej patta), ginger, sugar, salt and water. It needs to cook until the chutney thickens and looks glossy. As with the gravy we were slightly worried: after thirty minutes our chutney wasn’t glossy or thick and the pineapple was bright yellow. But after three hours the chutney looked exactly as Asma Khan predicted. The panel was surprised by the sweetness and gentle spiciness of the chutney. The flavour of the pineapple was clearly present, but in a savoury way. Tasty in its own right, very nice accompaniment with the lamb and the rice.
The Book
Ammu, Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul by Asma Khan is available via the usual channels or your local bookstore for 35,00 US$ or 26,00 EUR. Some of her recipes were published by the BBC, other recipes were published by Great British Chefs and these by the Foodnetwork.
Recently we bought Asma Khan’s cookbook Ammu, Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul. ‘An entrancing book’, according to Nigella Lawson. Asma Khan is an Indian British chef, cookbook author and restaurant owner. In 2012 her pop-up restaurant started for 12 guests at her home, serving food cooked from traditional family recipes. Today her all-female Darjeeling Express restaurant in London offers Indian Rajput and Bengalihome cooking specialties.
In 2024 she won the Johannes van Dam Prize, a lifetime achievement award for an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the world of gastronomy. Previous winners of the prestigious prize include Yotam Ottolenghi, Carlo Petrini, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Jeroen Meus and Alain Passard.
We prepared five dishes from the book and asked our esteemed panel (André, Joke, Martine and Rutger) for their thoughts. In this post we will look into Asma Khans Pumpkin and Coconut Soup and a dessert from Bengali, Bhapa Doi. On July 17th we will post part 2 of this review.
Flavours and Aromas
Asma Khan’s cookbook is about the food she enjoyed when she lived in India, the food she missed so much when living in the UK. By publishing the recipes, she creates an opportunity for all of us to enjoy the food that is close to her heart. That’ s why we followed her instructions to the letter, with one exception; we used less chillies.
Spices
Buying the right spices was a bit of a challenge. One of the ingredients of the Pineapple Chutney is Tej Patta, or Indian bay leaf. It has a clear cinnamon-like flavour and is not to be confused with common bay leaf. We also needed not too spicy large chillies. We found some excellent Kashmiri Red Chilies. Flavourful, a touch spicy and dark red. One dish required Cassia Bark which we couldn’t find and replaced with cinnamon. We wanted to serve original Indian beer, so we had to find a few bottles of Kingfisher or Cobra. The shopping took a bit of time, but it was worth the effort!
Not Just Another Cookbook
The book is called ‘Ammu’ which translates to ‘Mother’. The stories, the recipes, the whole book is a tribute to the food her mother (and the family’s cook) prepared. But we feel it’s more: it’s also a tribute to original flavours, to people taking time to prepare food, to sharing and enjoying, to communities and heritage.
Pumpkin and Coconut Soup
When talking about our menu, we looked at the menu of The Darjeeling Express and decided to prepare one starter and four dishes as main course. A vegetarian Pumpkin and Coconut soup would be ideal as a starter. The ingredients are pumpkin, onion, garlic, ginger, red chillies, coconut cream, salt, star anise and fennel seeds. Two tablespoons of fennel seeds (for 6 servings)? Star anise? Would that work?
The panel was impressed: a delicious pumpkin soup, spicy, but not the kind of spiciness that lingers on. The fennel worked beautifully with the pumpkin and coconut. The star anise gave the soup a nice additional and unexpected aroma. André’s favourite.
Bhapa Doi
When reading the book, we noticed that the recipes are not too complex, however, most are rather labour intensive. The book includes several recipes for desserts but given the time we needed to prepare the other dishes we decided to make a relativity easy Bengali dessert (not included in the book).
The Bhapa Doi is rich and moist, the taste long and (not overly) sweet. It made us think of cream cheese pie. The raisins combined very well with the creamy flavours and the cardamom. Perhaps we could have made smaller portions?
What You Need (for 7 ramekins (150 ml))
One tin of Condensed Milk (approximately 400 grams)
250 ml Greek Yoghurt
100 ml Whole Milk
1½ teaspoon of finely crushed Cardamom Seeds
Handful of Sultana Raisins
Pistachio Nuts (to decorate)
What You Do
Soak the sultana raisins for 15 minutes in lukewarm water
Preheat your oven to 170 °C or 340 °F traditional (no fan)
Combine the condensed milk with the yoghurt until smooth
Add the milk and combine
Add the crushed cardamom seeds
Use kitchen paper to dry the raisins
Add the raisins to the mixture
Fill the ramekins with the mixture
Place the ramekins in a baking tray
Add boiling water up to 2/3 of the height of the ramekins
Close the oven door and reduce the temperature to 120 °C or 250 °F
Leave in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes, until set
Test with a needle (it should come out dry)
Remove the ramekins from the baking tray and allow to cool.
Best to refrigerate the ramekins for 4+ hours in the refrigerator before serving
Decorate with pistachio nuts
The Book
Ammu, Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul by Asma Khan is for sale via the usual channels or your local bookstore for 35,00 US$ or 26,00 EUR. Some of her recipes were published by the BBC, other recipes were published by Great British Chefs and these by the Foodnetwork.
The Johannes van Dam Prize 2024 was won by Indian British chef, cookbook author and restaurant owner Asma Khan. In 2012 her restaurant started for 12 guests at her home, serving food cooked from traditional family recipes. Today her all-female Darjeeling Express restaurant in London offers Indian Rajput and Bengalihome cooking specialties. On her current menu are dishes such as Chicken Momis (dumplings served with smoked chillies sesame chutney) and Badami Baingan (aubergine with coconut, peanut and tamarind). Sounds delicious!
Prize
The Johannes van Dam Prize is a lifetime achievement award for an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the world of gastronomy. Previous winners of the prestigious prize include Yotam Ottolenghi, Carlo Petrini, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Jeroen Meus and Alain Passard. The prize giving ceremony used to be part of the Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food, but for reasons unknown to us it was decided to separate the two events. As a result, the prize giving event in 2024 with Asma Khan was relatively small and went by hardly noticed. A pity.
Cookbook
We bought her cookbook Ammu, Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul. ‘An entrancing book’, according to Nigella Lawson. We were impressed by the great stories and of course the recipes. Over the coming weeks we will prepare some of the dishes and ask our review panel to taste the flavours of Asma Khan’s kitchen.
Join us!
Please join us in preparing one (or more) of her dishes. You could buy the book, look at her recipes as published by the BBC or these recipes published by Great British Chefs or these from the Foodnetwork. Post about it on your blog and ping back, track back, share or re-post.
Let’s enjoying Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul!
Food is much more than just food, it’s about culture, about being with friends, family, about learning from other cultures, about talking and sharing memories, about emotions, about special days and celebrations. It brings people together and enhances our understanding of others.
We take part in Jo Stacy’s BKD Cookbook Club and this month the focus is on Christmas recipes for us all to make and share. Our choice is a recipe for a Casserole from Together: Our Community Cookbook.
The book is written by a group of residents, gathering in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London to cook food for their families, friends and neighbours. They began using the kitchen at the Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre and used the kitchen for two days per week, preparing food and eating together. Gradually more local women began to join in, embracing the community and supporting their neighbours. This was the beginning of the Hubb Community Kitchen (‘hubb’ meaning ‘love’ in Arabic). In 2018 the group published Together: Our Community Cookbookwith 50 simple and tasty recipes from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and other countries. Food that brings people together, food you prepare for your loved ones.
The book features mouthwatering recipes including Shakshouka (Algeria), Potato Fritters with Cilantro (India), Spicy Peanut Dip (Uganda), Green Rice (Iraq), Fennel and Orange Salad (Italy) and many more.
Food that helped restore hope and provided a sense of home.
Casserole
We decided to prepare Tepsi Baytinijan. To quote Intlak Alsaiegh, the author of this recipe: “Tepsi translates as ‘casserole’ and this is a traditional Persian dish of meatballs in tomato sauce with eggplant. It’s quite rich. You could make it with less oil, I suppose, but then it wouldn’t be so traditional—or taste so good.”
The dish is indeed a rich, tasty combination of small meat balls (ground beef, garlic, curry powder), fried egg plant, fried potatoes, onion, green pepper, tomatoes, tomato paste and tamarind paste, served with basmati rice or crusted bread. The detailed recipe can be found in Together: Our Community Cookbook or on Food52.
Together: Our Community Cookbook is dear to us, because it shows us that food can unite people. Preparing food from this book will bring you closer to the hope and strength of the Grenfell community.
The book is available via the usual channels and your local bookstore. A portion of the proceeds from the sales will help the Hubb Community Kitchen to strengthen lives and communities through cooking.
We wish you Happy Holidays and a Wonderful 2025! Mr. Cook and Mr. Drink
Recently we reviewed An invitation to Indian Cooking (published in 1973) by Madhur Jaffrey as part of the ongoing cookbook review project by Bernadette. When we leaved through the book we were looking for something special, something new and exciting to prepare. Dal soup (the classic Indian soup made with red lentils, onion, various spices and perhaps ginger or orange) was not on our radar, until we read her recipe. Interesting! Yellow Split Peas? Cloves? Croutons? Let’s start cooking! The soup was very tasty and uplifting. The split peas brought structure to the soup, making this soup different compared to lentil-based dal soup. The combination of peas and cloves is one to remember.
We’re always interested in new ways to prepare mushrooms, so when we spotted a recipe with cumin and asafoetida (asafetida) we immediately knew we wanted to prepare this dish. But what is actually asafoetida and where to buy it? The first thing to know about asafoetida is that it has an extremely powerful aroma. Its taste and smell are a combination of onion and garlic. We bought 25 grams at Jacob Hooy which is Amsterdam’s premium shop for spices. The Dutch name is Duivels Drek and the German name Stinkasant. Both names are a clear indication of its pungent smell. Mushrooms, tomatoes, various spices and asafoetida: we didn’t know what to expect of the dish. The result was delicious, aromatic (in a subtle way) and a tribute to the tomatoes and mushrooms, with a long-lasting taste. We loved it. Mrs. Jaffrey suggest serving the mushrooms with chapatis or pooris. Recipes are included in her book, obviously!
An invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey is a comprehensive introduction to the Indian kitchen, one with reliable, easy to follow, tasty recipes and useful background information. The book includes chapters on meat, chicken, fish, dal, soups, vegetables, chutneys, breads and desserts. Which reminds us of our plan to make Kulfi (ice cream with milk and cardamon pods). An invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey is available via your local bookstore or the usual channels for 15 euro or 18 US$.
Dutch cuisine and cauliflower? Nice, but not sensational. Normally the cauliflower will be broken into florets, cooked in water (and in the old days this meant cooking until the cauliflower was more than well done), drained and served with a béchamel sauce and nutmeg. That is, if you’re lucky, it can also be a thin sauce made with the cooking liquid and corn starch. A pity because cauliflower is such a delicious and versatile vegetable. As curry, korma, gratin, casserole (with potatoes, thyme and garlic), in a pickled sauce, as vada (a snack from South-India), steamed or fried, all very yummy! We combine our cauliflower with grilled lamb chops and a mint and cilantro sauce. Lots of flavours, colours and aromas!
Wine Pairing
Given the various spices we would suggest a white wine or a rosé. A glass of Verdejo will be a great choice if you decide to drink a glass of white wine. We opened a bottle of Monteabellón Rueda. The wine comes with the right acidity, bringing freshness to the dish. It has floral aromas typical for the Verdejo grape. You may recognize the aromas of banana and exotic fruit. A glass of Provence rosé will also be nice. Or our favorite rosé: Chiaretto di Bardolino, produced by Monte del Frà from Italy.
What You Need (Cauliflower)
One small Cauliflower
Turmeric
Fresh ginger
Garam Marsala
Red Onion
One clove of Garlic
Fresh Cilantro (optional)
Olive Oil
What You Do (Cauliflower)
Clean the cauliflower and break into florets. Peel and slice the fresh ginger, match size. Peel and slice the onion (rings). Chop the garlic. Add olive oil to the pan and fry the turmeric (curcuma) and the garam marsala on medium heat. After a few minutes add the florets. Make sure the florets are nicely coated with the spices. Now add the fresh ginger and the garlic. Reduce the heat somewhat. A few minutes begore serving add the sliced onion. You could add some cilantro, to bring the cauliflower and the sauce together.
What You Need (Sauce)
Three Mint Leaves
Lots of Cilantro
Teaspoon Cumin Seeds
One clove of Garlic
Ginger
½ Green Chili Pepper (depending on the taste)
Olive Oil
Lemon Juice
Black Pepper
What You Do (Sauce)
Crush the cumin seeds in a mortar. Chop the garlic, some ginger and the green chili pepper. Combine everything and use a blender to make a smooth paste. Add lemon juice to taste. Transfer to a bowl. Drizzle some olive oil into the mixture and stir using a spoon. Happy with the consistency? Add black pepper and perhaps some extra lemon juice.
Cook and Drink 