Tag Archive for: Veggie

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Oh Calcutta! Hakka noodles lead the Indo-Chinese charge at Bundobust

‘Want to go for a Chinese?’ may have lost its cool cachet in the UK, but for a new generation in India the casual dining out choice is definitely Indo-Chinese. You don’t go out to order dal. Manchurian chicken? Bring it on.

There won’t be any chicken on the menu at Bundobust as they launch a quartet of Indo-Chinese specials across their sites in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, available until August 29. The veggie/craft beer formula rightly rules. They’ve done cauli and mushroom Manchurian mash-ups in the past, favouring a sweet-sour sauce that’s a bit chippie-like. 

And they’re not the only Manchester city centre Indian to put the Asian hybrid on the menu. Indian Tiffin Room confirmed its street food credentials by featuring diaspora dishes that originated in the old Chinatown of Kalkota (Calcutta) with influences from far beyond. 

Take Hakka Noodles. To the traditional base of Indo-Chinese spices and soy sauce coated noodles the Bundobust chefs add stir-fried green and red pepper, mushroom and white cabbage. For a fiver it’s a gorgeous combo but begs the question: who were the Hakka? 

It’s tiffin time in Kalkota’s teeming Tiretta Bazaar – the link between Chinese and Indian street food

In the late 18th century these folk emigrated from Northern China. A magnet for their silk and tanning skills was Calcutta, established by the British East India Company as capital of colonial India.

Two areas there vied to be Chinatown for them and other Chinese arrivals – Tangra and Tiretta Bazaar. Only the latter remains today as a food and cultural destination. Its restaurants are testimony to the inevitable fusion that quickly occurred to accommodate the deep-fried, chilli/spicy flavours Indians love. Key elements  soy sauce, vinegar and the Hakkas’ essential Schezwan sauce substituting dried red chillies for Sichuan peppercorns

Nowadays you’ll find this Indo-Chinese cuisine across the Sub-continent. It’s especially popular in my favourite Indian city and great melting pot, Mumbai. In Kolkata, though, the influence goes much further, where’ll you’ll find the likes of Chinese bhel and Schezwan dosa. Any resemblance to authentic Cantonese or Sichuan food is fanciful.

Alongside is a more authentic approach to Chinese regional food, too. Around 1974 India’s first Sichuan restaurant opened up at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. A different kind of hot.

Chicken Manchurian was invented in Mumbai, by Nelson Wang, the son of Chinese immigrants in Kolkata. And that’s how umami made its entry into Indian cuisine. And made the Wang dynasty!

Indo-Chinese has been a slower burner in the UK, perhaps the flagship being Hakkaland in Harrow-on-the-Hill, but I recall a visit to Asha Khan’s much-missed Darjeeling Express off Carnaby Street, where some sizzling Tangra Prawns were on the menu.

Bundobust’s entry onto the scene is as playful as you’d expect, plugging into their own Gujarati-inspired small plate evolution. 

Gobi Toast (£5.25) is deep-fried pav soldiers crowned with garlic and ginger minced cauliflower crusted with mixed sesame seeds. Served with coconut korma dipping sauce. Salt & Pepper Okra Fries (£5.50), where the Bundo top seller is tossed with peppers, onions, chilli flakes and soy sauce. And from leftfield, Tofoo 65 (£6.75), a Bundo debut for the bean curd, filling pakoras in a sauce rich with Chinese five spice, curry leaf, garlic, ginger, fermented red chilli paste and mustard seeds. 

The sauce is “a Chinese spiced reimagining of the classic Chennai Hotel Buhari 1965 sauce recipe.” More research for me to do, then.

• Bundobust has venues in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester Piccadilly and Oxford Road (the Brewery).

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Brussels to San Diego – now cool sprouts sparkle at festive Bundobust

It’s that time of the year again when Bundobust is dangling its festive baubles, otherwise known as Sprout Bhajis. It’s a world away from all the crass foodie gimmicks of Christmas – pigs in blankets pizza toppings and the like, but then this burgeoning brand yoking Gujarati veggie street snacks to craft beer always does things with style.

So what do you get for your £4.75? Deep-fried bundles of Brussels sprouts, broccoli, onion, fennel and chilli, served with a dollop of cranberry chutney. Chuck in an extra £1.25 and it comes in a soft vegan brioche bun. Proof all their venues are a Scrooge-free zone, a quid from each Sprout Bhaji Butty goes to a local charity.

My Bundo destination of choice to snaffle a bhaji has to be their latest project – the Bundobust Brewery on Oxford Street in Manchester, where head brewer Dan Hocking is knocking out a splendid range of beers tailored towards the spice-driven food menu.

I was disappointed on a recent visit that my favourite of his beers wasn’t on. West is West is a piney and resinous, dank and bitter (in a good way) West Coast IPA. A perfect match for the setting, surrounded by the gleaming vessels of a working brewery, it reminded me of many of the taprooms I’ve visited along the US western seaboard. In San Diego, say.

Which brings me back, by a roundabout route, to Brussel sprouts. The tiny green cannonballs are definitely love or loathe over here with major consumption confined to Christmas. Our Brussels Sprouts Appreciation Society Facebook Group numbers under 700 members after five years in existence.

Vivid green healthy ammunition, but they are culinary anathema to many folk

Contrast this with California, where the foggy, coastal area south of San Francisco grows 95 cent of the American crop, and they are mega cool. A big help is they are not over-cooked to bland mushiness. Food websites in the States are packed with innovative ways to treat your Brussels, which are neck and neck with kale to be top green on menus. Apparently they are a good source of dietary fibre, folic acid, manganese, and vitamins A, C, and K. Sprouts date back to Roman times but were first grown in large quantities in Belgium – hence the Brussels tag – and French settlers brought them to Louisiana in the 18th century.

Flying kites for the much-maligned Brussels sprout in glorious San Diego

Yes, there are roasted sprout gumbos out there, but I’ve never tackled one. I vividly remember  tempura sprouts accompanying  shrimp tacos in one downtown San Diego taproom, their natural hint of bitterness in harmony with the hop. Bizarrely research has shown that genetically two thirds of folk may be wired against the bitter chemical PTC found in sprouts, broccoli, dark chocolate, coffee and even beer. 

Definitely count me out of that pool.

My top Brussels sprout dish is also Indian…from my favourite new generation cookery writer, Meera Sodha. This quick Keralan stir-fry is in Fresh India, her follow-up to debut Made In India (both are £20 from Penguin Fig Tree). Like so many of her recipes, it fuses her Asian culinary sensibility with the raw materials she inherited when her family made their home in rural Lincolnshire.

Shredded Brussels Sprout Thoran (Choti gobhi thoran)

Ingredients

2 tbsp coconut oil; 1 tsp mustard seeds; 12 curry leaves; one large red onion, thinly sliced;  2 cloves garlic, crushed; 1 red chilli, finely sliced; 50g coconut, grated (fresh, creamed, or desiccated); 600g Brussels sprouts, washed and shredded; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 lemon, juiced.

Method

Heat the oil in a large pan or wok. Once hot, add the mustard seeds and curry leaves and cook for a minute or two until they start to pop. Add the red onion. Cook until soft and starting to caramelise, about 10-15 minutes. Add the garlic, chilli and coconut and stir fry for a couple more minutes.

Turn the heat up. Add the sprouts, mix thoroughly, and stir fry for a few more minutes. Add the salt and lemon juice, stir, and then adjust the seasoning to taste. The lemon juice counters any bitterness from the greens, so add more if you’ve used quite large sprouts.

Bundobust has three other bar/restaurants besides the Brewery – the original in Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool. They are all taking Christmas bookings now.

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Tree spinach – one giant leap forward for my Mexican kitchen magic?

Why have I allowed an invasive native of the Yucatan peninsula into my kitchen? The immediate answer is the thunderstorm outside. It’s freaking out our chihuahua (fellow Mexican), who is cowering in a corner, while I’m equally frightened our new Chaya plant (also known as Tree Spinach) will be devastated if left out in the deluge in its flimsy pot.

When it hits maturity as a 12ft tall rival to Japanese knotweed the Chaya will hold its own but, as a stripling freshly arrived from a Lincolnshire herb nursery, we’re giving it shelter. And that kind act is causing ructions all of its own. Because I have briefed the rest of the household on the pluses and minuses of harbouring such a nutritious plant.

So already I’ve slipped in its major selling point. Chaya has high levels of protein, calcium and iron, while  the leaves are also crammed with carotene, potassium and vitamin C, putting normal spinach or Chinese cabbage in the shade. Superfood status? This is a hype-free zone.

All this nutritional benefit is for the future, of course, when my plant grows enough foliage to cook with. 

Wild tree spinach grows abundantly around Hartwood restaurant

You could just juice it or, like our spinach, stew it in butter, one minute minimum. I’ll start with legendary food writer Diana Kennedy’s Tamales de Chaya and then proceed to Grilled Coronado Fillets with Piña and Chaya from Eric Werner and Mia Henry’s Hartwood restaurant between the jungle and the sea in the hippest stretch of Yucatan (if you can’t get there their cookbook is highly recommended).

Culinary bucket list logged but let’s first fit in the downside, which is causing some domestic consternation. As a major convert to indigenous Mexican regional cuisine during lockdown I hunt down authentic ingredients zealously, but some do come with a health warning. Not all the insects surprisingly. Cue Chaya. When mature, the leaves can be tough with microscopic stinging hairs, which can irritate the skin for days, so handle with latex gloves when cleaning. Unless very young, best not to eat it raw since, like spinach or almonds, it contains a toxic compound, a form of hydrogen cyanide. That’s easily sorted, I’m telling my wary nearest and dearest, simply by boiling, frying or drying the leaves.

This is my tree spinach in search of jungle conditions in the Calder Valley

I will be charting my progress – in the garden and the kitchen – with this vigorous perennial, which I’ve been slow to catch on to. A decade ago Guardian gardening correspondent Alys Fowler vividly described the beauty of the Tree Spinach Chenopodium giganteum or Magenta Spreen Lambsquarter in her garden: “The tree spinach is a brilliant bright green with each new set of leaves blushed a shocking magenta.”

Attractive, but Alys warns: “It will reappear everywhere. It is not exactly a thug, but if you’re not prepared to eat it, that’s an awful lot of weeding. If you sow it as seed, consider sowing it in modules or seed trays and planting it out as this will give you more control as to where to grow it. If you want full-height plants, it needs to go at the back of the border.”

Maybe it needs a WALL.

TOP FOODIE DOCUMENTARY TIP

Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy (available to rent on Amazon Prime for £3.49) tracks the now 98-year-old expat Brit to her lair deep in the Mexican forests. This fiery, formidable cookery writer is the foremost champion of authentic Mexican cuisine and Elizabeth Carroll’s inspiring warts and all profile does her proud.

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