The Indian subcontinent · Volume 15, The Trami, the Boti and a Kitchen Split Three Ways
Dum aloo, Kashmiri Pandit style
Kashmir Valley, Kashmiri Pandit tradition
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
The clearest single demonstration of the Pandit gravy base against the Punjabi or Mughlai dum aloo a British reader is more likely to already know: no onion, no garlic, no fresh ginger, no tomato, no cream, and mustard oil rather than ghee or a neutral oil.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 500 g baby potatoes
- enough for deep frying mustard oil, for deep frying and 2 tbsp for the gravy
- a pinch asafoetida (hing), a pinch
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp ground fennel
- 1 tsp sonth (dried ginger powder)
- 1 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
- 300 g yoghurt, whisked
- 200 ml water
- a pinch garam masala, a pinch
Method
- Deep fry the potatoes whole in mustard oil until golden, then prick each one lightly so it can take up the gravy.
- In a separate pan, warm the mustard oil and add the asafoetida, turmeric, ground fennel, sonth and Kashmiri red chilli powder.
- Add the whisked yoghurt gradually, stirring continuously.
- Add the fried potatoes and the water, and simmer covered for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are fully cooked through and the gravy has thickened around them.
- Finish with a pinch of garam masala.
What a modern chef changes
Sous vide potatoes, fresh-ground chilli and a real dum finish on the Egg
Builds on rung 2
Method
- Cook the potatoes sous vide first. Bring them to just tender before frying, so doneness and browning are controlled separately rather than traded against each other in a single fry.
- Grind the chilli fresh. Dry a portion of the Kashmiri chilli in a dehydrator and grind it fresh for the gravy.
- Seal for a real dum finish. Seal the finished dish under foil or a tight lid on a Big Green Egg for a final ten minutes over indirect heat, real trapped smoke rather than the sealed-pot method alone.
- Dust with dehydrated sonth. Finish with a fine dusting of dehydrated, powdered sonth over the top, a concentrated version of the same aromatic already in the gravy.