The Indian subcontinent · Volume 18, The Ilish, the Chhena and a Border the Kitchen Never Kept
Shatkora beef
Sylhet
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Bone-in beef, browned with onion and a modest garam masala, then finished with cut pieces of shatkora and simmered until the fruit's sharp, bitter-sour oil has worked properly through the meat. Shatkora is inedible raw and native to the hill country around Sylhet, Assam and Meghalaya; a visitor to Sylhet is routinely told not to leave without buying some.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 5. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 1kg bone-in beef
- 0.25 shatkora, cut into pieces
- 1 cup onion, sliced
- 1 cup onion paste
- 1 tbsp garlic paste
- 0.5 tbsp ginger
- 1 tsp panch phoron
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 0.5 tsp turmeric powder
- 1.5 tsp chilli powder
- 0.5 tsp ground black pepper
- to taste oil, salt
Method
- Temper the panch phoron in the oil, then fry the sliced onion until soft, add the onion paste, garlic paste and ginger, and cook until fragrant.
- Add the beef, ground spices (ground cumin, turmeric powder, chilli powder and ground black pepper) and salt, browning well on all sides.
- Cook until the beef is half tender, then add the cut shatkora and enough water to cover.
- Simmer on low heat (Rung 6) until the meat is fully tender and the shatkora's sourness has worked through the sauce rather than sitting on top of it.
What a modern chef changes
The citrus timed, not just added
Rung 6
Method
- Brown the beef fully and separately before the shatkora ever meets the pot, exactly as Rung 6 sets out, so the meat's own Maillard colour is established before the fruit's bitterness enters the pan.
- Reserve a small piece of raw shatkora zest, finely grated, and finish the dish with it off the heat, for a bright top note against the long-simmered fruit's rounder, more integrated bitterness underneath, two registers of the same ingredient in one bowl.
- Serve with plain rice only, resisting the temptation to add a second sauce or side that would compete with shatkora's own singular, hard-to-place flavour, which this chapter's research found nowhere else in the whole atlas.