The Indian subcontinent · Volume 19, The Ash Pot, the Bamboo Basket and a Border the Map Draws Wrong
Hah mangxo
Assam
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 121 sources in the brief
Assamese duck curry, a special occasion dish above all for Magh Bihu, the January harvest festival, traditionally thickened with ash gourd or black sesame paste and best eaten with joha rice.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 1.8 kg duck, jointed into pieces
- 3 tbsp mustard oil
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 green cardamom pods
- 2 cloves
- 2 dried red chillies
- 1 large onion, sliced
- 1 tbsp ginger paste
- 1 tbsp garlic paste
- 1 tomato, chopped
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- To taste salt, to taste
- 300 g ash gourd, peeled and cubed
- Enough to cover water, to cover
- to serve joha rice, to serve
Method
- Joint the duck into pieces.
- Heat the mustard oil until smoking, then let it cool slightly before adding the bay leaf, cinnamon stick, cardamom, cloves and dried red chillies, frying until fragrant.
- Add the sliced onion and cook until deeply golden, then the ginger paste and garlic paste, cooking out the rawness.
- Add the duck pieces and brown well on all sides, about 8 minutes, then the tomato, turmeric, chilli powder and salt.
- Add the ash gourd, cover with water and simmer, covered, for an hour to 90 minutes until the duck is tender and the gourd has broken down into the sauce, thickening it.
- Serve with joha rice.
What a modern chef changes
A decoupled sear and braise, and a clarified duck fat base
Method
- First, brown the duck pieces separately in a very hot pan or on a Big Green Egg run wide open, then finish them gently in the sauce, decoupling a hard sear from a slow braise so both are controlled rather than traded off against each other.
- Second, render the duck skin separately and clarify the fat through a chinois, using it in place of some of the mustard oil for the tempering step, a genuine duck fat base under the same whole spice bloom.
- Third, purée and pass a portion of the finished sauce through a fine sieve for a smoother base, then fold the reserved, unpuréed ash gourd back through for textural contrast rather than a uniformly smooth gravy.
- Fourth, finish with a scattering of black sesame, toasted and lightly crushed, echoing the traditional black sesame thickening option in a garnish rather than the sauce itself.