A Journey through the World of Slow Cooking
Forty years ago, in June 1974, at the end of our first year of catering college, we escaped to the French countryside near Toulouse for what is called ‘finishing all the goodies’—a tradition that involves clearing the larder before buying new geese and ducks and canning all the products.
We arrived at Castelnaudary, where our friend lived. This southern French market town is the seat of La Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary, or The Brotherhood of Castelnaudary’s Cassoulet, an organization that was formed to retain the purity of a tradition and the quality of a dish that dated back to 1355.
Before unpacking, we were treated to a sumptuous lunch of foie gras, stuffed goose, duck magret and confits. It was delicious and we were ready for a well-deserved siesta. Our host, however, told us that it was now time to start preparing the cassoulet for the next evening. We reminded him that we had over twenty-four hours before it was to be served, but he impressed upon us that the dish must cook for that long. So off we went to the market to buy the finest white beans, pork meat and sausages.
We lit a wood fire and put a clay pot on it. In went a generous dose of goose fat and finely chopped onions. We sautéed the beans a bit, then added the various pork meats, sausages, duck leg confit, some tomato paste and a large helping of water from the nearby well. Then we covered the pot for a twenty-four-hour cooking—the real way to cook in the countryside.
Our host was pleased to see that hardly any stock remained from the previous year in the garde manger. We had indeed finished all the jars of liver, neck, pates, fat and confits, and they would be refilled as soon as the goose and duck markets opened the following week. The next evening, all of us gathered in the garden to open the clay pot. Lovely aromas emanated from within, and we were excited to taste the succulent meats that had been simmering for more than a day. Our host, however, had something else in mind. He opened the pot and started piling the pieces of meat on to a plate. We asked him why and he simply said that the dogs of the house would make a feast of them. We gaped at him in open-mouthed horror. Is that what was to become of our day-long cooking? He laughed at our shock and explained that this was the right way to eat a good cassoulet. The meats would have imparted their flavours to the beans, so now we could enjoy a simple dish of white beans flavoured with goose, duck and pork. It was heavenly. Thus content, we went back to finish the college year dreaming of the next cassoulet we would cook.
A parallel can be drawn, closer home, to the Goan prawn curry from which the prawns can be removed easily after the cooking as the gravy absorbs all the flavours. Often visitors just drink the curry without bothering about the ingredients inside. This is of no surprise to me as the masalas are ground for hours and then put in the mixer with coconut milk for another couple of hours, making the curry extremely flavourful—a kind of slow cooking done the Goan way.
I often learn new recipes while cooking with Aunty Chlo, a sweet Goan lady who has transformed her passion for cooking into an art. I recently visited her to learn the Portuguese-Goan recipe for pork solantle, one that requires a lengthy preparation. We started by cutting the pork belly into one-inch cubes, ensuring we retain all the fat. Then Aunty Chlo added garam masala, cumin, turmeric and black pepper brought from my garden, and cloves, and cinnamon ground into a fine powder. She then poured in a large dose of vinegar. I was up and raring to cook, but she ushered me out of her kitchen, saying, ‘Not yet. This has to mature overnight, so come back tomorrow.’
I was promptly back the next morning at ten. We now added quartered onions, garlic, broken dry red chillies, kokum and salt. Then the mixture, without adding water or oil, went into a large clay pot that was put on a low fire for six hours. When we removed the lid, a beautiful smell wafted out, and when we tasted it, the pork had taken on the flavours of all the ingredients. Aunty Chlo instructed me to keep it for a day and warm it up on the following day to derive an even better taste. I did as she told me, and sure enough, the solantle was much appreciated and enjoyed by my partner and a few of our friends the next day.
Slow cooking is a great way to enjoy certain dishes; cooking a dish and re-heating it over days is another great experience. Take, for instance, the Goa sorpotel with a large dose of feni in it. On the first day it is a nice dish to look at, having a raw taste and the feni still stands out. By the second day, the feni settles in the meat and the gravy thickens. Do not eat it as it is not yet ready for you. Cook it a third time to get the subtle taste of feni in a rich, thick gravy. This is another approach to slow cooking, very common in Goan diet, be it with vindaloo or with pork assado. But, unfortunately, a lot of people do not have the time for such elaborate cooking, or think that if a dish is cooked and re-cooked, it loses its freshness. Do not believe the detractors; instead indulge in your taste buds.
It is true that such dishes require a long preparation time, which most people do not have today, but it is worth it to sacrifice some leisure time for the pleasure of one’s body and mind. Slow-cooked food packs all the flavours into a dish, particularly when the pot is kept sealed for long hours. The aromas are trapped in, and when the crust is broken open, a wide range of tastes and smells will greet the senses.
Modern life has, unfortunately, altered food habits for the worse. Hassled with the trappings of their daily lives, people have little patience for their food and how it is cooked. Ready-to-eat dishes, fifteen-minute home recipes and poor quality takeaways dominate meal patterns, and the abomination that is fast food is the default option for most. Why are we all right with having lost touch with our native cuisines? What is it about fast food that appeals to so many people across the world? They are all just industrial products, inelegantly mixed together, fooling the consumer into thinking that there’s a recipe hidden somewhere in there. A key ingredient in any recipe, however, is love. If palates and senses are to be appealed to and pleased, a more personal approach is vital, which is, of course, absent from all the fast food outlets of the world.
All hope is not yet lost, though, as there is still a lot of traditional cooking in practice around the world. The appeal of these preparations lies in the fact that they are so intrinsically a part of their traditions. Even though the rest of the world may not understand them, they are inextricably tied to the culture of the place they originate from.
We had an amazing experience in Mongolia eating roasted marmot and drinking airag, which is fermented mare’s milk with 2 per cent alcohol content. Admittedly, it was not the best experience in terms of taste, but knowing that I was engaging in a tradition that dates back to Genghis Khan won me over! The marmot was roasted to perfection from inside and outside. Mongols, in fact, do a lot of cooking by stuffing their animals with hot stone, which yields a very tender meat. They even use hot stones to boil their stew, placing the stones inside the pot and letting it cook for hours.
I ate my first bat on a trip to the Seychelles years ago, only to find recently that it is a delicacy in Goa, where people cook it slowly in xacutti. They are very tasty animals as they feed on fruits: the best time to prepare a bat is during the mango season when the taste of the fruit has permeated into the meat, lending it a sweet flavour.
Cooking and eating a cat’s head might sound horrific to most, but while working in the Middle East, I discovered that it is a delicacy for the Filippinos, and tastes similar to rabbit. They would feed the cat for weeks from their own rations in order to have the dish prepared once a month. Imagine the smiles on their faces when the dish was brought out!
The bugs, worms and insects sold near the temples of Angkor Wat are amazingly tasty. Of course it takes a strong stomach to even look at them as food, but once the psychological barrier is crossed, one finds that they taste like regular fried prawn or whitebait.
The fafaru in Tahiti is a kind of pickled fish prepared by leaving the raw fish out in the sun with sea water till it is nearly rotten. It is sure to make those with palates unexposed to it extremely squeamish, but is considered a delicacy by the locals, and is eaten at every meal.
The list is endless, but I must mention here the Carnivore restaurant in Nairobi, which used to serve an assortment of grilled game meats. It has now been closed down due to growing awareness about the need for the protection of wildlife.
While Carnivore may have had to close its doors to customers due to ecological concerns, my search for other traditional places that are still cooking like in the past has left me with mixed feelings. These are increasingly difficult to find, as labour costs have begun to hit the roof. The small bistro on a street corner in Paris, the food stalls in Singapore, the excellent churrascaria in Brazil, the real paella on wood fire in Spain, a pizza on a piece of bread in Italy, the last Ottoman cuisine restaurants of Istanbul, an entire traditional meal at a private home in Georgia—will these soon become unfamiliar token memories of times past? We can still find them today, but they are rapidly disappearing as technologies and tastes continue to change.
Bistros in Paris now order vacuum-packed dishes that try to look authentic on the plate. But, on a closer look, it is possible to still find superb bistros that have a good chef behind the ‘piano’. Here, we may relish what our mothers used to cook at home: simple, unpretentious dishes that transport one to heaven. I do make sure we visit a couple each time we are in Paris, and taste tripes, gratin parmentier, quenelles of pike fish and usually a simple apple tart for dessert.
The food stalls of Singapore have more and more products mass-prepared in central cooking units and the days of the Newton Circus Food Centre are gone. It is difficult to find fresh fish there any longer, but you can still get a decent plate of fried noodles straight out of the wok.
In Brazil we now find salmon and prawns on the list of a place known only for grilled meats, the churrascaria. But it still remains arguably the best place on earth to have a meat dinner. Imagine the setting: your table has a small paddle that is green on one side and red on the other. The waiters glide around it with dozens of offerings. If you turn the paddle to green, you are served a large helping. Turn the paddle to red till you are ready for more, and you are left to enjoy the juicy pieces.
The contemporary paella of Spain is a disgraced cousin of the original recipe. Nobody remembers that originally it was made with green kidney beans, not rice. I learned this quite by chance myself, over a Cognac and cigar on a cruise ship in Western Africa. I was in conversation with a man from Catalonia as we wanted to order a paella the next day. He recounted his mother’s cooking and his story revealed to me that our collective perception of a dish we consider traditional is so warped and distorted. Of course the ship was unable to produce such a delicacy.
Pizzas are topped with industrial ingredients, the first being canned tomato puree. So I will dwell instead on the original pizza still served today at my sister’s house near Laggo Maggiore. A large, thick slice of bread with pure virgin olive oil, fresh tomatoes, a few olives, anchovies and basil—to die for at the beginning of a meal.
Ottoman cooking is so labour-intensive that traditional restaurants of Istanbul are fast disappearing. But if you visit the Topkapi Palace, you can still indulge in traditional Ottoman preparations seated peacefully above the Bosphorus. It’s definitely worth a try on a hot day, as you can enjoy your meal under the shaded canopy of centuries-old trees.
For how long will the Georgia family open its doors to tourists even while the chefs keep ageing? We had a wonderful experience in a Georgian home, where everything was cooked right before us on a wood fire. We downed the food with vodka.
Perhaps in another generation or two, we will all eat a standardized version of every dish prepared industrially. But instead of throwing up our hands in despair, a more constructive approach would be for us to continue our traditions at home. This would entail not eating out too frequently, but it is fully worth it. The pleasures of going to the market, making preparations in the kitchen, and cooking slowly while sipping a glass of wine or champagne will compensate for the changing world and its poor tastes. Imagine a cooling Champagne Sangria as you start cooking a beef bourguignon. It is a forty-eight-hour process: selecting the meat with the butcher, buying two nice bottles of Shiraz wine or rich Burgundy if available, and then going to the market for fresh herbs, carrots, spring onions, mushrooms and potatoes. But this is just the beginning.
Once you have returned to the kitchen you need to cut the meat, wash the vegetables and carve them in the shape of olives, then tie the herbs in a nice ‘Bouquet Garni’. Put everything in a large bowl, pour the wine slowly on top before adding some rock salt and black pepper. Et voila, you are ready for a twenty-four-hour marination.
While the beef is marinating, I want to make a point about the horror of dieting. If you eat healthy and in reasonable quantities, you should never have to diet. The food scene has become completely dysfunctional with various kinds of diets that offer quick-fix, temporary weight loss accompanied by a painful experience. The best diet is made of fresh products, cooked at home and eaten slowly without reaching for second helpings. You should be able to control your weight and feel good about yourself. Add to the menu a vegetable coulisse made only with roasted capsicum, fresh tomato and basil, nicely pureed, together with a tinge of chilli and a few pine seeds. Or a green salad with apples, emmenthal and walnuts. These could be the perfect start to a slow-cooked dinner.
Let’s return to the kitchen for the Beef Bourguignon. It is day two, and a chilled glass of Chardonnay will accompany the cooking. Fry the beef in a mixture of equal parts of olive oil and butter so that it doesn’t overheat. When it has turned light brown, sprinkle a large spoon of white flour till all the pieces are well coated. Then pour wine on top and let it thicken on a low fire. Add the vegetables, herbs and seasoning and cook for about thirty minutes. No, it is not done yet! Seal the pot with plain flour dough and place it in the oven for the next twenty-four hours on the lowest temperature. When you smell the aromas coming out of the dish on opening the seal the next day, you will definitely adjudge those forty-eight hours as having been well spent. You may say that it is a waste of all that time for a mere twenty minutes of eating, but when you see your guests’ faces, you will feel rewarded for the time and effort spent.
So far I have used only traditional ingredients. It is worth trying new, unusual ingredients and adding them to an old recipe. Have you ever tried clams on the barbeque with a slight dose of Pernod and served with saffron-flavoured mayonnaise? It is divine. Or you can pair fresh mangoes with tender chicken meat to make an unforgettable salad with olive oil and homemade wine vinegar vinaigrette. What about wasabi added to slightly pureed potatoes to give that spicy taste? Cube potatoes sautéed in goose fat are enjoyed even by the staunchest vegetarians. Morel mushrooms from Kashmir stuffed with a nice French goat cheese are also a delicacy, especially if they are nearly a metre long. Prawns sautéed with fresh cream and Dijon mustard are a must try, as is the barbeque fillet of beef sprinkled with single malt.
And most importantly, to accompany the food, you need a group of close friends with whom you can share the delicacies.