Mutton Bunny Chow

Tadka: blooming spices in fat 22 recipes

• The fat is at tempering heat before anything goes in, around 180C (350F): one test seed dropped in surfaces and cracks within two or three seconds. A seed that sinks and sits quiet means the fat is cold and everything will steep rather than bloom; fat already hazing and thinning has gone past 200C (390F), and the first thing in will be black before the last thing is in.
• Ask what went in and in what order, then read it back off the pan: the hardest seeds lead, with ten to twenty seconds before the next addition, and the softest seeds, any leaf and any powdered aromatic go last with only seconds left. Everything tipped in on one drop is a fail even when the pan smells right, because the most delicate thing in it cannot survive the time the hardest one needs.
• The pan gave a hard scatter of popping that rose, peaked and thinned before it left the heat. A pan that stayed silent never reached popping heat and the seeds are still hard and raw against the teeth; seeds still cracking loudly as it is poured finished blooming in the dish instead of in the fat, where nothing was watching them.
• Cumin is exactly one shade darker than it went in and no more, a warm even brown that smells nutty and sweet; anything near coffee colour, or smelling of scorch, has already carried bitterness into the fat. Fenugreek is pale gold, checked under the light with nothing copper or brown among it, and this is the mark to judge first: past gold it turns the whole pot bitter, and no salt, sugar or souring will pull it back.
• The leaf is blistered and gone translucent, still green at the edge and crisp rather than black or limp, and it cracked sharply when it met the fat. It reached the dish still at full heat and answered with a violent hiss, and it reads on the surface afterwards as bright separate fat with whole spices suspended through it, not a dull dark sediment settled on the bottom.

Where it goes wrong The fat was pushed past hazing before anything went in, or every spice was tipped in together, so the hardest and the most delicate cooked on one clock: in the seconds the hardest seeds need to pop, fenugreek goes from gold to brown and the leaf goes black. Nothing can be corrected after that. The tempering pours in dark and smells scorched over the top of the dish, the specks read black rather than brown when the surface is turned to the light, and a flat acrid bitterness arrives at the back of the palate after the swallow and stays there through the next mouthful.

Pounding a curry paste 23 recipes

• Smeared thin across a pale surface it reads as one substance, edge to edge: no pale gritty specks standing proud of the smear, no shard that drags a line through it as the smear is pulled. Flecks mean something hard went in after something wet and skated instead of shattering.
• Rubbed between finger and thumb it feels like wet clay, dense and smooth, and takes the print of the thumb. Anything that rolls into a hard grain or grits like sand has not been broken down, and the order of work was wrong.
• The fibrous aromatics have surrendered: pinch a little and pull, and nothing draws out as a thread or a hair. Listen to the last minutes of work as well, which should be a dull wet slap in the mortar; a dry knock or rattle still present means hard pieces are being chased around rather than crushed.
• One even colour throughout when it is turned under the light, deep and saturated, with no marbling and no streak in which a single component can still be read. A dull grey cast over the surface says it was worked long past its point.
• Heaped up and left alone it stands in a soft peak and holds the mark of the pestle for a full minute: no clear or coloured liquid creeps out at the base, no oily film separates on top. It should also come to the pass cool, no warmer than about 25 C (77 F); a mortar warm to the back of the hand means friction has driven off the top aroma and the paste will smell flat.

Where it goes wrong Everything went into the mortar together, or the wet ingredients arrived before the hard, dry ones had been reduced to dust, so the moisture cushioned every blow and the hard pieces slid rather than broke. What comes to the pass is a wet mince rather than a paste: hard flecks and fibrous threads through a loose slurry, liquid weeping out of the heap within a minute, colour marbled instead of single, and on the plate it reads as separate raw items sitting next to each other rather than one flavour.