LEMONADE SPRINGS

The morning mail brought me yet another book club offering, this one called the New York Times International Cookbook. It is an insult — not to me, because I’m not going to keep it — but to those people who bought it thinking they would actually learn something from it.

The people who buy international cookbooks presumably want to learn new methods and techniques for cooking the same old foods, and they want to learn how to use new ingredients.

Comparing the foods people eat and how they prepare them is fascinating, but most international cookbooks are rip-offs, and this one is no exception. Instead of giving authentic recipes which show the similarities and differences throughout the world, international cookbook author’s reduce everything to some least common denominator — usually American. Who wants to learn how to cook Americanized Ceylonese food?

In this ponderous volume — and it’s just one of a type, no worse than dozens of others — one of the four recipes for Ceylon is a curry made with curry powder. Now then. There are several countries which use that particular mixture of spices we’ve come to call curry. Not one of these countries uses premixed curry powder. Each region uses its own blend of spices, and the spices are freshly ground for each dish. In the New York Times International Cookbook, the recipe for the Ceylonese curry includes a recipe for curry powder. This same curry powder recipe is used in recipes for four other countries. So we have the spectacle of an Indonesian curry made with a mock Ceylonese curry powder.

Technically, no food is authentic unless it is prepared from native ingredients by a native cook in his native land. If you are trying to cook according to the style and flavors of a certain area, you can get pretty close if you use the proper, techniques and if you try to find the necessary ingredients in import markets or stores which sell to the group you are interested in. If you can’t find the ingredient you are looking for, ask someone in one of those ethnic markets what he would substitute.

BOY HOWDY!

For the Indonesian recipe I’m going to give, you can buy the ingredients in some Chinese markets, some Phillippine markets, and in some Dutch delicatessans. Also you can order Indonesian foods by mail from Mrs. De Wildt, 245-A Fox Gap Road, Bangor, R.D. 1, Pennsylvania 18013. If you live in a large city, you should be able to buy all of the ingredients for the Indian recipes in supermarkets or spice shops.

For this and many other Indonesian recipes, you need coconut cream. You can get this cream one of several ways. First of all, you can buy it canned in stores which sell Hawaiian products or cater to people who use a lot of coconut mile and cream — Africans, Latin Americans, Indonesians, Philippinos, South East Asians,-Indians, etc.

Secondly, you can make coconut cream from fresh coconuts by grating a large coconut and mixing it with three cups of water. You then bring the mixture to a boil, turn off the heat, and let it sit until it has cooled. Stick this mixture into an old pillow case, a bag made of several thicknesses of cheesecloth, or a strainer, and press out all the liquid from the pulp. There should be nothing left in the coconut pulp, so just throw it away.

If you are willing to settle for coconut milk instead of coconut cream, you have a third alternative. Although coconut milk is thinner than an Indonesian might like for this recipe, it can be made from dried coconut which is the easiest way to buy coconut: Get some unsweetened dried grated coconut from a health food store, and mix four cups of it with two cups of boiling water. Let the milk soak until cool, and strain it as for the coconut cream.

To prepare this Indonesian white chicken curry, first make the aromatic paste by grinding up one tablespoon of coriander seeds, a half teaspoon of cumin seeds, a half teaspoon of fennel seeds, twelve black peppercorns, a quarter-inch piece of cinnamon stick, three cloves, two cloves of garlic, three raw macadamia huts or almonds, and a half-inch piece of fresh ginger root. You can use a mortar and pestle or a blender for the grinding, but just make sure that you get a smooth paste.

Cut up a frying chicken, slice up one large onion, and set the paste, the chicken, and the onion near the stove.

Now, heat up a tablespoon of peanut or coconut oil in a large frying pan or Chinese wok, and saute the onion until it is soft and translucent. Add the spice paste, and stir it up until the spices are mixed throughout the onions. Then add thd chicken pieces, and stir the mixture until the chicken is well coated. Add a tiny bit of water, two curry leaves (this is not curry powder, but a sort of bayleaf type leaf), one stalk of lemon grass or one teaspoon of dried lemon grass powder (also called sereh powder), and a pinch of laos powder (also called galangal powder). Cook the chicken for about twenty minutes.

Now, stir in two cups of the coconut cream, and stir the curry until it comes to a simmer. That means that it is just beginning to boil, but it isn’t frothing all over the place. Simmer the curry until the chicken is done. When you stick a fork into the chicken, the chicken shouldn’t fight back. Stir in the juice of half of a lemon, and enough salt to taste good, and serve your curry over rice. The Indonesians prefer long-grained rice.

Instead of giving you an Indian recipe for the stew-type of dish we usually think about as a curry, I thought I’d give you a recipe for roasted chicken baked with the same sorts of spices we’ve come to think of in curry.

Before I get into it, though, I should tell you how to make clarified butter, which is a primary cooking fat in India. Melt butter slowly without letting it bubble, and skim off the clear golden part (the clarified butter). Use the milky part on the bottom for other cooking.

For chicken tandoori, use either a whole or a cut-up fryer. Remove the skin, and prick the chicken all over with the tip of a sharp knife. Rub it with a mixture of one teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and six cloves of minced or mashed garlic. If you are roasting the chicken whole, sprinkle the cavity of the chicken with a half teaspoon of onion salt. Let it marinate for a half hour.

Make a paste in a blender or a mortar of two shallots, four ounces of mashed papaya (if you can’t get papayas, I suppose you could try peaches or plums), four seeded green chilis (or less according to your mouth), 1% teaspoons of ground termeric, two teaspoons of ground fenugreek seeds, a half teaspoon of ground cumin seed, and two tablespoons of mustard seeds which have been toasted in a dry frying pan. Rub this mixture into the chicken and let the chicken sit for eight to twelve hours, or until about an hour before you want to eat. I would begin the preparations in the morning and cook it that evening.

Roast the chicken in a 425 degree oven for a total of about 45 minutes. If you are cooking the chicken in pieces rather than whole, it will be done in less than 45 minutes. Baste the chicken often with a sauce made of a third cup of heavy cream, a third cup of yoghurt, the juice of two limes or one large lemon, and a half cup of melted or clarified butter. Mix these liquids with a two-inch piece of fresh ginger root which has been pounded, mashed or ground with a teaspoon of paprika.

While the chicken is roasting, make a paste from a teaspoon of black pepper, % teaspoon of ground aniseed (or fennel seed or dill seed), a one-inch piece of cinnamon, three crumpled bay leaves, and the water strained off after pounding four tablespoons of chopped chives with one tablespoon of water.

When the chicken tests done, remove it from the oven, and rub this last aromatic paste into it. Put it back into the oven, or into the boiler, turn up the heat, and let the chicken get crusty, but not burnt. Rub the chicken with the drippings from the roasting pan, and serve it with a pilau with raisins and nuts maybe.

To make a pilau, saute a sliced onion in clarified butter, then remove the onion, draining the butter back into the pan. Next, saute the necessary amount of washed long grain rice until the grains are translucent. Add a small amount of water, and keep adding water as it is absorbed until the rice is tender. If you want to add some dried fruits or nuts, add them with some salt when you put in the first water. When serving the pilau, top it with the fired onion.

That’s it. These recipes aren’t any more work than the long but Americanized ones in that international cookbook, but they are different from the way we normally do things. When you read through an authentic ethnic cookbook, you get all kinds of ideas. Like, putting a leaf from a citrus tree into the food as it cooks to lend delicate citrusy flavor. That’s Indonesian. Or, using the leaves of fenugreek as an herb as well as the seeds. That’s Indian. Or, sprinkling lime juice, salt, and even shredded fresh green ginger root on raw lentil sprouts. That’s also Indian.

And it’s all a hell of a lot more interesting than curry powder.