What's Cooking With Dive? Toona Boona

I am an Englishman.

The tao of the Englishman is: "If all else fails, there is always curry."
When you've been feeling a little like poor Old Dive has of late, making a curry is a great and sure-fire perk-me-up.

Our national dish (which I - as an outrageously pretentious food snob have never eaten) is chicken tikka masala; which actually does not exist in any form in the Indian subcontinent and according to legend was invented by a cheeky cook in a London curry house in response to an ignorant English customer demanding "Where's my gravy?" at which he is said to have returned to his kitchen and added a tin of Heinz cream of tomato soup and a few spices to the dry-fried chicken tikka and the rest is history.

There are hundreds of curries in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and for each curry there are hundreds of recipes; regional variations and "Anglified" mutations.

Most "Indian" restaurants here are actually Bangladeshi and the average Brit would stare, stupefied at genuine Indian cuisine.

I was fortunate enough to learn my own curries from Lady Caroline Egerton (delightful spouse of the late and sadly missed diplomat and spook, Sir Stephen), when I designed their country house on his retirement.
I spent a whole summer virtually living over there, supervising the works and Lady Caroline found an apt and enthusiastic pupil, eager to learn all the recipes she herself had learned during her childhood in the Raj.
Lady C. taught me dozens of regional Indian dishes, some taking minutes, some a whole day to cook but all delicious.
She also taught me that anyone who uses "curry powder", "spice mixes" or those Godawful jars of curry sauce should under no circumstances ever be allowed near a kitchen.
Not only will they never know what a curry actually tastes like, they are missing out on some of the biggest fun and most astounding aromas known to true food lovers.
Making curries is an art and a delight beyond words.

Today, we'll be making a mild fish curry, a tuna bhuna (I usually make prawn bhuna but I ate most of the prawns yesterday and had a tuna steak to dispose of … plus it rhymes nicely: toona boona).
Lynn: you can make this with chicken so you don't get grossed out; the rest of the recipe's the same.

So …
You know the drill: pinnies on and follow me into the kitchen …

Oh, before you do that, run upstairs to the CD shelves (see last week) and grab Lata Mangeshkar - The Legend and stick the first CD on nice and loud.
Lata was the woman who provided all the classic songs in Bollywood movies for decades (the pretty girls playing the lead roles could never sing like her) and The Legend is a thoroughly wonderful 2CD collection of her greatest hits; perfect for cooking and eating Indian dishes.
Hoo-ray for Bollywood!

Anyhoo …
Here are some of the things we'll be eating today:
Boffo garlic, a strong, large organic onion, (all this is organic, by the way, as always so to save repeating myself, yadda-yadda …) a pepper - any colour, a couple of ripe tomatoes and some chilis (as strong or as mild as you like … you're the ones who will have to eat this when you've cooked it).
I'm a huge chili fan but fish dishes demand subtely so I'll be de-seeding two of those chilis and only leaving the hot stuff in the third.

You'll also need some fish …
Like I say, I usually make prawn bhuna but I ate most of them and all I have left today is enough to make a garnish so we'll be cooking that scrummy tuna steak instead.

We'll be using all sorts of spices but to start us off we'll need green cardamom pods, cumin seeds and coriander seeds.
Those are my own coriander seeds. When my coriander leaf (cilantro) gets leggy I just stick the plants on the patio and let 'em go wild, then harvest the seeds in late autumn. Yum!

By the way, popping open some green cardamom pods and chewing the little black, slightly lemony seeds inside them is a great cure for garlic breath should your date not eat garlic when you do and you want him or her to let you near them later on …
See? It IS worth reading this crap sometimes!

Righty-ho!
Time for one of the finest things a man living on his own can do in a kitchen:
Dry frying spices! Yay!
Woohoo!
I love this part of curry making. It gets all sorts of spidey senses tingling and the unwary may need to wear a drool bib while they do it.

Heat up the hob and the wok … HOT!
Toss in the spices and jiggle 'em around until they squeal.
After a little while a deliciously fragrant smoke will start to rise and the cumin will begin to look toasty.
This is the moment (don't let it burn or you'll have to start over).

Pick out the cardamom pods (with a spoon, unless you like hopping round the kitchen screaming with burned fingers) and then it's pestle and mortar time.
Those with long blog memories will know all about me and my pestle and mortar fetish.
This one is my old heavy cast iron spice-grinding one.
Just inhale the gorgeous aroma rising from those piping hot spices as you crush and blend them and their aromatic oils have dirty sex right under your nose.
Wowee!
If your taste buds don't orgasm you're probably dead.

Time to get cooking.
Cut the tuna into bite-sized chunks and whop it in a flat-bottomed heavy pan with a splash of organic sunflower oil.
Put the rice in the steamer and switch it on. Organic Basmati is the ONLY rice to use here. If you have a clay tandoor in your kitchen (which I don't) you can make naan bread, too, but rice will be enough today as I have to eat all of this myself (God, I need a girlfriend, if only because I tend to cook for two and then have to eat the lot myself).

Brown off the tuna until it is almost (but not quite) seared all over … we want a little bit of red left because otherwise while it rests it will dry out.

Set it aside. See the little bits of red still left in the middles? That's how you want it if you want succulent tuna as opposed to dried out cardboardy tuna.

Back to the pan! Yay!
What we have here is (clockwise from bottom-right):
- about a thumb-sized chunk of fresh ginger root, finely chopped;
- a good clove of yummy garlic, finely chopped;
- half of that onion, finely chopped;
- and half of it just chunked. This is one of the secrets of "restaurant-style" Indian cooking. They throw in roughly chunked onions so you get those huge, juicy bits in your sauce.

You'll also want those chilis and the pepper and a can of organic plum tomatoes. I don't usually use the ready chopped variety, by the way, but they were on special and I'm a cheapskate.

Right!
Ready?
Fry off the onion and garlic. High heat to start with until they are good and sizzly, then reduce it to minimum and just let 'em sweat down to translucency for a few minutes.
Then whack in the chili, ginger and pepper and stir for a couple more minutes before adding your dry-fried spices and cardamoms (mixed with a tiny amount of water to make a paste).

When it's all good and hot, toss in the seared tuna and give it a nice stir.

After that, gradually add the chopped tomatoes, followed by a teaspoon of turmeric and a teaspoon of garam masala and let that lot simmer until your rice is done.

While you're waiting, you'll have a couple of minutes to dance around the kitchen, Bollywood style and make a garnish with coriander leaf and a deseeded tomato.

Hokay …
You have rice, some prawns, some garnish and a curry. Toss a handful of coriander leaves into the curry and give it a final stir and then dish it up.

Splot a big blob of yoghurt on the side in case the chilis are too hot for your guests (or you can make a cucumber raitha but I really couldn't be arsed).
Most idiots try gulping down water or beer if they get chili burn but milk or yoghurt are the only things that work. Always have them to hand.

Serve your rhyming tuna bhuna with scrummy Indian lager and appropriate music.

Enjoy!