Mumbai is my village. Around this time of summer, every year, the hordes on the streets in my neighbourhood seem to thin. It’s ‘muluk’ going season – everyone goes home to their ‘native place’ to wait the heat out, maybe do some sowing, or hanging with grandma. For the East Indian community, this Mumbai is our ‘muluk’, so our

grandmas get down to doing the summer things. Making sausages (the heat helps them dry out) and grinding bottle-masala. Losing against the inevitable slouch towards urbanity, these may be the last days when individual homes call on the bottle-masala aunties to gently roast, grind, sift and bottle that masala we’ve been making for generations: that safely guarded recipe, that summer air crackling with the sparks from roasting spices, that scented, spicy dust that rises from the giant mortar-pestles they pound in percussive unison.
Bottle-masala is ubiquitous in East Indian cooking and our culinary-cousins, the Goans, are pretty snide about it. Yes yes, we do put it in everything. But a-ha! Everything does not taste the same! Whether it flavours sorpotel, vindaloo and traditional East Indian curries like ‘lonvas’ or ‘khuddi’ or you use it to bolster the flavours of a Thai curry, it is quite versatile. My favourite story is of a true-blue East Indian aunt who married a proper Punjabi man and he discovered that he loved making chole using bottle-masala.
Bottle-masala is made up of anything from 20 to 60 ingredients depending on who you ask. The truth is closer to 25. My mum and my auntie Juliet grind our huge extended families’ supply every two years and will never ever tell me anything except that the quality of the kashmiri chillies has to be first-class. Try and source a bottle where you are. It keeps for years and just needs the odd skewering to loosen after it settles. It’s quite addictive and smells of summer in my village, Mumbai.

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Aloo Vindaloo
This is perfect to serve as a starter or an accompaniment to a simple meal. You can make it with baby potatoes with the skin on — par boil them and then fry or roast them to a crisp or even with French-fries my mum says. It works because the trick is to cook the potatoes and masala separately and then toss them together. They’re spicy, lightly sweet and summer-perfect because they go very well with an ice-cold beer. This is not a classic vindaloo recipe — it’s my recipe — because you know, East Indians won’t give you the correct recipe.

Ingredients:

750 gms potatoes
1 onion
20 kadi patta leaves
1 tsp jeera seeds
2 red chillies
6 cloves garlic
4 tbs grated ginger
Splash of vinegar
1 tbs gur
2 tbs bottle masala
Oil

Method:

Cut the potatoes into medium sized chunks. Cook the potatoes. You can parboil and then fry them, deep fry them or do what my mum does, cook them in a pan on medium heat until they crisp up on the out and are fluffy on the in. While they dry, toast the jeera and then grind it to powder, then add garlic, ginger, chillies and onion and grind it all to a paste. When potatoes are done, remove them and in the same pan, fry kadi patta till it crackles, then add the paste. Fry until you get the aroma, then take off the heat, add the bottle masala and return to the stove. In a few minutes, splash some vinegar in and the gur. Keep mixing. Taste. If you’re happy with the flavours, throw in the potatoes and lightly mix. Garnish with coriander and serve with something gentle like creamed spinach.

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Creamed Spinach
We recently went to a pork-tastic tasting treat created by a local East Indian chef. He served pork vindaloo with potatoes and steamed spinach and it went rather nicely. Creamed spinach will do well too.

Ingredients:

2 bunches spinach
½ cup cream
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch ground pepper
Pinch salt
1 tsp olive oil or butter
Few basil leaves (optional)

Method:

Clean, wash and then blanch the spinach in boiling water for 5 minutes.
Squeeze off excess water and chop finely. Warm the oil, saute the spinach in it and then add cream and salt.
Cook for about 5 minutes, then season with nutmeg, salt and pepper and throw in the basil. Puree if you want or leave as is.

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cheat-thai curry
The most basic bottle-masala curry is the lonvas — garlic, kadi patta, bottle masala, coconut milk. The first time I made it was one of the first times I ever cooked. My then-boyfriend and his pal were sent for the chicken. I called my mum for a refresher. We made this curry and the boys raved and ate it all up. Now that boyfriend is my husband and his pal grew up to be food writer Vikram Doctor. I’m not giving the curry any undue credit but… You can build lonvas up, thicken it with onions, spice it with ginger… or add some Thai ingredients and you have this lovely veggie curry that works well with chicken and prawns too.

Ingredients:

3 tsps grated ginger or galangal
6 cloves garlic
1 onion
1 bunch of lemongrass leaves
4/5 kaffir lime leaves or 2 tbs lemon zest
Big bunch fresh basil
2 cups coconut milk
4 tbs bottle masala
200 gms mushrooms (I used shiitake)
200 gms tofu
250 gms broccoli

Method:

Chop the onions and garlic fine. Saute onions, garlic and ginger until translucent. Take off the heat, add bottle masala, stir, return to heat. In two minutes, add the coconut milk. Bring to a gentle bubble, add the lemongrass and lime leaves. Chop the tofu into squares and lightly sear on a pan. Soak, squeeze and then slice the shiitake mushrooms. Cut button mushrooms into semi circles. Prep the broccoli. When the curry is hot, add the shiitake mushrooms first. Then the tofu. Chop the basil and keep it ready. When you’re ready to serve, throw in the broccoli and turn the heat off in a minute. The broccoli will cook but not wilt by the time you bring it to the table. Stir in your chopped basil at this time too. Serve with rice noodles or just rice.

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Khuddi
When I was a child, my parents would watch in horror as I scarfed down way more than my share of this chicken curry. “Half for Genesia, half for everyone else” they’d say, half-joking, half-worried. My eldest acorn has not fallen far from the oak and yesterday she had to be dissuaded from taking thirds because we had guests. From the moment you start roasting the coconut to the time you bring this curry on the table, the aromas are quite enticing. Hearty, wholesome, deeply flavoursome, this is my most favourite thing to eat in the whole wide world.
Ingredients:
½ cup dessicated coconut
6 medium sized onions
4 inch piece ginger
6-8 cloves of garlic
12 fresh kadi patta leaves
800 gms chicken (pref on the bone)
4 potatoes
2 pieces kokam
4 tbs bottle masala
½ cup coconut milk (optional)

Method:
On a warm tavaa, roast the dessicated coconut gently. Pay attention that it doesn’t burn. You want a toasty, browned to almost red. It’s okay if the colour is not even and there are some specks of lighter coconut. Empty into a bowl. Slice onions, ginger, garlic. Roast the onions until they too are nicely browned. Don’t be tempted to fry them — it won’t taste as good. Prep your potatoes in the meanwhile by peeling and cutting into large chunks. Put roasted onions with coconut and finally roast the ginger, garlic and kadi patta. This smells great. Don’t roast these too much. Grind them up nicely with the onions and coconut until you get a paste. In the pan you intend to cook in, heat up 2 tbs of oil and fry the paste around for about 4 minutes. Take the pan off the stove and add the bottle masala and mix it in well. Put the pan back on the heat, keep stirring for a couple more minutes. Then add the chicken. Stir until it’s coated in the paste. Add 2 cups of water or 1 cup of water plus coconut milk. (The coconut milk is not strictly kosher but I think it makes the curry very delicious.) Bring to a boil, then lower to simmer. Throw in the kokam. Cook until chicken is almost done. Put the potatoes in. When they’re done, the curry is. Serve with hot rice.