Skip to content
LoginRegister
WhatToEat.Today

Recipes with amchar masala

4 recipes that use amchar masala, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Trini pumpkin talkari, takes 40 minutes. It is most often cooked with garlic, onion and scotch bonnet pepper.

Got a few things in the fridge? Search by everything you have

Trini pumpkin talkari

A pot of pumpkin talkari is cooked on Divali, at every puja and on plain weekdays all over Trinidad, eaten with sada roti, dhalpuri or as one of the seven curries. The pumpkin is cooked down with a lot of garlic, roasted geera and hot pepper until it collapses into a sweet, savoury mash with no curry powder at all. The usual mistake is adding water, which makes it soupy; the pumpkin's own juice is enough if you keep the lid on. Chef's tip: toast whole cumin seeds in the oil until they crackle and turn brown before the garlic goes in; that roasted geera is the backbone of the dish.

40 minTrinidadianVegetarianVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Kuchela

Kuchela is the dark, oily, intensely sour mango relish that sits in a jar on almost every south Trinidad table, spooned beside roti, dhal and rice, curry or doubles. Green mango is grated, squeezed and dried until leathery, then cooked in mustard oil with amchar masala, garlic and scotch bonnet until almost black. The common mistake is skipping the drying; wet mango stews instead of frying and the relish goes mouldy quickly. Mustard oil is traditional; heat it to smoking first to mellow it. Chef's tip: wring the grated mango in a cloth with real force; the drier it is before it hits the oil, the longer the kuchela keeps.

90 minTrinidadianChutneys & DipsVeganGluten freeSpicy
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Doubles

Doubles are Trinidad's favourite street food, sold from carts at dawn on corners from Curepe to San Fernando and said to have started in Princes Town in the 1930s. Two pieces of bara, a soft, puffy fried flatbread coloured with turmeric, are piled with soft curried chickpeas (channa), then spooned with sweet tamarind sauce, cool cucumber chutney, shado beni sauce and as much pepper sauce as you dare ('slight' or 'heavy'). They're messy, cheap and wonderful, eaten standing up from a square of paper. These are different from Indian chole bhature: the bara is light and yeasty, the channa is cooked very soft in Caribbean curry, and the toppings are sweet, sour and fiery all at once. Chef's tip: keep the bara dough very soft and wet, and handle it only with oiled hands. Stretch each ball thin over your fingers and slide it straight into the hot oil, so it puffs light and stays soft instead of turning into a crisp puri.

120 minTrinidadianFast FoodVeganSpicy
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Curry channa and aloo

Curry channa and aloo is a staple of Trinidad's Indo-Caribbean home cooking: chickpeas and potatoes simmered in a turmeric-gold Caribbean curry until the potatoes start to break down and thicken the sauce. It's what fills a dhalpuri or buss-up-shut roti in roti shops from Chaguanas to Penal, and it's at every Hindu wedding and Divali feast. It isn't an Indian chana masala: there's no tomato or garam masala, the curry powder is the Caribbean kind, heavy with turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, and it's finished with shado beni (culantro) and green seasoning. Chef's tip: 'chunkay' the curry. Fry the curry paste in hot oil until it darkens, turns grainy and the oil separates before you add the chickpeas. Raw curry tastes dusty and flat; fried curry tastes rich and round.

45 minTrinidadianCurriesVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with amchar masala