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Recipes with dried plums

3 recipes that use dried plums, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Alu bokhara chutney, takes 35 minutes. It is most often cooked with onion, bay leaves and boneless beef.

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Alu bokhara chutneyPlum and date chutney

At Bangladeshi weddings and Eid lunches, a small spoon of glossy, garnet alu bokhara chutney comes round after the polao and meat, a sweet and tangy palate-cleanser before the doi and mishti; Old Dhaka caterers are known for theirs. Dried plums and dates simmer with sugar, a splash of vinegar and spices until the fruit is soft and the syrup thick enough to coat a spoon, with a hint of chilli and roasted panch phoron. The mistake is cooking it until it looks thick in the pan; it sets much firmer as it cools, so stop while the syrup is still loose. Chef's tip: toast panch phoron in a dry pan, crush it and stir it in at the end rather than frying it at the start, which keeps the flavour bright.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Old Dhaka beef tehariMustard oil beef rice

Tehari is the everyday cousin of kacchi, the rice that office workers queue for at lunchtime in the narrow lanes of Nazira Bazar and Bangshal, scooped from huge dented degs onto plates with a slice of cucumber and a green chilli. Instead of big pieces of mutton it carries small dice of beef, cooked down first in sharp mustard oil and then steamed with short-grain aromatic rice, so every mouthful has a bit of meat in it. The smell is the giveaway: mustard oil, bay leaf, a little kewra and plenty of slit green chillies that soften into the rice. Where cooks go wrong is adding the rice before the beef is truly tender, because the meat will not soften any further once the grains go in. Chef's tip: cut the beef no bigger than a sugar cube and use chinigura or kalijira rice if you can find it; basmati works but gives longer, drier grains.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Shaki pitiLamb, chickpea and chestnut stew

Piti belongs to Shaki, the old silk-road town in the green foothills of northern Azerbaijan, where it is still cooked in individual clay pots and served in restaurants near the caravanserai. Each pot holds lamb on the bone, chickpeas, a chestnut or two, a little tail fat and saffron water. It is eaten in two stages: first you pour the broth over torn bread with sumac, then you mash the meat and chickpeas and eat that as a second course. Rushing it at a high heat is the error to avoid; the broth turns cloudy and the lamb tightens. Chef's tip: if you have no clay pots, a heavy casserole works, and you can ladle it into bowls to serve.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with dried plums