Canapés in the desert dunes: homemade rotis and kachri chutney

chefs, ingredients, Recipes, Travel, Uncategorized

We make our way out to the desert on camel carts – I the only sore-thumb Westerner amid chef Vivek Singh and his appointed motley crew brigade (put together from some willing travellers from our vessel – the Maharajas’ Express). As we’re pulled along by the plodding creature, children greet us with precocious shouts of “hello, how are you?” and general giddiness,  laughing I am sure, at my pink-tinged face and its situation – only a matter of centimetres from the camel’s larger-than-life genital accoutrements.

After a bumpy, dusty and colourful ride we arrive at our destination – some sand dunes in the desert of Bikaner, and Vivek sets about sussing out the kitchen set up – some prep tables, gas stoves and grills – as it’s our task to prepare some traditional Indian canapés for the rest of our train. I take in the scene that surrounds us – fairy lights, cushions, linen-covered kneeling tables and standing candelabras – all set in the hazy, balmy beauty of the desert at dusk.

As usual, I’m bothered by the nagging of my bladder – but I don’t need to worry, the desert facilities are more than adequete.

After obligatory glasses of green mango and sweet lime, it’s time to make some roti dough. This is a quick and surprisingly simple induction to a typical roti recipe: I put equal parts gram (chickpea flour) and wholemeal flour in a big mixing bowl with three chopped onions, a chopped green chilli, pinch of salt, onion seeds, a slug of ghee, turmeric, and dried fenugreek leaves and about three quarters of a litre bottle of mineral water, then draw it all together with my hands and start kneading like I’ve never done before. The dough is still quite dry and crumbly with this amount of water – but Vivek says to resist the urge to add more water to make kneading easier – it will make the texture inferior.

Vivek Singh getting prepped
The dough's raw ingredients
kneading

A good ten minutes of hands-on, finger coating action later and a rustic dough has formed – ready to be separated into patties, rolled out into disks and cooked on the grill in a matter of minutes. To accompany the rotis, Vivek has rustled up some garlic and kachri chutney (recipe to follow, but here is one to be getting on with).

Kachri
the chutney being cooked

Kachri is a green, tomato-like fruit which grows on trees in the surrounding areas – a favourite among the locals, desert tribes and nomads both as a tenderiser for meat, and as an ingredient in its own right. Dried and chewed, it tastes similar to a dried mango – but fried with onion, garlic, chilli and ginger it imparts a unique sweet-sourness in the chutney – which is a famous dish of Rajasthan. “These dishes are very good examples of food from the area,” says Vivek. “Very arid, very dry – with spicy, earthy aromas and big, deep flavours. The kachri gives the garlic chutney some real intensity.” We spread the sticky jam across the homemade rotis and hand them out as a treat to our guests, who quite rightly devour them without a second glance.

The rotis and chutney

And so as the sun comes down in that blink-and-you’ll-miss it way it does in India, and we drink gin and tonics (for their anti-malarial qualities of course) to the sound of our desert band – whose youngest member – a small, cheeky, be-turbaned boy, dances with enough smiling, rhythmic bombast to make Beyonce look like Miss Marple.

Our answer to Beyonce

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvia9960Tzg]