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Welcome back to the channel. It is another guest chef collaboration and I've got the amazing Karan Gokani to see you between this week and next week's recipe. A couple of recipes from your book. So this is probably the dish for me that defines the city I grew up in. Okay. It was my favorite dish growing up. I'm off to Bombay on Saturday in two days from now. Oh, nice. And it's probably going to be one of the first things I eat. It's called pauhaji. Oh, so this is like your nostalgia. This is where you like you land and you're like, it's nostalgia. It's genuinely delicious. I think there's there's
different food. So, it's not just breakfast, lunch, dinner. There's food you eat in the evening. There's food you eat on the way home. There's food you eat for certain occasions. There's religious food. There's comfort food. And that's what I love about it. I mean this is probably one of the you know pauhaji is this amazing leveler of a dish pauhaji special you know specialist pauhaji restaurants right and uh you'd go to them and you'd find people from all walks of life either eating there ordering eating on their cars in their cars taking home delivering now for those who don't know what a pa baji is like what's your like one
sentence explanation it's literally pa means bread and comes from the Portuguese word pao yeah that's funny isn't Pa so pa p all of that is from the Portuguese. Exactly. So it pa is bread. The interesting story was pa also means foot and it used to be the cheapest bread you could buy. It's a simple white flour but needed with people's feet because you'd make it in such big in such b a bit like you stomping that you're like pressing down other noodles like that. I know about grapes. I didn't know about noodles. We're using burger buns because that's just easy.
You'll get some bri. Slice it. Butter it, toast it really nice. Really nicely. And then baji literally means vegetable. Got it. And it in India it's a bit like dal which could be the dry lentils or the cooked lentils. The same way bhaji could be the the raw vegetables or the cooked vegetables. And in this case it's a very typical spiced vegetable sort of mash almost. It's like it's I always say it's the best mash you'll ever eat. Oh yeah. Potatoes, tomatoes, bunch of things you see around here. peas if you have some onions, not a huge amount, ginger, garlic, and then little bit of coriander for freshness. But then there's the pauhaji masala. It's got that lovely raw
mango. So it's got cumin, it's got chili, and it's got a little bit, it's got a lot of that raw mango tartness to it. So it's a tangy spicy masala. So if you just take the tops off the seed a little bit, you can leave the seeds, but they get quite spicy and Okay, fine. Use a bunch. We'll use a basically want about a tablespoon off. Okay, fine. Nice bright. Was there ever a time do you think that chilies weren't a part of Indian cuisine? I think there was. I mean I think for a long time chilis weren't part chilies, tomatoes, potatoes weren't part of our cuisine. Now I'm not a historian but I have heard enough about this.
Yeah. And for you like getting into food like were you always into it or? So I've always been obsessed with you know cooking. I think it's that creative process. I don't know what you enjoy most. I mean, it's it's this incredible thing of we've got a set of ingredients here. We put a little bit of our souls, our creativity, and ourselves into it and we create something totally different. Even if we make it to the same recipe, you and I will make it differently. Oh, absolutely. And then the beauty is you then feed someone. So, you're actually becoming a part of themselves. I mean, it's a very philosophical thing that I start thinking about now. That's all seeds, man.
There's a whole series you could do on food philosophy. Yeah. M um and how it how we interact with food. You meet people all the time all over the world and someone will be able to teach you something about food. It's probably the only real universal language. Yeah. Because you can go to a new country not have an idea about where you are, what you're doing. Yeah. Um what the culture and history of the place is or the language. But if you know, if you understand food and if you're open to the food, I think the food will teach you so much about the people and the place now. And so how long do you need to
boil these for? Like just to soften them and then we want to blend them and then we're going to blend them. Yeah. Okay. Uh are you okay for me to just pound it in a p of water? Absolutely. Okay, cool. Um as long as we get as fine as possible. You know, normally if I was doing this at home, I'd make the bread myself. Okay. Yeah. But um the whole point here is I want people to make this at home and at least get a taste for it and then you can go off and you know get to the source and do it more sure traditionally. So let's talk about the regions a little
bit because north south you know it's easy to [clears throat] think north and south. Yeah but maybe east west totally different every 100 km we talked about that much. Yeah you go from Mumbai to Goa 500 km right and you probably get three unique cuisines on the way. Forget about the difference between Mumbai and Goa. Sure. But even on the way you'll find three completely different cuisines. Okay. And I think this is again the beauty of India and the diversity of India. And I think it's something you know I want to showcase to people at whatever level in this country. So we talked about pao y which is this Portuguese inspired bun
which is incredible in Bombay. I'm still trying to figure out how to make it. If anyone here knows, please write a comment below or tell me. Um, baji on the other hand is again this incredible leveler. Now the story goes that these are all the vegetables that were going off at the end of the day. So like rotting, not rotting but sort of really overrite vegetables and pulled off and then someone had the brilliant idea of mashing them all up together with that spice and then all you do is dip this toasted buttery bread. So this is like a letover it's like a leftover almost like a food waste anti food waste but because
of that it was also the cheapest thing available. So it was effectively, you know, labor food. People who've been working hard on the streets all day. They need a nice nourishing tasty meal. Like how do you really make it spicy? And I think this is what I love about a lot of Indian cooking. This is very entrepreneurial. So now if you're vegan, you could just cook this without the butter. Sure. Uh but is a big part of this. So little bit of butter and oil. I've not gone plain butter because it'll just brown and done.
Sure. Good amount of fat in there. That's about one onion. Mhm. Now Jeremy, do you fry onions first or ginger garlic first? Because in India we I do onion first and but the key for me is actually it doesn't matter once you know how to cook and you understand your heat so long as you know why you're tempering your spices. Yes. Like yes you can get there in multiple different ways and that's exactly what you know I like to show people as well. You do it in whichever way you want but question why you're doing it. So when I think of curries I like to think of them as this sort of process of layering.
Yep. You want to get it's a bit like an orchestra. Yeah, you have the different And I think it's the same thing with food. So I usually start if I was using whole spices like your mom, I'd get the whole spices in oil first because they're less likely to burn. It'll flavor the oil which will then flavor the onions. Correct. But I'm only using a dried spice here. Sure. So I'll use it later. And there's a little bit of cumin seed. A little bit of seed. I'm going to fry that now. I mean, technically I could put cumin seeds in first. Sometimes I do. So, there's not much of a difference in when you put that.
Sure. Um, but one thing I do is when I fry my onions, I get a little bit of salt. You might have seen me doing that. Okay. Do you do that as well? I always get a little bit moisture out. To get the moisture out, it helps it cook faster because this is a step that people get very bored of. So, then they go really high on it. And to be honest, I like to little lower because you don't want them to fry from outside and go brown. Sure. and stay, you know, raw sweating them break down because at the end of the day, you want a nice mash where you don't you get pieces of vegetables, but you don't get them.
You don't want the texture of it too much. You want it to be soft. Yeah. Exactly. So that's when my cumin is going in. Yeah. So again, like teaspoon of cumin. Very simple dish. Just chili, cumin. Mhm. And then you've got the pauhaji masala, which has everything. And if you didn't have chili and cumin at home, you could still go only paji masala. So for me, I'd wait to get to about this stage. Sure. Where it's just they've softened. And sometimes, you know, if they've gone a bit too brown. Okay. Just a little bit. Not too much because then it turns to boiling. But you want to kind of hear that because that still
means that there's more oil than water because the oil is sizzling. You want to hear it sizzling. You could do the same dish. Yeah. Something I always have. A little cheats ingredient is deep fried onions. Oh yeah. Slice them up. [clears throat] Fill a fill half of water. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Deep fried. Don't store, don't buy them from a store because those tend to have a little bit of flour on them.
These are done yourself. You slice them up, okay? Uh fry them, no salt or anything. Once they crispen up, nice and brown, sip them, put them on a little towel for a little while and then into a box and they'll stay for months. If I had some of those right now, I'd have gone straight in with that in a little touch of butter. Yeah. Splash of water, soften them out, they would have come to this stage, probably beyond this stage in seconds. Right. Now, that would save you a good 15 minutes in your kitchen. So, the onion's nice and brown now. Yeah. In goes the garlic.
Lots of ginger. I love ginger. Oh, smelling incredible. That is We've still got that little oil on top. Now, spices always into oil. Okay. Uh is one of the fundamentals. You'll see it across the book as well. And then we got Kashmir. A little bit of Kashmir chili. Not too much because we've got the pastry. So, you don't want the chili to burn. So, what I'm going to do here is just put the tomatoes in. I've got nice ripe tomatoes. If you don't have them, tin tomatoes are great as well for this. Yeah. And then here again, essential to really soften them down. Little more salt in there. And you've had influence from
everywhere, right? Because you obviously, as you say, you've grown up in Bombay. Yeah. Um, but how long have you been in the UK? Exactly. Half my life. So I spent half my life in India. Half my life in the UK. But you still go back to India a lot. Go back to India all the time. All my family's there. My Okay. Uh friends are there. Um and Sri Lanka as well because of now work. But work is just an excuse to go there all the time.
Yes. I quite often find when I go away and I come back um that my food completely changes. Well, not completely, but it changes quite a lot. I take a lot from my trips. Yeah, my food changes as well. I think there's nothing like inspiration. I find the sea gives me a lot of inspiration. So, any seaside town, I was in Porto recently. Have you been to Porto? Oh, no, I haven't. But do you guys along here? Not Porto was incredible. Right. You tell me when you want chili and potatoes.
I think we'll let it break down a little more. I kind of want to see those pieces completely broken down a bit like those. Yeah. Now, that's a lovely color already from And then we'll go a little brighter. from the chili paste red with the paste. Okay. So, I'm not going to use all of that. Yeah. Proper dynamite especially from our experience of So, this could even be brighter if you use some of the Kashmir chilies.
Okay. Yeah. That just goes in. Again, background cake as well as brightness. We have no idea what that's going to lead to. And the potatoes you're going to mash in there and then Yeah. It's just literally the water from because that's got all that starch and flavor that's going to bring it. It's a bit like pasta water. Yeah, exactly. And then basically you'll just keep going. So you could add more potatoes in, but this is the beauty of this dish. You just freestyle if you like potatoes. I like this kind of balance where it should still be red. Some people add carrots to it. Some people add peppers to it, green peppers to it. This is a cooked masala. So technically it's been roasted and stuff. So you could just sprinkle it.
But for me, in my head, it needs to go into the fat cuz that's how it kind of really disperses and gives the dish flavor. So, some masalas will be a darker, some will be redder. And right now, what you're doing is you're kind of cooking out the moisture. You're drying it up a little bit. It's basically a mash. Little bit of coriander and a little bit of lime towards the end. You don't want to cook this too much as well. Very posh. Uh, you know, we like to impress. Yeah. Exactly. We've suddenly gone from street food to Michelin star right now. I was very comfortable until I found this plate, but it's lovely. We're going with a stone.
It's like a risotto. I know. Look at that. It's a bit too posh for your street side. Just so that it looks like bow. We'll cut it into a square. There we go. Now it looks a little bit more like bow. Okay, this looks aart. Look at that. In the beautiful ratoto flakes. Listen, it's been fun, man. Little melting butter. The little pool of butter. Very essential. And have you got a specific way to eat? Uh, dig in. Yeah. All right. Okay.
We can break a little piece. You know what? I'm going to just I'm going to go like this and take the whole Just do that. W Yeah. Look at that. Load it up as much as you can. M. Good. That is absolutely carbon on that spice, sourness, all the vegetables and the vegetables are still all alive. The sourness does jump out at you. You need that to balance the spice. It's tangy, but it's not sour. The saltiness of it is also really important.
Yeah. So, I think there's a fresh tang from the lime and there's dry mango as well, which is that sort of, you know, back of the throat. Well, going in for one more and the rest is all yours. It's really great to have you here. If you haven't already, check out Karan's book, Indian 101. The recipes in there. Yeah. Um, if you happen to be uh nearby one of Karan's restaurants, pop in. But more importantly, I've really enjoyed learning about your background a little bit more. Uh you've got next week's recipe as well that
you're going to um do yourself. And don't forget guys, like, comment, subscribe, yeah, all those things. All of that, whatever. Um, and most importantly, cook, eat, and enjoy.
