Tropical
Zing : Coriander
On Mumbai’s Tulsi Pipe Road near
Dadar Station the vegetable market sells coriander leaves wholesale. In the
morning trucks unload huge, fresh, feathery green bundles and the smell can be
so gloriously strong that for a moment you can feel you’re drowning in
coriander chutney.
..There is really nothing like fresh coriander leaves. It has been called Chinese parsley as a way of making it less unfamiliar to cooks in the West, but it shares nothing with parsley other than a certain intense green taste. But where parsley is pretty much one note green (which is why I find it boring), coriander then adds on spiciness, earthiness and, above all, an exuberant citrus character like a refined, aromatic Italian lemon that went to Brazil or Thailand and became all sexy, dirty and just bursting with tropical zing.
I do get the soapiness, which is one adjective commonly used by the haters of coriander. Harold McGee explains there is a reason for this: much of the flavour of coriander leaves comes from chemicals called aldehydes which are derived from fat molecules. Aldehydes are also created while making soap so, it’s true, if you chew plain coriander leaves, you may pick up a faint whiff of washing your hands. But where, for the haters, this is all they taste, for the fortunate rest of us, the soapiness serves as the slight sense of transgression which ends up making leaves more alluring. Am I really eating this? Yes, I am!
Indians eat vast quantities of coriander leaves, but I sometimes feel we don’t pay enough attention to what it’s really like. It is often eaten as chutney, where the taste is muddled up with other ingredients, or it is sprinkled on top of other dishes because, like limes, it has the power to cut through the spice and richness of many Indian dishes, giving your taste-buds a herby green jolt that helps you appreciate the dish more. Or it is cooked along with the dish, which is mostly a disaster, since the flavour chemicals in coriander leaves are highly volatile so they escape leaving only a tasteless tangle of stems and leaves.
Only a few dishes manage to cook coriander leaves and retain some of its lively spirit. Parsi patra-ni-machhi manages because, I think, the banana leaf envelope shields the fish doused in coriander based chutney from high heat. Kothimbir wadi, the Maharashtrian dish of besan paste mixed with chopped coriander, set in squares and then fried, again works best when the cooking is very light and the besan paste stays a creamy, just-set medium to hold the chopped up coriander leaves. Two places which usually get it right are Mumbai’s Diva Maharashtracha (which has other annoying aspects, but the kothimbir wadi is great) and Dattatreya.
For those who feel their coriander aversion means they could never try these dishes, there is one bit of good news. While some coriander leaf haters may be really unchangeable, for others it may just be a matter of getting used to the unexpectedly strong taste. That this can happen can be seen from the progress of coriander in the Europe where it was generally held in disdain, barring Portugal, which picked up the taste from its colonies (Mexican food has played this familiarisation role in the US).
The British were appalled when they encountered it in India. Colonel Kenney-Herbert in his Culinary Jottings for Madras was generally appreciative of Indian vegetables, but he drew the line at coriander: “The very smell of ‘country parsley’ is assuredly sufficient to warn the unwary, and yet many native cooks bring it home daily,” he fumed. Yet coriander is one of the top selling herbs in the UK today and chefs like Nigel Slater declare they use it in “heroic quantities.” So perhaps if the haters really give it a chance they could learn to like coriander. And if not, they should check if their medical insurance allows them to claim corianderhating as a disability!
vikram.doctorCDET120831
..There is really nothing like fresh coriander leaves. It has been called Chinese parsley as a way of making it less unfamiliar to cooks in the West, but it shares nothing with parsley other than a certain intense green taste. But where parsley is pretty much one note green (which is why I find it boring), coriander then adds on spiciness, earthiness and, above all, an exuberant citrus character like a refined, aromatic Italian lemon that went to Brazil or Thailand and became all sexy, dirty and just bursting with tropical zing.
I do get the soapiness, which is one adjective commonly used by the haters of coriander. Harold McGee explains there is a reason for this: much of the flavour of coriander leaves comes from chemicals called aldehydes which are derived from fat molecules. Aldehydes are also created while making soap so, it’s true, if you chew plain coriander leaves, you may pick up a faint whiff of washing your hands. But where, for the haters, this is all they taste, for the fortunate rest of us, the soapiness serves as the slight sense of transgression which ends up making leaves more alluring. Am I really eating this? Yes, I am!
Indians eat vast quantities of coriander leaves, but I sometimes feel we don’t pay enough attention to what it’s really like. It is often eaten as chutney, where the taste is muddled up with other ingredients, or it is sprinkled on top of other dishes because, like limes, it has the power to cut through the spice and richness of many Indian dishes, giving your taste-buds a herby green jolt that helps you appreciate the dish more. Or it is cooked along with the dish, which is mostly a disaster, since the flavour chemicals in coriander leaves are highly volatile so they escape leaving only a tasteless tangle of stems and leaves.
Only a few dishes manage to cook coriander leaves and retain some of its lively spirit. Parsi patra-ni-machhi manages because, I think, the banana leaf envelope shields the fish doused in coriander based chutney from high heat. Kothimbir wadi, the Maharashtrian dish of besan paste mixed with chopped coriander, set in squares and then fried, again works best when the cooking is very light and the besan paste stays a creamy, just-set medium to hold the chopped up coriander leaves. Two places which usually get it right are Mumbai’s Diva Maharashtracha (which has other annoying aspects, but the kothimbir wadi is great) and Dattatreya.
For those who feel their coriander aversion means they could never try these dishes, there is one bit of good news. While some coriander leaf haters may be really unchangeable, for others it may just be a matter of getting used to the unexpectedly strong taste. That this can happen can be seen from the progress of coriander in the Europe where it was generally held in disdain, barring Portugal, which picked up the taste from its colonies (Mexican food has played this familiarisation role in the US).
The British were appalled when they encountered it in India. Colonel Kenney-Herbert in his Culinary Jottings for Madras was generally appreciative of Indian vegetables, but he drew the line at coriander: “The very smell of ‘country parsley’ is assuredly sufficient to warn the unwary, and yet many native cooks bring it home daily,” he fumed. Yet coriander is one of the top selling herbs in the UK today and chefs like Nigel Slater declare they use it in “heroic quantities.” So perhaps if the haters really give it a chance they could learn to like coriander. And if not, they should check if their medical insurance allows them to claim corianderhating as a disability!
vikram.doctorCDET120831
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