[Assam] Lani could do with some excellent & appropriate KharKhowa Recipes!

[Bartta Bistar]

Good news for TV anchor: Indian cooking

http://www.thestate.com/mld/miamiherald/living/food/11785429.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_food

BY LINDA BLADHOLM

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

The spiciest news that Tom Haynes, the WSVN 7 newscast co-anchor, can report is what he ate for dinner. His wife, Lani, is East Indian and grew up in the Assam region bordering Bhutan, China and Myanmar (Burma). Family favorites include jalferezi (stir-fried meat curry with potatoes and brown onions), yakhni pulao (rice steamed in meat stock), prawn paturi (shrimp smeared in coconut paste and cooked in banana-leaf packets) and of course lots of rice and dal (stewed lentils). For the past month Lani's mother, Ishrat, has been visiting to help with 4-month old baby Brennan Rana. That means more exotic fare, as his mother-in-law is a skilled and adventurous cook. Tom says ``since she arrived our fridge has never been so full.''

Tom grew up in what is now Pinecrest in an Italian-Irish family that mainly ate home-cooked Italian food. After studying political science at the University of Massachusetts, he got into television, learning hands on. Eight years ago while doing an internship at CNN in Atlanta, he met Lani on a blind date set up by a friend. When they married three years later, Lani took the constant moves in stride. Her father had worked for a big tea company, and the family relocated a lot to various tea and coffee plantations, living a few years in Papua New Guinea.

Like many Indians, Lani's family history is complex, with a melting pot of recipes passed down through the generations. Her father was a Rajput Hindu from Nepal and her mother grew up Muslim-Bengali in Bihar, the state bordering Bengal. Lani's maternal grandmother, Sultan Jehan (the name means ``Emperor of the World''), is from an aristocratic Nawab family renowned for their refined cuisine. She married into an Arab-Indian family who operate a silk mill in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and spent time in Myanmar where she learned an incredible noodle dish.

The food Lani and her mother cook range from simple Bengali fish curries to richly spiced and perfumed Mughlai dishes. On a recent evening, Tom came home to a feast fit for a Moghul. It started with chicken rezala, a type of Bengali korma (braise), served over basmati rice. To make this, skinless boneless bite size pieces of chicken are marinated in yogurt with the juice of ground and strained onions and ginger (to keep the sauce light). After sizzling whole spices in a little oil, thin slices of onion are added and browned until crisp, and the chicken added, with the marinade and plenty of slit, seeded red chiles. When the chicken is cooked to tender perfection, saffron crushed with rosewater is stirred in for a final fragrant layer, delicious served with sweet Bengali tomato chutney, speckled with fragrant panch phoron (five-spice seed blend).

The main dish was khaukswe, Burmese-style noodles smothered in a coconut-milk and chickpea flour-thickened broth with shredded chicken -- according to Tom, ''the best thing I have ever eaten.'' In Asia springy egg noodles are used, but the Haynes family prefers linguine so the sauce clings to the thick strands. The noodles are garnished with chopped hard-cooked egg, cucumbers, scallion greens, cilantro, crisp fried onion shreds, deep-fried garlic, crushed peanut, lemon wedges, and slices of hot green chiles. To dig into this is to taste a fusion of hot, sweet, salty, sour, creamy, crunchy and hot flavors, just as Tom's diverse family is united by a mutual appreciation of food.

 

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