Egg Curries - Kashmir to Coorg

 

Egg Rogan Josh

Coorg Egg Curry

-Brian Mendonca

This morning I tried something Kashmiri. It was pitched as 'Egg Rogan Josh.' What it turned out to be was a far cry from the famed mutton rogan josh, but it was worthy to eat. I loved preparing it and breathing in all the aromas. I imagined what it would be like cooking away in a kitchen in Srinagar which I visited in 1998.

I like to retreat into the kitchen and do my kitchening in the morning  hours. First I set up the system for Dwayne's online class at 8.15 a.m. Then I am free to do my own thing. I am done with the papers which come by 5.30 a.m. I need to put away the peels before 9 coz that's when the waste gets collected.

Cooking gives me a sense of well-being; of creation and the satisfaction of literally feeding my family. I put up the tea for all of us and start the flame on the cooking vessel at the same time. By 10 I can plate my curry and serve the family with a flourish. By then Dwayne is done with his solitary online class - Class 5 - and joins Queenie to sit down hungrily for a hearty (hopefully) breakfast. Things do slide on vacation and its great spending the precious days enjoying the banter at breakfast. 👪 Sharing food brings bonding, Queenie says. And so it is.

This recipe of the rogan josh was like nothing like I have seen before. It used yoghurt instead of coconut milk (in the South Indian variation). I also waded in with mustard oil rather than rice bran oil in the Coorg version. 

The recipe of the rogan josh provided a lot of handholding with pix for every stage of the preparation. I must admit I was quite thrilled to see that the pix matched my efforts. 😊 This time I had a ball marinating the eggs in turmeric and mustard oil before I got going with the main prep. Bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves - needed to hunt for the powders - all became principal actors on my stage (read wok).

This time I was cautious and made a 4-egg dish for one sitting for breakfast. It was only my second attempt at egg curry - after yesterday. Happy to declare that we licked the platter clean with lovely, tasty sliced bread.

Yesterday I tried my hand egg curry from Coorg. This needed coconut milk. (Honestly, if I had seen this part of the instructions earlier, I would never have tried it!) Queenie gave me a hand and at the right time I tipped the milk into the cooking vessel. 😅 I guess I went overboard with the veggies because while they said pees I pitched in the whole hog which included carrot, cauliflower and potato. As a result the curry became a little heavy to digest. This was not the case with the rogan josh. 

But the Coorg curry was appreciated by all of us. Since I put in six eggs, we have ample for another sitting. It will certainly take us back to Coorg where we drove to in 2019. The piece de resistance was when we had the curry with rice for lunch today (26/8).

Now I am more confident at boiling a few eggs and can deploy them when and where I need them. Cooking food typical of a place is the next best thing to going there. I did it for the egg bhurjis. Now it is the turn of the curries. 💫

The blogs are beautifully written with so much of love. You just get weaved into the stories of their lives!

I am looking forward to graduating to cooking meats now.

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Recipe courtesy: https://thegastronomicbong.com/kashmiri-egg-curry-egg-rogan-josh/ and https:/www.smitachandra.com/blog/2016/10/23/egg-curry-in-coorg-india. Updated 26 August 2021.