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Summer is coming to an end and the nights are getting cooler. Sougri (or kenaf), the one Summer's loyal vegetable, will soon start flowering and dry up.
Before the season ends, I wanted to do another post with sougri and this recipe came to mind when I was just about to fall asleep. I had then slightly raised my head and squinted my eyes to speak to Korou, "Let's have pork for lunch tomorrow." And it was set! I went back to sleep.
So, for this recipe you will need:
1 kg pork (with decent amount of fats).
2-3 bunch of sougri leaves.
1 tbsp szechuan pepper/mukthrubi maru.
salt to taste.
Chop up the sougri leaves finely and the meat into medium sized chunks.
I used sougri nayaatpi leaves for this recipe as it gave a sourer taste to the dish. And I wanted it to be as sour as possible using sougri leaves. The picture above shows a nayaatpi on the left and a normal sougri leaf on the right. Notice that the edges of the nayaatpi's leaf is more prominently jagged as compared to a normal sougri leaf.
Szechuan pepper is a delightful addition to the spice collection if you still haven't started cooking with it. It goes beautifully with red meats and especially more so with beef. It lends a tangy minty flavour to the gravy but could be a little unpleasant if you accidentally take a bite of it... something similar to taking a bite of a whole black pepper when it is used that way in a curry. Biting a szechuan pepper can leave a minty hot sensation on the tongue which some people might not find pleasing.
Cover about 2/3rd of the meat with water and boil it in a pressure cooker for about 10-13 whistles. You can boil it in a pot for about 2 hours if you like or if you don't have a pressure cooker. In that case, you will have to keep replacing the water which gets lost with evaporation. We are not adding any seasoning or salt right now as we will be saving the lard that melts out of the meat for later use.
You will get something like this at the end of the process with lots of lard melted out of the meat and very little or no water left.
Strain the liquid and keep the meat aside.
Isn't lard simply beautiful?
Now carefully skim the lard from the top layer leaving behind the water or the pork stock. ..
And store it away in a jar for later.
Roast the meat in slow fire (smouldering fire would be the best). Make sure the meat is high up from the fire source. Some fats will still ooze out of the meat and fall into the fire and cause some flames. The flames could burn the meat if it is in direct contact with it. It will, however, give a nice smokey aroma to the meat if placed higher then where the flames end and give out smoke. Turn the meat whenever necessary and let it sit for the smoke to get infused in the meat.
I didn't smoke my meat for too long as that would have taken up half the day. But if you have the time and the patience, you can smoke it for hours in slow fire and that would definitely pay off.
Now, take the stock that was left behind and heat it in a pot. I used the same vessel that was used for boiling the meat. There will still be some lard in it. Let it be.
When the stock starts boiling, throw in the chopped sougri leaves.
Bring it back to a boil...
And then, add in the smoked pork. Stir them around for a few seconds.
Now, add some water for the gravy, and salt. Bring it to a boil and let it stand for a minute or two to get the two flavours mixed up well.
Then add the szechuan pepper and let it boil for a few minutes... not too long. You just need to boil it long enough for the oils in the pepper to release into the gravy but not too long for it to vapourise away.
And thus, the smoked pork with sougri is ready. It is a comfort food which goes well with a hot plate of rice!
Sougri kangsoi is a simple dish.... simple to make with only a few ingredients. But I have to confess that I was never satisfied with, what I thought was, my preparation of sougri kangsoi. It never managed to match the balance of flavours that my mom's sougri kangsoi had achieved... or for that matter, those made by other seasoned and experienced ladies... (men rarely indulge in preparing kangsoi... RARELY, though not never).
After getting married I was cooking more of the traditional dishes and I was determined to get them right. That's when I started observing my mother-in-law's cooking. I was using the same ingredients as she was but her kangsoi had the balance while mine was always a little off. The lack of balance was subtle, and it bothered me more because it was so. It is fairly easy to catch a mistake in the recipe if the thing that is off, is significant... but it takes an amount of concentration and observation to pin a mistake if it is so subtle. Almost like trying to cut a very thin slice of cake... bad analogy, is it?
Sougri, also known as deccan hemp or kenaf, is of the malvaceae family. The leaves are the only part of the plant consumed in the meitei cuisine except for the silhot sougri variety (roselle) of sougri, in which case, the sepals are also consumed. The leaves and sepals are sour to taste. The sourness and its availability make it a summer vegetable which is light and easy to digest.
I always thought that sougri leaves look a lot like marijuana leaves... anyone with me on this?
Almost every household in Imphal has a few of these plants growing somewhere in the vicinity... and by "somewhere", I mean "anywhere". These plants are very hardy and they will grow almost anywhere... I had seen two of them growing on an abandoned terrace where a small pile of sand had been left standing for some time.
A few of them are growing in our kitchen garden too and Korou had suggested that I started my post from the garden itself where the ingredients are fresh and alive!
I know that the way to harvest them must be common sense to most of us but some of us have lost touch with our traditional cooking so much so that it can be quite confusing when someone asks us to go to the garden and pick some vegetables. And in our ignorance, we often harm the plant while trying to harvest them. Sougri is a tall plant and could reach several feet if it gets the required nutrition. That is why we pick only the leaves that grow out on the stem and never the bud at the top end of the stem in order to keep them standing tall and healthy.
And while we are at it, I should touch on how to harvest maroi napaakpi too as it is one of the ingredients in this recipe . Unlike maroi nakuppi, which is cut whole and left to sprout again from the stub, napaakpi is harvested one leave at a time working from the outermost layer.
Now getting to the recipe....
For this kangsoi, you will need:
a bunch of sougri leaves (adjust the amount according to the sourness you want).
a medium sized ngari.
2-3 pieces of smoke roasted fish.
a medium sized potato.
a few green chillies (according to the hotness you want).
fresh kidney beans.
5-7 maroi napaakpi leaves.
salt to taste.
The kidney beans I got for this recipe are locally grown. The vendors were selling them fresh off the pod. I love how they have those markings on them. The store bought dry ones don't have them... at least the ones that we get in Imphal don't.
Remove the stalks off of the leaves.
Chop the maroi nakuppi and crush them with your hands. Crushing them helps release the flavour more effectively.
Cut the green chillies into halves.
Slice the potatoes... not too thick not too thin. Slicing it up so will help the potato to cook faster. Peeling the potato is not necessary if you wash it thoroughly.
Roast the ngari on an open flame. This helps remove any impurities like occasional jute fibres as the flame burns them away. It also enhances its flavour by adding a smokiness to it.
We don't need to char the ngari. Just softening it a little will do.
Throw in the potato, kidney beans, ngari, smoked fish, maroi napaakpi, some water and salt in a pot. Now this is the step where I was going wrong. I would always save the maroi napaakpi for later. I thought that adding it later and leaving it half cooked preserved it's fresh colour and made the dish look pretty. But that tipped the balance in the flavour. Adding the ngari and the maroi napaakpi at the same time helped fuse the two flavours. The maroi napaakpi negated the pungent fishy smell of ngari while the ngari balanced the garlicky smell of raw maroi napaakpi. And adding the maroi napaakpi later somehow prevented the two flavours to mix together and hence produced a dish with the two unpleasant flavours managing to stay separately and noticeably.
Put the pot on a flame and keep the lid covered to get it to a boil fast.
Once it starts boiling, put in the chillies. Put the lid back on and let it boil a little more.
Check if the potato is done.
Once the potato and beans are done, throw in the sougri leaves. Notice how fast the leaves are cooked. They turn olive green as soon as they touch boiling water.
Cover and boil for about 30 seconds to one minute to allow the leaves to lend its sourness into the liquid.
Now put off the flame and it is done.
Look at how the roasted fish gives a nice milky texture to the liquid.
Sougri kangsoi tastes best with brown rice... should try that!
