Nigel Slater: A Root Vegetable Korma

The kormas of India, serene, rich, silken, have much in them that works with the sweetness of the parsnip – cream, yoghurt, nuts, sweet spices. The ughal emperors who originally feasted on such mildy spiced and lavishly finished recipes may not have approved of my introduction of common roots but the idea works well enough. Despite instructions the length of a short story, I can have this recipe on the table within an hour. For those who like their Indian food on the temperate side.

enough for 4 with rice or Indian breads

onions – 2 medium
ginger – a fat, thumb-sized piece
garlic – 3 cloves
a mixture of parsnip, swede, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes – 1.5kg in total
cashews – 100g
green cardamom pods – 6
cumin seeds – 2 teaspoons
coriander seeds – 3 teaspoons
vegetable or sunflower oil, or butter – 2 tablespoons
ground turmeric – 2 teaspoons
chilli powder – half a teaspoon
a cinnamon stick
green chillies – 2 smallish ones, depending on their heat, thinly sliced
single or double cream – 150ml
thick natural yoghurt – 150g
fresh coriander, chopped

Peel the onions, cut them into large pieces, then blitz in a food processor till roughly minced – you don’t want a sloppy purée. Peel and roughly grate the ginger on the coarse side of a grater. Peel and finely slice the garlic cloves. Peel and coarsely chop the vegetables. Roughly chop half of the cashews.

Now deal with the spices: open the cardamom pods with your nails and scrape out the seeds, then crush them to a gritty powder. Grind the cumin and coriander seeds to a fine powder.

Put the oil or butter into a deep, heavy-bottomed pan and stir in the onions, letting them soften but not colour. Stir in the grated ginger and sliced garlic, continue cooking over a gentle heat for a couple of minutes, then introduce the spices – cardamom, cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli powder and the cinnamon stick. Continue cooking, stirring for a couple of minutes, until the fragrance of the spices begins to rise, then add the chopped root vegetables and the chopped nuts. Season with the thinly sliced chillies, salt and black pepper.

Stir in 750ml water, partially cover with a lid and leave to simmer gently for forty-five to fifty minutes, till the roots are tender to the point of a knife. Toast the reserved whole cashews.

Carefully introduce the cream and yoghurt to the pan, allowing them to heat through but not boil. Should the mixture boil, it will curdle, and though the flavour will be fine the grainy texture will be offputting. Check the seasoning, adding more salt or pepper if necessary. Scatter over the toasted cashews and some chopped coriander.

And more on Parsnips…

• Due to their excellent storage qualities, parsnips are in the shops all year. At their best after a good frost, their sweetness is welcome in any month from Ocober to March. They feel awkward in summer.
• I have been known to stick a box of them outside when there is frost around. They seem all the sweeter for it.
• The small, round parsnips that appear in late summer are exceptionally mild (one could say tasteless) but are good for introducing the root to sceptical newcomers.
• I have very little spare room in my vegetable patch, so I plant no parsnips. They hog a lot of space throughout summer.
• The sweetness of this root is particularly appropriate with beef and all the game birds and ravishing with offal. Mashed, it forms a sincere partnership with liver, bacon, lamb shanks and oxtail. This is not the vegetable to force into a marriage with fish. It is just plain wrong.
• The sweet mash likes some gravy to play with. I include it on the side of uncuous, sloppily sauced suppers like braised oxtail, ham and parsley sauce, lamb stew and liver and sausage hotpot.
• Parsnip chips rarely crisp as successfully as potato ones. But blanching or steaming the vegetable first, then frying it once in hot oil, then again in very, very hot oil will bring us as near as we can get.
• If you grow parsnips, they will keep splendidly in the ground till you need them. If you buy them, then try to find dirty ones. The presence of soil seems to have a preserving effect. I keep mine in a cool scullery (the coldest room in the house) in a brown paper bag. They remain in fine condition for a week or more. The fridge is fine too, even more so if you wrap them in newspaper.

Nigel Slater’s latest cookbook, Tender, Volume One: A cook and his vegetable patch, is published by Fourth Estate on the 17th of Semptember. With over 400 new recipes, Tender chronicles the things we eat – from the vegetable patch to the kitchen table.