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Curry of Veal, Johore-Malay
Cut three pounds white fresh shoulder of veal into twelve even pieces and keep on a dish. Finely mince one onion, two shallots, one bean sound garlic, one green pepper, one peeled and cored apple, three slices egg plant and one branch cleaned white celery. Heat one ounce butter in a saucepan, add the veal and gently brown for ten minutes, turning the pieces once in a while. Gradually add two tablespoons flour, briskly mix while browning for five minutes, then add the above articles, with a tablespoon curry powder; mix well, moisten with a pint hot water, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, one saltspoon each grated nutmeg, thyme, powdered bay leaf and a piece of lemon rind. Mix well, cover the pan, and let cook on the range for twenty-five minutes. Add half a pint tomato sauce and two tablespoons of raw rice, mix well, re-cover the pan and set in the oven for forty minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish, sprinkle a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley over and serve.
A braise in the Anglo-colonial curry style, thickened twice over — first with a flour roux built on the meat, then with rice added in the last stage. Nothing here is difficult, but the original assumes you know your oven and your pan.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given for the forty-minute oven stage. Treat it as a moderate oven, 350F, in a lidded pot; the dish should barely murmur rather than boil, or the rice will break down and the veal will tighten.
- Saltspoon and other small measuresA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. "One bean sound garlic" appears to mean a bean-sized piece of sound garlic, near enough one small clove; and a pint is two cups in American measure, half a pint one cup.
- The rice is the hingeTwo tablespoons of raw rice in a pint of liquid plus tomato sauce is meant to thicken, not to make a rice dish. Stir it in evenly and do not lift the lid; if it settles it will scorch on the pan bottom and the whole braise will taste of it.
- Bloom the curry powderPeriod curry powder is added to the roux before the liquid for good reason. Give it a full minute in the fat with the flour and the vegetables so the raw, dusty edge cooks off.
- Tomato sauceIn Filippini's day this means a cooked, seasoned tomato sauce of the classic kind, not ketchup and not raw passata. A cup of plain tomato puree simmered a few minutes with a little stock is the nearest thing.
- Green pepper and egg plant"Green pepper" is a sweet bell pepper, not a chile; this curry carries no heat beyond the powder. Three slices of eggplant means roughly a cup diced — it dissolves into the sauce and is there for body.
- Veal shoulderCut in twelve pieces from three pounds, each portion is about four ounces, which wants the full sixty-five minutes of cooking to become tender. Boneless shoulder or breast works; leg is too lean and will go stringy.
- YieldSix servings, twelve pieces at two apiece. Steamed rice alongside, and the customary chutney and grated coconut if you want the period presentation.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with dishes labelled by place, and the labels tell you more about the reach of steamship routes and the British Empire than about any kitchen in Southeast Asia. Johore — modern Johor, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula — adjoined Singapore, and under an 1885 treaty Britain controlled its external relations, though a formal General Adviser was appointed only in 1914. The recipe itself is Anglo-Indian in construction rather than Malay: commercial curry powder, a flour roux, and the minced apple that British curry cooks had used since the nineteenth century to round out the spice. A genuine Malay kari would build its own spice paste and finish with coconut milk. What Filippini gives is the curry of the transatlantic hotel dining room, where a place name on the menu was part of the dish.