Lucky dip - Kedgeree

"a culinary fight to the death between Indian flavours and Victorian nursery food." Leah Hyslop - The Telegraph

I have to thank this particular lucky dip for finding a recipe that I had lost long ago. I rarely make kedgeree - well I think the last time was when I lost the recipe. The thing is that it was so good - in my memory anyway - that I haven't wanted to try other ones. So my lucky dip - which I confess I did some time ago, but have not followed through was a page on various rice dishes from The Robert Carrier Cookbook. I didn't follow through because the main section was Chinese Rice and basically just told you how to cook plain rice three different ways according to the Chinese. I really couldn't think of anything to say on this - the Chinese like rice - what then? Maybe another time I shall be feeling more inventive.

On the opposite page were recipes for Breakfast Kedgeree with Ham and Wild Rice with Mushrooms. Maybe I'll do something on wild rice another time. But I wasn't feeling particularly inspired, and, as we have noted before, I'm basically lazy. Today I am feeling stronger, so here we go - kedgeree.

To return to my lost recipe from Delia which she simply calls Kedgeree, I think it is a pretty classic recipe without anything extra or weird. The thing - the trick if you like - that I remembered that made it so unique - to me anyway - was the fact that when it was cooked she put a tea towel over the top, the lid on top of that and left it on the stove on a very low heat for five minutes. I think this is what gave it just the right texture.

Having now researched a bit, I think the basic/classic dish consists of rice, smoked fish (haddock traditionally), hard boiled eggs, curry powder, parsley and lemon juice. Delia does have a couple of other recipes using other smoked fish, but they don't stray much from the classic pattern. Of all the variations on the classic combination that I saw, the main alternative things were cooking the rice first and then sort of stir frying everything, doing different things with the boiled eggs (chopping the whites and mincing the yolks), along with minor arguments about which fish to use. I'm not sure that you can get smoked haddock here, but you can certainly get smoked cod.

Robert Carrier's recipe, however - well this one anyway - is far from traditional as it includes ham and tomato ketchup and does not include either curry powder or lemon juice. I did not see another recipe with ham or tomato ketchup! Here is his version - no picture I'm afraid, and I am being lazy because I haven't converted from imperial measures. But then it is a British Empire dish.

BREAKFAST KEDGEREE WITH HAM

1/4 lb rice

1/4 lb cooked finnan haddock

1/4 lb cold boiled ham

2 hard-boiled eggs

4 tablespoons butter

1-2 tablespoons tomato ketchup

2 tablespoons chopped watercress

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Boil or steam rice in the usual way until tender, but not mushy. Remove skin and bones from fish and flake. Dice ham. Chop whites of hard-boiled eggs.

Melt butter in saucepan; toss rice in it. Add fish, ham and egg whites. Stir in ketchup and toss lightly over heat until hot. Stir in chopped watercress and correct seasoning. Grate egg yolks and scatter over kedgeree. Serve immediately.

You could argue that this is not kedgeree at all - just a rice dish that he has invented. But maybe it has enough of the traditional ingredients - the fish and the eggs to just make the grade. And maybe we should applaud because kedgeree itself is a variation on a traditional Indian dish - well that's one theory anyway.

The story goes that it is a variation of an Indian dish called Kichiri (and a whole lot of similar but different spellings) which is rice and lentils. This dates way, way back to the 14th century. It is somewhat soupy and served for breakfast. I don't think either eggs or fish come into it. Although fish was often eaten at breakfast because it would go off pretty quickly and needed to be eaten as fresh as possible. Personally I think it is a bit of a leap to go from just rice and lentils to kedgeree as we know it. I think it's much more likely that it comes from some kind of pilaf. And I also forgot to mention that the English version sometimes includes sultanas. Not for me I think.

The other story is that Scottish soldiers who had served in India missed their spicy food, and added their native finnan haddie to rice with curry powder. I don't know what happened to the lentils which seem to be an essential part of all of those Indian dishes from which it came.

"But the British are rarely content to leave a foreign recipe untweaked, and you can’t build an empire without protein. So the colonials added fish and eggs and embraced it as a breakfast dish." Leah Hyslop - The Telegraph

It was a standard component of all those stately home breakfast buffets and Queen Victoria is said to have been a fan. I vaguely remember it being a standard thing on P&O liners too.

And obviously, looking at Robert Carrier's recipe the British are still tweaking it. Not that he was British - he was American, although he did spend a large chunk of his life in England. They (and everybody else) continue to tweak it. At the simplest level I saw quite a few added cream or milk - well the fish was often cooked in milk. Nigel Slater used pearl barley instead of rice and smoked salmon I think for example, and I did see a Quinoa version somewhere. Of course.

The ultimate tweaks are perhaps from Heston Blumenthal (also of course).

"The base is a rich creamy rice with smoked haddock cream and acidulated butter. Charcoal grilled abalone and cured prawns bring charred sweetness while a pickled lemon gel and pickled grapes give bursts of acidity. Leeks cooked in brown butter give the dish another rich dimension which is then finished with coriander stalks that lend brightness and fried saltbush that gives texture. At the table, curried marron oil is poured over the rice to transform it into something easily recognisable as a kedgeree; the marron, curry, chili, kaffir lime and eucalyptus oil blends with the rest of the dish to give spicy depth and aroma." Dinner by Heston website

Wow! Not very traditional at all - no eggs I notice. It looks quite substantial though.

And here is another very non-traditional and haute cuisine version from The Goring Hotel in London. You can view the recipe and a sort of masterclass here if you want to be really fancy.

It's a long journey from that very plain dish of lentils and rice near the top of the page, to this. A history of cuisine in pictures really. And if we follow Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's admonition to improvise and make a dish your own, you have to admire. Not for your everyday cook though. However, Robert Carrier's version which is really not very 'authentic' is also very simple, so it just proves that you can improvise without having a degree in 'cuisine'. My money's on Delia though.

I'm off to improvise a bit on Hugh's asparagus, pasta and chorizo. No chorizo because of David - bacon instead, with maybe some additional spinach or perhaps just lots of parsley and tomato - the last of my home-grown ones. I can add a few chilli flakes to my own.