Remember Enoch Powell’s speech about rivers foaming with mulled wine? No, you don’t, do you? Because he never made a speech about mulled wine. And here is precisely where the late Enoch went wrong. Because if he had done what The Hype chose to do one afternoon in early November – make and sample traditional dishes from some of the religions that play a part in Leeds life – he could have been in no doubt that multiculturalism was a great idea, and tasty too.
Perhaps it is because the days are darker, the nights colder and the wind crisper, perhaps it is because we are nearing the end of the year or perhaps it is just because everyone likes a party – whatever it is, December is a merry time. Christmas, Diwali, Chanukah are but three of the gloom-lifting opportunities for which this month is famed. Most of us mark Christmas in some way, but have you ever thought of having fun for Chanukah or discoing for Diwali? If not, you are missing out, because good as mince pies, crackers and turkey are, there is more than one way to celebrate the turning of the seasons.
Time was when recipes lived in books. Now they reside on the Internet – at Google and Yahoo and countless other addresses. They are all over the place and easy to access. So, with a taste for something different, The Hype set about taking a culinary voyage to the heart of the festive period to discover how to make a dry fruit kheer (an Indian take on a rice pudding), a potato latke (a Jewish take on a hash brown) and mulled wine (a Christmassy take on hot wine).
First stop: The International Supermarket, Hyde Park. As shop names go this is one of the most accurate and truthful: It is a super international market. It sells a massive range of spices, vegetables, sauces, many of which The Hype had never heard of before and all of which are unlikely to be found in other so-called supermarkets. Within ten minutes our basket was full of every single ingredient we had set out to find:
6 eggs
1 pot of cream
1 packet of cassia bark
1 packet of cloves
1 pot of ginger
1 bottle of milk
1 orange
1 lemon
1 onion
4 potatoes
1 bag of flour
1 packet of custard creams
1 bag of rice
Salt and pepper
1 packet of dried sultanas
Because ‘The International’, as it is known amongst its friends, is a Muslim-owned establishment, we bought our wine at the adjacent Booze Bin.
Second stop: The Kitchen and first item on the agenda: The kheer. According to the website from which The Hype got the recipe, www.diwalicelebrations.net, kheer is one of the most popular sweet dishes of Diwali, the Jain, Sikh and Hindu festival of light. The online instruction manual guided us through the process:
Mix rice, biscuits and milk. Boil it for about ten minutes or till it thickens a little. Mash the rice and biscuits with a masher so they mix well. Add the cream and sultanas. Mix well and boil for two minutes. Pour the kheer into a bowl. Keep it in the freezer to chill or it can be served hot also.
It was a lot of fun – we particularly enjoyed mashing with a masher – and after the prescribed twelve minutes we had ourselves a kheer. Rice-y and lumpy, fruity and thick, it looked exactly like a kheer should do, if the online photos are to be believed.
Straight onto the latkes. Chanukah, a Jewish festival, celebrates the miracle by which just one day’s worth of oil lasted eight when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed. Accordingly, it is traditional to make oily dishes at this time of year. Latkes consist of potato, onion and as much oil as you could hope for. This time, and taking my recipe from www.harperchildrens.com, slightly more work was required:
Wash, peel and grate the potatoes. Squeeze out liquid. Combine with onion, salt, flour and pepper. Lightly beat the egg and stir into the mixture. Heat the oil in a skillet, and spoon in tablespoons of the mixture to make medium sized patties. Brown on one side, turn and brown lightly on the other. Repeat.
Improvisation was the name of the game here. Lacking a skillet (and in fact any idea what one is), a simple frying pan was brought into action. The first two latkes disintegrated, pieces of onion and potato flicking off in different directions. So, true to the spirit of the festival, in went a lot more oil. From that point on, oil flowing, consistent, strong, well-formed latkes fizzed into shape before our eyes.
Finally, we cracked open a bottle of Shiraz and set to making some Delia Smith-inspired mulled wine. Some people use little sachets of mulling spices to create their warm winter wine. None of that for The Hype – fresh ingredients only, as we followed the simple directions of East Anglia’s favourite chef:
Put all the ingredients in a saucepan with 2½ pints (1.5 litres) water then heat to simmering point, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Keep it barely at simmering point for at least 20 minutes, but do not boil or all the alcohol will evaporate.
A heady concoction of spices, fruit and a full-bodied red: mulled and ready to drink.
And that was that. One dry fruit kheer, five potato latkes and a pan full of mulled wine. Multiculturalism on a plate and in a glass. Next time, we would eat the kheer warm and runny rather than cold and firm, we would use more oil on the latkes, and we would add a dash more sugar to the mulled wine but, on the whole, a fantastic meal for The Hype.
But what’s the point of sitting in your kitchen, anaesthetized by all this wine and rich food? This is the point: Society is crumbling. Immigrants are flooding in. 2000 people want to blow us up. Gun crime is rife. We are at war! There is so much discord. The point is to share your newly acquired recipes with as many people as possible. Surprise your neighbours with a kheer, treat a stranger to a latke, take a thermos full of mulled wine and sit in a park with a friend and talk peace. In a small kitchen and for the bargain price of £11.19 The Hype has found the key to a better world.
