A modern twist to an old classic

Australia

Ic was a moment of pride and honour for all Indian foodies to see acclaimed l\1.ichelin- scar Chef V ikas Khanna appea r on 1\i[aste,Chef ./11tstralia currently being aired on Channel Ten.

He was invited to set up a pressure test challenge on the 6th season of the show.

And the challenge be set up - chicken tikka masala! t ow before you th.ink chat would have been easy, rem e m ber this is Vikas Khanna and this is Maste,Chcf. The hosts were pleasantly surprised and che contestants filled with dread when Chef Khanna lifted the cloche to reveal his s ignature creation, rose rea smoked chicken tikka masala with coriander oil, r ice pappadurn and lemon r ice.

Khanna said tl1at th.is dish incorporated the numerous traditional elements that he learnt while growing up and travelling in India along with some modern and contemporary Western influences that he learnt while living a nd cooking in the US He explained to the conrestanrs that the smoking technique is a traditional one followed in lnd.ia where sp ices are added to ghee and poured over hor charcoal to infuse flavour and aroma into the dish. In this particular dish, he used a melange of spices, dried rose buds and Darjeeling tea leaves to lead a distinct tandoor flavour to the chicken.

There were many modern. elemenrs but Chef Khanna said that the main one was the chicken i tself; instead of using regular boneless p ieces, he created a chicken roulade stuffed with roasted tomatoes, garlic, Mad ras spice mix and figs to create the traditional sweet and sp icy flavour tones of chicken tiklrn masala. The rice pappadum was the ocher surprise element where he infused boiled rice with orange blossom , white wine vinegar and mustard seeds and then oven baked it to create the pappadum.

The dish was a challenge for marry of the contestants who were nor familiar with Indian flavours and in spite of being a pressure test, Kha= was present with each contestant throughout the challenge offering advice, boosting morale and sometimes, even_ lending a helping hand. 1n spire of be ing such an acclaimed celebrity chef, he is an extremely warm, kind and friendl y pe r son which really came across on the show.

Khanna's cooking journey began in his original home town of Amritsar, Punjab. He was interested in food from an earl y age, so naturally, his grandmother became his first reacher. She passed on to him the traditional arc of h is family's cuisine. From then, it wasn't long before he scarred co share his love of cooking with otl1ers. Ar the age of 17 he starred his own catering business.

Today his accomplishments are numerous and varied, and his recognicion is wide. Khanna is an accomplished chef, restaurateur, fil mmaker, author, and television personality. He also runs and owns Junoon, a highly acc laimed restaurant in New York showcasing modern Indian cuisine. He admits running a restaurant is no easy task and still works very ha rd to prove his potential.

Ocher successes include catering for events ac the White House in the U S and authoring many books including Tbe Spice Street and Modem Indian Cni.,ine. Producing and filming the series Ho(y Kitche11 is also on this list, where Khanna taltes a look at the role tl1at food plays in our spiritual lives, festivals, traditions, and how cooking food and sharing food can bring people, and the world closer. His successes also include becoming a televis ion chef and personality, scarring in Gordon Ramsey's Kikhen Nigbtf!lares and Hell's Kitchen, with Martha Stewart on her show, and hosting A{dstnChef .l11dia.

During his brief vis it to Melbourne, Chef Khanna took a whirlwind cul inary rour of the cicy with the Maste,Chefhosrs, Gary, George and Matt. He said char he enjoyed sampling local Indian fare which also made him realise tl1at there i s much more to explore and experience in culin:u:y Melbourne an d promised that he will be back soon. Whac advice does Kharu1a have for fellow ymmg Ind ians here in Melbourne who have migrated from the east co li ve now in the west W,e he did? \Xlas he ever lonel y, did he struggle with cultural differences, how di.cl be gee his confidence?

"New York is a place where ever yone is from everywhere e lse," he replied. "Everyone is a sel fsrarter and everyone is moving and creating, and that is the culture of the place. There was no one particularl y lonel y; there i s not that sense, what you do is, you just get stuck iaro it, into plans and imo creating a life for yourself roo". Watch the foll Masterchef episode, ifyou missed it, on htt-p:llte11play.co111 a11/cbmmeltenlmastercbeflepisodes www in dia n lin k.com au

A!though they come from the land of Karna Surra, I ndians are n ow gammga repmariou at the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction A,,mrd for passages of pleasure gone wrong The award's .latest rec ipient, for the year 2013, is Mani! Suri, who took the gong, o r rather the climax, with his sub atom.ic bisexual orgy The City of Devi (Bloomsbury). Aniruddha Bahal's B11llker 13 cameio a [lmmber o ne.in 2003 , a n d there have been many, many other nominees includ.ing bigwigs Salman Ru shdie and J\ru nd hati Roy

For those not familiar with Literary Revieuls annual antiaward, it was establis h ed in l 993 by Rhoda Koenig and Aubero n \'v'augh and aims "to draw atte n tion co the c rud e, badly written, ofte n perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to d.iscou.rnge it". Lad y D iana, P rincess of Wales even prese n ted tbe award one year.

Critically-acclaimed writer, professor of mathematics at a US university, nominee on th e ]\fan Booker and even sho r tlisted for the Fa uJ.kner awards, Manil Suri is now also the w iru1er of a Bad Sex Award Suri's taboo- busting book The City of Devi, his third , i s an apoc aln)tic thriller se t in Mumbai The famous, or .infamous, de pending o n how you look at it, sex scen e comes fro m an u n usual lo,,e rr.ia ngle in cl ud.i ng the n arrator Sarita , h er husband a nd a young gay Musli m man. Suri m anage d co woo me judges w im the passage: S11rely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some gal.axy. The h11t vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands - only Karim's body, locked with mine, 1·emaim. We streak like superheroes past suns and solAr systems, we dive through shoals ofq11arks and atomic nuclei In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rtjoice. How couJd rh.is sexual explosion through time, sp ace a nd co n sciousness, involving all of tl1e ch aracters of the book, n ot win?

Indian writings ofpleasurable things between the pages win Bad Sex Awards for all the wrong reasons

Suri was n ot present to accept the award for his super charged work. Instead, n ovelist Joan Colfa1s presented it to his p u blisher Bloomsbury, who accepted it o n his behalf in London. During the acceptance speec h the sex sce nes in the n ovel were described as "unfette r ed, quirky, beautiful, tragic and wildly experime n tal".

Aniruddha Bahal's 2003 es p ionage thriller B1111ker 13 (Faber & Faber), also went on to w in tl1e Literary Re11ie1v's Bad Sex Award for i ts take on. sex, drugs and corruption in th e Indian army. A part of the winning section o f the novel is:

She picks 11p " Bugatti's 1110111e11tt1111.

Yo1t JI/{//// her 1J1ore t1t a Vo lkswagen's steatfy trot. Sq11eeze the lllileage out oj yo11rgallon of gas. But she's eating 11p the road with all rylif!dm h!t1zi11g

Cars and sex seem to b e a combination in Bahal's novel, even if it does make one wo n der w h at type of a Volkswagen h e wanted? Perhaps a slow and steady kombi va n ?

Babat even decided to publish a tongue -in- cheek piece on o u tloo kinindia com regarding h is expectation s on winning the pr.ize:

My soitrce also told me that he had it on good a11thority that the winner ofthe award some years back was trailed by five beautiful and luscious women to the hotelfrom the evening's venue and taught many things by them during the course ofthe night They might have taken pity on the w riter's sex writing and wanted to enrich his experience so that he could in future do full j11stice to the subject ofsex in his works

It was also suggested that siJ1ge r Sting, w h o presented Bahal the award, would catch up with him late r w ith " fi ve cantric sex goddesses and a b u cket of grease". Surely such a night could not possibly be topped for a wrirer i n n eed of imp r oving their w ritte n. sex scenes, for in spi ration alone?

Th is comment raises an eyebrow at what the sex lives of these writers who w in tl1e Bad Sex Award are really like. Bairn! comically answers th.is by say ing in his p iece:

Some duffers have also started walking up to me these days and

Bunker 13

asking whether my real life sex was as interesting as nry writing. 17-Je women 1 have taken aside andjotted their phone numbers down to give them some detailed answers 1be men have had their nuts reconfigured.

A lthough Bahal happily accepted t he mvarcl as a " r ebellious ges nue" for bis saucy writing, du e to h.is belief that there is too m uch censorship o f writing in India, he was also a tad peeved , as, "lots of other wri ters in India moughc m y book had great sex writing".

Following on from Suri's credenti als , it seems that critical acclain1 of the writer is no guarantee chat me sex passages they write will be any good Amo ng noteworthy winners are John Updike, Hilary Mancel,Joh n Mortioler and Kingsley Amis. A nd keeping up the lnclian trad.ition, we have none otl1er than Salman Ru shdie in Shali1J1ar the Clown Qo n athan Cape) nominated in 2005: ln reply, Boonyi pulled her phiran and shirt offover her head and stood before him naked except for the little pot offire hanging low, below her belly, heating further what was already hot

"'Let's, you know, ca1·ess each other in five pl.aces and kiss in seven ways and make out in nine positions, but let's not get cmried away".

''Don't you treat me like a child, " she said in a throaty voice that proved ,-he had been unsparing in her dmg abuse

Sht1!i111ar the Clown was nominated for t he prize , despite winnin g the 2005 Vodafone Crossword Book Award and b eing a finalist at the 2005 Whitbread Boo k Awards.

Keeping Ru shdie company in the 2005 shortlist was Tarun Tejpal, currentl y in jail for sexuallr harassing a young journalist who worked at his magazine Tehelk11 T ej p al was nominated for his novel The Alche111y of De:ri,·e (Picador):

We began to climb peaks and foll offthem We did old things in new ways. And new things in old ways Any body part could be joined to any body part. And it would result in 11 masterpiece

A few years earlier, another of India's Booker Prize win n ers

Arundhaci Roy found herself nominated for her highly celebrated work The God of .lfllall Tbi11gs, for ideas such as "nucbrown breasts (th at would n't support a toochbrnsh)," alon g with "haunc hes (that could support a whole array of toothbrushes)". l remember blushing up a storm when I bad to read these passages ouc to my English lie class at uni. Wby oh why had I chosen those quotes for my speech?!

Other nominees have included Siddhant Dhanvanr Shangvi (2004) for his book The Lt,st Song of D11sk (Weidenfeld & N icolson); the Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam (also 2004) for Maps far Lost Lo1,ers (Faber & Faber); Hari Kunzru (2002) for The b11jmssionisl (Hamish Hamilton), and Nee l Mukherjee (2010) for A Life Apa,1 (Constable).

Certainly no one can say that w r iting a sex scene is an easy task, whid1 is why so many authors, Lldian or o therwise, shy away from writing one altogether, especially with the threat of winrung this award Indian or otherwise. Writing about sex in a non-crude, non -redundant way is one of d1e hardest things to do. How much information should the author give? Or not give?

As Sarah Crown in The GHardia11 writes, " Maybe it's me, but l find d1e concentration on phys ical sensation, a whole lot sexier than an y amount of thrusting, grabbing or grinding". Sbe also notes that "as someone wbo works hard to get it right in my own novels, I'm very aware of just how difficult it is to depict well," and wanes to know where the good sex awards are? Perhaps writing from lndia, a country thar is foil of co n tradictions abour attitudes towards sex ha s even more of a c hallenge.

A survey conducred by Men's Health in 2013 found mat Indian men are the least sexuall y active among their counterparts. Noc only are Indian men having Jess sex, tbe education system refuses to even teach children about sex. Nirmalya Dutta on The Health Site asks, "Is our refosal to talk abour sex o r pretend it doesn't exist breeding potential predators who never realise that sex is meant to be an enjoyable experience between two consenting adults?" He concludes, "\Y/e keep on having to remind people about this but t he so-called Indian culture they keep on h:uping on about isn't even Indian, it's the remnant of 19th cenrury Victorian morality and there's noming Indian about it". Is it these attitudes chat are resulting in bad sex writing? Or maybe it's just a happy (ending) coi ncidence chat many of the win.oers and nominees are Indian writers?

And if you are wondering why Fif!Jr

Shades of G,·ry bas yet to win d1e dubious honour of winning, d1e award is not for pornographic or expressly erotic Literamre. So mere goes an y mentions of the narrator's "inner goddess doing d1e lambada". Such a shame

From Roy's rood1hrushes, to Tejpal's peaks, Rushdie's awkward teenagers, Bahal's steady VW's and Suri's supernovas, Indian writers sure know how to impress tbe Bad Se,--c Award judges. Here's to me cmde, to the badly written, and co me redundam passages d1at lnclian authors have written, we salute you for giving it a red hot go in a tricky fie ld of crumpled bed sheets and underwear on the floor.

Who "vill win tbe 2014 title? And which lndian writer will find themselves on the s hore-list?

Tweet @indian link @Lit_ Review #BadSex what book you think should win this year's prize

Add a tropical touch to your next sweet or savoury meal

Sweet and sharp aren't usuaUy words used to describe a p iece of fruit. EspeciaUy when tropical is thrown into the mix. Bue that's exactly what passion fruit are, and th ey're the perfect addi tion to meals in w inter.

"Weight is the most important fearure i n choosing passionfruit," T ina McPherson, an Australian passion.fruit grower, says. "Choose a fruit that feels rather heavy for its size. "It d oesn't matter whet!1er the fruit's skin is wrinklr as th is i s not a n indicator of ripeness".

Rich in antioxidants including vitami ns J\ and C, potass ium and dieta ry fibre (a.nd low in calories), they're g reat a lo n gside pork, prawns, chucked into a smoothie or dessert.

Moroccan Glazed Bbq Prawns

Serves4

For the marinade/glaze:

6 passion fruit

'/2 bunch coria nder (r oots and stems)

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp olive o il

2 tsp mild paprika powder

1 t sp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

1 esp ground c inammon

'/2 tsp ground ginger powder

½ tsp cardamom powder

Chilli powder, to taste

Sale and pepper

For the remaining dish:

24 peeled, deveined, raw prawns, tails on

16 bamboo skewers

2 passionfruit

½ bunch coriander Qeaves, from above)

Green salad and crusty bread, to serve

Remove passion fruit pulp and place in a bowl , microwave for 30 seconds 011 high , then strain through a fine si eve. Reserve the juice and cliscard the seeds (op tional) Thorough l)r wash coriander and pick leaves, set as ide for decoration Chop the sterns and roots and place in a mortar and pestle along with some salt. Grind to a p aste, then mjx jn o live oil, aU the spices, and passion.fruit juice. Place marinate and prawns in a bowl and mix thorou gh ly to coat Allow to marinate for at lease 30 minutes In the meantime, soak skewers in some cold water for at least 30 nii.nutes to prevent burning.

Using rwo bamboo skewers at a rime, thread three prawns onto

PASSIONFRUIT, WHITE CHOCOLATE AND CASHEW CHEESE- FAKE

Sen•es4

Base:

¾ cup (11 0g) raw almonds

¼ cup (S0g) p istachios

1 cup (90g) desiccated coconuc

8 Medijool dates , (170g pitted )

1 vanill a bean, seeds only

3 tbsp of passionfruit seeds ot1ly

Pinch of salt

Cheesecake:

440g cashews, soaked over n ight

250g lemon and lime juice

250g honey; raw honey o r agave

270g extra virgin coconut oil

2 vanilla beans, seeds only

½ tsp of salt l tbsp of lime zest

I tbsp of lemon zest juice and seeds. Zest and juice t!1e lemons and lin1es, set aside. eacli of the skewers so that the prawns are se mi straight and sir snugly together. Keep remaining marinade and mix in the passionfruit and a little extra olive oil if you need to loosen it - this will be the glaze.

L ine the base of a 26011 spring form cake tin with baking paper. To make the base place, almonds, pistachios, des iccated coconut, dates, vanilla, passion fruit seeds, and salt in a food processo r Process 1mti1 the mbmu:e resemb les a line crumb a nd comes toget!1er when pressed. Place crumb into t!1e cake tin and press down evenly to form the base. Chill in freezer. Melt the coconut oil in che microwave at 10 second bursts until it becomes a liquid.

To make cheesecake layer, place dra ined soaked cashews, lemon and lin1e juice, honey, vanilla, salt, melted coconut oil an d zest into t!1e food processor. Blend until very smooth and well combined. Pour half t!1e mixture into the cake riu and tap to level o m the filling. Place in freezer to set for one hour.

Heat BBQ to a medium heat and place prawns on grill, baste constantly with the passionfruit glaze, mrning every so often, and cook 1mti1 the prawns are just cooked through (you will see when they cha nge co lour). Serve hot, garnished with coriander l eaves and a side of crusty bread and green salad

1'/, cup passionfruit seed less pul p, (Ap prox. s ix passionfrui t), reserve seeds for base

Garnish:

200g block of good gllalicy white chocolate, shaved (optional for l actose free)

2 smaU passio n fruit, halved and placed on top

1 tbsp of lime zest

I tbsp of lemon zest

Soak cashews overnight in wate r, or pour boiling water over cashews and soak for cwo hours. Remove pass ionfruit pulp and place in a bowl, microwave for 30 seconds on high, then strain through a fine sieve. Reserve d1e

In the meantime blend t!1e other half of tilling with pass ionfruit pulp unti1 weU com b ined. Then pour over chilled first larer, and set in freezer for at least two h o urs. Prepare the garnish, using a vegetable peeler shave white chocolate into ribbons. Cuc passion fruit into halves.

When cake is sec, remove from freezer, and with a wooden skewer release the edges of d1e cake before rem oving i t. Scatter shaved white clmcolate and zests around die center of the cake and top with hal ved passionfruic. Enjoy frozen or chilled

All 1-ecipes and photos:

Sammy and Bella Jakubiak (My Kitchen Rules 2011 winnen) for PassionfruitAustralia www.pnssio11fruitaustralin.org.au