This is an eternal favourite. One of those meals that everyone from your grandma to your best friend will talk about with a dreamy glint in the eye, reminiscing about where they had it last and who made it for them etc.etc. In my experience Khow Suey is especially popular with families from the East of India, where the relative proximity to Burma brought a lot of people into contact with either the Burmese themselves or with people who'd spent time in Burma - especially post World War II, when this dish and its recipe was carried over the border along with many people who were moving away from Burma.
In Calcutta, which is where my mother grew up, many families eagerly included Khow Suey in their culinary repertoires, welcoming its basic principles and ingredients with gusto. More importantly, it is a dish which provides plenty of room to innovate or make edits to suit the tastes of the intended audience. It works beautifully in India, where the essential philosophy of cooking seems to be improvisational as opposed to fixed. Kind of like jazz.
As as I grew up, I inherited the love of Khow Suey from my mother and my aunts, who are peerless masters of its preparation. Most recently, I learnt o prepare it as well - having promised a dear friend that I would make it for her as a birthday treat. Having served it to 5 hungry adults, all of whom were generous with their compliments, I feel encouraged to share it with you here.
It is essentially a rich, hearty broth (usually chicken or beef) served on noodles, whith a wide assortment of condiments to layer on top. The broth is the heart of the dish, but the condiments create a unique charm - both visual and gustatory. You can't imagine Khow Suey without them!
To make the broth (assuming you're cooking for 6-8 people) you need first need to make your chicken stock, For this you need:
- 1 kg of chicken (with bones), cleaned and curry-cut
- 1 bay leaf
- 5-6 pepper corns
- 2-inch piece of ginger
Pressure cook all of the ingredients with 6 cups of water to make a chicken stock. The chicken should be well cooked and coming apart easily when you touch it. Shred all the chicken and discard the bones. Keep the shredded chicken and the stock aside.
Now move to the next stage of preparing the broth. For this you will need.
- 4 medium sized onions, finely minced
- 6 cloves of garlic finely minced
- An equal quantity of ginger, finely minced
- 3 green chillies, coarsely ground
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 2 tsp cummin powder
- 2 tsp corriander powder
- 1 tsp red chilli powder
- 2 tbsp of mustard paste (optional)
- 1 bunch of curry leaves, still on the stem and tied with string so that they won't come apart when dunked in a gravy.
- 2 tbsp of gram flower, mixed with a cup of water.
- 6 small tetra packs of coconut milk
- 3/4 cup of tamarind water (made by soaking some fresh tamarind in hot water for 15-20 min).
- Salt to taste.
To prepare the broth, fry ingredients 1-3 in a generous quantity of oil (5-6 tbsp). I like using sesame oil. Always put the garlic first, then a couple of minutes later add the ginger and then the onions. Be careful not to brown them. Stop cooking once the onions have turned translucent. Take this mix out of the pan, leaving the oil behind (you will need the same oil for later so don't wash the pan).
Cool the mix and then blend it to a smooth paste in the blender. Heat the oil in the pan and add the paste of onion, garlic and ginger to it. Add ingredients 4 through 9 to the paste and fry until you see the oil separating from the mix, Take care not to brown the mix.
Add the chicken stock and 3 cups of water. Add the bunch of curry leaves and bring to a boil.
Add the gram flour paste after stirring it thoroughly and again, let the broth boil for 5-10 minutes. The gram flour will cause it to thicken, which is the intention.
Take the broth off the heat and let it cool thoroughly. Push it through a strainer to make it really smooth. and return it to the pan. Now add the shredded chicken and the coconut milk. Bring it to a boil and let it boil for about 10 minutes. Add the tamarind water and salt and let it boil for another 5 minutes.
Take the pan off the heat and allow the broth to cool. No further cooking is needed.
With the broth done, you can turn your attention to the condiments. The ones I like are:
- Boiled eggs, nicely chopped up
- Caramelized onions, cooked crisp
- Deep fried slivers of ginger also cooked crisp
- Very finely sliced potato, roaster or fried to a crisp - alterntively some sev from Haldirams
- Crushed peanuts
- Spring onions, chopped fine
- Coriander leaves, chopped fine
- Minced green chillies
- Some roasted cummin powder
- Some roasted coriander powder
- Wedges of lime.
Use your discretion to prepare quantities sufficient for your people. I prefer to err on the side of excess! You can always think up more condiments to add as well. No restrictions, really.
Also boil up a nice batch of plain noodles.
All the requirements of Khow Suey are now prepped - see pic above.
All you need to do now is heat up the broth and take everything to your table.
A serving of Khow Suey is typically prepared by putting some noodles at the bottom of a large soup bowl and topping them up with a couple of ladle-fulls of the broth. Then depending on individual tastes, you add the various condiments over the noodles and broth and go on to mix them up. I always squeeze some wedges of lime over my Khow Suey before I dive in.
The act of layering the condiments is one that the feasters enjoy the most, so make sure you always have enough. And once the eating has commenced, be prepared for relatively less dinner time chatter and more off the approving "Mmmmm"s and slurps and lip-smacks as your people devour the dish and bless the people that invented it!
Enjoy!
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